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HS that suspended teen who tweeted photo of hallway has 9 COVID-19 cases:
North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, sent a letter to parents Saturday, saying, "At this time, we know there were six students and three staff members who were in school for at least some time last week who have since reported to us that they have tested positive." The letter was published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Most or even all of the six students and three staff members who tested positive could have had the virus before the school reopened on Monday, August 3. As Harvard Medical School explains, "The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure," and "a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms."
[...] As we reported Friday, the school issued a five-day suspension to student Hannah Watters after she posted a photo to Twitter, noting the "jammed" hallways and "10 percent mask rate." The school lifted her suspension after extensive media coverage. One other unnamed student who was suspended for a similar reason also had the suspension reversed, the Journal-Constitution said.
Students attended class in person only on Monday through Wednesday, as the district said it conducted a short first week "so that all of our schools can step back and assess how things are going so far."
Update at 6:50pm ET: North Paulding High School announced Sunday that it has canceled in-person instruction for Monday and Tuesday, August 10 and 11, because of the nine positive cases and "the possibility that number could increase if there are currently pending tests that prove positive." The school said that on Tuesday evening, parents and students will be notified about whether in-person instruction will resume on Wednesday. Remote learning will continue while the school is closed.
Previously:
(2020-08-08) Pupils Who Shared Photos of Packed Corridor of Maskless Georgia Students Suspended
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Freeman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:10PM (34 children)
While one might say it serves them right. It's the students and families that are suffering. I'm a bit torn on what should be done, but at a certain point. If we don't get back to business as usual, we will have a new economic depression. That would be bad for everyone, except our enemies.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:33PM (19 children)
> If we don't get back to business as usual, we will have a new economic depression.
Well, a severe recession anyway. And yes, that's what happens when you have a severe pandemic. There's not really any way to avoid that part, all we have control over is how many people die. You can't go back to business as usual until the disease is controlled - trying to just means a whole lot more people die, and the survivors stop trusting the government so that once the disease really is controlled, everybody continues to hide because they don't want to die, and the government already lied to them once about it being safe so why should they believe them now?
>That would be bad for everyone, except our enemies.
Except that our enemies are also suffering from the same pandemic. Our suffering is (arguably) good for them, but their suffering is (arguably) good for us - so things kinda balance out on that front. Unless one or the other actually does a good job of managing the pandemic and maintaining their population's trust in the government - in which case they recover much faster once the threat has passed and gain a strategic advantage.
This isn't exactly unexplored territory - we've got lots of documentation of what happened in previous major pandemics, how hard economies were hurt, and how quickly they recovered under a lot of different responses, with the 1918 flu being particularly well documented. In 1918 those states that shut down soonest and most completely, and remained shut down until the pandemic was actually over, were the ones that recovered to pre-pandemic levels the fastest. While those that lied about how bad things really were, and tried to open up long before the pandemic was over... well they had a long hard road to recovery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:46PM (4 children)
Honestly, who are the enemies of America anyway? Mexico and Canada?
Or maybe what people really mean by "enemies" and those who America has simply decided to fuck with and a pandemic can't be allowed to put a full stop to that!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:54PM (2 children)
Russia, Iran, and China are the top three that come to mind. North Korea too, though they really don't have much power to do anything. And no, Russia isn't an "enemy" as you put it; like China, they have aspirations of becoming a superpower again, and America is in their way. When one country wants to become the most powerful nation on earth, and enjoy the benefits that come with that, any other nations that are an obstacle to that goal automatically become enemies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:11PM
None of those are even your continent. They are not "enemies". That's the doublespeak Americans can't get their head around for some reason. Russia and China are competitors. Iran and North Korea are resistant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:07AM
China has such a loooong way to go to get close to the USA.
Their best and brightest emigrate asap and don't go back. Yes, some are spies but a vast vast majority just want to get out of that corrupt bullshit where the President puts his son-in-law and daughter in top government positions. Yes I'm being facetious but this is a gross anomaly in the USA that both parties will fix in short order when Trump is no longer relevant. Just like the 22nd Amendment pass about 5 seconds after Roosevelt (the famous one) died.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:11AM
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
--- Pogo, cca 1971
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:06PM (10 children)
Except that our enemies are also suffering from the same pandemic.
Not really, no. Just look at the numbers; Iran had a hard time at first, but we're far, far ahead of them in infections and deaths per-capita now, and they seem to have it under control. China has done far better (even if you believe they cooked the numbers), and it's totally under control there. We're handling this about as well as Brazil right now. If anything, this pandemic is a boon for our biggest enemies, because it's hurt us so much more than them, and is threatening to tear the country apart, which is great for countries that want to create a power vacuum that they can then step in to fill.
Unless one or the other actually does a good job of managing the pandemic and maintaining their population's trust in the government - in which case they recover much faster once the threat has passed and gain a strategic advantage.
That doesn't look like it's going to happen here.
In 1918 those states that shut down soonest and most completely, and remained shut down until the pandemic was actually over, were the ones that recovered to pre-pandemic levels the fastest. While those that lied about how bad things really were, and tried to open up long before the pandemic was over... well they had a long hard road to recovery.
There was a lot less travel between states in 1918, so it was easier to isolate them from each other. Not so much now. Now we're all going to have a long, hard road to recovery. Meanwhile, China will be happy to take on a bigger leadership role in the world while we're preoccupied with the pandemic.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:42PM (2 children)
There was still much travel, aiui. The prevalent travel was just of a different nature, mostly soldiers moving into high-concentration areas to be deployed overseas, spreading the flu to each other and to the people along their journeys and at their destinations.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
That's how the 1918 flu spread so fast. But the key is that it was of a different nature as you said: it was much easier to isolate states from each other because they didn't just have people driving or flying all over the country willy-nilly like we do today. People stayed much closer to their homes. So once the problem was identified, it was much easier for states (who wanted to) to contain it.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:31AM
A better comparison would be between the different responses in states back then equating to countries now.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:42PM (3 children)
How's Iran's economy doing? We're talking economy here after all, not infections or deaths, since the implied argument for "we need to get back to business as usual" is basically "let people die to improve the economy", despite the fact that that has never actually worked.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:11PM (2 children)
I imagine Iran's economy is doing better now than when they were at the peak of Covid infections. What exactly are you getting at? Iran isn't an example of "let people die to improve the economy"; Iran actually handled it somewhat competently, given the challenges they had with being embargoed. I don't know of any real-life examples of "let people die to improve the economy" actually, but this does seem to be what roughly half of Americans want to do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:52PM
Well, assuming you consider them an enemy woth considering at all, they'd be the enemy in my original post that managed the pandemic effectively, and whose economy would recover to pre-pandemic levels much faster than our own, and thus gain a strategic advantage.
But it's not the pandemic that gave them the advantage, it's our own piss-poor handling of it.
I specifically mentioned where to find plenty of examples of "let people die to improve the economy", and how terribly it worked out in the end - the handling of the 1918 flu. And we've apparently learned nothing since then, with much of the population, many states, the President himself, going all in on "just let people die". So we all get to sit back, relax, and enjoy the nigh-inevitable even worse economic damage from that. Yay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:13AM
> I imagine Iran's economy is doing better now
Cool.
I imagine Iran's economy is not doing better now. Now what?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:09PM (2 children)
I don't believe that China cooked the numbers, at all. What they did, was to send in a team with flamethrowers, to incinerate all of the records. Seriously, they stand at ground zero, and claim that they had fewer casualties than ANYBODY in the world? The most populous nation in the world, with fewer cases and fewer deaths than some tiny countries that no one ever heard of? In effect, they are telling us that their people are immune, or so close to immune as to not make much difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:25AM
To be fair, just like the UK's new rules, if you tested positive but died of another cause - such as being lined up and shot - then you can be removed from the COVID statistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:38AM
So they overcooked the numbers?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:33PM
There is a reason we didn't do a lunatic response like this to a seasonal infection for over 100 years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
Talking about the deaths from COVID is a way of underestimating the costs. If a person dies there's a short term added expense. If they've got a stroke or kidney damage there may be an ongoing cost that continues for decades. And a lot of people are experiencing continuing symptoms. Even the asymptomatic cases may well have contracted permanent heart damage. A short time study showed asymptomatic cases as having signs of heart damage a couple of months after "recovery". They were careful to say this doesn't prove permanent damage...but they sure left the door open to find that later. And they didn't check for kidney damage, micro-strokes, etc. which may also have been present. And this was with asymptomatic cases. In symptomatic cases irrecoverable damage to organs is not uncommon. People don't usually die of it unless the cases are very severe, but ...
Of course, I could be wrong. There hasn't been enough research in this area to be certain. But preliminary reports don't look good.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:21AM
I saw a small study where most cases including asymptomatic cases showed dark areas in the lungs when X-rayed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:30PM (3 children)
What's worse: 1. 90% out of work for a month. 2. 15% out of work for two years.
I think that if we had done a truly hard, intelligent, enforced lock-down, it would be scenario 1. Scenario 1 wouldn't have destroyed the economy. Many people can sustain themselves for a month with no income, and the burden of government aid for those who can't is not that bad for just one month.
Instead, it's looking like we're closer to scenario 2. Scenario 2 isn't just bad for the increased loss of income. It's bad because of the prolonged effect. Even though fewer people are out of work, most people can't sustain that for such a long period of time. That has knock-in effects that tend to amplify the impact in the larger economy.
In other words, American culture seems to be uniquely geared to drag this out unnecessarily long, and to approach it in ways that are less effective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:23PM
>> Many people can sustain themselves for a month with no income,
Not the 57% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. Are you expecting them to starve? #BLM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:23AM
Yes, some can, and some of us could sustain ourselves for far longer than a month with no income.
But, there are far too many who cant: Many Americans who can't afford a $400 emergency blame debt [cnbc.com]
There are way too many who have flunked basic economics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:29AM
The good news for the USA is that if we drag it out then we drag everyone else along with us.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:40PM (2 children)
On the other hand, if a bunch of people are saddled with unpayable medical debt and/or left with lasting symptoms that leave them unable to work, that won't be good for the economy either.
In this case, school is an activity that can be accomplished virtually. There's no need to make the pandemic worse in order to do in-person school at this time. What's really inexcusable is that they not only insisted on having school in-person, they aren't requiring masks or apparently doing anything at all to mitigate potential spread of covid. Teachers in Polk and Cherokee county report that the promise to sanitize the classrooms between classes is a bad joke at best. They're doing no such thing.
That's part of the problem with the discussion in the U.S. Too many people pretending that a few reasonable precautions is the same as shutting down the economy and hiding in a bunker. Working from home where feasible is a prudent move and does not constitute shutting down the economy. Many workplaces have found work from home sufficiently effective that they're considering (or have already decided) making that policy even after the pandemic is resolved.
Also notable, in neighboring Cherokee county, 900 students are currently in quarantine due to contact with students that have tested positive. School has only been open for 1 week.
Some have pointed out that the reason kids seem to be more resistant to COVID is that until a week ago, they were much more socially isolated than the adults since they were on summer vacation. As soon as they start having more contacts, that apparent resistance proves to be an illusion.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:03PM (1 child)
Well, to be fair it's not clear that the early school levels can be handled remotely. The information can be put out there, but that's only a small part of what he early years of school are about.
And I still think the cost is too high. Neighborhoods were isolated villages, then "village schools" would be a reasonable choice, but the parents spread out throughout the city or town in working, shopping, etc. The barber comes from a different neighborhood than the butcher or cash register attendant, and the garbage collector from somewhere else again. You don't have isolated bubbles. And schools with kids coming in from all over the city/town make things a LOT worse...and they share the diseases they pick up. Back to school season has always been associated with a crop of new colds, etc. This time the etc. includes COVID. Even if the schools were all neighborhood schools, the parents don't live in the same bubble. When you get merging bubbles like that (this doesn't only apply to schools!) the very concept of bubble turns into a false security blanket.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:43PM
Australia [archive.org] has managed it for years.
It beats a repeat of the summer camp fiasco [webmd.com].
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:37PM (1 child)
A little bit of a false equivalency. One might instead establish new normals instead of thinking one has to return to the way things were. Though I would have to admit that history does not generally support this. People do tend to want to go right back to they way things were previously even though one can never really go back and it wasn't that great beforehand. So we squander an opportunity to create new structures for the better.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:42PM
While I might be quite happy with working from home:
Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice [arstechnica.com]
I'm somewhere between a place that has embraced working from home and Charter:
Charter employees beg for work-from-home rights during pandemic [arstechnica.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by https on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:58PM (4 children)
Translation: "I want my old job back, and I don't care how many other people are crippled or killed for it to happen."
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:23AM (2 children)
Many of us do not get free government money to never have to work for their own survival again.
Many more do not want to live like that. And this year we get to have a bit of a word in that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:32AM
Some also don't see it as one or the other.
(Score: 2) by https on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:51PM
Your framing is borken. It's not money so you don't have to work. It's money so you don't have to kill.
Or is this particular Anonymous Coward actually OK with their mere survival coming at the expense of the lives and well-being of innocent bystanders? Just remember that when your like-minded buddies have been infecting you for weeks before they showed any symptoms. And you should have killed them (they're not innocent bystanders after all) weeks ago. Some "buddy" you are, huh?
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:09PM
A school can mandate dress code, so they should be able to handle students wearing masks. Though, perhaps, that's not a thing in public schools.
Your, "kill them all and let God sort 'em out" kind of translation, isn't a good faith translation of what I said.
At some point, we do have to get back to business or everything collapses. I for one have been to third world/developing countries and I don't want the USA to become one. I get taking precautions, etc.
Perhaps, if we responded like a totalitarian state, we could have nipped this thing in the bud. Then again, China only fixed their own problem. They sure didn't want their neighbors to close their borders with them and pressured them to keep them open. Yet, when the whole pandemic got out of hand, China was sure happy to close their own borders to others to keep the virus from coming back in. Would have also been nice, if they'd been open about the whole developing problem, instead of hoping they could contain it. Then when it was clear that they hadn't contained it, they released poor quality data, and probably blatant lies. All the while, the WHO was saying, wow, we're so glad that China has been doing such a bang up job! Well done! That's like pouring on the praise, telling them that they did such a great job, and how wonderful it is, that your child told you half the truth after you caught them lying to your face.
I've been working the whole time through the pandemic, thankfully. Yet, I'd have been quite happy to work from home the whole time. The place I work at is reluctant to allow people to work from home. We got to work from home for a little while, but they were very eager to get us back in the building. Even though I could do the major portion of my job remotely.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"