For several weeks, most of second quarter, I started my social studies classes by showing CNN 10, a ten minute current events news show packaged in a format geared for middle and high school students. Just before we stopped watching, the coronavirus, now official named COVID-19, had just started to creep onto the world’s radar. One story stands out above them all in my memory. The day that the Chinese government shut down all transportation in and out of the city, a reporter stood outside the still bustling train station with his back to travelers heading out from the province at the epicenter of this outbreak. As he talked about the mad scramble behind him of people catching ever last possible seat out of the promise, I just shook my head. Right there I knew that people with the virus yet not showing symptoms got on those trains. Knowing what we know now, the global spread likely started right there as I watched.
For weeks, COVID-19 remained just a news story to me until Leap Day when my colleague texted me about making contingency plans to communicate to the parents. I will admit now that I thought she may have started to overreact but also know that she had a valid point regarding the need to be proactive and prepare to assuage parent concerns. I learned that weekend just how fast this story changes. By the time I next spoke with my colleague Monday after school in our meeting, I had received information from the conference about the precautions they planned to take and my principal asked us to hold off on communicating anything to the parents because the district may cancel the trip. Great.
From that point forward, I became hyper aware of COVID-19 news. I really wanted a firm word of approval for us to go ahead on the trip. The students had worked so hard. I had given up so many planning periods to sell candy and donuts. I could see only one benefit to cancellation. I would not have to edit and prepare their position papers. At the same time that I wanted to go, I wholeheartedly did not want to put my students’ health and the health of their loved ones at risk not to mention the others around me that I could transmit the virus to. The news did not share anything that helped calm fears of the possible cancellation, nor did it provide anything that would conclusively provide cancellation fodder, at that time.
This careful attention to the news also made me more aware of people’s responses to the aforementioned news. While working in the evening (#teacherlife) I sometimes need a procrastination – I mean brain – break and turn to Facebook to scroll through the news feed. This quickly, as it usually does, became counterproductive as I saw post after post dismissing all the news media coverage and various government actions as hysteria. They “Cited” various facts such as the election-year virus theory and/or the fact that the flu kills way more people than this virus. Normally, I do not comment on this type of post but in this instance, I could not read this misinformation and not attempt to stop the spread, like people should do to the virus. While I will not rewrite my now carefully honed rebuttal argument, I will summarize it briefly. One, viruses outbreaks happen all the time including non-election years. Two, the flu has killed more people simply because it has spread further, not because it has a higher mortality rate.
The bigger problem with the spread of the misinformation is that it promotes the anti-hysteria campaign at the expense of needed and valid precautionary measures. This misinformation leads people to believe that since the flu kills way more people than COVID-19 and we don’t change our lives because of the flu, we shouldn’t be ridiculous like all those other hypochondriac nuts and take even normal precautions much less extraordinary ones. That moves me to righteous anger for two primary reasons. One, you can’t see an autoimmune disease and thus have no idea of the vulnerability of those around you. Two, this apathy hinders those trying to contain the spread and compels them to even more drastic measures like the lockdown of New Rochelle, a New York City suburb last Tuesday, the 10th, the likely tipping point on the decision scale for the cancellation of our Model UN conference, and so many others.
When I first started writing this entry two Sundays ago, March 8, I had no idea about the status of the conference, whether our district would cancel or whether the conference organizers would cancel. I made the decision to press ahead Monday with the preparations, even knowing that anything and everything could change. On Monday the United States had somewhere over 550 cases. By Wednesday that number doubled. Last Saturday when I typed this entry, the cases had reached nearly 2,800 in number. The pace of spread left open the real possibility that students in my school could become infected and that the district could close schools for any length of time. As I write on Saturday, 19 states have closed schools for at least 3 weeks along with other large districts in many of the other states. South Carolina has not even though our reported cases increased more than 50% just that day.
As I conclude this entry, just the first on this particular topic, reality feels surreal. I just finished teaching World War I a few weeks ago and talked to my students about the Spanish flu which killed millions, more than the number that died in the war itself, having no idea that only weeks later another pandemic which threatens to reach those levels waits outside the door of the history books.
I watched a city shut down its transportation system in a manner which let out thousands of the potentially infected, never imagining the growth proportions. I invested more time, effort, and money in planning a trip than I ever have before only to have a pandemic snatch it from my grasp.
Sometimes I stop and marvel at the fact that I am living through history, something that historians a hundred years from now will reference in a similar manner to the way I referenced the Spanish flu. (Incidentally, the flu did not originate anywhere near Span; they were just the first to bring awareness to it and for their heroic act got labeled with it for perpetuity.)
No doubt, by the time this post goes live, the virus will have made even more history in ever mushrooming fashion. Even the day after I finished writing the rough draft of this post, last Wednesday, the snowball gathered rapid speed with changes coming from the local with my school district finally cancelling all out of state field trips, to the national with the cancellation of March Madness, the NBA and NHL seasons, postponement of the MLB regular season opening, closing all Broadway shows and so much more to the international with increased tension between the United States and Europe after the president banned travel from the Schengen Zone without notifying the European Union and Disney closing all of its parks, including Disney Paris.
I have never lived through a time where history changes dramatically while I teach. I have no idea where this pandemic will send us and how the world will emerge once this finally finishes. I hope that when we finally come out on the other side, people will stop and reflect, take the time to learn the lessons we should have learned and come out stronger on the other side.