Today’s lesson, class, is about how not getting vaccinated against Covid-19 and not wearing a face mask can lead to a Covid-19 outbreak in a school and beyond.
Now, open up your latest copy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Turn to the page that says, “Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant in an Elementary School — Marin County, California, May–June 2021.” Has everyone reached the right page?
There you’ll find a story of what happened at an elementary school in Marin County, California, when a big bad virus or actually a little bad virus, called the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), came visiting. Note that your school making the CDC MMWR is not like making the magazine Ranger Rick. It may not be a positive thing.
That school in Marin County had 205 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and 24 staff members. All of the school’s classrooms had portable high-efficiency particulate air filters with the doors and windows left open for ventilation because of something called the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. All of the staff members had already received the Covid-19 vaccine, except for two teachers.
This is where things get “interesting,” class, interesting in a bad way. Apparently, one of those unvaccinated teachers had attended some social events from May 13 to 16. The teacher didn’t recall running into anyone who was positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus at the time. But expecting everyone to tell you when they are infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus can be like expecting everyone to tell you that they like 50 Shades of Grey. What’s 50 Shades of Grey? Well, it’s not something to talk about here. Anyway, back to the story.
On May 19, the teacher started experiencing nasal congestion and fatigue. Despite having these symptoms in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic, the teacher attributed the symptoms to allergies and continued to teach classes at the school for another couple days before getting a Covid-19 test on May 21. When you are unvaccinated and in the middle of a Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, assuming that such symptoms are not Covid-19 can be like being in the middle of an alpaca rave and assuming the something furry is not an alpaca. If you are felling sick, don’t go to work, and don’t go to school.
However, not only did the teacher still teach classes, the teacher also did not wear a mask while reading aloud to the class. That’s even though the school required folks to wear face masks indoors. So the teacher was unvaccinated, having symptoms, and not wearing a face mask while reading out loud to others indoors. In other words, nothing was blocking the teacher’s nose and mouth and preventing them from becoming a respiratory droplet sprinkler. Can you spell the words, “what the bleep,” class?
Well, on May 23, the teacher’s Covid-19 test came back as, oh no, positive. Yes, the teacher was infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus.
So does anyone know what might happen when a person infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus doesn’t wear a face mask in an indoor setting? If you answered “nothing,” in this case, you’d be wrong, wrong like a Nutella sarong.
How about a Covid-19 outbreak instead? Can you spell “oh bleep,” everyone? From May 23 onwards, more and more staff members, students, and their family members started reporting Covid-19 symptoms. Then on May 25, the school notified the Marin County Department of Public Health (MCPH) of the teacher’s positive test.
Eventually a total of 27 people including the teacher got infected with the SARS-CoV-2 in the outbreak. Half (12) of the 24 students in the teacher’s class ended up testing positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus. That included eight of the 10 students sitting in the front two rows of the class and four of 14 in the three back rows.
And here’s the problem with elementary school kids, besides them smelling funky when you don’t keep pushing that “take a bath” thing and not being old enough to be Uber drivers or play baccarat in Las Vegas. They typically aren’t old enough to get the Covid-19 vaccine yet. They haven’t yet cracked the 12 year old threshold to get the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine through its emergency use authorization (EUA). Therefore, none of the kids in the class had been vaccinated.
When you’ve let the Covid-19 coronavirus loose in a classroom, the virus don’t stop, in the words of that Megan Thee Stallion song. It spread to other parts of the school as well. Six of 18 students in a separate grade at the school got infected too. So did eight others who were family members of the kids in the two grades. Three of these family members were fully vaccinated.
Class, this wasn’t a “nobody had symptoms” type of outbreak either. It was a “22 of the 27 cases had symptoms” outbreak. The most common symptoms were fever (with 41% reporting this symptom), cough (33%), headache (26%), and sore throat (26%). Whole genome sequencing found the Delta variant in all 18 of the specimens that were taken from those who got infected.
The whole outbreak essentially had no class. Mass testing occurred. All infected persons had to remain isolated for 10 days after hey first experienced symptoms or had a positive Covid-19 test if they were without symptoms. Those exposed to the Covid-19 cases stayed quarantined for 7 to 10 days. The school had to close and sanitize the two affected classrooms from May 21 to 30 and May 24 to June 2, respectively. The outbreak could have spread even further but approximately 72% of those 12 and older in community around the school were fully vaccinated.
Again, all of this occurred simply because one teacher did not get vaccinated and did not wear a face mask while teaching in the school. It’s a reminder that while air filtration and good ventilation can be helpful, they may not overcome the virus geyser that may come out of an unmasked nose and mouth, unless you turn the school into a jet propulsion laboratory wind tunnel. As I have mentioned before for Forbes, even though many face masks requirements seemed to disappear in mid-May and June, that was probably a case of premature relaxation, which ended up leaving many disappointed and confused. With the Covid-19 coronavirus surging throughout the U.S., it’s important to keep wearing face masks while indoors, even if you are fully vaccinated, and especially if you are unvaccinated.
So, that concludes the lesson for today. Remember take Covid-19 precautions for now. Don’t worry this pandemic will not last forever. And stay in school, except of course when you are sick or the school is shut down because of an outbreak. In that case, stay the heck away from the school.
