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You got some of those virusesses?


Ms. Spam
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3 hours ago, Odine said:

Lol. When we started secondary restrictions pubs had to close at 10pm. Weird. There were lots of memes "don't worry the virus only comes out after 10pm" etc. Arbitrary curfews didn't work and we are in the tail end of a second lockdown.

The issue here is tracing things back to parties, which are already illegal under a health order but the governor is afraid to enforce the law because the state legislature is run by Trumpish Republicans and they’ll try to impeach him if he actually does anything, and he doesn’t have the courage to fight that fight. The main reason for the curfew is to stop the parties. Columbus is a huge college town and has a lot of young adults due to a thriving business/tech environment. So a targeted curfew here, if enforced, would probably help. Maybe not so much in rural areas, but I’ve heard that in a lot of rural areas they’re still crowding in bars and such because they don’t believe it will happen to them, even though it is happening.

So, yeah, I think that a curfew here would help, but only if it was enforced. And if other orders were enforced, we probably wouldn’t need a curfew.

It is going to be really hard to go back to having relationships with the COVID denier and anti-maskers when this is all done.

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My friend Jackie has 2 special needs grandkids and their parents are divorced. Their Dad is on the spectrum and he is not doing well trying to manage their school days online. Kids don't seem to be getting or dying of this much so I think they should allow kids to go back to school-gawd knows everyone could use the break.

 

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Kids are getting it, especially starting at around age 10. And it isn’t solely based on them dying, but kids spreading it to people who will get sick and die. Plus we don’t know the extent of long-term issues, and even people who are asymptomatic seem to be coming down with stuff, and I’m a case study in what can go wrong. I could write a book about my experiences.

That isn’t to say the current situation is a good one, and it’s especially taxing for kids with special needs and maybe the answer is to keep kids home except for those with special needs. We went for homeschool this year because none of the options with traditional school were appealing. Not everyone can do that, but for us it was the best option.

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I get closing early for grocery stores and stuff to stock up but honestly if you close early it just means more people have to crush into the stores and places so they can buy things or eat out and intermingle. It's better when I could shop at 11 PM at night at my 24 hour stores because hardly anyone was in the store. 

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I think special needs kids absolutely need to be prioritized. My son isn't learning squat in this environment, unfortunately. But for the very severely impaired kids, they need the routine and structure more than anything. If they have a working parent and/or siblings trying to manage online school, that has gone right out the window. So many special needs parents rely on a carefully curated environment and structure that is really difficult to maintain in this environment unless there are zero other distractions for at least 1 parent, like work or siblings.

My daughter's school is operating very well, with no person to person spread. About 7 kids (out of 900?) have gotten it, and those classrooms quarantined for 2 weeks before coming back. I think they have a good model for other schools to operate in this environment, because let's face it, there won't be a pediatric vaccine this school year. I am concerned about their ability to operate in an outbreak, however. Caseloads have gotten very bad here the last month, so I'm sure more kids will get it and more classrooms will have to shut down.

I think testing will be the other key to reopening schools. They need robust rapid, regular testing ability to catch asymptomatic cases. One of my daughter's classmates missed 3 days because she had a cold and got tested and had to wait for results. I'm so glad their family was responsible but that is 3 days the school would've had to wait to act.

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The other huge issue with schools, which is causing schools here to close is staffing. Too many teachers and bus drivers are getting sick and there just aren’t enough subs. So schools are closing because they just don’t have enough bodies between people being sick or having to quarantine.

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And the school just notified us that they are going to be virtual the week after Thanksgiving and then return to school for the last 2 weeks before Christmas. Basically, they don't trust anyone to follow the rules for Thanksgiving gatherings, either. However, my money is on we don't come back until after Christmas. Ugh. I actually think my son handles online learning better than my daughter. She was a hot, whiny mess by June last year. Then she whined all summer. I love her but she is super emotionally needy and can't handle the idea of not being the center of attention when we're around. Constantly asking me to play with her or spend time with her when I'm just trying to finish my stupid work day.

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1 hour ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Just saw a commercial for Norwegian Cruise Lines, about how now is the right time to get back on because of how hard 2020 has been. Unbelievable.

I was working at a mall yesterday. Some Cruise line had the nerve to put up a display to win a free cruise to the Bahamas. I'd sent a picture of it to my wife with the comment "Hell No!"

 

One of my co-workers tested positive. He works in the office, but I work in the field. I grab my tickets and get out. I need to start wearing my mask when I visit there, because I wear it everywhere else.

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18 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Just saw a commercial for Norwegian Cruise Lines, about how now is the right time to get back on because of how hard 2020 has been. Unbelievable.

Unless you get a negative COVID test within 72 hours prior to arriving in Norway you'd still have to stay on board the ship. So what's the point? Seems like a bloody silly idea to me.

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We've lost about 50 people in the last 2 months, quite horrible, it had been stable for several months after the first wave. Government is continuing restrictions on travel across the border which makes sense because on one side its Sweden which went with the herd immunity route with this pandemic, and on the other its Russia which....did what only Russia knows.

At my workplace we wear masks and gloves, as do about 80 percent of the customers. But the last two weeks have seen a break in willingness to do distancing which worries me. Couple of my co-workers have been tested for the virus because of flu like symptoms but so far everyone's tests have been negative. 

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22 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

Just saw a commercial for Norwegian Cruise Lines, about how now is the right time to get back on because of how hard 2020 has been. Unbelievable.

Yeah considering that some of the first people who caught COVID in the US were on cruise ships, that sounds like a brilliant idea.  

angry gi joe GIF

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10 hours ago, Darth Virul said:

We've lost about 50 people in the last 2 months, quite horrible, it had been stable for several months after the first wave. Government is continuing restrictions on travel across the border which makes sense because on one side its Sweden which went with the herd immunity route with this pandemic, and on the other its Russia which....did what only Russia knows.

At my workplace we wear masks and gloves, as do about 80 percent of the customers. But the last two weeks have seen a break in willingness to do distancing which worries me. Couple of my co-workers have been tested for the virus because of flu like symptoms but so far everyone's tests have been negative. 

Are you in Finland? 

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Our General Assembly is about to strip the governor and health director of being able to do anything about any public health crisis ever. We’re already definitely over 10k cases a day, despite our official numbers not showing it, because we’re so overwhelmed that we can’t count the cases.

So, yeah, Ohio is about to become the most screwed state in the US.

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13 hours ago, Odine said:

Are you in Finland? 

That's what I'm told.

Restrictions are being tightened again which is one step away from roadblocking the capital city areas from the rest of the country like was done earlier this year. Mind you, this is 25% of the whole population of country.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So now we're talking vaccines, who should get them first? https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vaccine-decides-things/story?id=74463065&cid=clicksource_4380645_2_heads_hero_live_twopack_hed

Towards the middle to end of the article, they talk about equity for low-income and minority communities getting it sooner rather than later. Admittedly this was something I hadn't thought of. The obvious first priority is health care workers and the elderly. This is actually something my daughter and I discussed tonight, because I told her that I hoped teachers would be 2nd or 3rd priority. I still think they are key to recovering the economy because people need kids back in school for them to be able to go to their jobs. People like me, unfortunately, who can work from home indefinitely, are the lowest priority but maybe before kids. But admittedly, as you can see, I sorted priority primarily by occupation, because, like it or not, all along the economy has been of greater importance than public health.  I still do think teachers should be rather high on the priority list. But where do they fall versus at-risk populations? And admittedly, my biggest fear is the anti-vaxxers will never vaccinate in large enough numbers to stop this thing. I assume the vaccine will be like the flu shot, where you might still catch COVID, but you will hopefully not get as bad of symptoms. (My daughter caught the flu in 2019 despite being vaccinated after an outbreak at her school. She was sick for 2-3 days instead of 10-14 like her unvaccinated classmates.)

The other thought I had today, was how we ethically test a pediatric vaccine. I feel a lot better about getting consent from say, teenagers, than I do little kids and babies. But a vaccine does need to have that range of study participants. While I like to think I'd be happy to volunteer my kids as study participants, I realized that it comes down to consent. My daughter has a severe needle phobia, it took 2 months of exposure therapy to get her to get a flu shot this year without losing her mind. There is no way I could get her consent for something like this, it would be completely forced. And admittedly, with my little guy, he's been through so much that I'm unwilling to risk him to side effects. You go through one week-long hospital stay and you find yourself to be pretty risk averse. But even then, how do you get little kids, who are likely terrified of shots, to participate in a vaccine study? My fear is that you will get families who are desperate for a vaccine to participate. I hope they get it right.

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I wonder when I will get the vaccine. NPR has had some interviews like on 1A where they were interviewing black people who still have strong memories about the Tuskegee experiments on them and are going to wait to take the vaccine. We have a terrible record of how we treated black people as a population which only serves to make them skeptical. I can keep wearing my mask. Hell it's kind of weird thinking because of Covid this year I may not be exposing myself to the flu in school and I am loving that people wash their hands WAY more often! HA. 

Some people want to wait because they're worried about the affects it will have and rushed testing but honestly they're doing the testing in the same way they do for regular testing we're just not getting durability results that look into long term affects.

What gets me is that my social media and work "pals" are passing around the anti-vac theories that further scare people off of even getting a vaccine. 

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My dad is still working. He is an optometrist so he is still in the medical field, but obviously not front line like an ER doctor or on a COVID unit. He knows he is not first priority and is glad because he wants to see how it goes, but I think you are right, its really long-term effects that we won't know, not immediate effects. I unfortunately can't blame the black and minority communities for being distrustful.

I'm OK with being one of the last because of where I ultimately fall in the priority order, but I will be getting that thing asap.

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