At least August is over

September is very, very welcome this year. I can't tell you how happy I am to see the back of August. It was a particularly bad one, and then it felt like it dragged on and on and on. I didn't have it in me to post very much.

Everything seems to be all pandemic, all the time again. The delta variant of this virus is running rampant in this state and our local community. At my school, the principal, his family, the bookkeeper, her family, about a third of the teachers, and dozens of students have gotten sick. And every time a student tests positive several others who have desks near him/her have to go home and quarantine for 10 days. That really pisses parents off, as some kids are on their third quarantine after just a month of school! The nurses get cussed out at least once a day. They're so overworked and worn out that I'm surprised they're still showing up, honestly. Anti-mask parents have been protesting at the district office and at the schools while we do the best we can to keep ourselves and our students safe. Two parents acted so crazy in the office this week (one of whom was a big redneck dad with what looked like prison tats on his neck and arms who took the mask I tried to hand him, threw it to the floor, folded his big meaty arms, and glared at me threateningly) that I felt the need to call for the school resource office to come down there and lend me the support of his presence. People have lost their damn minds. 

And you know what's scary? Most of the staff that have gotten sick in the last two weeks are fully vaccinated. Granted, they're not in the hospital and they're not deadly ill, but they feel like they've caught a bad case of flu. It's beginning to feel like a matter of when, not if, I get sick myself. My friend Karen from book club caught this delta variant despite being vaccinated. She tested positive last weekend after running high fevers for a couple of days. Things are so bad in this area that we're canceling book club meetings for the next couple of months out of an abundance of caution. A couple of days last week South Carolina surpassed Florida for per-capita new infections and deaths. Florida! One of the hotspots of the country!

Meanwhile, over half the people in this community act as if nothing is happening. They're off traveling over this Labor Day weekend, and the town next to mine, Darlington, is hosting their annual big drag race weekend which will bring over 40,000 people to the area. The beaches are packed. Most of the people participating in this stuff are anti maskers and anti vaxxers, of course. They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Last week, my husband came close to quitting his job over the fact that most of his coworkers refuse to wear masks and the owner of the business won't do anything about it. Honestly, we were both so fed up with the state of things last week that we both wanted to quit our jobs. 

Here's hoping that September will mean the return to virtual school, at least for a while, and I can work from home again. Everyone in the district think it's a matter of time. At least the weather's nice. We've started off the month with a small dip in temperature and a big dip in the humidity, and those are very welcome developments. Also, it's a much needed three day holiday weekend. I'll try not to think about what all the holiday travel is going to mean for our numbers in the next couple of weeks.

Stay safe, friends. 

Delta

 Yesterday South Carolina hit a grim milestone: 10,000 people in this small state have lost their lives to Covid-19. It's hard to fathom the true cost in suffering of that number. Not just the physical suffering of the people who died, but the emotional cost to the loved ones left behind. 

It didn't have to be this way. But here we are.

Here's where we also are: the Delta variant is spreading like wildfire in South Carolina and our infection rate, hospitalizations, and death rates are skyrocketing. All while half the population (at least) act like nothing is happening and the pandemic is over. It actually was almost over at the beginning of the summer, but with the variant out there now and such a huge percentage of the population acting like it's their God-given right to go around unvaccinated and unmasked, we're as bad off now as we were back in February. Misinformation about vaccines is rampant here. A local doctor (a guy I went to high school with) said the number one reason his patients give for not getting vaccinated is that they feel it's not "loyal to the GOP". It's maddening that a virus that threatens our very lives has been turned into a political issue.

 Speaking of which, I'm beginning to wonder if governor McMaster (nicknamed, fittingly, "McDisaster") is trying to kill us all off. He's joined other Republican governors in the South in making it illegal to require masking in schools or to offer a virtual option this year. Yes, friends, you read that right. It's illegal and we'll lose our federal funding if we require students and staff to wear masks, and we're not allowed to have a virtual option this year, either. Several school districts in Texas and Florida (two states with governors almost worse than SC) are openly defying these laws and filing lawsuits. All while our schools are a hotbed of Covid transmission.

The students at my school will have been back for two weeks tomorrow. Several students and a couple of staff members have contracted Covid already, and as of early this morning we had over 50 students who have been sent home to quarantine for several days because of close contact with an infected classmate. The number was probably more like 70 by the end of the day. Our school nurse, Lisa, is being run ragged trying to keep up with the tsunami that's her workload this year. She has to document everything, explain the quarantine process to scared parents, finish reports for the county health department, in addition to the normal middle school nurse duties. Normal duties like the little girl that had an accident in gym class and broke her arm this afternoon. It's a giant mess. Pretty soon so many kids are going to be at home quarantining that I'm not sure how we're going to continue to have normal school days. It's that bad.

Needless to say, it's back to masking and being super careful for me. I worry about the kids too young to get vaccinated, and the ones who are eligible but whose parents won't do let them have it. And then there's the teachers and staff: one teacher at our school has Multiple Sclerosis and was taking a type of treatment for it back in the spring that meant she couldn't take the vaccine. She has a choice: come to work,  unvaccinated out of medical necessity, and risk her life with the highly contagious Delta variant that we KNOW is all around us, or stop working to protect herself and lose her career and income. 

What the hell kind of place do I live in to allow such a thing to be possible?