I do not enjoy reading stories about people who died because they did not get vaccinated against COVID-19. I like it even less when it happens to someone in my extended family, but I’ve now had that experience. It’s tragic.
I have an 11-year-old son who is not yet eligible for a vaccine, and we have to decide if it’s safe to send him to middle school. It’s a grade six through eight school, but only incoming sixth graders like my son are ineligible. Originally, the mask mandate was going to be optional throughout the entire school system, including the elementary schools, but that was reversed once the CDC recommended masks for all students and staff regardless of vaccination status. The school board meeting was disrupted by angry anti-vaxxers, canceled, and held virtually the next day.
The district got through the last school year without much incident, but the Delta version is completely different. We can see this clearly by looking at the South. It’s not just that vaccination rates are much lower in the South, but also that they start their scholastic year several weeks earlier than in the North. That gives me the opportunity to see how the schools are faring down there before I make the call on where my son will go to school. Here’s what I’m seeing:
With both siblings wearing backpacks, Mkayla Robinson put her arms around her little brother, and the two smiled for a photo on Friday, Aug. 6., as they prepared to leave home to start her final year of junior high and his first day of kindergarten. But eight days into her eighth-grade year at Raleigh Junior High, Robinson died of COVID-19 on Saturday, Aug. 14, mere hours after testing positive for the virus.
She was one of at least 5,993 Mississippi students who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks, according to data the Mississippi State Department of Health released today. At the same point in August 2020, the Mississippi State Department had reported just 199 cases among students; total confirmed COVID-19 cases did not surpass 5,000 until the end of the semester in December 2020.
Last week alone, 803 schools reported 4,521 positive cases among students. Schools have also confirmed 1,496 cases among teachers and educational staff this month so far. The situation and the deaths of at least two teenagers from COVID-19 since late July has led to increased calls for Gov. Tate Reeves to reverse his opposition to a statewide mask mandate and take aggressive action to stem the viral tide.
One thing that seems clear is that the transmissibility of the Delta version is defeating mitigation efforts that were previously successful. So, while I’m glad my son’s school will require masks, I know I shouldn’t expect that to prevent an outbreak. I’m not sure how much more dangerous Delta is for kids than prior strains of COVID, but it does seem to be worse.
Since the beginning of August, schools have quarantined at least 24,769 students for COVID-19 exposures, including 20,334 this week alone. During the first two weeks of 2020, schools quarantined just 2,035 students. Public-health leaders have repeatedly warned that the delta variant is far more contagious than earlier iterations of the virus and possibly more dangerous for children, including healthy young people.
“In the 2020 version of COVID-19, most children infected did not show symptoms that developed into serious health conditions. That’s not the case today, as nationally and in Mississippi, the Delta variant of COVID-19 is driving up the number of children hospitalized at Children’s of Mississippi,” the University of Mississippi Medical Center said in a news release yesterday.
The Children’s of Mississippi, the state’s only pediatric hospital, is currently full of children sick with COVID-19, including several on ventilators for life support.
I know that there’s a gigantic difference between Mississippi and my part of Pennsylvania in terms of the vaccination rate and also basic compliance with common sense mitigation efforts like masking and social distancing, and this is reflected in the respective positivity rates. COVID infection is rising where I live but it’s still quite low, and if it begins to spread it will no doubt spread slower than in the South. That provides some comfort, but I’m struggling to convince myself that I can tolerate this level of risk.
For a good part of the last school year, no one in my family was vaccinated and the main concern was less that my son would get infected than that he’d infect older family members. Now I am much more worried that he could get seriously ill, although that fear has never been far from my mind. But last year he had a virtual option, which we took advantage of and in which he thrived. They are not offering that option now, as they expect it would collapse once the vaccination becomes available for kids younger than twelve.
So, my choice is to send him to school or to keep him out and use a statewide virtual program. He doesn’t want that, and we don’t want that for him. Since the choices are terrible and don’t seem to be getting any better, I’m angry all the time. More like seething mad, actually, which isn’t good for me or anyone who has to live with me.
Yet, there’s nothing I can do but take in all the information I can gather and make a call one way or the other, knowing that I’ll be terribly depressed and anxious either way.
That’s the context in which I digest news stories about people dying because they refused to get vaccinated. That’s what I’m feeling when my school board meeting which is supposed to provide me with the information I need, is cancelled because parents show up who refuse to wear a mask.
It’s a kind of murderous and explosive rage which is totally uncharacteristic for me, but I think understandable for any parent who is having trouble figuring out how to protect a child and has to deal with people who are making that task more difficult.
I’m sorry you’re in this situation. One thing I’d recommend is testing CO2 levels (monitors aren’t too expensive) and making sure the air exchange is heavily filtered in his classroom, if possible. Outdoors is ~400 ppm, but some schools in the south are seeing 4-5k ppm when they need to be sub-1000 for enough adequate air exchange.
Here’s a good thread from David Elfstrom:
https://twitter.com/davidelfstrom/status/1428107316998586376?s=21
I’m in Mass General Hospital with a breakthrough case that is almost certainly the Delta strain that hit Cape Cod and the Islands. I was vaccinated back in March. I’m fine, making a strong recovery but not, as yet, a full recovery. My whole family is vaxxed and three of the four of us got sick, when my son most likely brought it back from work. Because we were vaxxed, my sons and wife are fine. I’m going to be fine.
But I also teach at a boarding school. Or – in other words – a petri dish. We did exemplary work testing, tracing and isolating last year, but Delta is different and we are all fatigued.
Scares the shit out of me.
Man, I hope you’re feeling better and discharged soon. That’s very scary.
Sorry to hear it hawesg. Please be nice to the nurses. I hope you get home soon.
Feelin’ ya man. I am SO worried about my friends with kids down south.
And, for that matter, worried for one branch of my extended step-family in North Carolina. Evangelical Christian parents of 5 kids, and a couple others they’ve adopted, all of who are under 12.The parents refuse to get vaccinated. It’s going to end in tragedy, and there’s nothing that can be done because they won’t listen.
There is so much tragedy. Children dying unnecessarily. It breaks my heart. What will it take for the American people to realize the people who use Covid for political purposes are monsters?
Really sorry you’re facing such a tough challenge, Martin. I have a similar fear. My son is 7 years old and home schooled. So sending him off to school isn’t the issue but he has type one diabetes. As a result, even a cold could be fatal. Makes the prospect of his getting Covid particularly frightening. Or my getting it or my wife. We are older parents and he relies on us so much.
You’re going to be really upset when you realize a full 40%+ of Americans are monsters.
I live in one of those Southern states. I am beyond frustrated. The virtual option available in my youngest daughter’s school district is not one she trusts, so we’re sending her to school in person. We’ve been through a week so far. Fortunately, she’s fully vaccinated as is everyone else in our household, and as is everyone else whom we allow her to hang out with. The only reason our district even got the option to adopt its own mask mandate is because a state court judge granted a temporary injunction to prevent a law from going into effect that would have forbidden mask mandates. There are also laws on the books now that prevent state agencies, colleges/universities, and public schools from mandating COVID-19 vaccination proof. Our state is still below the 40% fully vaccinated rate for those 12 and over. My county (which is actually relatively populous, and includes one of the largest cities in the state) is behind even the state’s vaccination rate. Masks in my daughter’s high school are better than nothing, but when the hallways are overcrowded, and the 9th grade cafeteria is still not ready for use (causing further crowding issues), I am highly concerned. I am also beyond frustrated, and very easily angered when it comes to stupidity regarding this pandemic. After a year and a half of suffering in the US (and a bit longer elsewhere) there are just certain buzzwords that the wingnuts use when it comes to reacting to COVID-19 and its variants that trigger me, and my responses are no longer even predictable. Maybe I can bite my tongue. Maybe not. Cases are going up. Vaccination rates went up for a while. At first, I hoped maybe this Delta variant was putting the fear of God into some folks. More likely was that parents who were already vaccinated got around to getting their eligible kids, and now that those kids are fully vaccinated, we’re heading down to baseline in terms of vaccinations. We’re now talking about boosters, which should never have been a thing. We’re nearing yet another holiday weekend. Another point for super spreader events in my area. And I’m pissed. I am more pissed off by the day. That cannot be healthy. I wonder how many of these folks who are so cavalier in their disregard for what my dad would call good horse sense have ever seen the inside of an ICU from either a patient’s experience or a family member of of a patient. I have, as a family member. That experience leaves a mark on you. Someone you know and love is often one wrong turn from going toward the proverbial light. That doesn’t go away. My household’s collective experience with that was a few years prior to COVID-19. We were so grateful for the ER staff and the ICU staff and doctors who worked to get my wife’s oxygen levels back up at a time when we weren’t sure if she’d need to be put on a vent. We’re now at record ICU and vent capacity. About the best my Governor (if he can be called that) can say is that this is a bad time to have a heart attack, stroke, or an accident requiring an ER or ICU. Don’t get too sick or too injured. Yeah, that’s calming. So, right now I guess there is a good deal of rage that I just barely contain on a daily basis. I am not an easy person to be around right now. In the confines of my household, no worries. That’s mainly because we’ve all talked a lot and are on the same page. It’s when I am outside of that bubble that I have to work extra hard to control myself now. I get the feeling that I am now going to need treatment for some form of PTSD once this is all over. Guessing I might not be alone.
Don, I just had my first session with a therapist, and part of the discussion was indeed about PTSD.
I find it incredibly stupid to pretend the vaccine is harmful as so many do. We have put over 360 million shots in arms and the world has administered 4.85 billion. WTF is wrong with these people? I also think this whole thing should not be voluntary since society has an interest in whether or not you decide to be vaccinated. Who are you that you consider yourself more equal than me and your rights are more than mine? I guess small pox would not change their minds, cause freedom, right?