Lee Continues to Lose in Court

 Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee continues to face losses in federal court. This time, a federal judge has ruled that legislation he supported banning mask mandates in schools cannot be enforced. That is to say, those districts using mandatory masking to protect the health and safety of students and teachers may continue to do so. 

Lee continues to lose in court, and the ruling is being interpreted as having broad application to the entire state, therefore allowing districts with mask mandates to circumvent the recently-passed state legislation.

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Mask Mandate Extended

 Sumner County Mayor Anthony Holt has extended the mask order through October 30, 2020, for all county buildings including all public schools.

According to the order, all staff as well as students in middle and high school are required to wear face coverings at school.

The mandate ends one day before Halloween, so will likely mean residents are in masks all the way through the month of October!!

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Merrol Hyde Magnet High School to Go ALL VIRTUAL Due to COVID-19

 Per an email from MHMS Principal Darren Frank:

Dear MHMS High School Families,

Our students have done an exemplary job of following health and safety precautions on campus and at school events.  We have had 100% of teachers and students in face coverings and continued to work on creative ways to keep physical distance while in classrooms and common spaces.

Even with these precautions, we have had some positive cases in the last week or so that have initiated calls to parents of close contacts.  With such a small student body and our family atmosphere, MHMS students spend a lot of time together on campus as well as during their free time.  This could be a reason why many of the students identified as close contacts were considered close to multiple positive cases.

Therefore, out of an abundance of caution and with consultation with the district health officials, we are immediately moving all high school students to 100% online/remote/virtual learning until after fall break.  

The teachers have been informed of this and will immediately transition to virtual learning via Google classroom and the platforms established while in the hybrid model earlier this year.  If your student needs a chrome book for the next 2 weeks, please let me know and we are happy to provide that access.

Unfortunately, this closure includes clubs and athletics.  Our high school students will not be practicing or competing until Oct 3 at the earliest and only after being cleared by the district staff.  We are already working on rescheduling contests so that our student-athletes can have a full and successful season.

I know this is a major disruption and inconvenience to students and families.  I believe it is the right thing to do, and should be viewed as temporary with the ultimate goal of safely returning students to in person learning as soon as possible.  

At this point, middle and elementary school students will continue to attend school and follow their normal schedule.  

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On the Importance of Contact Tracing

A note from the newsletter Pro-Public offered by In the Public Interest. 


Get this: Vietnam, a country of 97 million people, has reported zero deaths from only 372 cases of coronavirus.

Theories abound about how they pulled it off. But public health experts chalk it up to swift action by the Vietnamese government, including contact tracing, mass testing, lockdowns, and compulsory wearing of masks.

Here, masks have become a political landmine. And despite President Trump claiming, “We have the greatest testing program anywhere in the world,” some states with surging infections have testing shortages—like Arizona.

But what about contact tracing, the process of calling potentially exposed people and persuading them to quarantine?


“I don’t think we’re doing very well,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when asked in June about contact tracing nationwide. Most states haven’t even made public how fast or well they’re implementing the process, if at all.

Florida, the nation’s current No. 1 hotspot for the virus, is often failing to trace positive cases. This, despite the state spending over $27 million on a contract with Maximus, a company notorious for underbidding, understaffing, and performing poorly on government services contracts in multiple states.

Yet, there are bright spots elsewhere. California allocated 5 percent of staff across 90 state government departments to contact trace. North Carolina’s Wake County trained 110 librarians. In Massachusetts, counties have used state pandemic funds to hire more nurses.

There are three reasons why state and local governments should reassign public employees or hire new staff outright as the country—finally—ramps up contact tracing

One, outsourcing what should be a public job to for-profit companies like Maximus reduces transparency, limits democratic decision-making, lowers service quality, and increases inequality, all while rarely saving public dollars. Public control is particularly important when it comes to contact tracing, which involves personal health data.

Two, this is a chance to begin to reverse decades of cuts to public health budgets, which have made the worst public health crisis in a century even worse. Almost a quarter of the local public health workforce has been let go since 2008. Federal spending on nondefense discretionary programs like public health is now at a historic low.

The Trump administration, as expected, is headed in the wrong direction. On Tuesday, it stripped the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of control over coronavirus data. State and local governments must do all they can to right the ship

And three, contact tracing is an opportunity to chip away at systemic racism. Since World War II, public sector employment has helped equalize American society by offering workers of color stable, well-paid employment. The median wage earned by Black employees is significantly higher in the public sector than in private industries.

Privatizing public work like contact tracing contributes to racial and gender income disparities. Workers at federal call centers operated by Maximus, for example, are predominately women and people of color paid poverty wages as low as $10.80 an hour with unaffordable health care.

If #BlackLivesMatter—as many governors and mayors across the country have proclaimed in recent weeks—then contact tracing should be treated as what it is: a public good.

To catch up to other countries like Vietnam, the U.S. needs to get contact tracing right—and that means doing it with public workers

Could Masks Prevent a COVID-19 Comeback?

A new study suggests the answer is YES:

Population-wide face mask use could push COVID-19 transmission down to controllable levels for national epidemics, and could prevent further waves of the pandemic disease when combined with lockdowns, according to a British study on Wednesday. 

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COVID Set for Comeback

From NewsChannel5:

New projections suggest Tennessee could see a dramatic resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the fall, reaching 100 deaths a day and a total of 3,652 deaths by Oct. 1.

That compares to an average of seven deaths per day right now and a total of 441 deaths so far.

The latest projections, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, reflect numbers that have been closely watched by the White House and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s office.

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36% Spike

WJHL reports that COVID19 cases are up by 36% in the last week even as Tennessee begins "re-opening."

Tennessee has seen a 36% jump in new coronavirus cases in the past week.

Health officials on Sunday reported 516 new coronavirus cases, pushing Tennessee’s total to at least 13,177.

A week ago Sunday, the state had at least 9,667 confirmed cases.

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Not Ready to Open

The Chattanooga Times-Free Press reports that a group of physicians is advising Tennesseans to continue to stay home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, despite Gov. Bill Lee suggesting Tennessee is ready to "re-open."

A group of more than 2,000 physicians in Tennessee is urging residents to stay physically distant to stop the spread of COVID-19 as the state moves to reopen its economy.

Since the coronavirus — which is five times more infectious than the flu — does not have a vaccine, the only way to stop the spread is to stay apart, said Dr. Aaron Milstone, a pulmonary specialist treating COVID-19 patients in Williamson County.

“To my fellow Tennesseans, you’re definitely hearing mixed messages about whether or not it’s open and safe to reopen our economy and engage in business again. Let us be clear, it is not,” Milstone said.

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More Deaths from Gallatin Rehab COVID-19 Outbreak

Sumner County Commission Chair Scott Langford took to Facebook to continue to criticize the leadership at Gallatin Rehab and Healing and the Tennessee Department of Health during the COVID-19 outbreak that left over 100 people infected. Here's his post:

Last week, Mayor Paige Brown, Mayor Anthony Holt, Chris Taylor, me, and the health community of Sumner County stood opposed to reopening the Gallatin Rehab Center that we evacuated 11 days ago.

The corporation that owns the center and the TN Department of Health overrode us and sent patients back three days after closure. There was zero transparency about cleaning, zero transparency about whether patients who were positive for COVID were being transported back, and zero transparency about quarantining staff members exposed to the virus. ZERO!

Now, patients are dying. Our first responders are exposed repeatedly as they move patients back and forth. More employees and residents are exposed to COVID in the center.

It is beyond appalling that this is allowed to go on.
These deaths are not a statistic. They are grandparents, parents, and friends.

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Bill Lee's Stronger Urging

Gov. Bill Lee today issued a "Stay Home" order to replace his previous "Safer at Home" order. This new executive order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic comes after more than 2000 physicians encouraged Lee to take bolder action.

An initial reading of the document indicates the wording is simply stronger -- a more forceful "urging" than in the previous order. That is, Tennesseans are to "stay home" unless carrying out "essential functions." These functions include going to the grocery, pharmacy, and bank as well as going to work at a long list of essential businesses.

From reporter Steven Hale:

Steven Hale

@iamstevenhale

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59m

As more details come out, it does sound as if the governor's new order is simply a more strongly worded "urging." With that said, it only seems fair to acknowledge that it's hard to envision a means of enforcing such an order that we'd really be comfortable with.

In other words, instead of Lee simply urging you to stay home, he's now saying: "Stay Home."

Of course, absent some broader enforcement mechanism (such as fines or curfews), it's difficult to imagine something much more stringent. Of course, Lee could significantly shorten the list of essential businesses -- so less people are going to work or to places that are open. So far, he's not done that.

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