FOLLOWUP: Case counts for COVID at West Seattle High School

| Coronavirus | West Seattle news | West Seattle schools

As reported here last week, masks were recommended through this week at West Seattle High School because of “multiple” COVID cases. The original announcement to families didn’t say how many, however. But if you check the district dashboard, the stat is stark – between February 7th and 14th, for example, 82 cases were reported at WSHS – the only school in the entire district to even have a double-digit total; next-highest total in the district was 7 cases at three schools outside West Seattle, while the next-highest total in the greater West Seattle area was Madison Middle School with 5 cases. The WSHS masking recommendation runs through Friday, which is the last school day before the district’s weeklong mid-winter break.

Watertowerjim February 16, 2023 (5:40 am)

Cases are low nationally and continue to decline. It makes one wonder if these are all verified, on-site tests or just people calling in sick. Covid is the new “I’ve got the flu” excuse? Very strange anomaly, regardless. Edit: it states “confirmed” on the dashboard. Interesting.

Sue February 16, 2023 (9:40 am)

Cases are “low” because (1) people essentially stopped testing and just assumed they have “a cold;” (2) some of these new variants aren’t showing up on home tests, so even if you are testing, it may not show positive; and (3) even if you get a positive test, so many places aren’t even reporting them anymore. I think the fact that it’s declining is an illusion to make people feel better for ignoring that we’re still in a pandemic and justify their return to “normal.”
- CAM February 16, 2023 (12:16 pm)
  
  Sue – the home tests continue to be effective for all variants of COVID because they are designed to test for something that is common to all variants. They have continued to verify the accuracy of the tests as new variants are discovered and have noted no significant decrease in accuracy. There can be false negatives because people are using expired kits, user error, or just because they are only testing once. The tests recommend repeated testing more than 24 hours apart when symptoms are experienced. I agree that people are not testing as much as they used to when they don’t feel well. I think it’s also likely true that there is a substantial decrease in the number of positive tests being reported to the government bodies for data tracking which skews the official counts. IHME has been doing data projections for the likely total number of infections statewide and they also offer data on total reported numbers. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/washington?view=cumulative-deaths&tab=trend
- Howard February 16, 2023 (12:19 pm)
  
  Sue, absolutely what you said! Very much still in a pandemic that most have just decided to carry on as normal with many and especially home tests completely underreported.
- Wseattleite February 17, 2023 (11:55 am)
  
  Sue, you forgot to include the people who get sick, think they have Covid, and go in with there life as though it were a cold. That is the large response of most people now. Some of us don’t feel the need to run around testing for something that is normal in our society.
fRanks1000wsb February 16, 2023 (10:12 am)

The school brought testing onsite when they got a swarm of students reporting positive at home tests. They encouraged all students to test and mask for 10 days to try to contain it.
brian February 16, 2023 (12:40 pm)

If you stop testing then the case count magically goes away. I remember someone said that once… some dude we elected once. Weird.
- watertowerjim February 16, 2023 (3:14 pm)
  
  I don’t remember that – but he did say a lot of stupid stuff!I do remember him saying that our country was so good at rolling out testing that it made our numbers look high in comparison to countries that had poor, slow testing roll outs – which makes sense.
  - CAM February 16, 2023 (7:32 pm)
    
    Our testing rollout was abysmal. There are no redeeming words for it. Unless you’re comparing it to a third world country there is no excuse for the fact that nobody could get tested in this country for months. He may have said that about our testing but his statement was an utter falsehood based on a complete misrepresentation of reality.

Sorry, comment time is over.