All things COVID-19

[Tahlvin]

Just heard from someone at one of my clients that her father-in-law died yesterday from COVID-19. He was 80 years old. Wife passed away a few years ago and he had been pretty lonely since then. Apparently he fell for some Facebook scam and went out to a bunch of local Walmarts, Targets, etc., and bought gift cards to send to someone. And while he was out and about, he was infected. He was on oxygen before being hit with COVID, and had a few other comorbidities, so he was definitely part of the vulnerable population.

[poorpete]

So sad, ugh. sorry.

I've been a little bit optimistic in NY with our low positivity rates, slowly decreasing everything, and our cautious school openings. But then I see baseball live-out a theoretical that should have remained a theoretical: "What if the coronavirus first hit America during the MLB season instead of the NBA?"

[Tahlvin]

Our local school board has officially decided that the school year will start out 100% virtual.

[Phoebe]

We are still supposed to be going back to school in person and there's all kinds of behind-the-scenes wrangling going on, because Republicans are desperate to get the kids back in school, all of the medical experts are telling them this is a crazy plan doomed to terrible failure, and nobody's really happy about fully virtual school because we know that's going to be a disaster too.

[akiva]

. Possibly contracted it at Trump's Oklahoma rally--he tested positive a little while after the rally.

[poorpete]

Our school is offering either 5 days a week at school or 5 at home, no hybrid model. Unsure of what we'll do.

Personally, kinda feel the days in-person at school should be based on the 5 divided by the positivity rate (technically 5 / (rate x 100)).
1% = 5/1 = 5 days in-person
2.5% = 5/2.5 = 2 days in-person
5% = 5/5 = 1 day in person
more than 7.5% = all at home

[poorpete]

This is a stage called "bargaining"

[FlameBlade]

Way things are trending, we are nowhere near ready for schools to be reopened. Let me point you to camp in Georgia. That is sort of thing that would happen if schools opened, and untold number of parents infected. Grandparents infected. And so on. Teachers too.

[Phoebe]

I am beside myself on what to do about this issue. My husband wants to send them back to school if school is going on; he feels strongly that letting them do what the other kids are doing, and letting them have social access to other kids and better opportunities for learning than they would be getting online, are important enough to outweigh risk. But his assessment of risk is very different from my assessment of risk. Back in May and early June, I agreed with him. But it turns out that our country and in particular our state is a terrible s******* that can't get their act together and so now I don't feel that way, as the risk levels keep shooting up exponentially.

I am outraged to the core of my being that they are putting this on innocent people, because our leadership has been too goddamn stupid and selfish, and our fellow citizens have been too goddamn stupid and selfish, to come together and solve problems. I have never had such a feeling of misanthropy and disgust at other people as I do today. I realize that in human history people have done many worse things, but I reasoned that this was because of bizarre circumstances and a confluence of specific causes, which allowed me to maintain optimism about human potential and functionality. I have totally lost that optimism. It sustains me to encounter sane and smart people, and to know that they are the majority, but when the majority is at the mercy of the minority of absolute dumb assholes, what hope do we have? I think it's important to start asking questions like, what level of self-defense against other people is justified under these circumstances? If that started to be the dominant narrative maybe things would change a little.

[FlameBlade]

here, have some more data to arm yourself:

https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/

Maryland just moved to "out of control" this past week. Too many infections to do proper contact tracing. Hogan had a great start, but now he's demanding private school in Montgomery County (just north of DC) to stay open after county council decided to close all schools (public or private)

Hogan has been on victory parade, but now seems like he doesn't really care anymore. And it's fucking infuriating. Reopening was pretty much to force people off unemployment rolls, and pretty much force youngsters to return to work, and they still get the barbs from the governor for spreading coronavirus. Comon.

[DMDarcs]

Hot take: If you're a parent who has made the decision to home school your child due to the COVID virus* because there is too much uncertainty on what your public/private/charter school is going to offer, but you don't have a curriculum in place and haven't researched where to get one or what your child needs and have decided to "wing it"....you're a fucking hypocrite. There, I said it.

* This does not count if you are home schooling your students for other reasons. This does not count if your student is offered a fully distance-learning option through said school.

[Kyle]

Most of the people I know who are deciding to homeschool this year due to Covid are almost unanimously doing it because of fear of contracting/spreading the virus- not because they don’t know what the schools will offer.

[FlameBlade]

[poorpete]

Major League Baseball has 80 cases of covid since early July.
80 cases / (30 teams * 26 players) = 10% of players.
Not a safe working environment.

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

No solutions, half the people here are crazy as f***, trying to figure out whether we should keep all or some of the kids home. I woke up this morning at 6:30 and was up for a while and then I laid back down in bed and now it's 1:20 and I have no will to get out of bed. I need to get out of bed for many many reasons, as you might imagine for a person running a busy household. I don't even know what's wrong but when I think about sending the kids back to school my head starts hurting so I think it has something to do with that.

[DMDarcs]

I just cancelled all county-wide music events for our schools this afternoon for the following school year. With the consent of executive council, of course, so I won't be blamed.

[Phoebe]

Well, I got up and worked in the yard during the afternoon and that's a pretty much guaranteed cure all for any problems. So now things are okay, but ... I seriously think the Russians or the Chinese or god only knows which foreign enemies of the US are working as hard as they can on the Internets to convince our locally grown stupids to remain stupid about the virus, so that we will continue to be destroyed both medically and economically for years. Despair. What pisses me off about this is a very small number of people could make the decisions that lead us in the right direction, and 70 to 80% of the voting population supports this, but somehow the stupids contingent has them by the balls. Why?!

[Phoebe]

Members of the non-immediate family continue to get the covid positive test. The family Republicans fall into two camps: 1. those who believe that the libs are still terrible people determined to destroy the country, but who nevertheless see at last that their god-emperor lacks clothes and his enablers are slowly killing us, and 2. those who still worship the god emperor and are locked in a full scale psychotic crisis trying to reconcile this idolatry with the intrusion of harsh and life-threatening realities. I literally want to vomit.

[Stan]