Day 154

 August 12, 2020 

Yesterday was another day of remote learning and collaboration with peers in preparation for the upcoming school year. We will be teaching remotely for the first quarter.  The district has provided many resources and asynchronous training opportunities around such things as creating a positive class culture to behavior management to communicating with families all designed around the digital education model.  There has also been online courses for the four digital platforms we will be using this year (Kami, Screencastify, Flipgrid and Pear Deck).

We are exactly one week away from virtually being in front of students.    

The situation in the world remains the same. We are in the midst of a global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus which has spread its way around the world and has infected over 20 million people resulting in 737,000 + fatalities.  Because testing remains limited in parts of the world, experts say we do not even know the true numbers of infected or dead. The virus has changed the way the world operates as travel bans and other restrictions have crippled the economy. The unemployment rate is at a rate not seen since the great depression and many businesses have been forced to close.  People have lost jobs, housing and loved ones as COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc upon the earth.  Every country has been effected either directly with large numbers of infected people (U.S., India and Brazil are the top three) or indirectly by travel or trade bans limiting their ability to maintain a sustainable income.  The top scientists in all the world are working to create an effective and safe vaccine. But because of the mysterious qualities of the virus the results may be unpredictable.  The current coronavirus is one which can infect people, but show no symptoms, it may infect and show minor symptoms which go away in a 3-7 days and it may infect people and take their lives within 7-10 days.  Underlying medical issues can play a part and the elderly seem to be particularly vulnerable.   However, there have been cases of perfectly healthy young people contracting the virus and succumbing to it.  Originally it was though children were immune, but that is no longer the case and although they are less likely to be infected and transmit the virus it is still a possibility.  A school, which had opened to in-person learning last week was quickly shut down after persons were infected and over 800 students and 40 staff members were quarantined after only being open for six days.

If you want to know how fast the virus has spread recently here is a quote from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, secretary-general of the World Health Organization, who said in June. “It took more than two months for the first 100,000 cases to be reported, ...For the past two weeks, more than 100,000 new cases have been reported almost every single day.”

Even after learning much about the transmission of the virus and witnessing major failures in prevention of infection across the world we are all still not performing the simple measures it takes for us to slow the spread.  A real enigma, especially after how easy it is to get the correct information and how simple the measures truly are (keep six feet distance, wear a mask and wash your hands often), yet the puzzlement continues. I suppose it says a lot about our humanism and egotism and ignorance. Our hope is for a safe and effective vaccine for the rational folks and let the ignoramus around us continue to do what they do.