The Chicago teachers union, which kept public schools closed through most of the COVID pandemic, used the death of a mother in the school district as proof of the dangers of the coronavirus in the classroom and a reason for stronger health restrictions. The only problem was that the woman’s death had nothing to do with COVID… According to her autopsy report, she drank herself to death.
A toxicology report obtained by Chicago City Wire revealed that 32 year old Denisha Henry passed away last September of “chronic ethanolism,” a phrase which is commonly used in coroners’ reports to describe deaths caused by alcoholism.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
But the Chicago Teachers Union attributed Henry’s death to coronavirus transmission at her child’s school, Jensen Scholastic Academy. The union issued a statement and staged a rally that identified Henry as a COVID fatality and called for stricter pandemic measures in public schools.
The union described Henry and another Jensen mother who died the same week, Shenitha Curry, as “two school mothers” who “die[d] of COVID.” The group also implied both mothers died from contracting the virus after their children brought it back from school, even though Chicago’s public health commissioner had found no evidence of a link between the mothers’ deaths and in-school COVID transmission.
“Both mothers had children sent home from quarantined Jensen classrooms,” the Chicago Teachers Union said after Henry’s death. “One mother complained bitterly on social media that she was never contacted by a contact tracer. Within a week she was dead.”
In response to Henry and Curry’s deaths, the Chicago teachers union demanded that the city adopt new pandemic measures, including weekly universal testing, more rigorous contact tracing, and new staff hires.
The union also chastised the Chicago government for cutting back on school restrictions, such as social distancing and mandates that force schools to close when they reach a certain number of COVID cases.
Local media outlets in Chicago, including CBS affiliate WBBM-TV and ChalkBeat Chicago, also repeated the claim that Henry died of COVID.
According to the Washington Free Beacon:
The Chicago Teachers Union gained notoriety during the pandemic for its staunch opposition to reopening schools. The union stalled negotiations with the city for months last year before reaching a reopening agreement. Then members voted in January to move to virtual learning amid the spread of the Omicron variant, forcing the district to cancel classes for five days and prompting Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D.) to accuse the union of “[taking] our children hostage.” The union on Tuesday vowed to fight the district’s decision to allow students and staff the option not to wear a mask starting next week.
A study published last year by the American Academy of Pediatrics discovered that in-school transmission of COVID was “extremely rare,” and the study’s authors concluded that “schools can stay open safely in communities with widespread community transmission.”
Source: The Washington Free Beacon
