“It will all be over by Easter,” “The summer of freedom,” “By this Christmas, it will be a lot better.” These three quotes all have one thing in common: they are failed predictions about when the COVID pandemic will be over. In the past few months, especially after mask mandates were dropped, there was a hope that the pandemic, which has taken the lives of over one million Americans and that we’ve all been enduring for the past two years, will finally be over. However, this hope has proven to be elusive as the seven-day average COVID numbers have doubled nationwide in the past month. As a result, numerous towns, including Needham, have been placed in the “red zone” by the CDC, meaning that the CDC recommends that Needham residents wear masks. Furthermore, in Needham High, the Junior Harbor cruise caused many (likely well over 100) COVID cases because students were congregated in a small area for many hours, without masks. Given all of these facts, what steps do students at Needham High believe should be taken to ensure that they are properly protected?
After asking numerous students about their opinions on the recent surge, it is clear that most students fall into one of two categories. The first category that people fall into is described by a Needham High junior, who stated, “I think that it [the recent COVID surge] stinks and that we should not have been lax with precautions for so long and that the surge should have been predicted a long time ago.” Much like this student, a lot of Needham students feel uneasy about the recent surge and think that more should have been done to prevent the surge. On the other side, there are some students who believe, as one 11th grade student argued, that “People shouldn’t be overreacting, I don’t think that we should be living with over-precautions.” After more than two years of a pandemic, it is easy to sympathize with people who are tired of precautions. Many of these students would push back against the enforcement of a new mask mandate and feel that it is an unnecessary encroachment on their personal freedoms. Clearly, students at Needham high are sharply divided over what precautions they have done personally or what they believe should be done on a schoolwide level.
Since no one knows when (or if) the coronavirus pandemic will be over, in my opinion, the priority should be to prevent unnecessary deaths and severe sickness from coronavirus; however, we also must be mindful not to let pandemic anxieties take over our lives since the pandemic has already taken so much from everyone. This balance, (again) in my opinion, includes regularly testing, wearing a mask if you feel sick, and being mindful of the people around you to make sure that you are not exposing yourself to COVID or, worse, spreading the virus to someone else. And, above all else, listening to scientists. That being said, there is clearly an ongoing debate at Needham High over how to handle COVID surges going into the summer and beyond.