Heather Han­well, Kate Laing, and ​“Han­nah” are mem­bers of Ontario School Safe­ty, a group of Ontario res­i­dents, most of them par­ents, com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that the province’s schools are safe enough for stu­dents, teach­ers, and oth­er edu­ca­tion work­ers, in the con­text of the ongo­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Scott Neigh inter­views them about Ontario’s response to COVID in schools so far, about the many things the province should be doing but isn’t, and about the legal chal­lenge that they plan to launch to get the provin­cial gov­ern­ment to make schools safer.

We all know the broad out­lines – in ear­ly 2020, peo­ple start­ed get­ting sick from a nov­el coro­n­avirus, and since that time, COVID-19 has killed in excess of 6 mil­lion peo­ple around the world. Tens of mil­lions more are liv­ing with often seri­ous long-term impacts from the dis­ease, lead­ing many experts to describe the pan­dem­ic as a ​“mass dis­abling event.”

Ini­tial­ly, many gov­ern­ments took deci­sive action to save lives and keep health sys­tems from col­laps­ing. As we learned more about how the virus works, and as new tools like vac­cines became avail­able, we tran­si­tioned to ways of pro­tect­ing each oth­er that were effec­tive but less dis­rup­tive. And yet today, with more COVID deaths in Cana­da so far in 2022 than in all of either 2020 or 2021, and with our health sys­tem in cri­sis, gov­ern­ments have almost com­plete­ly retreat­ed from the kinds of mea­sures that we know would keep us safe while still allow­ing us to large­ly go about our lives.

Today’s episode focus­es on the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Ontario. The pan­dem­ic response in that con­text has large­ly fol­lowed the broad­er tra­jec­to­ry – lots of shut-downs ear­ly on, then a shift to depen­dence on over­lap­ping mea­sures like dis­tanc­ing, mask­ing, and vac­cines, fol­lowed by the cur­rent refusal by the gov­ern­ment to do much of any­thing to keep stu­dents and staff safe or to even acknowl­edge the exis­tence of a problem.

The guests on today’s show are all par­ents with chil­dren who attend school in Ontario. In addi­tion, Han­well has a PhD in Nutri­tion­al Sci­ences from Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, as well as Mas­ters degrees in both nutri­tion­al sci­ences and pub­lic health. Laing holds two Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence degrees, one in psy­chol­o­gy and one in phys­i­ol­o­gy, and she lives with an autoim­mune dis­ease. And ​“Han­nah” is a small busi­ness own­er – she is par­tic­i­pat­ing under a pseu­do­nym out of con­cern for the kind of vicious back­lash some­times mobi­lized by those who oppose pub­lic health measures.

For Laing, ​“the begin­ning of the end” of Ontario hav­ing a halfway decent response to COVID in schools came when capac­i­ty issues were used as a rea­son to sig­nif­i­cant­ly restrict access to test­ing, which in turn meant that it became very dif­fi­cult to know the extent of the disease’s pres­ence. She said, ​“Our [case] num­bers went to crap, quite frankly. And that real­ly impaired par­ents’ abil­i­ty to make informed deci­sions … and at the same time the gov­ern­ment was try­ing to say, we need to put it on you.”

Laing con­tin­ued, ​“We have more noti­fi­ca­tion pro­to­cols in place for kids get­ting head lice than we do for a dis­ease that caus­es enor­mous endovas­cu­lar com­pro­mise, car­dio­vas­cu­lar events, neu­rocog­ni­tive deficits, long COVID. Like, it’s just mas­sive, the num­ber of things that we’re find­ing COVID does. And we as a soci­ety have just said, let it rip. And we’re just let­ting it run through schools.”

“Han­nah” added, ​“The fact that we are fine with this run­ning any­where in our com­mu­ni­ties is astound­ing to me, let alone infect­ing our chil­dren and run­ning ram­pant in schools.” She con­tin­ued, ​“It’s no longer a ques­tion that schools are areas of high trans­mis­sion. It’s also no longer a ques­tion that kids can be infect­ed with it, and that it is doing dam­age to their bod­ies – poten­tial­ly short term, and poten­tial­ly long term.” Some peo­ple, such as those with some autoim­mune dis­eases, are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to COVID and the dam­age it can do.

And Han­well said, ​“One of the things that’s real­ly frus­trat­ing for me, as some­one with a back­ground in pub­lic health, is that there were a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions – evi­dence-based rec­om­men­da­tions – that the gov­ern­ment refused to imple­ment in schools.” She said there was enough time between the onset of the pan­dem­ic and the dead­ly Omi­cron wave that ​“they could have made invest­ments. Time and time again … there were things that the gov­ern­ment could have done to make schools safer.”

Ontario School Safe­ty got its start on Twit­ter. A lawyer had post­ed a thread out­lin­ing why he thought that par­ents in Ontario would have a strong legal case against the provin­cial gov­ern­ment for its unrea­son­able and unsafe choic­es in respond­ing to COVID in Ontario schools, and a num­ber of par­ents respond­ed. The lawyer facil­i­tat­ed an ini­tial online meet­ing, and they decid­ed to form a group.

A planned law­suit against the Ontario gov­ern­ment is the cen­tre­piece of the group’s strat­e­gy, though they are also doing var­i­ous kinds of media work and pub­lic edu­ca­tion. They set up a GoFundMe page, a web­site, and social media. As of this record­ing, they have raised about $35,000 out of the $75,000 they need to launch the lawsuit.

They are also look­ing for more peo­ple who might want to get involved in the group or become plain­tiffs in the legal chal­lenge. Han­well said, ​“We’ve already had a lot of fam­i­lies reach out to us,” but they are eager to hear from more. ​“We want to know if you’re hav­ing trou­ble, if you’re hav­ing issues with COVID in schools or what­not, and you think you might want to be a plain­tiff…. We want to hear from [peo­ple], we want to hear their stories.”

The deci­sion to focus on a legal chal­lenge was made in the con­text of most mem­bers of the group already hav­ing been very active as indi­vid­u­als in putting pres­sure on their local school boards and indi­vid­ual schools around COVID safe­ty, and being frus­trat­ed by how lit­tle head­way they had been able to make. They were, Laing said, ​“run­ning into a lot of red tape” and being con­stant­ly told that, oh, no, this is actu­al­ly some­one else’s respon­si­bil­i­ty – ​“You kind of get the runaround.” It soon became clear to the group that deci­sions on these issues are being made by the provin­cial gov­ern­ment, and the law­suit is a tac­tic that allows them to ​“go for the head of the snake, for lack of a bet­ter term.”

The group is very clear that they are not ask­ing for more school shut­downs – what they want is the gov­ern­ment to do the things that would be nec­es­sary to make it safe to keep schools open. This could involve a lot of dif­fer­ent ele­ments, but it promi­nent­ly fea­tures re-ori­ent­ing the province’s response to cen­tre what the sci­ence actu­al­ly says about COVID and its trans­mis­sion in schools, hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion about that with the pub­lic, and more test­ing. They want evi­dence-based deci­sion mak­ing about mea­sures like manda­to­ry mask­ing, invest­ment in bet­ter indoor air qual­i­ty, and changes in school oper­a­tions like cohort­ing and altered sched­ules. They want all of this imple­ment­ed in a way that is equi­table, with for exam­ple free pro­vi­sion of N‑95 and sim­i­lar masks to ensure that expense is not a bar­ri­er to safety.

At the same time, today’s inter­view par­tic­i­pants say that they have a lot of sym­pa­thy for peo­ple who are skep­ti­cal of their demands and who don’t under­stand the extent to which COVID remains a threat, in schools and in gen­er­al. ​“Han­nah” said, ​“There has been just mas­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ure” from gov­ern­ments about COVID-19. ​“We as a group ful­ly under­stand why the major­i­ty of peo­ple don’t think COVID’s a big deal. … They have not been giv­en all of the information.”

With that in mind, the group is also pri­or­i­tiz­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion relat­ed to COVID safe­ty in their work, because most peo­ple just do not have the time to fol­low the emerg­ing research direct­ly. Han­well said, ​“We’re not out here nec­es­sar­i­ly to change people’s minds if they’ve already dug into strong posi­tions against COVID pro­tec­tions. But rather, I like to think about friends of mine in my small north­ern com­mu­ni­ty who are busy with their lives, they’re strug­gling to put food on the table because of ris­ing gro­cery prices, they’re wait­ing for a day in the ER when their kids are strug­gling to breathe, they’re not able to access med­ica­tions, etc. And they’re con­fused, and they’re prob­a­bly feel­ing a lit­tle bit, if any­thing, annoyed or angry at the gov­ern­ment, I would think, right now. Because why are we talk­ing about masks? Again, we thought we were out of this. Why are we hav­ing this cri­sis in hos­pi­tals, in par­tic­u­lar­ly in the children’s hos­pi­tals? So part of our work right now, in addi­tion to the legal case, is to help get that infor­ma­tion out there.”

Laing agreed, say­ing, ​“There are dots that need to be con­nect­ed here that the gov­ern­ment isn’t real­ly inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing for peo­ple.” How­ev­er, she empha­sized that in say­ing these things, Ontario School Safe­ty is not just focus­ing on ​“doom and gloom. … We’re say­ing, yes, this is out there, and we know it’s out there. And, yes, we need to learn to live with COVID. But liv­ing with COVID doesn’t mean just, you know, accept­ing the fact that you’re going to get infect­ed with it mul­ti­ple times. It means, okay, got to wear a mask in con­gre­gate set­tings, got to social dis­tance, got to get vac­ci­nat­ed, got to do all of these lay­ers of pro­tec­tions. And the gov­ern­ment has its role to play in terms of mak­ing sure that air qual­i­ty is high, mak­ing sure that there are poli­cies in place.”