Teacher Deaths Raise Alarms As New School Year Begins

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Thu Sep 10, 2020, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: AP News

By Jim Salter and Leah Willingham, Associated Press, 1 hr ago.

O'Fallon, Mo. (AP) — Teachers in at least three states have died after bouts with the coronavirus since the dawn of the new school year, and a teachers' union leader worries that the return to in-person classes will have a deadly impact across the U.S. if proper precautions aren't taken.

AshLee DeMarinis was just 34 when she died Sunday after three weeks in the hospital. She taught social skills and special education at John Evans Middle School in Potosi, Missouri, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis. A third-grade teacher died Monday in South Carolina, and two other educators died recently in Mississippi. It's unclear how many teachers in the U.S. have become ill with COVID-19 since the new school year began, but Mississippi alone has reported 604 cases among school teachers and staff.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said schools need guidelines such as mandatory face coverings and strict social distancing rules to reopen safely. “If community spread is too high as it is in Missouri and Mississippi, if you don’t have the infrastructure of testing, and if you don’t have the safeguards that prevent the spread of viruses in the school, we believe that you cannot reopen in person,” Weingarten said.

Johnny Dunlap, a 39-year-old drama and forensics teacher at Dodge City High School in Kansas, said he considered quitting before the district made masks mandatory for teachers and students. Still, his history of bladder cancer and high blood pressure have left him with some angst about being around so many people. The New York City Department of Education alone lost 31 teachers among 75 employees whose deaths were blamed on the coronavirus...



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/teacher-deaths-raise-alarms-as-new-school-year-begins/ar-BB18SbvE

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According to The American Federation of Teachers, 210 union members throughout the U.S. have died. Included are support staff and retirees as well as teachers. The return to school brought with it more fatalities.

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. Shut it down.

One teachers life is too many.

Teach by correspondence. Meet outdoors when needed.

Abraham Lincoln taught himself.

[Igel]

4. The assumption is that it was at school that the COVID was contracted.

The first teacher named was hospitalized around 8/16/20, according to the article.

School was to start (the website says) on 8/24. Granted, there was a week or two before that was for training, prep, etc., but it's less likely that she caught it from the training than from other sources. Possible, but it's no longer because of all the kids clustered around her.

It's more of the rampant post-hoc fallacy that's come to be central in Critical thinking. Say one thing, say a second thing, and let people assume that since you've placed them near each other there's some causality. No need to prove it, or even suggest it. Pure logic says you've just put two things together, with no link. Conversational implicature says something wildly different.

[appalachiablue]

2. Nightmare, murderous regime

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. K&R

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

5. I wonder how they are doing school in those places

Kids haven't gone back yet where I live. It will be next Monday. The way they are doing it is parents can either choose remote learning all week or their kid can go two days a week in person and 3 days online per week. Some special needs kids will go to in person learning 4 days a week. This divides the classes in half so there is probably about 10 kids in a class, actually probably less because some kids will be remote all week. Everyone has to wear masks. Teachers that have heath issues can request to work remote only. This is in Maine and we have a pretty low number of new daily cases. Usually about 20 new cases a day on average for the whole state.