outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

i'm in tech. i've done maybe half a dozen informational calls so far. just today i had the first call where they said: we're remote now, but we're not talking to anyone who isn't willing to relocate to us in the new year and i was like "lmao i have you seen the news? ok good luck this that!"

if anyone in the US needs a test and can't get an appointment, or local results are taking weeks to return, then give https://www.everlywell.com/ a try. recommended to me by a virologist i know who happens to be in florida where delays are pretty bad. 3 days to get the test, 3 days to get the results after you take it. $109 out of pocket but should be reimbursable.

This is good news: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/health/covid-antibodies-herd-immunity.html

Sounds like the whole people-getting-reinfected thing is somewhere between anecdotal and straight-up inaccurate.

I went to the big Asian grocery store on March 8th and basically all of the rice, noodles, and preserved vegetables were gone which is when I started to freak out a bit. My university closed downing the 11th and on Friday the 13th I picked my kid up from preschool for what turned out to be the last time.

clipped from the US politics thread:

i kept looking at Vietnam and their ZERO deaths, thinking that of course they must be suppressing what's actually happening...

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Monday, July 27, 2020 12:19 PM (two hours ago)

I just read the story of an expat 42 year old British immigrant pilot who contracted the virus and spent 68 days on a ventilator while VN doctors did everything they could to save his life and prevent their country from having their first fatality...

...and it worked! He lived to tell his story:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-53544345

His lung capacity dropped to 10% of normal VO2 and he was a potential candidate for double lung transplant (!!!), losing ~66lbs/30kg over the course of the ordeal.

And after surviving that ordeal he has to go back to Motherwell, poor guy.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that that pilot survived, thought he would be the first casualty here in Vietnam. After three months with zero community cases, we're finally seeing new cases in Da Nang, quickly spreading there. Govt has not hesitated to quarantine whole buildings here, so already more than 1000 people have been quarantined. Hope that that is enough to stop it; I was looking forward to not teaching online anymore

Lots of reporting on how curves are miraculously flattening in Texas, Florida & New Mexico even tho mitigation efforts have been minimal. Equally as miraculous is how quickly the curves began to flatten only two weeks after hospitals were ordered to bypass the CDC w/ case data.

— KC Says Fuck A Lot (@strychninelove) July 28, 2020

Hmmm, not sure that I agree with this from a Texas perspective. There's been a statewide mask mandate, shutdown of all bars, and reduction in overall business capacity among other things. This has led to a real decrease in some areas, while others are still struggling. I believe it is neither miraculous nor misleading, and there's still a lot of work to be done before we reach any kind of acceptable level.

Good news for wee guys

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/tall-people-more-risk-catching-18674866

The study found that being tall, specifically being over 6ft, more than doubled the probability of having COVID-19.

(subject to peer review)

Nae luck, big yin.

<blockquote>Lots of reporting on how curves are miraculously flattening in Texas, Florida & New Mexico even tho mitigation efforts have been minimal. Equally as miraculous is how quickly the curves began to flatten only two weeks after hospitals were ordered to bypass the CDC w/ case data.</blockquote>

unless something changed at the state and local level 2 weeks ago, this is FUD and bullshit fwiw.

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-positive
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/cases-by-state

<blockquote>Almost all of the data we compile is taken directly from the websites of local or state/territory public health authorities. Where data is missing from these websites, we supplement available numbers with information from official press conferences with governors or public health authorities.</blockquote>

lol html sorry

i've seen lots of the CDC/HHS conspiracy stuff online, it's disheartening

Yeah it's still very serious

yeah the complete collapse of trust is the worst thing about this (well, that and all the dying)

I have an unusually large number of teacher friends as my best friend from high school married a teacher who has a ton of teacher friends, and most of them are flipping the fuck out about the Executive Order demanding giving an in-person option.

supposedly they've been told accommodations will be made "where possible" for those teachers who prefer to work only at home due to COVID, but there's not a lot of faith there.

I do feel for the parents who need day care options to return to work, especially those that weren't budgeted to have to pay for day care in the Fall, but....every time I see a parent talking about schools needing to re-open, it's never due to "I don't want him to fall behind", it's always "I need you to watch him so I can return to work". The government failed both parents and teachers, but parents are starting to show their asses here to the teachers a bit.

One of my friends insisted the option to have one or two days on, the rest virtual during the week would be bad, because they'd come into contact with other kids at day care who might be infected, and a "family style" classroom of 12-20 people, the same people each day, would be much safer. I didn't have the heart to ask her how she was fully assured these children would come into contact with no other people outside of the classroom, which was her main gripe with the "2 on, 3 virtual" option - or that they wouldn't be the kids of parents who didn't believe in masks. or that classrooms would be 12-20, when most of my teacher friends are seeing rosters of 30+ kids.

in the words of the Descendents, "parents, why won't they shut up?"

america needs child care as much or more than it needs schools but that's not a conversation we're having

The problem is the Government has basically pitted parents and teachers on opposite sides when both are getting failed disastrously by the Federal, and some state governments

I was chatting with my mechanic yesterday and I was so happy that he shared my relief at schools staying closed.

it's never due to "I don't want him to fall behind", it's always "I need you to watch him so I can return to work".

I don't really see how "2 in person, 3 virtual" is a whole lot better. yes you increase the chances an infected kids catches themselves before returning to school but most kids seem to have mild or no symptoms.

every time I see a parent talking about schools needing to re-open, it's never due to "I don't want him to fall behind", it's always "I need you to watch him so I can return to work". The government failed both parents and teachers, but parents are starting to show their asses here to the teachers a bit.

I mean...yeah? Despite the fact that we're in a worse place than we were in March a lot of companies are still planning to bring employees back to the office in 4-6 weeks. so a lot of parents are having to make the choice between quitting their job at a time when unemployment is skyrocking and no real benefits are on the horizon (thanks Trump) vs. taking the risk of sending their kids back.

When you consider the argument that our Governor and Education Commissioner have used as the excuse for re-opening schools, absofuckinglutely. They have stated the reason to re-open schools and give the parents choice is so that children will receive a quality education and not be left behind - to give parents choice in their child's education. The unspoken reason, nationwide, is "we want more people to return to work and want to pay less people unemployment benefits", which is why they're obviously letting Federal unemployment expire before MAYBE renewing it with something much weaker. They know parents can't wait around for whatever that is, and with schools open for their children and the hefty costs of private childcare (and shrinking availability due to COVID-19), this is their only method of having someone care for their kids so they can work. The education is completely secondary.

the primary job of a teacher isn't to provide day care, just like it is not to wield guns to ward off armed campus invaders. it's to provide education. the caring for the child during the day is a secondary function - a function, yes, but not the primary aim.

At a normal time of year, that's a negligible point. During a pandemic, when you live in a state that is one of the epicenters of the outbreak, that has had child hospitalizations increase 35% in the last week, and, flattened or no, still has a phenomenally high number of new cases per day, being a teacher and being told that parents have choice, but that YOU may not have choice whether you get to avoid going into the building or not....is all kinds of fucked up. Teachers are allowed to indicate their preference to work from home, but have been told they might not be allowed that accommodation.

There is no indication that children will be required to wear masks. Social distancing WILL not happen. One of my friends received a roster of 35-40 people, and as an experiment, went into her classroom arranged the desks 6 feet apart, and was only able to get 12 desks in there. Kids will be mushed together.

Striking for teachers is prohibited in Florida since 1974 - you can lose your teaching license, have your pay frozen, and forfeit your Pension. So they have no leverage to organize or refuse to show up. Basically, if they're told they have to go into the classroom, and perhaps they have a spouse at home that is at a higher risk, they either have to show up and risk it, or quit and try to find a new career, with no unemployment (due to quitting their job), and a job market that is sketchy in the midst of a pandemic.

I've had people dismissively tell my friend's wife she should just "suck it up or find another job", to which she's stated "I didn't get a Master's degree and work my young adult life for this only to discard my career because I'm viewed as dispensable by the state".

So yeah, treating teachers like they are just glorified babysitters whose own rights don't matter, when there could have been other options is extremely fucking insulting. I don't blame parents for that, because they're equally fucked by the same government. but it is still fucked.

xxpost

I'm also a bit fired up about this because the Education Commissioner is deliberately cherry-picking COVID data to insinuate this is low-risk and that teachers are just being fuckin' stupid about it, and pretending to give a shit about education despite deliberately making cuts to and underfunding it, year after year.

additionally, the start date for virtual classes was bumped up two weeks in Orange County with no warning to the teachers. they have to be ready Friday instead of 8/13

but most kids seem to have mild or no symptoms.

https://www.axios.com/children-coronavirus-florida-hospitalizations-def62d48-7a89-46a4-9654-f2dcfe365325.html

Coronavirus cases in youths have greatly increased in Florida, with total infections up 34% and hospitalizations up 23% between July 16 and 24, according to the Florida Department of Health.

The big picture: The increase from 23,170 confirmed COVID-19 cases in youths to 31,150 in just eight days comes as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Trump administration continue to aggressively push for schools to resume in-person classes in August.

By the numbers: 36% of the cases in children are patients between the ages of 14 and 17, according to Florida's data. That age group also accounts for the majority of children hospitalized (34%).

The state's positivity rate among youths has also gone up, increasing from 13.4% to 14.4% between July 16 and 24, per Florida's health department.
Researchers are still studying how quickly the coronavirus is transmitted among children as schools and child care centers begin to reopen.

and whether they have milder symptoms or not, the teachers they pass it to may not.

right - what I'm trying to say is having mild/no symptoms is a bad thing since the plan for businesses/schools/Major League Baseball seems to be "well if someone's sick hopefully they isolate themselves before they infect everyone else". I thought this was why the "2 days on, 3 days virtual" plan made sense to some people

oh gotcha, sorry, misunderstood.

honestly I think you should either go to school or learn from home, mixing defeats the purpose as it dilutes the benefits of either option.

i'm just aggrieved at the constant negative news in FL and should probably step away from it for a bit.

New from @BrandyZadrozny + me:

Dark money and a PAC's coordinated 'reopen' push are behind that wildly viral hydroxychloroquine videohttps://t.co/QbgE3y4sdm

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) July 28, 2020

A dozen doctors delivered speeches in front of the U.S. Capitol on Monday to a small crowd, claiming without evidence that the coronavirus could be cured and that widely accepted efforts to slow its spread were unnecessary and dangerous.

It was the latest video to go viral from apparent experts, quietly backed by dark money political organizations, evangelizing treatments for or opinions about the coronavirus that most doctors, public health officials and epidemiologists have roundly decried as dangerous misinformation.

Donald Trump Jr. was left unable to tweet for 12 hours on Tuesday morning after Twitter took punitive action on his account for tweeting the video. “This is a must watch!!! So different from the narrative everyone is running with!” Trump Jr. tweeted at 8:13 p.m. on Tuesday. Twitter’s press account tweeted that Trump Jr.’s tweet broke the social media company’s policy of “sharing misinformation on COVID-19."

“We’ve removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement to NBC News. Stone also noted that Facebook is directing users who have interacted with content that has been removed to a World Health Organization website debunking COVID-19-related misinformation.

YouTube and Twitter followed Facebook, removing the video as it racked up thousands of views.

President Donald Trump also retweeted a clip of the video late Tuesday night. The tweet was later deleted, and no action was taken to his account.

The popularity of the video underscores the difficulty in moderating misinformation surrounding the coronavirus, when treatments and public health responses have become increasingly political, aided in part by right-wing Facebook groups and Super PACs secretly driving the conversation on social media.

Dressed in white coats with “America's Frontline Doctors” stitched on the chest, the stars of the Facebook video claimed that business and school closings, social distancing and even masks were not needed, because hydroxychloroquine, a drug commonly used to treat malaria, could both prevent and cure the coronavirus. In fact, the FDA has warned against using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, citing serious health effects and the conclusions from randomized clinical trials that have shown little benefit from the treatment.

“We don’t need masks. There is a cure!” said Dr. Stella Immanuel, a licensed pediatrician from Houston. In one of the event's most fiery speeches, Immanuel, who claims to have effectively treated 350 COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine out of her medical clinic, but declined to provide data, referred to doctors who declined to treat patients with hydroxychloroquine as “good Nazis” and “fake doctors,” and called published research “fake science.”

The U.S. has 4.3 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, and more than 149,000 Americans have died.

That Monday's so-called news conference had more speakers than attendees was of little matter. Livestreamed by the far-right website Breitbart News, the video spread quickly, initially through conservative, anti-vaccination and government conspiracy groups. Within hours, it had reached over 20 million Facebook users.

The event was hosted and funded by the Tea Party Patriots, a right-wing political nonprofit group led by Jenny Beth Martin, the group’s co-founder, who spoke at the news conference.

The group, which collects funds through two nonprofit groups and a political action committee, has raised over $24 million since 2014 to support Republican causes and candidates.

These people need to be arrested

already saw one old co-worker share it, another acquaintance post this morning. how are people so fucking stupid.

i can't even laugh about it. our President and his son shared this shit.

These people need to be arrested

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, July 28, 2020 2:51 PM (fifty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's much milder than my own reaction.

I mean...they're quite literally going to get people killed.

So yeah, treating teachers like they are just glorified babysitters whose own rights don't matter, when there could have been other options is extremely fucking insulting. I don't blame parents for that, because they're equally fucked by the same government. but it is still fucked.

to the extent anyone is saying teacher's rights don't matter, sure. and i don't think this is an easy problem.

but i think you're underestimating the importance of kids being out of the house and safe during the day to the vast majority of parents, and the catastrophe it would be not just for The Economy but also for equity and mental health. it doesn't diminish teachers as professionals to say this.

i keep coming back to a fact i learned early in the pandemic which is that in the 1950s, before the advent of daycare/TK, 4 year olds watched 45 hours of TV per week, and 5 year olds (in school) watched like 6 hours. we need babysitters!

also if your concern is that kids receive a quality education and not just baysitting then i have bad news:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F24c4a6eb-aa27-45b8-8cdc-8f0b83a2307a_1256x681.jpeg

take a look at https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/schools-whats-it-going-to-take

tbqh if I were earning fewer "badges" in something called "zearn" I don't know that I would be too concerned

Lol disparate impact

well yes that part's bad i'm just feeling my skin crawl b/c of edtech

I love to go to skøøl and Zearn

Until this March, sending children to school was legally mandated and parents could be jailed if they didn't do it.

So it's not like "school being most people's main source of work-enabling childcare" came from out of nowhere, or is a bougie invention of lazy-ass rich parents. It was literally required, and there is no other comparable infrastructure.

As Deb Perelman writes here,

one might wonder if you’re supposed to educate your children at night. Or perhaps you should have been paying for some all-age day care backup that sat empty while kids were at school in case the school you were paying taxes to keep open and that requires, by law, that your child attend, abruptly closed for the year.

Also if you can work from home (as almost all of us can), or you can afford to just Not Work, you may be speaking from a position of some privilege. Just sayin.

almost all of us? say what???

xpost stopped reading the article you posted at "When we reopen schools, some people at schools — kids, staff — will get COVID-19. Some of these infections would happen anyway, outside of school. Many of them will not be driven by school contacts. But there will be in some in school transmission, no matter how careful we are. This is the unfortunately reality. Some of these people may get very sick. If we are not willing to accept this, we cannot open schools. We also, in that case, should not open anything else. "

Because that's just bad fucking logic. there are a lot of businesses re-opened right now that shouldn't be, but the research is STILL unclear how much children spread the virus. It's not even clear if we have an accurate estimate of how many children truly have the virus since their symptoms are milder, fewer probably get tested AND most of them can't choose to get tested if their parents don't want them to.

There is a wide gulf of difference between reopening a restaurant with patio-only seating and requiring masks and opening classrooms and mushing kids into rooms with poor ventilation, inches away from their teacher. It could very well accelerate transmission much higher than perhaps a restaurant seating outdoors, or a retail store that limits the number of people who come in and wear masks. It might not. We don't know. But these situations are not the same . It's also amusing that she left out the possibility that students or teachers could also die.

I don't think it's an easy problem either, but the fact is - despite the endless optimism that article's author has, schools opening safely will require measures that many state Governors, school boards, school principals, etc aren't willing to enforce. Students may not wear masks (there is nothing required that they do in the guidelines for re-opening schools in Florida). I've already established how in some schools in Orange County, distancing will not happen. And kids, especially younger ones, may not distance when around friends. They may hug, hi-five, etc. I'm not faulting kids for that, that's how kids are, and depending on their age, they might fully understand the gravity. and old habits die hard.

Obviously, there's no way to re-open schools without some level of infection, but the way it's going to be opened in many states, we know from public officials who ALREADY have PUBLICLY STATED they're going to be taking few, if any of the steps that Oster suggested. Orange County California actually suggested its schools do not have any form of social distancing and argued that masks were harmful (but most of the local school systems ignored the recommendations).

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics, who are encouraging re-opening schools, have admitted that doing so safely hinges on a number of things - namely listening to public health officials, and scientists. To wit:

"Returning to school is important for the healthy development and well-being of children, but we must pursue re-opening in a way that is safe for all students, teachers and staff. Science should drive decision-making on safely reopening schools. Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics. We should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.

Local school leaders, public health experts, educators and parents must be at the center of decisions about how and when to reopen schools, taking into account the spread of COVID-19 in their communities and the capacities of school districts to adapt safety protocols to make in-person learning safe and feasible. For instance, schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts. A one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for return to school decisions."

In Orange County, CA, many of the health officials on the panel that the decision was attributed to said they had next to no input on the recommendations made, and that their names were merely slapped on there to legitimize what the Board said. Desantis and Richard Corcoran are not basing their decisions on what public health officials say - Desantis fired one for daring to report accurate COVID-19 data!

I agree leaving children home full-time is deleterious - it's also deleterious to many adults. But it isn't a solution to a problem if we only accommodate one side of the problem, at the expense of the other. I know several people who have been in the hospital for COVID-19, some of whom have co-morbidities, some who don't. I'm not looking forward to some of my other friends joining them simply because they're crammed into a classroom because they've been told they can't work from home and they're welcome to find another job. This isn't speculation - this is what has been explicitly stated in the State of Florida.

None of my teacher friends even KNOW if they're going to be in-classroom or working from home. They've all submitted preferences, and none have any idea if they were granted. Teachers union asked to delay re-opening schools until COVID cases were under control, but no consideration was given. They originally delayed it until 8/21, but since that would cause teachers to lose a paycheck, which concerned teachers, it was then moved up until 8/10 earlier this week. Teachers might be less worried about losing that paycheck if there were any kind of Federal unemployment in August that they could apply for as a furloughed employee, but they can't.

I'm well aware that the quality of education dips during a pandemic, in person or via remote, but idk what that point has to do with the fact that nobody I know that's a teacher signed up to be a babysitter during a global pandemic. They're already leading Active Shooter drills, a thing that didn't even exist in my schools growing up. In some places, they're being asked to carry handguns to protect children. Now they're being told they may have to return to work in a possibly unsafe environment (being that we're run by a lunatic), and told their requests to work from home might not be accommodated, and they're welcome to either do this, or quit their career.

I should really walk away from this discussion at this point.

like none of you all are fucking listening to a god damn fucking thing. fuck this

sorry my dear firends legitimate concerns are wishy washy to you. I'll go fuckin tell them

DESANTIS IS FINE, HE'S NO LONGER PSYCHO, since now we're making a point about teachers and lol fuck teachers.

The answer to all of this seems like:

1. Force banks to put a hold on mortagages
2. Cancel rents until the virus is under control
3. Pay full PPP wages to everyone who needs it
4. Don't open the schools - do distance learning instead
5. Find a way to help disadvantaged kids participate in distance learning
6. Wait for vaccines/treatments to bring the mortality rate down to seasonal flu rates.

I'm shocked that 1 and 2 haven't happened. It's completely messed-up and arbitrary that congress is cutting PPP wages.

At least in San Francisco, we are going to have small pods for disadvantaged kids to go for distance-learning.

Florida is deep in the clutches of late-stage conservatism. It sucks that you have to deal with this.

wow xp

my wife's job can be done 100% from home, in fact there is no reason for them to be in the office at all right now, all common areas are closed and no in-person meetings are allowed, and yet she is required to return in 4 weeks. her commute is an hour each way. so, an extremely difficult situation is about to be made much, much worse

Yeah Neanderthal I think you're both mischaracterizing my position, and subsequently going way beyond it to find ways in which it might be twisted to be insulting to you and dismissive of your friends' lives.

It is neither; I am in fact agreeing with you upthread that teachers and parents have both been betrayed by the fucked-upness of the situation. It is a false dichotomy that you are only allowed to care about one of those groups of people, in a some zero-sum smackdown.

What I was responding to was the implication that parents are somehow being selfish jerks if they attempt to return to work, or if they hope for in-person school as a means to doing that. For at least some families that is literally their only way to pay the rent. Which is itself fucked-up, as you noted. Parents did not invent that bind, it has been handed to them.

And like, I don't know why it's necessary to say this but: my parents are both teachers, two of my sisters are teachers - but even if they weren't, I would still not want teachers to be in danger. Of course school would be great but it must be done safely for all concerned and we are obviously not there yet.

We're going to hear no end of hydroxychloroquine for the next 98 days.

From a scientific perspective, the hydroxychloroquine claims are absurd. From a political perspective, it has logic and we're not done hearing about it. A friend's explainer. pic.twitter.com/GIxKWujhVL

— Esther Choo, MD MPH (@choo_ek) July 29, 2020