Experts enlighten listeners about masks and vaccines at school board hearing

The Enterprise — Sean Mulkerrin

Congressional candidate Liz Joy, at the microphone, was the main draw at a press conference outside of Voorheesville’s secondary school on Aug 27.

VOORHEESVILLE — While public hearings on masks and vaccinations have often been one-sided, against both, the Voorheesville School Board on Monday heard the other side from an authority on the constitution and from a scientist who has researched treatments for COVID-19 — both Voorheesville parents.

Pete Michels, the scientist, commended parents on all sides for wanting the best for their children, acknowledged the concerns of parents uncomfortable with vaccines for which there is little data available, and explained science. 

Colin Donnaruma, vice president of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Region Chapter, spoke to the constitutionality of mask and vaccine mandates. 

After a two-and-a-half hour meeting that saw attendees applauding politely after both proponents and opponents of back-to-school mandates spoke, the board adopted COVID-19 layered mitigation protocols for the 2021-22 school year.

New for the upcoming school year is that students voluntarily participating in high-risk sports — football, cheerleading, and volleyball — have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus during periods of high transmission, if they are eligible; the board made exceptions for students with medical exemptions.

The other major issue that drew participants and protesters to school board meetings all over the country this summer, including Voorheesville in July — masks — became a settled issue in late August as the state stepped in and made them mandatory. 

The state Department of Health filed an emergency regulation, which became effective on Aug. 27, that requires all students, faculty, and staff of all public and private schools in the state to wear masks inside school buildings.

While the atmosphere of the meeting was positive, some of what was said could be construed as callous. 

Christina and Dennis Oakley as well as Ryan Lawson in a letter to the board sought to marginalize child deaths from COVID-19 in their arguments against the mandates. 

“The statistics are undisputed.  A child aged 1-14, has a 1.5% chance of dying from suicide as compared to dying from COVID-19, which stands at 0.02%,” Lawson wrote in his letter. “A child is more likely to be killed or injured on their way to school than from this virus. The seasonal flu poses a much greater risk, and mask mandates or vaccines have never been issued before.”

COVID-19 “seems to spread more easily than flu,” according to the CDC, and “can cause more serious illnesses in some people.”

The CDC estimates that, since 2010, influenza has been responsible for between 12,000 and 61,000 annual deaths. Between Aug. 28, 2020, and  Aug. 28, 2021, there were nearly 440,100 COVID-related deaths, and close to 640,000 since the pandemic first began, according to the CDC

Christina Oakley took issue with the Centers for Disease Control.

“Why are you listening to the CDC? They are only highly paid civilian doctors and scientists, hired to work there. They are not devine; they are not geniuses,” Oakley said to board members. “They are imperfect people as they continually demonstrate with their ongoing internal contradictions.” 

The CDC is “not elected by us to make decisions,” she said. “We elect you guys to be here [and] make decisions for us and listen to us, and we appreciate that.”

Voorheesville follows guidance from the Albany County and New York State health departments as well as the CDC.

Then Oakley tried to offer the board a taste of its own medicine.

She said, among other things:

— “Ongoing scientific data from the CDC shows a steady decrease in deaths in the U.S., each and every week”;

— These mandates are coming from numbers of cases, but we should be looking at the numbers of deaths, which are now really minimal compared to March 2020.”

There were approximately 7,200 COVID-related deaths in March 2020 and about 23,000 in March of this year, according to the CDC.

— “On August 28, 2021, [there were] 1,106 new deaths from the previous week, nationwide, as the CDC old chart shows. It keeps declining.”

 The CDC caveats the death-count reporting by stating the data is often one to two weeks behind other reported data because its reporting is based on death certificates, which takes time to be completed, and is continually updated.

As of Sept. 1, for the week ending Aug. 28, CDC data show 2,642 deaths involving COVID-19 — an increase of over 1,500 deaths from when Oakley made her statement — which was down from over 6,000 and nearly 7,000 deaths, respectively, the two weeks prior, but a near 80-percent increase from the July 4th weekend.

There were about 21,000 deaths involving COVID-19 in August, with close to 53 percent of the entire country fully vaccinated, up from about 10,400 in July and 7,800 in June and above the numbers for May and April while slightly lower than March, when 15 percent of Americans were fully inoculated; 

  — “In Albany, we had approximately 100 new cases but only one death last week. That means barely 1 percent of the people” in Albany County who tested positive for COVID-19 “in recent weeks have died.”

“Yes, sad, yes,” Oakley said. “But hardly [what] one would call the Black Plague from 14th-Century Europe”; and

— “Since this board puts so much faith in the CDC, you all must acknowledge the data found on this site that only 385 children under the age of 18 have died from COVID us since March.”

“Why are we punishing our kids the most when they are the least at risk?”

Oakley also said research shows that the Delta variant is seven times less deadly than the original variant.

What is known about the Delta variant is that it is highly contagious, more than twice as contagious as earlier variants, that it might cause more severe illness in unvaccinated people than the earlier strains, and that hospitalization is twice as likely in the unvaccinated compared to unvaccinated individuals with the earlier Alpha variant. 

The number of individuals a sick person will infect when an entire population is vulnerable to a virus is known scientifically as “r nought.” The Delta variant has an r nought of seven, while the earlier strain’s value was two to three. The 14th Century Black Death that wiped out one-third of Europe, about 25 million people, was estimated to an r nought range between 1.5 and 1.9.

 

The kids

Kassidi Morrison, a mother of two, in her comments touched on topics that explained how we got here. 

Morrison said, in June, epidemiologists and immunologists were saying that July 4 would be a “massive superspreader event,” and that by late July and August “we are going to be in a situation where” the Delta variant would be running “rampant.”

“And at that same time, they were looking at mandates and everybody was kind of, ‘OK, well, we’re gonna go about our business and kind of do what we will.’ And then sure enough, here we are with the Delta variant running rampant,” she said. “So, we’re in a position now where the Delta variant, which is more detrimental to children, and they’re in a more vulnerable position, and we’re taking less precautions. And that’s very concerning to me.”

Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association show the cumulative count of children dying from COVID-19 reported by 45 states, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam was 425, as of Aug. 26, a 23.5-percent increase from July 8, when 43 states, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam reported 344 deaths — cumulative deaths for people of all ages over the same period increased by 8.5 percent, from 523,848 to 568,234.

From the week ending July 8, the number of children alone who tested positive for COVID-19 went from approximately 19,500 to almost 94,000 four weeks later, the week ending Aug. 5, to nearly 204,000 cases as of Aug. 26, which accounted for 22.4 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the country, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The organizations acknowledged there were limitations to the data, for example, the definition of a child — age ranges reported for children varied by state — or that somes states reported less frequently and dropped certain metrics they had previously reported.

New York State did not provide the organizations with an age distribution for its state-wide cases, only New York City did, which reported an age range of zero to 17 — the new coronavirus case data was collected from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

In Florida, for example, ground zero of country’s school mask-mandate fight and which in the past two weeks alone has also seen its highest seven-day average of deaths, hospitalizations, and new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, the reported age range of children was zero to 14; the state stopped reporting child hospitalizations in late June. 

Among the 24 states and New York City that reported hospitalizations, cumulative child admissions increased by about 2,460 between July 8 (when 23 states and New York City reported data) and Aug. 26, from about 16,600 to approximately 19,100, a 14.8-percent increase.

All-age cumulative hospitalizations for the reporting states and New York City over the same period increased by 9.7 percent — and 9.58 percent when children are unaccounted for— from 740,371 to 812,130. 

The cumulative count of children dying from COVID-19 reported by 45 states, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam was 425, as of Aug. 26, a 23.5-percent increase from July 8, when 43 states, NYC, Puerto Rico, and Guam reported 344 deaths — cumulative deaths for all ages over the same period increased by 8.5 percent, from 523,848 to 568,234.

 

The constitution

Charissa Mayer was concerned about the mandates being placed on children.

“And I look at it from this lens: What is freedom?” Mayer said to board members. 

“[It’s] the political right, the ability to change things, and not be constrained in the present state. The power or right to act, change, speak, or think what one wants without hindrance or restraint,” Mayer said. “[It’s] the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint of choice or action, doing things that will, in theory or practice, not be prevented by other forces.”

Mayer, a Republican who has appeared on Fox News more than once to discuss masking, then plugged her run for New Scotland Town Board, an opportunity she seizes every time she speaks publicly in school forums on school matters.

Rarely, if ever, do the agendas of the New Scotland town and Voorheesville school boards overlap. 

Mayer then pivoted to a point she made during a sparsely-attended press conference on Aug. 27, where she and Congressional candidate Liz Joy spoke out against masks and mandatory vaccinations of athletes. 

“But I think what this comes down to — what someone said earlier — this is a constitutional right,” she said.

Donnaruma, vice president of the NYCLU Capital Region Chapter, spoke to the constitutionality of mask and vaccine mandates. 

“I think it’s clearly legal,” he said. “I think it’s clearly constitutional.”

Donnaruma said, “I’m a constitutional attorney by training. And this is not an infringement of constitutional rights. The case law is clear: There is not a protected class under the Constitution for folks who are unmasked or unvaccinated.”

“I don’t believe this is an infringement on our freedom that is unjust,” he said. “I think this is about collective responsibility; it’s about public health, I think there’s a clear consensus that masks are needed.”

Matt Bergeron, also an attorney, spoke about the mandates from a legal perspective, with some rhetorical flair. 

“If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we also have a pandemic of selfishness,” Bergeron said. For society to run as a society, it needs to be run for the common good, he said.

“To those who claim the freedom to govern their ability to impact others health, I simply offer: “Which is that the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. 

“On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”

 Bergeron was quoting a 1905 United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the concept that we, “as a civilized society,” he said, can mandate vaccinations.

He also noted, “We’re not even talking about across-the-board-mandated vaccines, we’re talking about vaccines in certain, limited circumstances, in an activity which is entirely — as it has already been pointed out — a voluntary choice.”

 

Science 

Science is not the truth; science is about finding the truth, Bergeron said.

Scientist Pete Michels said he decided to speak because he’s someone “who has done research on vaccines as well as on various treatments for COVID disease.”

“There is, unfortunately, a lot of different information which is out there,” he said. “A blizzard of information, which also then changes from time because the virus is one that mutates.”

Michels said that the earlier variants of the virus had “basically” been “eliminated,” and that 98 percent of cases are now caused by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, “which is very new and has different characteristics than COVID originally.”

Michels recognized “most people are very uncomfortable with these different technologies,” but said, “We’re going to continue to make decisions based upon the changing nature of the pandemic, and the changing information that comes out as more and more scientific information [and] medical information is shared.”

Put another way: “When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you,” Bergeron said. “It just found out more.”

 

The plan

While, during periods of high community transmission, vaccinations will be required for students playing high-risk sports at Voorheesville, during periods of either substantial or moderate community transmission, vaccinations will be recommended for eligible students; there is no mention in Voorheesville’s plan of vaccines during periods of low community transmission. 

Community is defined as Albany County, which is currently labeled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having a high rate of transmission of COVID-19 — the worst of four categories.

Despite parental opposition voiced during Monday’s meeting and at a press conference held outside the school on Aug. 27, the data was borne out by the number of students — save for cheerleading — who had already been vaccinated.

Anyone 12 or older is eligible to be vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, to be marketed as Comirnaty.

For cheerleading, 13 individuals signed up for both junior varsity and varsity, but just six had provided proof of vaccination; junior-varsity cheer will not run this fall because of the low numbers. 

For varsity volleyball, 10 of 11 players submitted proof of vaccination, while for junior-varsity volleyball, seven out of nine had. 

For varsity football, which has 24 players, 22 showed proof of vaccination, and for junior-varsity football, 15 of 18 players had submitted proof — however, 16 are needed to field a squad.  

The deadline to show proof of vaccination was extended until Sept. 3

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