The Delta variant is exploding across the United States. Since I live and work in Georgia, I am going to focus on my state’s current COVID-19 status. It isn’t a pretty report. My focus here is also school in the age of coronavirus. COVID-19 is our plague. For those adults who don’t think that COVID-19 is a serious threat to their health and everyone around them, you are ignoring the science that is very clear about the cause of your illness, if you get sick. You only have yourself to blame. But, your ignorance doesn’t end with you. Your callowness affects everyone around you. What follows is a bit of information that you might find useful. You might start by reading what Ed Johnson says. He’s an educator in Atlanta whose taken lots of time to analyze COVID-19 in Georgia.

As soon coronavirus was considered a national health emergency, schools across the world closed their doors to face-to-face learning. At the time that schools closed its doors, the virus was spreading rapidly across the world. The nature of the virus was understood, but there was hesitation, even from the CDC, about how people could protect themselves from catching the virus. It was a wise decision to close schools, yet mixed messaging created problems for local school districts often pitting parents against school officials. Unfortunately, even after what we know, some parents are at war with school officials because of a mask mandate.

When Should Schools Open?

The decision to close schools to face-to-face learning led to the question of when should schools open? How can we do that safely?  When schools closed, all teaching and learning was moved to online frameworks. This led to a host of problems including the availability of computers to families especially in low socio-economic communities, access to reliable networks, providing instruction for teachers to learn how to use online resources and the effect of learning at home on students and parents. Online learning pushed teachers and students to use multiple technologies, email, websites, as well as zoom and video technologies. Many were not prepared. 

With respect to school, I was concerned about safety as well the effects of online learning.  How could schools manage a safe environment considering the community spread of the coronavirus? Who would benefit from online learning?  Who wouldn’t?

Look at Georgia

For example, in Georgia where I live, and am emeritus professor of science education at Georgia State University, more than 360,000 college and university students are enrolled across the state.  I used coronavirus data that Ed Johnson compiled using the Georgia Department of Health statistics to answer questions about the opening of universities and schools last August.

The situation today is no different than it was a year ago, and it might actually be worse. Early in the pandemic, not much was known about the effect of bringing students back to their respective schools. Bringing students back to school safely is still an open question. The question can be answered if the primary consideration is safety, health and welfare of students and teachers, as well the families of each group. However, because of the slew of adult anti-vaxxers that populate the United States, hospitals are full and the state of Mississippi’s health care system is near collapse. They’ve requested sea faring hospitals for help.

COVID-19 in Georgia March 2020 – August 2021

Ed Johnson’s recent analysis of COVID-19 in Georgia is not good. Since last March, he has used data from the Georgia Department of Health to make charts based on 7-Prior days moving average. Here is his most recent chart. Georgia has entered what Johnson calls Epoch III of Covid infections. Notice that the angle of the infection rate in Epoch 3 is no different than the rates in Epoch 1 or Epoch 2.

However, COVID infection periods (Epochs) have life cycles as shown in the chart below. For example, according to Johnson’s data, Epoch 1 began on June 14, 2020 and started infecting more and more people until it reached a peak on July 25, 2020. It took until September 29, 2020 to fall to its lowest level. In all Epoch I lasted 108 days which is about 60% of a public school year. You can see on the chart that Epoch II was even longer at 166 days. And now we are in the first part of Epoch III which started in June 2021. COVID is spreading like wildfire among the unvaccinated adults and children. In Georgia, Its gone up from 207 cases per day to 3,904 cases per day. School has started across Georgia and some school districts are reverting to the previous year’s plan of remote learning.

Georgia Map Data

The situation in Georgia can also be viewed via mapped data. Below are two maps that show the extent of the spread of COVID-19. Every county in Georgia is affected as you can see on either map. The evidence here is that students should wear masks and keep separated by at least six feet. Schools should not have the option to allow students to attend classes maskless. Take a look at the data. On the map in Figure 3, the darker the color, the higher the average daily cases per 100,000 people. Wilkes and Chattahoochee are only counties that have average daily rates of 10 or lower. These two counties are in the Green Zone. Green zone schools can open for face to face classes. Red zone counties have positivity rates above 10 per 100,000. Unfortunately, at this time, 150 of Georgia’s 152 counties are in the Red zone.

Should Schools Open?

Anthony Fauci supports sending kids back to school, but only if the COVID-19 positivity rate is 5% or less than 10/100,000 population. This is referred to the green zone. Yellow zones have positivity rates between 5% and 10%.  Red zones have positivity rates above 10%. In December 2020, there were only 4 states in the green zone, meaning that the positivity rate was less than 5%.  More than half the states have a positivity rate of more than 10%. Dr. Fauci says that to open schools in the yellow and red zones, we’ve got to lower the positivity rates in the community of these schools.  As more people get vaccinated, COVID-19 positivity rates will go down. 

For those adults who have children not vaccinated, hear this. The safest way to protect your children is for you and other adults and children over 12 years of age in your household to be vaccinated. This will be a modest shield for your kids while at home. When they go to school, make sure they mask up and stay 6 feet away from others. If you don’t get a jab, you are putting your own children at risk. Why would you do that?

In the initial stages of the pandemic, there wasn’t much research to help school and university officials base decisions on whether to open schools and under what conditions. That’s beginning to change.

Medical Experts

However, some medical experts have raised questions about the methodology used in some studies that might become influential in directing schools to open or not. There is little data on the spread of the virus in schools.  Most states provide data on coronavirus cases for each county.  I used this type of data to raise questions about returning students to school.

Based on data from MCH Strategic Data,[1] 13,597 of 14,944 U.S. school districts that provided school reopening plans, 24% were completely online, 51% were using a hybrid model and 17% were fully open for in-person instruction.  Slightly more than half had students participating in school sports programs. Most school districts require students to wear masks, but on further inspection of the data, only 7% required middle and high school students to wear masks, and only 2% of high schools require masks.

Some Research

A review of some research on school opening and SARS-CoV-2 infection rates was reported by CDC researchers. The findings reported in the study are of the authors and not the CDC.  Crowded conditions, in adult living environments or meat packing facilities, are ripe for spreading COVID-19.  Schools risk the possibility of spreading SARS-CoV-2.  In one study in North Carolina, which involved 90,000 students (about the seating capacity of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum) and staff for a nine-week period, within school transmissions were rare (32 infections in schools, whereas there were 773 community-acquired infections). 

However, Stephen Friedman, MD, MPH commented that the infection rates reported for students was limited to the local school dashboard rather than systematic testing of students.  He also noted that comparing students to community spread data was comparing students to adults (Honein, Barrios, and Brooks, 2021).  School related activities have increased the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially in after school sports programs.  One example of how contact sports can lead to infection was a study of a high school wrestling tournament. Among 130 tournament participants, 38 (30%) had lab confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection.  Only 50% of the participants were tested.  Secondary transmission was identified through contact tracing in households and in school (classrooms and athletics).  Some states banned after school sports.  However, in Georgia, where I live, there is little evidence of schools reducing after school activities.

Here’s what we know

The researchers conclude that schools need to take into the account community spread and to insure safe environments for students during and after school.  Masks, social distancing, and hand washing are essential and should be required. However, in some school districts, parent groups are filing lawsuits opposing mask wearing for students.

The CDC’s latest recommendations are stated as essential elements of safe K-12 school in-person instruction.  They are universal and call for use of masks, physical separation (6 feet), handwashing and respiratory etiquette, cleaning facilities and contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine.  These were used successfully during the 1918 Flu Pandemic, by the way.  Schools should limit opening until teachers and staff are vaccinated.

Anti-Science Anti-Vaxxers

Throughout the pandemic there has sometimes been a disconnect between CDC guidance for operational strategies for K-12 schools and local and state government COVID-19 guidelines.  For instance, the CDC still recommends mask wearing and physical separation in schools, while some governors, as in Florida and Texas, have banned mask mandates. This is a problem.  Some parents continue to say they do not want their children vaccinated.  Some very smart parents are not sure what the long-term effect of mRNA vaccines will have on children’s brain development, for instance.  Other parents are committed anti-vaxxers and won’t allow their children to be jabbed.

If the virus is in circulation, then non-vaccinated children, teens, and adults can be infected, and can pass the infection on to others.  I agree with the World Health Organization, that anti-science and anti-vaxxers present a serious health problem not only to themselves but everyone around them.

It’s Still Spreading

COVID-19 is still spreading at high rates and with great speed in some countries and most states in the U.S. COVID-19 has infected more people in five months of 2021 than all of 2020.  At the present time, the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is spreading at a rate of 113,000 cases per day in the United States, as well as in many other countries around the world.

The viral loads in the Delta variant were ~1000 times higher than those in earlier infections.[2]  Jing Lu at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues tracked 62 people who were quarantined after exposure to COVID-19 and who were some of the first people in mainland China to become infected with the Delta strain.[3]

It’s time for the United States to lead a world-wide push to get vaccines to every person on earth.  And we have to start at home. If you aren’t vaccinated, get a jab.

[1] MCH Strategic Data. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://www.mchdata.com/

[2] Lu, J., Li, Y., Yuan, J., & He, J. (2021, July 7). Viral infection and transmission in a large well-traced outbreak caused by the Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant. Virological.org. https://virological.org/t/viral-infection-and-transmission-in-a-large-well-traced-outbreak-caused-by-the-delta-sars-cov-2-variant/724.

[3] Ibid.