Opinion: In light of the announcement that children will receive the COVID vaccine in schools despite her best efforts, Yifat Shasha-Biton must engage in some Introspection after she almost put our children at risk by objecting to to the inoculation being administered in school hours
It is unclear how – in the sea of dilemmas presented by the COVID pandemic – Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton managed to turn a trivial matter such as vaccinating children against the pathogen during school hours into a clear hazard.
Israelis had finally managed to reach a consensus regarding all the difficulties in the education system – the large classrooms, the shortage of teaching staff, and a curriculum that lags behind the standards of the 21st century.
We only have one matter to attend to, and that is the issue of whether or not to vaccinate students during school hours.
Students in Israel have been receiving vaccines during school hours for decades, since it both saves the parents the hassle of taking their kids to a local clinic and, more importantly, ensures that every child gets the necessary vaccines.
True, during these decades arguments occasionally arose for and against these school-time vaccines.
In the classes my children attended there were children whose parents stated that they did not agree to vaccinate their child, and therefore took full responsibility for all the implications of that choice.
Back then, though, opposition to vaccinations was nothing but a curiosity, a mild annoyance that didn’t come up even once during our many parent-teacher conferences.
The most attention it got was from two or three minutes of inter-parental gossip. We agreed these anti-vaxxer parents might be a little off, but they were fully within their rights.
Anti-vaccination became an issue in 1989 when polio reemerged in the country, despite our sincerest belief that this disease was all but eradicated in Israel.
The current reasoning of those who oppose the COVID vaccination in schools is nothing but a pile of nonsensical excuses – one of which is the claim that a child should not be forced to undergo the experience of receiving the vaccine.
By this reasoning, one might think receiving the vaccine is worse than going through 18 months of a pandemic, constant closures, forced remote studies, social isolation, and the fear and depression born out of living in the shadow of prevalent uncertainty.
That is without even mentioning how this will create unfair social pressure on the children whose parents refuse to allow them to get vaccinated.
All children, be they just 12 years old – the minimum age eligible for the vaccine – or above, are well aware of the claims that those who refuse to get vaccinated endanger not only themselves, but everybody around them.
They are also privy to all the data published on a daily basis, which show that no less than 90,000 students are currently in isolation, and that a third of all verified cases in Israel are in those aged 12 to 19.
They see how 3,000 of those recently verified cases were children and that uncertainty still prevails with less than two weeks to go before the start of the school year, as no one knows what the school year will actually look like.
Despite all of these issues, is Shash-Biton really kept awake at night by the 10 minutes it will take every student to get the vaccine?
The director-general of the Health Ministry, Prof. Nachman Ash, was right to put an end to this farce and order all children – pending parental approval of course – to be vaccinated during school hours.
And Shasha-Biton? She would be wise to take the time to study the criticism directed towards her by the public and the government.
She might also want to avoid finding solace in the news that some parents are threatening to open schools solely for unvaccinated children.
For the public, by the way, this is great news. Let these parents do just that. And while we’re at it, let them take all the teachers who refuse to receive the inoculation with them.
Let them establish an education system whose foundations are the fake news continuously bubbling to the surface like poison gas.
The rest of the country, meanwhile, must focus on formulating an outline for the real return to school, something that has so far eluded all the experts.
As reported by Ynetnews