Once again, I am sharing the school hours in the same room as my students. The state of Michigan decided to lift the pause due to “the numbers improving.”

Quite frankly, I’m not sure I know the numbers to which are being referred. Is it the rate of infections per 100,000? Is it the death rate? The hospitalization rate or the ICU bed availability rate? The last rate I was attuned to was that the number of infections was highest among teens and early 20-somethings, in other words, high school and college kids. Yet, here we are back at it.

I have a couple of students who refuse to wear their masks properly. If masks were pants, they’d be at their ankles. As their teacher, there is only so much reminding, warning, admonishing, and punishing that I can do. I suggested last week to my principal that we ought to have a zero-tolerance policy about mask-wearing because, let’s face it, after nearly a year of this pandemic, and approaching half a million deaths in this country alone, wearing a mask should be as easy as logging onto TikTok. I’ve had it with these kids. I’m exhausted.

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This is not to say that teaching and learning in person are not superior to the virtual way. Of course, it is, there is no comparison. Even I, unconvinced as I am of my personal safety, get lost in the person to person interaction, and that special kind of classroom energy. But these are luxuries that no one in this country, this world, can actually afford. Yet, I comply with building hours, as do my colleagues, most of whom look as though they concur with me wondering, “What the ... are we doing back here?”

We have all heard our last and current president proclaim that we are "at war” with COVID-19. Wartime production acts are being invoked so, yes, I guess we are. As far as our students go, what would we do with them if there was actually violent combat? We would place them in age-appropriate levels when the war was won, that’s what. Why don’t we do this?

Well, I’m back here, and have taken my personal safety into my own hands, using my own funds and unwilling to defer to or wait for my district to make things safer, or at least more comforting for us middle-aged teachers.

The first thing: KN95 masks. I would have purchaced N95 masks but they are impossible to procure as I imagine they are reserved for the front line health care workers. The next best thing – perhaps equivalent – is the KN95 which is pricey, but worth it. Depending on what research you’re reading, they filter out nearly 200 percent more particulates than cloth masks, and a third more than disposable three-ply medical grade ones. No one can tell me why 90% of the people in my building are walking around with cloth masks.

Worse, companies and organizations are giving away said masks with their logos on them. What kind of sick marketing is this? Do they say, “Here, take this, it’ll protect you half as much as the disposable kind. Be saaaafffee! Remember, we’re in this together.” No thanks – I’m about living your cloth lie.

So over my KN95 mask is a solid acrylic guard that covers my nose bridge to just past my chin and wraps itself around the bottom half of my face. They have arms like glasses that hook over your ears. Easy, and chic, if I do say so.

Over my eyes – because coronavirus can pass through the sockets – are goggles. Either ones that are large enough that I can wear my reading glasses under them; or special reading glasses that have been retrofitted with goggle-like apparati. The point here is to protect all around the eyes, so that there is a significantly lessened chance of virus particles floating into them.

Directly behind my desk is a fan that blows away from me, so that if anyone comes near as I am sitting there, any of the particles they release will be blown right back at them. On my desktop are spray bottles of 90% alcohol and hospital grade hand sanitizer. The piece de resistance? An electric ULV fogger gun, that shoots out a mist of anti-viral/anti-bacterial acid that promises to kill 100% of any microscopic living thing it touches.

Here’s the thing: 100% is the only thing that should comfort us. Until there is enough vaccine, enough people getting vaccinated, and until we are clear of this pandemic and its even more virulent variants, we really are combating coronavirus. The point is not to merely survive COVID-19, it is to completely avoid it. People who survive it are not in the clear by a long shot.

Be obnoxious if you have to, as have I. Aren’t you and your family worth the trouble?

Dan Ho, a native of Agat, is a writer and teacher and holds a Ph.D. in indigenous studies. Follow his garden adventures on Instagram @HoandGarden.

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