Fall is setting in. You can feel it in the crisp morning air, and it is becoming ever more visible in the changing colour of our trees. You can also hear it in the sniffly runny noses of children as the temperature shift and the return to school combine, as they do every year, to produce head colds. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, what was once an annoying rite of passage at the beginning of the school year now causes whole families to grind to a halt at a time when things are already uncertain and strange enough.
Navigating this new abnormal is going to be a headache for parents and teachers, who are now being asked to treat almost every insignificant childhood ailment as a potential symptom of the virus. Stories abound about parents who were forced to collect their children from isolation in daycares or schools because of a runny nose. Once the process has been initiated, parents are left with little choice other than to subject their child to an unpleasant COVID-19 test or wait out a lengthy isolation period. I’m not at all suggesting that we should not be monitoring our children’s health on a daily basis, or that keeping them home when sick is an imposition. I am concerned about the chaos this may cause to already overwhelmed families, early-childcare centres and schools.
I am also concerned that our saturated health care system and its many complementary services, such as tele-health support lines, may not be prepared for a spike in runny-nose-related calls from confused and frustrated families. In insisting that families carry on with daily work and school lives, the Quebec government may have underestimated the toll this pretense of normality may take, on all of us.
Sarah Rennie