Writing Through COVID-19: Outbreak, School, & Sweet Corn

My parents' care center notified us today of their first COVID outbreak in months. After one resident tested positive, all residents and staff were tested. Four additional residents and five staff then tested positive. This tallies 10 current cases in a facility that has logged a total of 159 infections in the 17 months since the pandemic began. 

For the time being, indoor visits and resident activities have been suspended. Families are asked to cancel all non-essential outings with their loved ones. Residents have been asked to stay in their apartments.
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Three students met me in the Journalism Lab today to work on our final pages of the yearbook. I wore a mask. The students did not. 
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Our local paper ran a story today explaining that our school district will follow the Iowa Department of Public Health guidelines for COVID-control in the coming school year. Of course, the IDPH is hogtied by HF 847, which outlaws school districts' right to set masking guidelines as they see fit. So much for local control.

Read the document summarizing Iowa's plan for COVID control this fall here. 

Or if you'd rather, scan my favorite lines. My editorializing is in bold:

• While not required (!!!???), vaccination for everyone who is eligible continues to be the most effective way to prevent COVID-19 illness and stop the spread of COVID-19. 
  
  
• HF 847... prohibits a school district from adopting or enforcing a policy that requires employees, students, or the public to wear a mask while on school property....[M]asks must be optional for students, teachers, and visitors. (Local control was once a pillar of Republican politics.)
  
  
• IDPH is not currently issuing isolation and quarantine orders for COVID-19 positive or COVID-19 exposed individuals. (Freedom.)
  
  
• LPH (Local Public Health? This acronym is not identified in the document.) cannot require schools to perform case investigations or contact tracing.
  
  
• (In case you didn't get it the first time...) HF 847, signed by Governor Reynolds on May 20, 2021, prohibits a school district from adopting or enforcing a policy that requires employees, students, or the public to wear a mask while on school property.
  
  
• Schools should allow students, teachers, other staff members, and visitors who want to voluntarily continue to wear a cloth face covering for reasons that make sense for their family or individual health condition to do so. (Why, thank you.)
  
  
• The CDC issued an Order effective February 1, 2021, imposing a requirement for persons to wear masks while on public transportation conveyances, and in its Frequently Asked Questions document accompanying the Order the CDC indicates that “passengers and drivers must wear a mask on school buses, including on buses operated by public and private school systems, subject to the exclusions and exemptions in the CDC’s Order." (Children will be masked on busses, but only on busses.) 
  
  
• HF 889, signed by Governor Reynolds on May 20, 2021, prohibits the mandatory disclosure of whether a person has received a COVID-19 vaccination as a condition for entry onto the premises of a governmental entity. (Right. Obfuscation has always been the best policy for building trust.

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Happy notes:

On July 16 I posted a photo of the season's first sweet corn to our family group text and declared it the first of 30 days of sweet-corn supper. Palmer's boyfriend asked if we really ate sweet corn for a month straight. 

"Yup," she said. 

We really do.










This evening I harvested what I insist will be my last sweet-corn haul of the season. My oldest daughter mowed down her final Corn 4 a Cause rows a few days ago. Harrison's yard plot is looking sketchy. But I was able to gather 30 ears tonight, cooked some from supper and some to bag, then declared my season OVER. It wasn't 30 days, but 25 is close. Yum. 

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison