Alabama schools report 13,000 COVID-19 cases in two-week period

[left-of-center2012]

Source: The Hill

Alabama schools reported 13,000 coronavirus cases in a two-week period on Friday, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Alabama State Department of Education. The number could be higher, because only 84 of the 143 school districts have reported their data, according to the dashboard.

Alabama does not have a statewide school mask mandate in place, but 90 percent of schools have chosen to implement a mask mandate on their own, according to The Associated Press. Children aged 5-16 have accounted for 21 percent of new coronavirus cases in the state over the past weeks, with the delta variant overloading the state’s health care system.

Superintendent Eric Mackey highlighted the number of cases from schools on Thursday during an event with the Medical Association in Alabama. “We had dozens of students sent home on the first day of school, and then more and more,” Mackey said. “Now we have scores of campuses that are closed to in-person instruction.”

Mackey stated that schools are trying their hardest to stay open after students scored poorly on standardized tests scores in 2020. “They are going to be significantly down across the board,” he said, according to AP. “That’s what we expected. It’s what we predicted, and we hope that we can turn that around this year.”


Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/570870-alabama-schools-report-13000-covid-19-cases-in-two-week-period

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The news from Alabama comes as tens of thousands of students around the country have had to quarantine after going back to school due to exposure to the coronavirus.

[IronLionZion]

1. Not a good time for anyone who needs hospitalization

since they're already over capacity throughout the South

[LisaL]

2. It really is bad, and not just in the South.

Hospitals are filling up.

[BigmanPigman]

3. My teacher friends have told me that

in both Pre-K and High School the students have lost a year academically. Schools in San Diego, where I was a teacher, have mandated masks inside and outside. I think this is the way to go. I was constantly sick in my classroom in Elementary School. Kids have tons of germs but they recover a lot faster than their teachers do. As far as schools go, they care about $$$ more than the kids, teachers or support staff. If kids need to "catch up" the classroom is the way to do it BUT only if everyone is vaxxed and/or masked.

Any parent or school district who doesn't want their kids falling further behind must put into place mandatory masking their first priority.

[Igel]

5. I have students home with COVID.

It's unclear to me that the only source of transmission, or even the dominant source, is in school.

We hear two sorts of reports:
1. School X had an outbreak and contact-tracing says it was likely in-school transmission.
2. Schools reflect the community transmission rate, and when there's a 1-2 week vacation it doesn't have a measurable affect on transmission rates for children and youth. In other words, school COVID rates are very largely driven by community transmission rates.

It's not cool to just assume causality works in a given way. It's an empirical fact, and therefore subject to empirical proof. We don't need the assumptions. In any given instance it's possible it was in-school transmission, but overall it hasn't been so far. If it's changed, that has to be shown, not assumed.

Some colleagues at school have had kids with COVID. Usually one of the adults contracts it and transmits it to them, then their cases are reported to school and show up on the school's COVID dashboard.

[paleotn]

12. With Covid so wide spread again....

contact tracing just gets muddy as hell. In school or outside of school? The answer is probably yes. Or better yet, who the hell knows? It's all over the place.

[monkeyman1]

4. great leader ship ! ya rite !

[groundloop]

6. I know it's a low bar, but AL governor isn't nearly as fucked up as FL or TX

At least she's not working against school districts who chose to implement mask mandates, which is something.

Unfortunately the state is full of 45* worshipers who refuse to get vaccinated.

[monkeyman1]

7. did some homework & got to take some thing's back ! ya rite about tx & floriduh !

[Botany]

8. This is insane ... the killing and making kids sick in order to "own the libs"

@ a 1% mortality rate that is 130 dead.

We should have had this virus all but shut down by the 4th of July except for Republican Governors, Fox News,
and other mother fuckers actively worked to keep the disease spreading for God only knows what political and
or monetary reasons.

I will always remember a clip from CPAC last July of the crowd cheering that President Biden's goal of being @
a 70% vaccination rate nationwide fell just a little short.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

9. +500, Botany.

[paleotn]

13. Attempting to sow chaos in order to regain power....

and they don't care how many die in the process, including their own yokels. Since when has the Republican power structure cared about their useful idiots?

[Botany]

15. I can't put my finger on why but there can be no doubt that "they" are working to help spread the ..

... disease and its accompanying horrors. DeSantis went to Yale and then got his J.D. from Harvard and
Abbott got his B.B.A. from the University of Texas @ Austin School of Business (one of the top biz schools
in America) and then his law degree from Vanderbilt. These are not stupid people. They know that masks
work ... see Vietnam ... and that vaccines work ... see Iceland ..... and yet they fight tooth and nail against
there use. Why? To blame Joe Biden for the failure to control the pandemic? So people can make money
off of things like monoclonal antibodies? Or is it much more of a Machiavellian plot to gain power?

In 2022 across America and even in red states the Democrats need to hammer home the complicity of the
Republican party and the likes of Fox News in knowingly spreading so such much suffering, death, and
grief. And we also need to publicly call out Russia's disinformation campaign on C-19 to get "the rubes"
all riled up about their FREE DUMBS which dovetails nicely into some kind of power grab.

[paleotn]

17. I think it's very Machiavellian....

Trying to deny Biden and the Dems the victory over Covid no matter how many die in the process. Americans are a fickle bunch who vote many times based on current conditions, regardless of who's responsible and who's not. Biden and the Dems just happen to be nominally in the drivers seat and will catch blame if things go to shit due to another massive Covid outbreak or at the very least don't get any better. I think that's the Republican plan. They're playing scorched earth and to your point, if we don't get just as rough with placing blame where it belongs, I can't help but worry about 2022. We've got to play scorched earth as well on Covid, Trump, Jan 6, etc. I see glimmers of that from Biden and Pelosi, but it's got to be more than glimmers. We've got to go all out.

[Botany]

18. 65,893* new cases yesterday. And the new projections of the # out of the Memphis area are chilling.

It is time to get tough with these idiots. No vaccination should mean no bed space in a hospital, no ICU
care, no monoclonal antibody treatments, no medical care outside of food, water, pain killers, and stick
their asses in wall tents out in some field so they can't infect other people.

* https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-US&mid=%2Fm%2F09c7w0&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

[BidenRocks]

10. If a child dies

due to the parents political misinformation,
They are guilty of forcing a late abortion.
This really pisses me off.

[RVN VET71]

11. The number is horrible, shocking, and revolting but

an even more telling number would be the number of children so stricken they wind up being hospitalized. Is that figure available?

[paleotn]

14. At only 48% fully vaxed per NYT, I'm not surprised.

It's increasingly a tale of the vaxed and unvaxed. Cases reported and hospitalization rates this Summer track rather well to vaccination status by local area. At least for now. Some breakthroughs, but they're minor, while the real story is the vast sea of unvaccinated people. Anti-vaxers talk about not wanting to be a "medical experiment." In reality the country is a vast experiment in viral evolution.

[Botany]

16. With something like 380,000,000 doses given out in America, 900,000,000 if you add in the E.U., the

U.K., Canada, and Australia, and world wide something like 4 billion vaccines administrated it
is hardly an experiment any more.

[BlueWavePsych]

19. Another failed (red) state ...