Less than two weeks into the school year, a Kentucky school district has canceled in-person classes for the rest of the week after nearly a fifth of its students came down with Covid, strep throat, the flu and other illnesses.
The Lee County School District, which has just under 900 students, began classes Aug. 9 but noticed attendance drop to about 82% on Friday, Superintendent Earl Ray Schuler said.
By Monday, the rate dipped to 81%, and 14 staff members called in sick, Schuler said.
It’s immunity debt from those strict never-ending kentucky lockdowns, right? Or maybe they all forgot how to wash their hands?
My professors announced that having COVID is no longer an excuse for missing class. If you’re in the hospital from it that can be excused with proof. Otherwise they aren’t even recording lectures.
Imagine saying that for any other sickness. “Sorry about your polio, but I need asses in seats.”
Love that we can be sick as a dog and they still expect us to work. My boss told me he went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner and the meat packer literally went “hey man I have covid they made me come in”
people being to forced to come to work sick is terrible, but when that happens, they should all be like that
We need to start doing bio-terrorism against pro-COVID fascists like this.
Wow what the fuck. Can students record the lectures and distribute them for each other? That’s such a horrible policy, y’all deserve better.
Edit to add: Also, what college student can afford to go to the hospital? Fuck that. That’s so classist. And ableist.
I don’t think students can record. The good news is that the university sells mandatory health insurance if you don’t already have it. My last class had 250ish students.
FLUnet isn’t showing a dramatic uptick in positivity, yet so I’m gonna say it’s almost entirely covid. For now at least. I’m sure RSV and Flu are waiting in the wings to start their seasons early.
I wonder if kids are getting hit particularly harder this wave.
Yeah, I doubt there’s a lot of flu going around or actually being tested for, but who knows? With the kinds of damage covid can do to the immune system people might just get sicker sooner and for longer every season.
In similar news, according to Biobot, wastewater numbers in Alexandria, VA are double the national average. Gonna see a huge drop off in activity here soon as all the get sick.
I guess the “immunity wall” isn’t stopping exponential growth in infections. Maybe it will work next year?
My guess is we’re going to be seeing this same pattern indefinitely - looks like we get cyclical upticks in fall and spring, and because vaccination is going to increase the rates of asymptomatic cases we’re going to see more covert infections. Hope that doesn’t impact the long covid numbers, because if it does, whoof.
Also obligatory joke that whatever they’re spending the defense budget on it’s not HEPA filters for the Pentagon.
strep throat
Meaning that they had a sore throat, didn’t know to swab their throat for the rapid test, swabbed their nose instead, and the nurse decided it wasn’t COVID after the rapid test was negative
Probably, lol. But also, serious strep infections have been increasing every year since we went back to normal. It’s been blamed on “lockdowns”, of course, even when it happens in places that barely had any covid mitigations, and strep is known to increase after respiratory infections because of the stress it causes on our immune system.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON429
there are rapid tests for strep throat and honestly, you can fucking tell on account of all the pus and the frequent rotting smell as it strep turns eats your throat tissue and shits out pus
