Walking through the hallways of West Essex High School there is sneezing, coughing, nose blowing and groaning being heard more and more each day. However, we warn the student body not to be too concerned. Against all odds and predictions, a majority of these sick people have reported negative for COVID-19. School nurse Karen Kinsey talked about the patients and what symptoms they are experiencing in order to get a good idea of how this strange illness came to be.

“They have sore throat, runny nose, coughing, general cold symptoms,” Kinsey said. “It started around the third week in September.” 

Kinsey makes a point that although many of the symptoms correspond with Covid symptoms, most of those people do not have Covid.

“Everybody is going and getting tested and they’re almost all negative because it’s just a cold,” Kinsey said.

She believes that part of the reason that the cold is spreading so fast is because of the drastic difference between isolation in quarantine and attending school. Being in isolation may have weakened the immune system due to a lack of being around multiple people at once every day, like how it is in a classroom. Back to being in person at school, people are getting sick far more easily.

“The thing is that, you know, everybody’s been around their core group of friends for the past 18 months and now they’re interacting with kids that they haven’t interacted with and it’s just like starting kindergarten again,” Kinsey said. “There’s marching band competitions, and playing all the games and stuff, and everybody’s sick. I live in Parsippany and everybody’s sick.”

As Kinsey said, this is not just a sickness going around the school district. A survey shows that 52% of the West Essex community, not just in the high school, have reported being sick. The Wire highly advises everyone who may be feeling sick not to panic, but to nurse themselves back to health so that our community and surrounding communities may heal faster.