COVID-19 (artist formerly known as Wuhan strain novel Corona virus)

Maryville City Schools - also gives no [uck fay]s.

March 13, 2020

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Maryville City Schools is committed to maintaining a healthy campus environment for our students and a healthy workplace for our employees. As you know, we issued a statement in late February about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) which gave both staff and families a sense of how our schools are addressing this new challenge to public health. In recent days, the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control declared that COVID-19 had reached the level of a global pandemic. In addition, the federal government is taking steps to legislate a response and Governor Lee declared a state of emergency in Tennessee yesterday morning. We want parents and employees to know that we are closely monitoring this situation and will continue to follow the guidelines and recommendations of the CDC, as well as our local, state, and federal agencies.

Like most organizations, our response to this outbreak has been and will continue to be multi-faceted. In addition to being hyper-focused on the cleanliness of our facilities, we have encouraged students and staff to stay home and consult with medical professionals when they exhibit flu-like symptoms. At all levels, we continue to reinforce best practices for good hygiene and know our parents are doing the same at home. Our district administration and school leadership teams are working through spring break to define the many specific ways we will respond to this ever-changing situation in the weeks and months ahead.

Out of an abundance of caution, when spring break ends we will require all employees to self-report recent travel to international destinations listed as Level 3 by the CDC, cruise ship travel, as well as U.S. travel to high incident locales with confirmed cases of COVID-19. Likewise, we will ask all student families to follow the same reporting process, but on a voluntary basis. The reporting process for both employees and students will be defined and communicated later next week. It is also important for our staff and families to know that absences due to exposure and self-quarantine would be met in a completely non-punitive and compassionate manner. Our responsibility is for the health and safety of everyone on our campuses and we feel strongly that you share our commitment to that priority. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

One more thing, despite what you may have heard around town, our plan at this moment is that all staff and students will return to school as scheduled on March 23. If that changes for any reason we will share the details through all available communication channels – voice message, email, text message, website, social media, as well as local print and broadcast media. Should the state or federal government mandate a COVID-19 response for all schools, we will share that information as well.

In the meantime, my hope is that you and your family remain well and focused on having a restful and enjoyable spring break. We are blessed to live in a community where caring for our neighbors is just “what we do” and please know that any actions we take as this crisis unfolds are for the protection of our children, our employees, and this community.

Dr. Mike Winstead, Director of Schools

 

Hopefully they forget to bring him food.

 

State of Tennessee massively miss handling school till test are more available IMO.


Our director just said people are panicking and see no reason to close

 

Oh Lord.

We've got spring break for a week. My guess is we'll haev a different story this time next week.

 

Case in Rutherford County (pop 320k). Schools are now closed.

 

Cheatham Co. is not til the end of the month. They shut it down 2 weeks prior.

Given the current status, my guess is they either go back when the numbers are actually worst or they dont go back this year.

 

Big fan of:

1) Giving hospitals flexibility and interstate options to come up with local solutions to the overwhelming demand that is coming.

2) Utilizing preexisting infrastructure of the private sector.

I'm sure there are issues and unintended consequences with both items, but in the moment I don't really care.

 

But don't say anything bad about these [uck fay]ers...

China government spokesman says U.S. military may have brought virus to China

https://news.trust.org/item/20200312152307-rlv7m

 

Absurd

 

Well apparently Trump made up the Google website thing.

Jk - he just got the facts wrong.

 

https://www.newsweek.com/young-unaf...=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1583952020

 

But, H1N1.

 

I don't understand why this is hard for people to understand

 

if you don't want to hear about it, don't bring it up. And why do you get so triggered when its brought up? Is it not fair to discuss the 13,000 US deaths, including children? Posters here have said they don't recall much about it. Media didn't hype it. People weren't overly concerned, nor did they point fingers at Obama. It was more like, "damn. That's a bad virus".
I don't understand why you have an issue with people making the point about how many died from the virus.

 

so you are going into isolation, without symptoms or need for a test?

 

I'm not going anywhere I don't need to go for a few weeks.

 

Yes. That is literally the only way to slow down the virus right now.

I'm not talking down to you right now. I would just recommend taking the time to read about why people are being asked to limit their exposure to others.

 

My very immuno-compromised father lives with us and I have three little girls. But I'm also self-employed in real estate and am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've got people still wanting to look at houses so I'm showing them while I can yet thinking in the back of my head whether I can live with bringing it into my house because I'm trying to make sure the bills are still paid. I'm sure there's a lot of people thinking that way. Of course, I'm doing everything I can about distancing myself from people the past few days when out showing houses and trying to wipe my hands clean after getting back into my car.

When this is all said and done I hope that people appreciate things more than they do now. Appreciate freedom, health, etc. But they won't. And we've got some shitheads that are openly posting that they hope they get it so they can spread it to as many people as they can because in their own words, "some people want to watch the world burn." I swear to God some people are just flat out soul-less.

 

I've gotten some comfort from knowing that young ones are relatively unaffected by this (I've got a toddler and a pregnant wife). I definitely don't envy the situation that you're in. We still have to live our lives, but you're being responsible and that's all anyone can really ask of anybody right now.

 

I don’t want to hear about it’s politics and using H1N1 response of evidence of it - that’s what I said.

As for why H1N1 is not all that relevant to this discussion:

- The 12,000 deaths occurred over about a year. Over the last 10 years or so in data I saw, seasonal flu has killed more than that each year.
- But is it relevant to discuss seasonal flu with regard to H1N1? Yes and no. They are both flus. They both had R0 factors of around 1.3 but seasonal flu is ...seasonal ... and H1N1 was far less deadly than seasonal flu (about 5 times less deadly). What does this mean? With similar R0 factors but seasonal slowdown, there were fewer seasonal flu cases than H1N1 that year but more seasonal flu deaths.
- Now on to is it appropriate to compare H1N1 and COVID-19. No. CV has an R0 of more like 2-3, which means it’s doubling time is half of that if H1N1 (read - many many more cases if left unchecked) and it’s fatality rate is 2-3% compared to H1N1 at 0.02%. CV is 100 times more deadly and spreads faster.

So - why would we bring it up?