Coronavirus Cases Rising

Coronavirus Cases Rising

Andrea Rodriguez and Isaac Novoa, Staff Writers

In the upcoming months of winter, people tend to get sick. The flu, runny nose, cough, maybe a fever. It could be the common cold, the flu, and now we worry about the emerging variants of the Coronavirus. As we have seen these past two years, there is a new deadly disease, Coronavirus, and it’s affecting all of us directly or indirectly. Recently there has been news about a booster shot for all adults and throughout the months there will be boosters coming available for teens and vaccines for younger children. 59.9% of the US population is fully vaccinated. 

If you haven’t noticed recently students are starting to get sick and covid cases in schools are starting to rise. This is due in part to some people not wearing their masks the right way covering their nose and mouth or staying close to people, or just not following the CDC guidelines. Perhaps people are not motivated to follow health guidelines because Covid hasn’t affected them personally yet. It is proven that you can still get Covid when you are fully vaccinated (including both shots and a booster).

Massachusetts cases alone have increased 59% in the past two weeks of covid cases and this can be due to many other things. Some people think that for just being fully vaccinated you can’t get COVID, so they carelessly don’t wear a mask spreading the disease even more when they weren’t vaccinated. And things just get worse as there is a new variant to these deadly diseases called ‘’Omicron’’ the ‘’variant of concern” by the World Health Organization: more and more countries are reporting cases, and it has an unusual combination of mutations that may enable it to spread faster as it is also could lead to surges with “severe consequences.” There are also many other types of variants around the world, that add a dangerous fear to Covid and make our life much harder in a pandemic. Now is the time to reconsider wearing your mask properly. 

We interviewed two people from Waltham High School: one student and one teacher discussing with us why Covid has increased. During the interviews we asked five questions about Covid and school guidelines about Covid and why there have been rising cases in school and the US overall. 

WHS health teacher Patty Connors-Beck is a great health teacher who has been teaching for more than 20 years. When asked: “What makes the students so ignorant about such a deadly disease?”, Connors-Beck said that students are not paying attention and believe that they are not following up with that they are supposed to be doing. Some students feel like Covid is gone and there is no need to put a mask on because they are fully vaxxed or they think that Covid will not affect them and they are “invincible.” She also mentions that the reason why so many people are unvaccinated could simply be that they don’t choose to be vaxxed, they are anti-vaxxed and against people that are actually vaccinated.

 WHS sophmore Cassandra Doyle, fellow journalist for The Talon Tribune, said that the main reason why there has been an increase in people getting Covid in school is because of students themselves not wearing their mask the right way as well as too much hanging around people and maintaining a close distance between each other. Doyle discussed how she stayed safe during the pandemic and worked to keep the important people around her safe. “Some people have grandparents qho need special care and need to be protected from Covid,” said Doyle who takes care of her grandparents herself. So when she is in school, she can’t afford to get sick. Sometimes older people tend to get more severe disease with Covid since their immune system is not very strong like a teenager or someone in their 20’s, everyone is fighting with Covid but just some are fighting harder than others and it shows/explains why this Covid cases have been on a rise starting these winter months.

Covid has changed many lives and we changed with its outcome. We are thankful for surviving last year and many years to come, and overall, Covid is not going away and it’s up to the people to take a stand and to stop or to slow the spread of Covid and to be fully vaccinated. Get vaccinated, get your booster shot, and always follow the guidelines and be safe with taking care of yourself and others.

 

 

 

 

What makes the students so ignorant about such a deadly disease?

What’s the main reason coronavirus cases are rising at school?

How to slow the spread of COVID?

Is this going to eventually stop? is COVID going to eventually disappear?

Do you think mask mandates would be gone since a lot of students are tired of wearing them?