Justin Parmenter, an NBCT teacher in North Carolina, published this article in the Charlotte Observer.
As COVID-19 rates skyrocket in North Carolina and more educators lose their lives to the virus, an unmistakable trend is starting to emerge: school districts falling all over themselves to claim the infected employee didn’t get the virus at work.
When Stanly County teacher Julie Davis died last month, superintendent Vicki Calvert quickly issued a statement saying, “there is no information from the local health department indicating Mrs. Davis contracted the COVID-19 virus from any staff member or student on campus.”
Davis’s family spoke of her extreme vigilance in avoiding situations where infections could occur, wearing a mask whenever out of the house and doing all of her shopping by curbside and drive-through. She was apprehensive about returning to school because of the increased risk but did so anyway.
Julie Davis got sick at the end of September and passed away on October 4. Her brother said Davis was convinced she got the virus at school. A student who attended the school (not one of hers) had tested positive, and she was unaware of any other time she would have been in the same space with someone who had COVID-19.
Just a week after Davis passed away, Stanly County Schools was forced to close to in-person instruction due to out-of-control COVID-19 infections in the community and in the schools.
The school’s superintendent said school officials didn’t believe Ward contracted the virus at work. However, her daughter said, “We don’t really know [where she got the virus] because she never really went out. She definitely wore her mask, she definitely hand sanitized. She did everything the CDC told us to.”
On Monday, Winston-Salem teacher assistant Teresa Gaither passed away after serving students at Easton Elementary for 23 years. A school spokesman wouldn’t confirm the cause but was eager to explain that she didn’t get it at work, saying, “At this time, the Forsyth County Department of Public Health has given WS/FCS no indication that Ms. Gaither’s cause of death was related to her employment.” Her colleagues confirmed that Gaither died of COVID-19.
In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, where the district has just begun reporting COVID-19 infections by school, a WBTV report this week said school officials “do not believe students and staff are testing positive because they are back inside the classroom. They say students (and) staff and getting sick from circumstances outside of the school.”
Here’s what public relations-minded school districts are implying when they claim that a COVID-19 infection had nothing to do with school: Somewhere, somehow that individual made a careless error which led to their illness. It had nothing to do with insufficient safety protocols, asymptomatic carriers, or a lack of resources.
There’s nothing to see here, folks. Mask up and wash your hands, everyone. Just lean in and we’ll be fine.
Could we please have the decency to admit that, in many of these cases, we have no idea where they got it? While it is possible these educators contracted the virus outside of school, it’s just as likely that they didn’t. We simply don’t know.
What we do know about this virus is that the only way to truly stay safe from it is to avoid crowded public places, perform regular disinfection and ensure proper ventilation and clean air flow when we must share space with others. Those conditions are hard to come by in a public school.
These educators who have lost their lives during the pandemic have been forced to choose between increasing their risk of infection by returning to in-person instruction and not being able to feed their kids or pay their mortgage.
Many of our educators have been vocal in calling for a return to school only when we can be reasonably certain it’s safe, with maximum social distancing, effective contact tracing, safe HVAC systems and sufficient staff. In far too many cases they’ve been forced back to the classrooms they love with none of those things.
In light of their dedication to serving our children despite a raging pandemic, it’s the least we can do to stop blaming our educators for getting COVID-19.
Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article247165609.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More of … BLAME the VICTIM, and in case “dead” victims.
I remember being in elementary school in the 80’s in Hawaii all of us lined up and being checked for lice and the school nurse saying ‘You don’t get lice at school’. At that young age I thought that statement was ridiculous and just plain false. I am not surprised decades later they are using that kind of talking points and false narrative about this pandemic.
Hell, I got lice multiple times from my classmates and almost got truancy cops called on my dad in 3rd grade because I had silvery blonde hair that the eggs could hide behind and even after multiple shampooings for a week and getting the lice pic on my scalp, they wouldn’t let me in til it was all gone. Every year for three or four years in elementary school, I would get lice. We had class closets and everyone’s jackets were hanging on hooks. By the time fourth grade rolled around, I almost never carried a jacket with me (or I’d shove it in my backpack zipped up tight). Stopped getting lice very often after that.
They don’t want to admit the possibility that a teacher got covid in school for two reasons.
1) the whole “schools are safe” schtick depends critically on schools not being sources of spreading.
2) if school districts admit that a teacher, student or anyone else got covid in school, it opens them up to potential legal suits (eg, for negligence) particularly when someone dies.
Much better and easier just to stick with the story that a covid victim did not get infected in school– even though it might not be true.
Despicable, isn’t it? We will watch this trend grow and we will announce one day soon that nowhere should this have been permitted. Planned death, denied infection rates, suppressed positive test results, all the while knowing PRECISELY the risks involved for teachers and staff. We will also learn that there we should have funded safe alternatives that protected the economy and our citizens.
“We Chose Not To” will be the inscription on this monument to our folly.
I don’t think anyone will ever admit that any mistakes were made, certainly none of the people pushing for school reopenings.
Even on the outside chance that they admit that schools can spread the virus, they will blame it on improper “implementation” of the safety protocol the way they blamed the failures of Common Core on failures of implementation.
The blame always circles back to the teachers one way or another.
Blameless and Shameless
Everyone’s to blame
Except the ones who are
The finger pointing game
Will really get you far
Great points, SomeDAMPoet.😐
There really is no way to know for sure where someone caught covid, which could be across the street or alley from the school. 😐
Even if custodial staff scrub constantly, covid could still be around somehow. 😐
Yes indeed, someone will sue if covid us suspected at a school. Those lawsuits could grow high number of victims (some who gave it and some who don’t) too. 😐
Also, constant scrubbing could empower bad covid germs over good germs too. 😐
It’s all very human, & part of the fear response: clinging to the idea that every positive case represents a failure to follow some jot of the safety protocol. My kids won’t suffer from infection [calming greatest fears, for our children’s safety]– can’t spread it to parents/ grandparents [2nd-greatest fear]—don’t spread it to teachers/ school staff [rationalizing placing kids in school so as to work – 3rd greatest fear, not being able to put food on table]– but … understanding at gut level all that may be false… none of these bad things can happen if teacher implements all safety protocols [magical thinking on several scores– & gives me an out for selecting in-person teaching].
Suggestions that teachers are responsible for their Covid infections are reminiscent of the suggestion when the virus started that those foreign workers at those meat plants were getting covid on account of their nasty lifestyle. It is silly to suggest that teachers lack of responsible behavior is the source of their infection. I for one am almost sure I got Covid at school, for all other social contact has been avoided like the plague (sorry, couldn’t resist). Nor should any one of us take this lightly. I wrote the following description of my bout with Covid. It seemed a long time before the referee raised my right hand. But I have only won the first match. I do not want to return to the thrilla in Manilla.
Covid and Me:
I am fully recovered except for some lung issues that resemble post asthma attack experiences I had when I was very young and suffered (if I am permitted such a word) from asthma between the ages of 8 and 18. What is interesting is that the experience left me basically wordless until last week when I went back to school.
Covid probably came to me on a Tuesday afternoon while I was waiting for my wife to get a flu shot at the Publix. I waited, seemingly forever, out in the car. Growing more miserable with each lingering minute, I began to, worry that I might be getting sick. That night I ran a significant fever that lasted until about noon the next day. Perfect 20 hour virus, I thought, no feeling of anything much, I am OK. So as my wife reacted to her shots, I bounded out of bed and went to get our daughter from school, confident that the following day would see me come all the way back. Thursday and Friday did nothing to dissuade me from my conviction, and my doctor suggested that testing for Covid might in my case be premature, giving me a negative before a real positive. Just watch your symptoms, they advised.
Saturday we went over to my brother’s where my first cousin’s girl was visiting. We sat outside around a campfire (the behavior of sane people during a pandemic which, in this case, I am convinced saved my sister-in-law from me). That night, and each night for the next week, I experienced fatigue unmatched in any experience I ever had. Monday I finally got a positive test for Covid, but it was at least with me from that Saturday night.
Each day I would begin with a good appetite and no fever. Ha! I would think. I have beaten this scourge. That afternoon would be a fever, usually around 102 without the normal feeling of a high temperature. By 6 or 7 I would have no fever, and feel like eating a bit. Night would be a restless tossing of headaches and discomfort that would finally depart and allow some sleep. Sleep, it became a thing to be craved, to be sought after like the object of a medieval quest.
All week I had been monitoring my oxygen thanks to a device our friend the nurse loaned me. She had also warned that I should get up some, which I had already decided since I knew the danger of lung problems. I would go out of the quarantine room my wife had prepared with fans and the air purifier and into the woods. There I would walk. I felt I needed to stay vertical for some of my day. In order to stay this way, I began cleaning up several sticks I have collected over the years to make walking sticks out of. Friday I did not have the usual temperature spike. So, expecting to rebound quickly, I gave thanks and went on my usual walk in the woods. But nothing happened. I was exhausted without fever.
It was at this point that the most frightening thing about the Covid happened. The thought began to enter my mind that this was not going to ever end, that I would never arouse myself from this lethargy. I began to force myself to walk faster and to work on walking sticks more. I began to actively seek naps. There were still long periods of time when I was inactive and not feeling like napping, deep into the following week. Ordinarily, I would give thanks and write something, generally a letter to an old friend or something enjoyable for myself. But no words came out at all. It was as if I could not express myself about anything. This intellectual drought continued into mid November, actually persisting until I started back to school.
Meanwhile I began to physically return to the land of the living. Six walking sticks and a couple of projects later, I decided on a Monday, a full 9 days after the end of fever, that I would attempt real vigorous exercise. I went out and split a stack of firewood. I was exhausted. It was then I knew I had done the right thing by staying out of school another week. Not until that Thursday did I do hard work without feeling good like you do when you grew up on the farm and felt that wonderful feeling of being simultaneously exhausted and triumphant after a manure spreader was completely full or a post hole was tamped in properly. I was finally back. Barely under a month of my life was gone, taken to battle a disease we might have prevented by acting more in concert as a nation. Perhaps it is not over. Virus infections are sometimes brutal in their re-visitation.
This is not ordinary disease. Those who wave it off should hear from those of use who are their victims. I am glad to have this first bout with it behind me. How many more times will I have to confront this before we finally dispatch it into the fire of historical remembrance?
So glad you are doing better, Roy. One of the scary aspects of this disease is the extreme variability of the severity. We know about age and preexisting conditions, but there are also seemingly healthy young people that die from this.
Extremely moving account, Roy. I hope that people will take the time to read this!!! That time will be quite well repaid.
I, too, had this, very early on. I wrote an account, below.
So, so happy you beat this thing, Roy. I treasure your friendship.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
“The school’s superintendent said school officials didn’t believe Ward contracted the virus at work.”
Here’s the thing, as Ward’s daughter pointed out: They don’t know.
It is at least possible that the teacher who died had an infected student in her own class that she was simply not aware of.
Many people (especially young people) who get the virus are assymptomatic and might therefore not feel the need to be tested and even infected students who are tested (eg, because of mandated testing) can test negative because of test inaccuracy.
The state of knowledge about infections in schools is nowhere near as certain as some people have been claiming.
But we have self styled “experts” running from one media outlet to the next claiming positivity rates among students and school staff that are well below (by a factor of 10 or more in some cases) the reported false negative rate of even the best test (pcr), apparently under the delusion that the tests are perfectly accurate and completely oblivious to the fact that there is even such a beast as a false negative.
And some journalists just repeat the BS because they are just as clueless.
These people are like a chicken with its head chopped off that keeps running around the barnyard. If it did not have such potentially disastrous consequences , it would be comical.
I agree with every word you wrote.
Yes, SomeDAM, GregB. Exactly.
There was an article yesterday published by Bloomberg news that kiddos at school don’t spread Covid, and that school closings were just a power play by teachers’ unions. Yup.
What bullsh*t.
This dripping irony here is that anyone who has had young children or taught them know that in normal times, especially in late fall and winter, little kids are little germ-spreading bomblets.
Exactly, Sandra. BS magical thinking that defies common sense.
Superspreading
Manure spreads fast
With source that is vast
If proof is the past
Manure will last
It’s not just North Carolina. Utah does the same thing with all of its schools. It insists that the skyrocketing cases, which “coincidentally” started just as school started, are “community spread, and not school spread,” as if schools magically don’t spread Covid. Everyone quotes that stupid economist Oster about supposedly schools not spreading the virus. How would she know? She’s an economist.
One parent at a protest for opening schools held up a sign at the district offices of the district in which I teach saying “Teachers’ immune systems are built for this.” Like we have special immunity by virtue of being teachers.
Oster is one of the headless chickens running around the barnyard that I referred to above. She’s a self promoting twit.
“Dr. Oster’s Elixir”
“Doctor” Oster’s
Magic Potion
Really fosters
Magic notion
Drink it down
It cures what ails ya
Like a clown 🤡
It never fails ya
Where manure comes from
You find it in the barn
You find it in the yard
You find it with alarm
It’s never very hard
It’s always rank and wet
The source is oft the bull
But you can also bet
Economist is full
Threatened Out West,
I think your excellent point about Oster being an economist also relates to a different post about Mercedes Schneider reviewing Douglas Harris’s book — Harris is also an economist.
In both cases, it seems to be like these economists use flawed data to make comparisons without any recognition of the DISsimilarities in the data groups they are comparing. They simply ignore them! They are completely blind to them.
No real scientist could get away with that. And yet far too often these “social scientists/economists” simply make claims about data that are appallingly bad science. And get away with it because those who promote their studies have no idea how to interpret and evaluate data.
Generally, when I ask a scientist to look at “data” or “studies”, they can see the flaws immediately and they are often stunned at how these studies are reported and how the conclusions made from that data are given credibility that simply isn’t deserved by the data presented.
My bout with Covid-19
Thanks, Roy, for sharing your experience of this disease. I think it important that people know what this is like. Here, my experience with it:
In February of this year, there was some talk in the news of this new disease, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, aside from getting p***ed at trump for not taking it seriously. But you know how that is. With Trump, it’s always been, what’s the outrage du jour? I live in Florida, where we are constantly bombarded by news about the invader that is going to kills us all—Zika, West Nile, dengue fever, or Chikungunya virus carried by Florida mosquitos, necrotizing fasciitis or primary amebic meningoencephalitis from microbeasties in our oceans, murder hornets, and at the time, Covid-19 hadn’t made its presence known HERE.
Across from me lived, in February, a family that had just returned from a visit to Puerto Rico. All came back terribly, terribly sick. One afternoon, the young man in that family got about a foot from my face to tell me how sick he and everyone else in the family was—some sort of flu, he said. Great, I thought. He just gave it to me.
A few days later, I became ill—a cough, shortness of breath, a slight sore throat, congestion. By the next day, I was running a slight fever, was extremely fatigued, and had lost my senses of taste and smell. There were other symptoms that I will spare you. I spent the next four or five days—I’m not sure, exactly, how many—in bed about 20 HOURS A DAY. I’m not exaggerating. I was extremely fatigued. In what little time I spent awake, I was exhausted, felt as though there were an enormous weight on my chest, and had a LOT of congestion. I thought of going to a doctor, but I was so exhausted that this seemed well-nigh impossible, and in very little time, after waking, after coughing up a lot of nastiness and drinking water and taking aspirin, I was back asleep again.
I lost track of my days and nights. Toward the end of this time, I was up more, and felt somewhat better, but I had suddenly developed numbness in my hands and feet and strange blotches on my feet and toes. I seemed to be experiencing some sort of significant neurological or cardiovascular problem. That was enough. I went to see a doctor. He tested me and gave me blood pressure medication and a statin and a diuretic. My feet had become quite swollen, and I was still experiencing the numbness in both my hands and feet. This was so severe in my feet that I had to get out on old hiking cane and use this to walk any distance at all, as to my mailbox. But gradually, these symptoms subsided. The blotches disappeared almost entirely, though I still have a slight discoloration in a spot on the top of one foot. The numbness in my hands left me and I could play the guitar and type again. The numbness in my feet has almost, but not entirely, disappeared. I have since learned that SARS-CoV-2 can cause these long-term neurological symptoms. They aren’t at all severe now. I no longer need the cane. But I suspect that my days of hiking up mountains are gone. I miss my mountains.
Sounds like you had it worse than I did. Glad you are better. I got the Covid and I still can barely play the guitar
We all know that we are going to die. This experience brought that home in a big way to me. I’ve long thought about the preciousness of each remaining day, but now, wow, I really feel that.
So glad you are both ok, Bob and Roy! Your sagas of dealing with this are enlightening and helpful.
Instead the number one business and civic priority among many state legislatures as well as the GOP (and many Dems) in Congress is to give blanket immunity to all corporations including businesses, schools and non-profits from any decisions they made which resulted in injury or death from COVID.
Such an egregious corporatist cave-in will be a test of the new Biden-Harris administration and I have little faith but that they will comply in earnest “for the good of the country”.
Two School Districts Had Different Mask Policies. Only One Had a Teacher on a Ventilator.
Eleven states let school districts decide whether students and staff must wear masks. One Georgia middle school where masks were optional became the center of an outbreak.
by Annie Waldman and Heather Vogell Nov. 23, 11:48 a.m. EST
On a balmy August morning in Emanuel County in eastern Georgia, hundreds of children bounded off freshly cleaned school buses and out of their parents’ cars. They were greeted by the principal, teachers and staff at Swainsboro Middle School who hadn’t seen them in four months. Before allowing the children to enter, a longtime receptionist beamed a temperature gun at their foreheads and checked for violations of the public school’s strict dress code: mostly neutral colors, nothing tight and no shoulders exposed.
Masks were optional, and about half of the children wore them. So did the receptionist, but only sporadically, according to several teachers.
Within a couple of days, the receptionist was out sick. Another receptionist called in sick as well. Both had caught the coronavirus, according to social media posts. In the ensuing weeks, a wave of cases would rush through the building — an outbreak for which district leaders blamed the community rather than the lack of a mask mandate in the schools. At least nine middle school teachers would be infected, including four along a single hallway; one would spend four weeks on a ventilator, fighting for her life. More than 100 students were quarantined because of positive cases or exposure. Within the first two months of school, the county would have one of the highest proportions of school-age COVID-19 cases in the state.
“Not everything that could have been done or should have been done was being done in the school system to stop the spread,” said Dr. Cedric Porter, a local physician who pushed in vain for a mask requirement. “Everybody seemed to be intent on keeping it secret that there was a serious problem.”
When another school district in Georgia 200 miles northwest of Emanuel went back to school in early September, the rules and results were far different. The city of Marietta required masks, with even pre-kindergarteners donning them inside school buildings. It trained its own contact tracers. During its first month of classes, it reported no school-related transmissions of COVID-19…
https://www.propublica.org/article/two-school-districts-had-different-mask-policies-only-one-had-a-teacher-on-a-ventilator
Further proof that what we have in our Public School establishment is a leadership problem, or lack thereof…