Texas School System Temporarily Closes After Two Teachers Die of Covid (1 Viewer)

[FreeBaGeL]

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033293779/texas-school-system-closes-teachers-die-covid-waco

WACO, Texas — A Central Texas school district closed its schools until after the Labor Day holiday Tuesday after two teachers died last week of COVID-19.

Connally Independent School District officials closed its five suburban Waco schools for the rest of the week after the Saturday COVID-19 death of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School, said Assistant Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.

Chansler's death came days after David McCormick, 59, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High, died of COVID-19, Bottelberghe said.

It was not immediately known if either teacher was vaccinated.

Connally High School football coach Terry Gerik says the Cadets will play La Vega as scheduled Friday night.

The school has had 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases since classes began Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. She added that more cases had been confirmed in the last few days, but she did not know if any have been directly traced back to Chansler.

"We have not found any correlation" between the two deaths, Bottelberghe said. "They were at two different grade levels even though they worked under the same content area, but we have recognized that there has been an increase in spread as far as throughout our student body at those two grade levels."

In a Monday email, Superintendent Wesley Holt said the hope "is that the closure and holiday break will provide those who are positive with the virus or exposed to others with the virus, the time to isolate and recover. This closure will also allow time for deep cleaning and sanitizing of all CISD facilities."

The rolling seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases in Texas was 15,400 cases as of Sunday, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths in Texas was 200 per day.

 

[Mookie]

So sad and preventable.

 

[Max Power]

So sad and preventable.

How was it preventable?

 

[Jackstraw]

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033293779/texas-school-system-closes-teachers-die-covid-waco

Skip school but play the football game. SO Texas. 

 

[kface]

Ugh...such a sad story.  More to come

 

[the moops]

So sad and preventable.

How was it preventable?

95% + of deaths are from the unvaccinated. The chances are pretty slim that both these teachers who died were vaccinated.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Ugh, awful story.

Minor nitpick, but I suggest changing the topic title. When I first saw "system", it made me wonder if every school in Texas had shut down statewide. Probably best to say "district" instead.

 

[Max Power]

95% + of deaths are from the unvaccinated. The chances are pretty slim that both these teachers who died were vaccinated.

So we're just going to assume they were unvaccinated and this was preventable?

If they are both vaccinated was this preventable?

 

[Sabertooth]

So we're just going to assume they were unvaccinated and this was preventable?

If they are both vaccinated was this preventable?

Of course.  Could have stayed online.  Lots of ways to prevent this.   
Why don’t we wait to see if they were vaccinated before we clutch our pearls.  

 

[Max Power]

Of course.  Could have stayed online.  Lots of ways to prevent this.   
Why don’t we wait to see if they were vaccinated before we clutch our pearls.  

You can't have a mentality that all death is preventable. That isnt logical or healthy. 

 

[RCon]

So we're just going to assume they were unvaccinated and this was preventable?

If they are both vaccinated was this preventable?

I'll bet you $100 right now that they weren't vaccinated.

 

[Max Power]

I'll bet you $100 right now that they weren't vaccinated.

That isn't something I really want to bet on. News stories tend to highlight the unvaccinated part when that is the case. This one didn't, so that adds a bit more weight that they were vaccinated. 

 

[RCon]

That isn't something I really want to bet on. News stories tend to highlight the unvaccinated part when that is the case. This one didn't, so that adds a bit more weight that they were vaccinated. 

I would say the exact opposite.  The media has overhyped "breakthrough cases" in my experience.  If the media knew these were two deaths of somewhat younger people who were vaccinated, it would have been in the first paragraph if not the headline.  Whoever wrote the linked article legitimately didn't know.  The odds of both these people dying after vaccination are so slim that I'm comfortable stating that at least one, and almost certainly both, weren't vaxxed.

 

[Sabertooth]

You can't have a mentality that all death is preventable. That isnt logical or healthy. 

No death is preventable over a long enough timeline. 

 

[Sabertooth]

That isn't something I really want to bet on. News stories tend to highlight the unvaccinated part when that is the case. This one didn't, so that adds a bit more weight that they were vaccinated. 

Of course you don’t. 

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I'll bet you $100 right now that they weren't vaccinated.

This is about right.  On an intellectual level, I'm happy to reserve judgment and wait for more information to emerge.  But statistically, the probability of a person being unvaccinated conditional on having died from covid-19 is very high.  An even money wager on that is a total sucker bet in our favor.

If it turns out that these two teachers were vaccinated, this is going to be a very tragic story involving an incredibly unlikely coincidence of two lethal breakthrough infections in the same relatively small workforce.  The US is a big country, and weird coincidences like that do actually happen daily if you go looking for them, but the underlying math doesn't change.  

 

[GordonGekko]

Ugh, awful story.

Minor nitpick, but I suggest changing the topic title. When I first saw "system", it made me wonder if every school in Texas had shut down statewide. Probably best to say "district" instead.

Direct Headline: New NPR Ethics Policy: It's OK For Journalists To Demonstrate (Sometimes)

Kelly McBride July 29, 20215:00 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2021/07/29/1021802098/new-npr-ethics-policy-its-ok-for-journalists-to-demonstrate-sometimes

********

"System" instead of "district" was intentional.

(Let me not ignore that these deaths were a tragedy but there is a discussion of political strategy to be had on how and why NPR curates it's headlines)

For all intents and purposes, Kelly McBride is in charge of media optics at NPR. She changed previous long standing policy that all on staff journalists had to keep their politics to themselves. It was a new permission to be as "woke" as they want and paid by tax dollars.

There's not much left to go after Donald Trump on, he's out of office. Nikki Haley, the preferred target, is human Teflon. The Democratic Party is already going to lose a staggering cross section of the military vote, so it won't want to risk any more by trying to run over Dan Crenshaw.

Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron De Santis in Florida are the two main high profile targets now. Red strongholds with lots of natural electoral votes that DNC HQ desperately wants to flip Blue. There is an ugly push by Pelosi to hunt Abbott as Texas has become a landing zone for big business fleeing California, which only makes the narrative to her "nephew" Gavin Newsom look uglier by the day.

This is why the RNC will struggle with the Ron De Santis question for POTUS. No one knows the total COVID19 related death count for Florida by 2024. It has the third largest population count in the country and one of the oldest on the average if you look at the demographics. The Democratic Party is obviously troubled that the Hispanic/Latino population there keeps trending Red ( The Border Crisis will tend to have that effect down the ticket....)  Unlike Texas, DNC HQ can't formulate a strategy to shovel as many immigrants into the system to bend down the social services / emergency services sector and De Santis' power base is too strong to run him over with a Blue upstart gubernatorial contender.  The only thing left to do is ride the COVID19 narrative and call him a murderer.

NPR is not a neutral actor in any of this. It leans left and McBride wants everyone to know it leans left.

That being said, this is an ugly situation for Greg Abbott and the political narrative on it will be hard to spin in his favor. While both Abbott and De Santis have been pro vaccination but also pro responsibility, De Santis took the much harder road to be informed on a technical level. In order to form a COVID19 political counter narrative in the media, you have to know when the science discussion is being cooked to lean against you. De Santis does a better job of counter striking here than Abbott.

There's an argument to be made, on both sides of the aisle, that states with the largest populations have no real choice but to allow smaller pockets within to run their own COVID19 protocols. Every situation is different and some needs shift one way here versus another there. This formulates a practical logistics question, not just political one. This dovetails into the discussion on why national politics often devolves almost regularly into a pro grifter feudal system because the chain of command stretches so far out.

Something Joe Rogan pointed out in the past is Big Pharma doesn't want anyone to talk about the comorbities situation for every person who does die of COVID19, because there's no profit in talking about a healthier lifestyle and subsequent choices which can start to improve one's odds, when the best cash grift is just settled by selling more pills to people.

The radical left and it's extension into the media won't be happy until Greg Abbott and Ron De Santis are painted as mass murderers.

 

[Max Power]

Of course you don’t. 

Of course I don't what? Bet on how someone died?  Yeah, I don't find that appropriate. 

I'll do a $20 donation to a charity of choice. 

 

[apalmer]

You can't have a mentality that all death is preventable. That isnt logical or healthy. 

Not all deaths are preventable. Some deaths are preventable. Shouldn't we take the steps to prevent those that are? Or, is it logical and healthy to have a mentality that no deaths are preventable and we shouldn't even try?

 

[Max Power]

Not all deaths are preventable. Some deaths are preventable. Shouldn't we take the steps to prevent those that are? Or, is it logical and healthy to have a mentality that no deaths are preventable and we shouldn't even try?

I agree plenty of steps can be taken to prevent death in many capacities.

I was interesting in hearing out the group on if Unvax'd = Preventable death and the vaccinated were unpreventable deaths because that seems to be the idea at play. 

Also we as a society don't even come close to doing everything we can to prevent deaths.  So it's odd to only see it thrown out when COIVD is involved. 

 

[Max Power]

I would say the exact opposite.  The media has overhyped "breakthrough cases" in my experience.  If the media knew these were two deaths of somewhat younger people who were vaccinated, it would have been in the first paragraph if not the headline.  Whoever wrote the linked article legitimately didn't know.  The odds of both these people dying after vaccination are so slim that I'm comfortable stating that at least one, and almost certainly both, weren't vaxxed.

fair enough. So back to the question I mentioned in a different post.  If one was and one wasn't, do you still say they were both preventable?

 

[RCon]

fair enough. So back to the question I mentioned in a different post.  If one was and one wasn't, do you still say they were both preventable?

Certainly.  Again, I'd be willing to bet that neither of these two were vaxxed.  That said, even if one was, the death was certainly preventable.  The school could have required masks.  The school could have gone to online only.  There are lots of things that could have been done, some more easily than others.  It's not really any different than claiming the NFL could prevent more spread by testing daily than semi-weekly 

 

[NorvilleBarnes]

Not all deaths are preventable. Some deaths are preventable. Shouldn't we take the steps to prevent those that are? 

No.

 

[Max Power]

Certainly.  Again, I'd be willing to bet that neither of these two were vaxxed.  That said, even if one was, the death was certainly preventable.  The school could have required masks.  The school could have gone to online only.  There are lots of things that could have been done, some more easily than others.  It's not really any different than claiming the NFL could prevent more spread by testing daily than semi-weekly 

At least you are consistent in your view.  I don't necessarily agree. I'll follow along with the story and if they are both unvaxed, I'll throw $20 to the charity of your choosing.

 

[GordonGekko]

I'll bet you $100 right now that they weren't vaccinated.

I have deep roots in Texas, so do others here at FBG. How about we not use the death of my fellow Texans as some type of Fan Duel themed spectator sport for your tribalism?

 

[RCon]

At least you are consistent in your view.  I don't necessarily agree. I'll follow along with the story and if they are both unvaxed, I'll throw $20 to the charity of your choosing.

Done.  I'll donate the $20 in reverse if either of them was fully vaxxed.

 

[SoBeDad]

I agree plenty of steps can be taken to prevent death in many capacities.

I was interesting in hearing out the group on if Unvax'd = Preventable death and the vaccinated were unpreventable deaths because that seems to be the idea at play. 

Also we as a society don't even come close to doing everything we can to prevent deaths.  So it's odd to only see it thrown out when COIVD is involved. 

As a country, we spend an inordinate amount on healthcare compared to other countries and don't have the outcomes to justify it. We're slow to the game on simple measures like better primary care, access to affordable health care, seat belt laws, dui laws, and now COVID vaccine use. DeSantis, while supporting the vaccine use in the elderly has been shy about supporting its use in younger people. He quietly got the J&J vaccine behind closed doors, to avoid political fallout. But he's not shy about promoting Regereron, which is more expensive than the vaccine and too late for many.

 

[Insein]

I'll reserve judgement until more information is released. I'm interested to know the comorbidities for each and if they died of Covid or died while testing positive for Covid. Especially the 41 year old. Very unusual for someone so young to just suddenly die from Covid. 

If it turns out they did not get the vaccine, they made their adult decision and unfortunately it didn't work out for them. If they ARE vaccinated, this causes way more issues. When were they vaccinated? Which one? Did the vaccine cause complications? Is the vaccine losing effectiveness? Was it ever as effective as they thought it was? 

Again all this is speculation. I'm sure many more details will come out about it that hopefully won't be muddied by the political spectrum but we all know that's wishful thinking.

 

[John123]

Not all deaths are preventable. Some deaths are preventable. Shouldn't we take the steps to prevent those that are? Or, is it logical and healthy to have a mentality that no deaths are preventable and we shouldn't even try?

There are a lot of variables to consider in this question.  If we got rid of cars no one would die in car accidents or equipment failures.  However, that would have a huge impact on society. I think we can agree that the risk/reward calculation in that case would indicate leaving the risk involved in driving for the rewards that cars afford us.  But, unfortunately, some preventable deaths are going to happen.

 

[tonydead]

There are a lot of variables to consider in this question.  If we got rid of cars no one would die in car accidents or equipment failures.  However, that would have a huge impact on society. I think we can agree that the risk/reward calculation in that case would indicate leaving the risk involved in driving for the rewards that cars afford us. 

Like it or not there is a calculated value to human life.  I think economists generally use 10 million dollars for a person currently.  For example, they didn't make it mandatory for new vehicles to have back up cameras to keep people from running over children until the camera technology became affordable and the economics of the situation made sense.  

 

[the moops]

There are a lot of variables to consider in this question.  If we got rid of cars no one would die in car accidents or equipment failures.  However, that would have a huge impact on society. I think we can agree that the risk/reward calculation in that case would indicate leaving the risk involved in driving for the rewards that cars afford us.  But, unfortunately, some preventable deaths are going to happen.

Of course some preventable deaths are going to happen. We should still try to minimize those deaths, don't you think? Airbags, seatbelts, vaccines, etc

 

[Mookie]

How was it preventable?

I made an assumption based upon readily available data that the vast amount of COVID hospitalizations and deaths involve unvaccinated persons.  In Texas, 0.2% of COVID hospitalizations involve vaccinated persons, and 0.4% of COVID deaths involve vaccinated persons.  That's 2 and 4 out of 1000.   In McClennan County, where this school district is located, the vaccination rate is currently at 38%. Since we know that two teachers at the same school contracted COVID and died, the chance that one of these teachers was vaccinated is very slim, and the chance that both teachers were vaccinated is almost impossible.

An additional factor putting teachers at risk is that mask mandates in public schools have been prohibited under State law.  Yes, it is possible that these teachers were wearing masks, but they caught the virus, so it is more likely they were not wearing masks.  Also, given the high rate of infection in the school necessitating closure, it appears likely that few students and teachers were wearing masks while the virus was being transmitted.    

If these teachers were both vaccinated and they and everyone around them had been wearing masks while at school, it is highly likely that they would still be alive today.  That is why I said it was "sad and preventable" despite not having definitive proof that these teachers were unvaccinated and not wearing masks. 

The fact that I just had to spend 30 minutes explaining this is a big part of the problem, and why so many are dying.  It isn't that hard if one makes this about the science and not politics.  Vaccinations and masks work. 

 

[Sabertooth]

Of course I don't what? Bet on how someone died?  Yeah, I don't find that appropriate. 

I'll do a $20 donation to a charity of choice. 

Yeah.  You won’t put your money where your mouth in.  They died of COVID.  That’s not the bet.  

 

[John123]

Of course some preventable deaths are going to happen. We should still try to minimize those deaths, don't you think? Airbags, seatbelts, vaccines, etc

Sure.  Within Reason.  I think there are nuances to even this discussion but I won't clutter up this thread with that tangent.  The post I was responding to left no room for nuance or cost/benefit analysis.  It simply said we should take the steps to prevent any preventable deaths.  

 

[The Z Machine]

We should take the easy steps to prevent unnecessary and tragic deaths, yes. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines fall into that category IMO. 

 

[Max Power]

I made an assumption based upon readily available data that the vast amount of COVID hospitalizations and deaths involve unvaccinated persons.  In Texas, 0.2% of COVID hospitalizations involve vaccinated persons, and 0.4% of COVID deaths involve vaccinated persons.  That's 2 and 4 out of 1000.   In McClennan County, where this school district is located, the vaccination rate is currently at 38%. Since we know that two teachers at the same school contracted COVID and died, the chance that one of these teachers was vaccinated is very slim, and the chance that both teachers were vaccinated is almost impossible.

An additional factor putting teachers at risk is that mask mandates in public schools have been prohibited under State law.  Yes, it is possible that these teachers were wearing masks, but they caught the virus, so it is more likely they were not wearing masks.  Also, given the high rate of infection in the school necessitating closure, it appears likely that few students and teachers were wearing masks while the virus was being transmitted.    

If these teachers were both vaccinated and they and everyone around them had been wearing masks while at school, it is highly likely that they would still be alive today.  That is why I said it was "sad and preventable" despite not having definitive proof that these teachers were unvaccinated and not wearing masks. 

The fact that I just had to spend 30 minutes explaining this is a big part of the problem, and why so many are dying.  It isn't that hard if one makes this about the science and not politics.  Vaccinations and masks work. 

I appreciate the thorough replay. I can't access the NYT data due to paywall here.  From what I saw the report was written 10 AUG.  Is that where the percentages were pulled from?  the CDC has recently come out saying the vaccine is less effective vs the delta variant and data from the last two weeks is showing a higher % of covid hospitalizations and deaths in vaccinated people than what was previously reported.  So that is something to consider in these current cases. 

Its established we don't know if they wore masks or even wore them correctly. It's also fine if you want to blame Texas for its anti-mask policies. 

My issue initially was saying these were preventable deaths.  We have to jump to several conclusions to make that statement. 

I agree Vaccines and Masks both help reduce the odds, but they don't make a covid death preventable. 

 

[Max Power]

Yeah.  You won’t put your money where your mouth in.  They died of COVID.  That’s not the bet.  

Like I said, I don't find it tasteful to bet on this.  I did put my money on my analysis of the situation though.

Stop being so angry.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I made an assumption based upon readily available data that the vast amount of COVID hospitalizations and deaths involve unvaccinated persons.  In Texas, 0.2% of COVID hospitalizations involve vaccinated persons, and 0.4% of COVID deaths involve vaccinated persons.  That's 2 and 4 out of 1000.   In McClennan County, where this school district is located, the vaccination rate is currently at 38%. Since we know that two teachers at the same school contracted COVID and died, the chance that one of these teachers was vaccinated is very slim, and the chance that both teachers were vaccinated is almost impossible.

An additional factor putting teachers at risk is that mask mandates in public schools have been prohibited under State law.  Yes, it is possible that these teachers were wearing masks, but they caught the virus, so it is more likely they were not wearing masks.  Also, given the high rate of infection in the school necessitating closure, it appears likely that few students and teachers were wearing masks while the virus was being transmitted.    

If these teachers were both vaccinated and they and everyone around them had been wearing masks while at school, it is highly likely that they would still be alive today.  That is why I said it was "sad and preventable" despite not having definitive proof that these teachers were unvaccinated and not wearing masks. 

The fact that I just had to spend 30 minutes explaining this is a big part of the problem, and why so many are dying.  It isn't that hard if one makes this about the science and not politics.  Vaccinations and masks work. 

Masks are not even in the same general universe as vaccines in terms of preventing either the spread of covid or the severity of covid.  If you do a randomized control trial of 650,000 unvaccinated people, you can just barely pick up small population-level differences in covid incidence among some very particular age cohorts caused by masking.  With vaccines, you don't need any fancy biometrics -- you can just look at a middle school level histogram and see a night and day difference.  People need to stop lumping these two things together.  It's effectively a weird form of vaccine hesitancy.  

 

[Grace Under Pressure]

Masks are not even in the same general universe as vaccines in terms of preventing either the spread of covid or the severity of covid.  If you do a randomized control trial of 650,000 unvaccinated people, you can just barely pick up small population-level differences in covid incidence among some very particular age cohorts caused by masking.  With vaccines, you don't need any fancy biometrics -- you can just look at a middle school level histogram and see a night and day difference.  People need to stop lumping these two things together.  It's effectively a weird form of vaccine hesitancy.  

Exactly. This case should also highlight the obvious: the approval of the vaccine in 5-11 year olds is critical to opening schools safely, and the fact this wasn't prioritized and kids just went back to school anyway with little to no mitigation in some places is borderline criminal. 

People discussing vaccination rates, how some places are doing with 18+ year olds, etc. Meanwhile 5-11 year olds sitting by wondering why no vaccine for them. It's almost insane. Newsflash, they're going to approve the vaccine for this group at 10mcg. 

 

[Sabertooth]

Like I said, I don't find it tasteful to bet on this.  I did put my money on my analysis of the situation though.

Stop being so angry.

I’m just sick of people flapping their gums who don’t really hold a conviction.  Your just being confrontational on something you don’t even truly believe.  So you clutch your pearls and make up straw men.  

 

[Max Power]

I’m just sick of people flapping their gums who don’t really hold a conviction.  Your just being confrontational on something you don’t even truly believe.  So you clutch your pearls and make up straw men.  

You're so angry you can't see straight. No strawman was made. I talked through my holdup with a view. Didn't agree, but moved on.  I also put my money where my mouth was. So what's your deal? Relax man.