Two school lessons from Georgia

The first week of classes in many school districts hasn’t gone well; there have been lots of cases reported, leading to students and teachers who were in contact with the person being sent home for 14 days to quarantine. Moreover, some entire schools have shut down because there were too many cases among students or staff. In Georgia’s Gwinnett County School District (in metropolitan Atlanta), 260 staff members have been ordered to stay home because they tested positive for Covid-19.

That this is happening shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone except those who don’t pay any attention to the experts or science – which unfortunately includes the US President and the Secretary of Education. If cases are increasing in a community, or if they’re at a high level and not decreasing, it will be virtually impossible to avoid widespread shutdowns of classrooms and schools. Again, to fix education (and the economy, of course), we have to first fix the virus. This is the first lesson from Georgia (and really, lots of other states as well).

The second lesson comes from North Paulding High School in Dallas, GA, and was reported in WaPo. Two students shared photos on social media of crowded hallways with almost universally maskless students. Faced with this evidence that the school’s reopening is way out of compliance with the CDC’s guidelines, the school administration took immediate, decisive action.

Does that mean administrators took steps to come into compliance with CDC guidelines, including requiring masks and figuring out a way for students not to have to crowd the hallways at the same time six or seven times a day? Certainly not: They suspended the two students! Paulding County Schools Superintendent pointed out in a letter to parents that “the images ‘didn’t look good’. But he argued that they lacked context about the 2,000-plus student school, where masks are a ‘personal choice’.”

This is quite an interesting argument. The Superintendent is admitting that the schools aren’t providing a safe environment for their students as they’re supposed to (and as they certainly promised the parents, at least I hope so), but they have to let students do what they want because they’re not violating any government order. I seem to remember from high school that administrators did what they thought was necessary to maintain discipline, protect students, etc. – they didn’t limit themselves to just enforcing the criminal code. I guess things are different nowadays.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old girl who was one of the two suspended students, told CNN that “I’d like to say this is some good and necessary trouble…My biggest concern is not only about me being safe, it’s about everyone being safe because behind every teacher, student and staff member, there is a family, there are friends, and I would just want to keep everyone safe.”

There you have it: A teenage girl has to point out that the schools should be actively trying to protect students (and through them their families and friends), not just making excuses for why they can’t do that. But she’s the one that got suspended, not the Superintendent for his lack of action to protect the health of his students. It doesn’t strike me that this will end well.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 5%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	5,087	727
July 18	5,476	782
July 25	6,971	996
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
August 1	8,069	1,153
August 8	7,657	1,094
August 15	8,028	1,147
August 22	8,417	1,202
August 29	8,825	1,261
Month of August	35,342	1,140	133%
Total March – August	192,113

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 162,836

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,228

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 5% two days ago. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 5,033,723

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 59,982

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 9%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 2,577,914

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 162,836

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 6%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com