From the Editor: What we need to know about COVID

Some questions about COVID-19 in St. Mary Parish:
—Public schools are now set to open Aug. 10, which, at best, will be near the end of the surge in COVID-19 positives since mid-June.
Parents will have alternatives to sending their kids back to campuses. They can home-school or take advantage of virtual learning opportunities.
But some percentage of 8,000 students will head back to their schools next month for at least a couple of days a week. If the statistics are right, the safety of the children will depend almost entirely on measures developed by the school system, including the wearing of face coverings and social distancing.
Gov. John Bel Edwards and Sheriff Blaise Smith are among those who have made public statements pinning the spread of COVID to failure to comply with coronavirus precautions.
Can we rely on kids to be smarter about COVID than adults have been?
—How effective will those school precautions be?
I went 10 years without taking a sick day before I got married to a woman with three kids in elementary and middle school. Suddenly, it was like I was catching every bug any kid in the parish brought to school.
Let’s hope that the schools do better controlling COVID than they do with all the other germs.
—At a special School Board meeting last week, people from inside and outside the system asked to put off the beginning of school until after Labor Day.
Their feelings are easy to understand. But some kids rely on schools for a decent meal, or special education to overcome physical or intellectual challenges, or just a place to escape for a few hours from a troubled home.
If we put off school until we know it’s safe, what happens to those kids?
—All things considered, St. Mary’s economy has held up pretty well, at least as measured by municipal budgets.
On Tuesday, we reported how Patterson, Berwick and Morgan City officials say they’re not seeing the drop in sales tax revenue that had been predicted.
But a lot of federal money has been coming into the parish, including a $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits.
The latest unemployment report from the Louisiana Workforce Commission says 16,930 people were working in St. Mary in June. That’s down from 18,833 in June 2019. The number of people who count as unemployed is up by 953 since June 2019.
If even half of those people qualify for the extra $600 a week in unemployment, that’s $1.1 million coming into the parish every month.
Republicans in Congress want to reduce the extra benefit to $200 a week. Democrats want to renew the $600 boost.
What happens if — or when — Congress decides it can’t afford anything at all?
—One of the arguments against renewing the $600 in unemployment benefits is that many workers would rather stay home because they make more in unemployment than they do when they’re working.
How does that work exactly?
When I got laid off nearly six years ago, I had to look for work, which meant logging on to the Workforce Commission’s clunky website to report applications. I was required to accept a job that was offered.
Otherwise, unemployment benefits stopped. Refusing to come back to work when called, which didn’t happen, was out of the question.
Surely some unemployed workers are enjoying an increase in income because of the $600 supplement. That doesn’t mean they can say no to a job.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.