Attendance in the Lee County School District dropped to 81% just nine days after the first day of school.
Less than two weeks into the school year, a Kentucky school district has canceled in-person classes for the rest of the week after nearly a fifth of its students came down with Covid, strep throat, the flu and other illnesses.
The Lee County School District, which has just under 900 students, began classes Aug. 9 but noticed attendance drop to about 82% on Friday, Superintendent Earl Ray Schuler said.
By Monday, the rate dipped to 81%, and 14 staff members called in sick, Schuler said.
The Eris variant seems to be massively spreading here in the midwest. I know several people that have gotten it and, unfortunately, the test kits don’t seem as effective in detecting this variant unless you’re significantly along in symptoms. Meaning you’ve been contagious for a while already.
Additionally, Eris appears to have a different method of symptom development where you have somewhat minor cold symptoms after a few days and then it goes away. Then, a week later, you get much stronger and worse symptoms. The latter stage can be detected by the test kits, the former can not.
So you’re contagious for a full week or more before you can even confirm you have Covid, making many people think they have the flu instead. (Which is also something you should isolate for and not expose other people to, but we have a bunch of idiots that live here in the US.)
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At the very least, dealing with Covid has significantly improved our medical science and technologies. mRNA vaccines and other innovations will be incredibly useful in the future and are already branching out to be used as treatments against other diseases, even some forms of cancer.
As someone suffering with an illness similar to Long Covid, I too am pleased with all the medical innovations coming.