As a reporter in two Southern states, I’ve walked amid the wreckage of natural disasters for which there was little or insufficient warning to board up windows, move to higher ground or pack the car and flee. That is not the case with the toll being taken on Georgia now from the delta variant of COVID-19, including a decision today by a Cobb school to shift an entire fifth grade to virtual learning.
We saw this coming. We just stood by.
The delta variant is nearly twice as contagious as earlier forms of COVID. Some data suggest the delta variant might cause more severe illness than previous strains in unvaccinated people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unvaccinated people are at the greatest risk and dominate swelling hospital wards.
A special concern are children under the age of 12 for whom there is no vaccine yet. That explains the announcement today from Cobb that the entire fifth grade class of East Side Elementary School in Marietta must stay home and attend virtual classes through Friday due to the high number of positive cases
The email, which also asked parents to retrieve their children by noon, dismayed Cobb residents who vented on social media that this is what happens when a district refuses to mandate masks. “Yeah, who could have seen this coming? Everyone paying attention. The thing is, kids have no problems wearing masks, it is the adults causing the problems. And, this is another example of people in charge not wanting to make a difficult decision,” said one parent.
We had plenty of warnings that any hope of vanquishing the wily coronavirus depended on vaccinations and masking. We chose to ignore them. We shed our masks and flocked to concerts and bars, went on beach trips with other families and sent kids off to sleep-away camps that turned into super spreaders.
And we allowed the vocal anti-maskers to intimidate school boards into backing off mask mandates, despite the urging of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC to impose universal masking in all schools.
Instead, those districts deferred to parents whose last science class was often high school biology and who rely on Facebook memes and fringe practitioners for their pandemic wisdom. They argue that wearing masks tramples their personal liberty while ignoring a ruthless pandemic that will yield only to collective responsibility.
Only four out of 10 Georgians is vaccinated. And even though there is no authorized vaccine for kids 12 and under, there are unvaccinated adults working in Georgia schools.
In its survey, Atlanta Public Schools found that, as of July 22, only about 18% of its eligible students were fully vaccinated and about 58% of employees were vaccinated or planned to be. But at least APS requires masks for students and staff. Most districts in Georgia do not.
We are sending thousands of children unmasked in school buildings because superintendents and elected leaders are too politically cowed by the anti-maskers.
In May, Gov. Brian Kemp railed against mask mandates, saying, “We’re not going to have a mask mandate for our kids. Our teachers have had the ability to get vaccinated. The time for mandates is over. Our numbers have plummeted.” At the same time. experts were cautioning that the pandemic was not done with us and that we remained at serious risk of variants that could be more transmissible, more deadly or able to circumvent some vaccines.
I am flabbergasted that any school district in Georgia would not require masks given what the state is now facing with rising cases and hospitalizations. Expect to see more reports of entire grades and eventually schools being sent home due to rising COVID threats.
When will we learn?
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