The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Madness: Teachers Accuse NYC Schools of Covering Up Chinese Coronavirus Threat

Posted on | March 22, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

New York City is now the U.S. epicenter of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, with more than 8,000 cases and 60 deaths from the disease. The most shocking fact is how deeply the city’s school system is implicated in this outbreak. People need to go to prison for this:

One after another, sick Brooklyn Technical High School teachers called union chapter leader Nate Bonheimer last week, to tell him they’d tested positive for COVID-19.
By Friday, five of them had shared the devastating news. But after being notified about each one, the city Department of Education still ordered the 6,000-student school’s 350 staffers to show up for work last week, saying the building had been cleaned.
“The DOE did not close the school for any of the cases,” said Bonheimer, who worries that inaction exposed others to the dreaded infection.
The city failed to follow a March 9 directive by the state Education Department that “requires an initial 24-hour closure, in order to begin an investigation to determine the contacts that the individual may have had within the school environment.”
DOE did not attempt to identify close contacts, Bonheimer said. “They did not alert the people who needed to know the most to protect themselves, their families and everyone else they came into contact with.”
One infected teacher was so torn by the secrecy he took it upon himself to personally let all his students know his condition.
Around the city, teachers and administrators are outraged that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza resisted a drum beat to close the public schools in the name of safety. . . .
Some DOE employees believe de Blasio and Carranza deliberately kept the lid on the COVID-19 cases popping up, putting kids and families at risk.
“The blood is on their hands,” one said.
DOE staffers think the two city leaders tried to cover up the cases because they wanted to keep the 1.1-million-student system running despite increasing pressure to shut it down. Finally, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo about to do it, the mayor relented and closed the schools for students on March 16. . . .

Pause to think about this. On March 12, Maryland and Ohio — which have but a fraction of the number of cases in New York — ordered the closure of schools, yet New York City’s schools stayed open until March 16. Now brace yourself for something that will boil your blood:

The information freeze started March 10, when Carranza, in an email obtained by The Post, told administrators not to alert city health officials about COVID-19 cases among students or staff.
“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call [the Health Department] to report potential or confirmed cases,” Carranza wrote, repeating the statement later in the same email. . . .
At several campuses and DOE offices citywide, multiple staffers have tested positive but affected buildings remained open while workers, students and parents were kept in the dark, whistleblowers said.
At the Grand Street campus in Williamsburg, which houses three high schools, a teacher returned from a trip to China over the February break. Despite reports of the outbreak, the teacher did not self-quarantine, but returned to teach kids in all three schools Feb. 26 through Feb. 29, a staffer said.
The teacher then became sick and stopped working. The school was not closed, and employees were not notified, insiders said.
Up to four other staffers have since become sick, they said.

This is sheer madness. Why would a teacher travel to China at a time when this dangerous virus outbreak was going on there? I mean, Trump shut off incoming flights from China on Feb. 3, and yet this Brooklyn teacher went to China nearly three weeks later, and taught for four days before falling ill? And then — to add insult to injury — the city’s department of education suppressed the information about this COVID-19 case? This is criminal negligence. Hell, it’s nearly manslaughter!

People in the Democrat-controlled fiefdom of New York City — the voters who elected this dishonest scumbag De Blasio, and who send vile subhuman monsters like Chuck Schumer to Congress — think they’re smarter than all the ordinary folks in “flyover country” who vote Republican. New Yorkers should be ashamed of themselves, but if they had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t vote for Democrats, would they?

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

By the way, as a public service, I ask that everybody carefully read this article about how symptoms of the disease manifest, and share it with everyone in your social networks. It could save many lives.




 

Category: Education, Health Care, New York

Comments

One Response to “Madness: Teachers Accuse NYC Schools of Covering Up Chinese Coronavirus Threat”

  1. NYC Teacher Spreads COVID-19, de Blasio, et al Cover It Up | 357 Magnum
    March 23rd, 2020 @ 8:59 am

    […] tip to The Other McCain, who […]