"Due to multiple data points related to the impact of COVID-19 on operations," nine Hamilton County public schools are shifting to remote learning for the rest of the week, according to an announcement by the Hamilton County Department of Education. And several of the schools will remain virtual until next Tuesday, according to a news release from the schools department.
This should be no surprise.
One of the "multiple data points related to the impact of COVID-19 on operations" anywhere right now is the gargantuan spike in new cases this month. And that's quite visible no matter what set of numbers you're viewing.
The Times Free Press daily tracks "confirmed" cases in Hamilton County, and by those numbers, we've seen at least 9,040 new cases of COVID countywide since Jan. 1 - with two thirds of them in the last nine days. (For context, the Health Department's numbers, which include "probable" cases, indicate the same trend - an increase of 10,490.)
Statewide, in 20 days, confirmed and probable cases climbed from just over 1 million to nearly 1.3 million - an increase of more than 181,000. If you're looking at averages, that's nudging 10,000 new cases a day across the state that would like to erase most COVID prevention requirements. And, yes, state deaths climbed, as well: 843 just since Jan. 1.
Given the rise, we wonder if those schools and more shouldn't have gone remote last week.
(READ MORE: COVID-19 cases are higher than ever in Hamilton County Schools)
We suggest there should perhaps be more virtual learning - not because we want children out of schools and parents out of work to care for them. Rather, we want COVID to stop spreading, to stop mutating and to subside so our students can be permanently back to normal in their classrooms and homes. That won't happen unless we take more preventive steps than we're taking today - like vaccinating, masking, social distancing and yes - even staying home until we get those first preventive steps right.
Stop a moment and think about the numbers of new local cases mentioned above: at least 9,040 in 20 days. More than 7,000 of them were reported in the past 9 days, based on the health department information we've been given.
Spring Creek and Ooltewah Elementary schools, along with STEM School ninth and 10th graders, were set to go virtual Thursday and Friday of this week. Also: Rivermont, Nolan, Harrison and Hixson elementary schools, as well as Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts, are shifting to remote learning Thursday through Monday.
But don't for a minute think those were the only schools affected by this month's surge - a rise which has resulted in the highest - by far - number of school cases and "close case contacts" reported in our classrooms since June 2020.
According to Thursday's HCDE COVID Dashboard, the department had 315 active cases among staff members and 1,215 active cases among students. Another 48 staffers and 5,089 students were listed as active close contacts. That means 7% of the staff and almost 15% of students are ill or exposed, according to the dashboard.
And not all of the highly affected schools are on that new remote list. For instance Signal Mountain Middle/High School listed 59 active cases and 436 "close contacts." Wolftever Creek Elementary School's totals reached 278. Loftis Middle School tallied 199.
But beneath the school system's list of schools shifting to virtual learning is this note: "Due to the passing of SB9014 into law, we await further guidance from the state with regard to COVID-related school closings. Until further notice, all schools will remain open."
In other words, our school officials have to phone home to the state of Tennessee to get permission to keep students and staff safe - after the horse has long run out of the barn.
Mind you, school officials are not having to get this OK from the federal government or the president or the county health department - which actually might be the smartest place to seek such guidance.
No - thanks to the failing wisdom of Tennessee's General Assembly, only the state leaders up in Nashville are deemed to know what's best for our students and employers.
Those would be the same state leaders who mandated against mask mandates and most vaccine mandates. They also are the same state leaders who were instrumental in the firing of a Tennessee health officer who dared to OK posters advocating for the vaccination of teenagers once the vaccines were medically approved for older students.
Here's the bottom line. Because COVID has become such a partisan issue and become so polarizing, we all seem to have lost sight of the fact that the virus doesn't care if we are conservative or liberal. It doesn't care if we're red or blue. It doesn't care who we voted for or who we will vote for.
It doesn't care where we live or where our kids go to school. And it doesn't care how rich or smart we are.
It's an opportunistic pathogen dependent on the cellular machinery of its host for its continuing reproduction.
And we're the host.
We're the nursery and daycare for its offspring, if you will.
If we make it hard for COVID to keep living and reproducing, we can stop it, whether there are mandates or not.
If we keep making it easy for this horrible virus, we're not hurting whichever politicians we don't like at the moment.
We're hurting ourselves.