SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:16PM (48 children)
I haven't really come down on either side of opening schools. Yeah, schooling is critical, and we should open them as soon as possible. How soon is reasonably possible? I dunno, really. Schools have historically been a breeding ground for every infectious disease that man knows about. If the schools are open, you are accepting the fact that the infections will be spread.
Huh. No dead kids? Not even any dead staff? School staff is typically young and healthy. Yeah, some older people, but mostly young and healthy. Maybe the schools do need to be opened.
I'm not terribly interested in the theory that closing schools will protect ME, and people in my age group. The real question is, "Is it safe for the KIDS?"
If 75% of the kids get COVID19, and 99% of that 75% have full recoveries, then it's time for all the schools to reopen. Greater than 99% recovery would mean that we have over reacted all along.
Just keep the little terrors away from Grandma, and things should be fine.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:39PM (15 children)
And when they spread the disease to their older parents? Their grandparents?
Also, the avegare age for a school teacher is square in the danger zone of over 40 [ed.gov] so your claim they are mostly young is false.
Americans are entitled to a workplace free from recognized hazards. [osha.gov] A globally declared pandemic is pretty damn recognizable.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:44PM (14 children)
Dude, 40 is YOUNG! I wish I were 40 again, and in the same physical condition! Most of congress can't even remember what it was like being 40.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=42657¬e=&title=The+Dinosaurs+in+Congress%3A+How+Many+Octogenarians+are+Seeking+Re-election+in+November%3F [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:46PM (12 children)
The virus doesn't give a crap about your opinions on relative age.
The virus is more deadly to people over 40 and most teachers are over 40.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:59PM (11 children)
Yes, but why should we care about this? Since when has America given a crap about the safety of teachers, or even paying them decently to make the profession attractive? The American people clearly don't care much about teachers, or else they'd make this a priority in elections, so why not just force them to go back to work or else get fired? Also remember, we're talking about Georgia here, where a large chunk of the population thinks it's "just the flu" or is "exaggerated by the mainstream media".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:06PM (10 children)
I care because I'm not a fucking asshole.
The government cares because the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires them to care.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:24PM (1 child)
Big deal. You're a virgin.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:40AM
TFW when you're not an asshole or a virgin. It's not a boolean choice.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:13PM (7 children)
I care because I'm not a fucking asshole.
Well people like you aren't doing a very good job of voting, are you? Or you just don't represent the majority. If you did, teaching would be a much more attractive and valued profession in this country.
The government cares because the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires them to care.
Not really. The government can easily ignore its own laws. Maybe they'll be penalized for it, years after the fact, in a court. Maybe.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:25PM (5 children)
I vote. But unfortunately for me the votes of the anti-education nutjobs count more than mine do.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:27PM (4 children)
Guess you're outnumbered, and maybe the people you vote for aren't very appealing. Pretty easy to see how the system works
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:42PM (3 children)
Nope, there were about 3 million more of us.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:15PM (2 children)
You have to win the majority of electoral votes. Gonna keep telling yourselves it ain't so?
You were outnumbered, and you might be again, for the exact same reason, the real one, not one your fantastic half-baked conspiracy theories
Your DNC is bogus, but right now we need a mannequin in the office that doesn't make the world barf. So whatever, I surrender to your Biden and Harris. I damn near like her
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:20PM (1 child)
Awww stupid fusty is leaking his rightwing bias again.
Better do some more damage control posts. I suggest insulting Trump, centrists love that one!
(Score: 2) by Aegis on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:09PM
Oh no, Fusty's both sides brain rot has spread into his mathematics!
1 and 2 are the EXACT SAME!!!!!!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:02PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:04PM
Most of congress can't even remember what it was like yesterday.
FTFY
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:39PM (3 children)
Even assuming 100% of kids didn't develop symptoms, there's been some data suggesting they still develop a much higher viral load (as much as 100x), and are thus much more contagious.
Exactly how "safe" is it for a kid when they infect their parents who are subjected to massive medical bills that wipe out their family savings?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @03:47PM (2 children)
Empirical data suggests that we're all going to die. Doomed! We're all doomed!! What some of us are suggesting is, we've over reacted to the most current threat.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:01PM (1 child)
And this is why we keep re-learning terrible lessons.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:40AM
Perhaps it's time to invade Iraq. Properly this time. Not like the other times.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @04:27PM
The problem is that young and healthy people are getting serious medical conditions from COVID. Young healthy people are still being left with chronic fatigue, lung damage, and other long term effects from this virus, too. There aren't a lot of people healthier than college athletes. The Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed fall sports because some of those athletes are developing myocarditis.
If you're only looking at the death rate, you're getting a very misleading picture of the actual risk level for young people. We don't know how they'll recover from these issues. Perhaps the issues will go away in a year or two like the longer term lung damage from SARS. But this virus isn't quite like SARS and we don't really know for sure how well they'll recover.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:10PM (1 child)
Are we talking about surviving the disease or fully recovering without any lasting effects?
There is a difference with Covid, ya know...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:18PM
We should be looking at all the above. It is well worth remembering that a lot of people survived polio, but were severely crippled for life. So, yes, yours is a damned good question.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:51PM (12 children)
So basically you're fine with a classroom full of kids dying in each school for the sake of them not being virtually schooled for 1 out of 36 quarters? You don't think that will cause any problems with education later when they get the message that society was happy enough for them to die for the sake of diagramming a few sentences and learning when George Washington was born?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:56PM (11 children)
Nowhere have I suggested any such thing. You don't get to spin things outside of reality.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:05PM (9 children)
Let's see, 75% of 2000 students get COVID, that's 1500 students. 99% of the 1500 recover leaving 15 that don't. That's about a classroom worth.
Put another way, that one school shooter with a couple magazines and a 9mm per school. Still sound good?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:12PM (3 children)
Where the heck are you, that has a teacher-to-student ratio of 15 or better?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:25PM (2 children)
Georgia. But it's been decades since I went to school there.
Nevertheless, is 15 students not recovering per school really acceptable? Especially when there are alternatives?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:43PM (1 child)
Well if we want to reductio ad absurdum the argument, you can't put a pricetag on even 1 human life.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:12AM
Of course not. But definitely worth a expending few on lower gas prices. I'm not saying you can put a price on it, but if a few soldiers die and I can fill my tank for less than $50 it's worth it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:06PM (4 children)
A good point.
Let's go even further though.
There are ~51 million [educationdata.org] k-12 students in the US.
If 75% are infected, that's ~37.5 million infections. If 1% of those kids die, that's 375,000 dead kids.
According to the CDC [cdc.gov], in normal times, less than 10,000 children under 18 die.
How about we cough and spittle on Runaway's grandkids. I'm sure he won't mind -- they'd just be part of that tiny (375,000) number of dead kids.
That's okay with you, isn't it Runaway?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:26PM (2 children)
When you send kids to school, you are intentionally putting them into an environment where they cough and sneeze on each other all day long. That has been part of the objection to opening the schools back up all along. Schools are breeding grounds for every disease known to man.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:12PM (1 child)
And that's why it is foolish to send them to school during a pandemic unless you're trying to get rid of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:14AM
Dude give up, the RunawayDoucheBag has been schooled and still keeps on dribbling out his lame bullshit.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:02AM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:02AM
Why not? You do this all the time!
(Score: 2, Disagree) by shortscreen on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:14PM (2 children)
That's the big question mark. TFA doesn't say anything about whether these cases are at risk of serious health consequences. If the virus isn't harmful to kids then it isn't a reason to close schools. From what I've heard (which isn't much), a tiny number of teenagers have been hospitalized, but kids under 10 haven't had problems at all. If that is true, then maybe it would make sense to open elementary schools and leave high schools closed. Someone needs to look at the hard data and make a decision (but not this school administration which has already proven themselves to be incompetent in just one week).
As for staff, they are adults and should make their own choice. If doing their job would be too much of a risk, they should be replaced by someone else who can do the job. Someone will say that is "not fair" but it wasn't fair to any of the other people that lost their jobs either, viruses don't care about fairness. Meanwhile, the public is paying for a service and if that service isn't being delivered then they're being ripped off, and that goes double for parents who will need someone else to watch their children so they can go back to their own jobs.
Last but not least, even if schools are closed that doesn't mean kids won't be a vector in spreading the virus. If the kids aren't at school, large numbers of them will be at some other day care facility, or they'll be clogging up public places, or they'll be at home with older and more vulnerable relatives.
On second thought there is another difference between elementary schools and high schools that might be worth considering. The young kids typically stay in one classroom with the same classmates for most of the day, whereas high school kids rush back and forth through the building and sit down in a different room with different people each time. The "musical chairs" approach to schooling seems particularly ill suited to this kind of situation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:05PM
A number of kids have suffered from something similar to Kawasaki Disease (which has a non-zero fatality rate) and some have died. The best explanation for relatively few kids being affected is that schools went virtual in the spring and they have been on summer vacation since then.
As for teachers, they should be able to work from home (as well as their students). Neither should suffer from official's stubborn unwillingness to live in realityland.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:39AM
And the trauma of having brought the disease home that killed their parents? Or even the worry? And kids are worried about it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:15PM (5 children)
> If 75% of the kids get COVID19, and 99% of that 75% have full recoveries, then it's time for all the schools to reopen. Greater than 99% recovery would mean that we have over reacted all along.
5.8 million school aged children in the United States.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 [ed.gov]
75% of 5.8M is 4.35M
1% of 4.35M is 43,500.
43.5 thousand children is a pretty large number to sacrifice so some clown's stock portfolio doesn't take a temporary dip in value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:25PM (1 child)
No. It's a pretty fucking small number for which to sacrifice all our lives trying to avoid the inevitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:32PM
"to sacrifice all our lives trying to avoid the inevitable"
lololol citation needed ;) just how dumb are you anyway?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:12PM (2 children)
You read the link you posted [ed.gov] wrong:
There aren't 5.8 million, there are 56 million K-12 students in the US [educationdata.org]
So multiply all of your numbers above by 10.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:16AM (1 child)
Argument still stands for any numbers. Kill the weak, let the strong survive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:56PM
Let's start with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:59PM
Bullshit, you've been an anti-masker economy over lives asshile this whole time.
Your attempt to seem like a centrist that just so happens to lean rightwing nutter is tiresome.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:25PM (1 child)
There's also the question of permanent damage. This is what bothers me. Even asymptomatic people have shown signs of heart damage a couple of months after they "cleared". And kidney damage doesn't show up as easily. Fortunately you start with more than twice as much kidney capacity as you need, but it doesn't repair easily, and people are known to suffer sufficient kidney damage to need mechanical support...or a transplant. Which means lifetime immune suppression, etc. Then there's stokes....
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:55PM
This frightens the hell out of me. I'm likely to survive it, being in my early 30s, healthy, and normal weight, but also being poor as hell means surviving it with a lifetime of debility would be worse than death. And this country sure as hell can't be counted on to do right by the people who end up like that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...