This has been especially true with the Co-vid pandemic. In a time where everyone is looking at the "numbers", whether it be positivity rate number of cases, number of deaths, or number of hospitalizations, and in a time where everyone has their own political agenda, it's hard to determine what is really the truth.
But through all the conjecture, one thing seems certain. The United States has turned this pandemic into a political side-show. Republicans are resolute in their belief that this entire thing is a hoax and has been entirely blown out of proportion by the media to make Trump look bad in a re-election year. My dearest republican friends believe that there is a cure for co-vid out there that doctors are ignoring. It's both alarming and ludicrous that they believe that doctors are letting thousands of Americans die because they are in an alliance to ruin Trump.
As the Republican National Convention wrapped up its four-day run, Trump delivered a 71-minute speech that largely delivered a version of reality that HE wants America to see rather the a version that most Americans are living. He declared the "China Virus" a thing of the past even as 1,000 people a day continue to die from it and 40,000 people in the United States are being diagnosed every day - which is enough to be 2nd in the world behind India. In fact, Florida has more daily cases than most countries in the world.
Which is a great Segway into my next topic - the state of the state of Florida. As I stated at the beginning, I rarely look at 'numbers as being completely accurate. Just one month ago, the numbers had Florida reporting 10,000+ cases daily. Now that the collecting and reporting of data has been stripped of the CDC and given to the White House, our numbers have miraculously dropped to about 3,000 a day. I don't believe either one. I believe the CDC mishandled and over-reported data and I believe the White House is manipulating numbers and under-reporting. All that to say, I think we are still hovering somewhere around 5-6,000 new cases a day. To put that into perspective, that is more than the cases of the following entire COUNTRIES!
1). Austria (181)
2. Canada (315)
3. Germany (785)
4. Australia (123) Interesting to note that at the beginning of the month, the state of Victoria experienced a surge and the numbers went up to about 700. The state issued another lock-down, students returned to distance learning, and just like that... down to 123.
5. Greece (251)
6. Italy (1,365)
7. Finland (7)
8. Norway (51)
9. Russia (3,711)
10. Japan (850)
11. Hong Kong (15)
12. Hungary (158)
13. Sweden (134)
14. Ireland (142)
15.South Korea (299)
16. New Zealand (2)
17. Egypt (223)
18. Indonesia (2, 858)
19. Georgia - the country (7)
20. The United Kingdom (1,108)
I could list many more, but you get the idea.
The latest from the United States reports 44, 269 new cases. Despite not conquering the virus, the president announced that school should resume face-to-face instruction so that parents can go back to work and our economy can return to normal. Our lovely governor, who hopes to attain a post with Trump if he is re-elected, jumped all over that and he, along with the Commissioner of Education, Richard Cochran issued a mandate that all schools must return to "brick and mortar" instruction 5 days a week or risk losing funding. The mandate is stated as such "all school boards must return to 5 day a week face-to-face instruction unless they have a recommendation from the local board of health ---wonderful ---except that the governor turned around and told the local health agencies that they were not to give their approval. And because they have government jobs and cannot afford to lose them, they did as they were told. In one county with a severe outbreak, school board members went as far as to seek the advice of 6 doctors - ALL who went on record to say school doors should not open under the current conditions. Surprisingly (not) the local health director would not give his approval. Despite the lack of approval, the board decided to follow the advice of the doctors and begin the first 4 weeks with distance learning. They were immediately visited by DeSantis and Cochran who told them they MUST open the school doors or risk losing 20 million dollars in funding. The board had no choice but to reverse their decision.
Thankfully, the state teachers association hired lawyers and sued the governor and commissioner and sought to block the mandate. The matter of the lawsuit was three fold...
1). It declared the mandate arbitrary and capricious in nature - basically stated, it was a serious abuse of power
2. The state constitution says the power of opening or closing schools lie with school boards - NOT with commissioner and governor.
3). The mandate did not provide any parameters of safety meaning it does not fit the requirement of giving the students a safe environment
After a week-long hearing, the judge sided with the teacher's union declaring the mandate unconstitutional and gave power to open and close schools to local school boards WITHOUT the threat of funding loss. An appeal is pending.
I'm confidant the appeal will not succeed, but it is too late for school boards to close now. However, at least they NOW have the power to close if it comes to that.
We've been back to school for one week now and the results have been mixed. Surprisingly, the kids do keep their masks on all day. However, there is no way to social distance during recess and bathroom breaks. At first, I thought I would just let the kids use the bathroom individually throughout the day when they ask. Yep ---that didn't work out too well as my classroom was a revolving door all day long. So we are doing the class bathroom break thing.
I have less anxiety though as I have had to adopt the attitude of assumption of risk. I do my best to follow the distancing rule but parents have to understand there is a certain assumption of risk sending their child to in person learning.
I see a return to distance learning in the future. I could be wrong - we'll see.
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