I read her posts first thing with my morning coffee
Before I retired one of my clients, who works in the government, a particular branch... we would have discussions while his dog was getting treatments...they were talking about how hard they were working to ensure the Russians did not tamper with the election like they did last time... in spite of how difficult the current administration made it to do so. Have no doubt .. they are ... working constantly ... to do all they can to disrupt. Break it down to the lowest factor .. for Impotus.. its about the money.. and.. avoiding prosecution should he not win... as for the Russians? well their agenda is the same as it has been ... and Putin? is a particularly dangerous individual for completely different reasons than Impotus is a dangerous man.
I am in despair about the dubious, groveling sycophant that calls himself Governor in my state..his ignorance.. makes him a clear and present danger as well. https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/07/16/georgia-masks
Here's my question. Aren't most hospitals already sending their data to both the federal government and their respective state health departments? We know that a couple of states (like Florida) are suppressing data. Yet many states are forthcoming. So, if glaring discrepancies develop between the numbers coming from states and the numbers being published by the CDC/HHS, wouldn't it be pretty obvious that something is amiss?
I lumped the CDC with Health and Human Services because while the dashboard of cases and fatalities has been restored at the CDC site, I'm pretty sure CDC numbers are going to be laundered through HHS from here on out.
When New York City reaches phase four of reopening, indoor activities are still not allowed.
Two of the largest districts in my Texas city announced today that at least the first three weeks of the fall semester will be online.
My son teaches in a district in Oklahoma. His school board is still debating but he thinks they will come down on the side of virtual learning because of liability issues. Basically it’s impossible for the schools to meet the CDC guidelines.
My daughter got an email from the superintendent with a survey. It was very short but asked teachers if they wanted to teach in person or online for at least the first 3 weeks. I am guessing that it will be an overwhelming choice to go online. Our local district in AZ is going online for the entire first quarter. That honestly makes the most sense. Parents will know how long to plan for and teachers will be able to focus in a certain direction for learning and have less unknown stress factors.
It is quite impossible to meet those guidelines, that is true.
We’re in a deeply conservative North Texas county, right next to the Oklahoma border. My kid’s school called us up last week or so for a survey about parental attitudes & remote classes. I got the impression that most families in our district (very small town of ~1,200 people) are in full support of remote classes cos none of us feel safe. The biggest hurdle for our community is basic internet access in a rural area, but the school seems to have a solid plan going and is doing everything possible to get the kids connected.
My daughter got an email from the superintendent with a survey. It was very short but asked teachers if they wanted to teach in person or online for at least the first 3 weeks. I am guessing that it will be an overwhelming choice to go online.
Excellent! As hoped and expected that most larger districts will offer.
When I read this story, all I think of the vast inexperience and incompetence of GOP friends and cronies running the federal government under the supreme idiot Himself.
At a time when T has issued an immigration ban and in his mind boggling stupidity doesn’t use the advice of experts, critically needed immigrant doctors are being barred from entering the US even though they have been hired hospitals now facing a shortage of COVID doctors.
The problem is in that boondoggle organization known as Homeland Security. Homeland Security was set up by Bush to give money and contracts to his donors under the pretense of protecting the country.
One of their jobs is to approve visas and they are rejecting doctors’ visas.
Republicans took over the federal government for one purpose only: to raid the coffers and make a small group of people very rich. They do not care about people.
The president doesn’t want people to know that he’s caused a pandemic to get out of control. Meanwhile other countries have it under control. So he looks bad.
But if the hospitals run out of doctors because he has put incompetent buddies in charge of approving their visas then people will start dying in hospital lobbies for all the world to see.
Russia trying to steal vaccine research?
Russian hackers attempted to steal UK's Covid-19 vaccine research, Downing St says
Also:
U.KU.K. And U.S. Spies Blame Russian Hackers For Targeting Covid-19 Vaccine Research
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/07/16/uk-blames-russian-hackers-for-targeting-covid-19-vaccine-research/. And U.S. Spies Blame Russian Hackers For Targeting Covid-19 Vaccine Research
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/07/16/uk-blames-russian-hackers-for-targeting-covid-19-vaccine-research/
@michele-b I did see all of those, but I didn't want to put too many links. Thanks! :-)
A friend pointed out something today which I had not considered.
It's very American to care about oneself first before others - a make it on your own type of mentality which is is engrained in the fabric of our society. Something to think about. When the government in both WWI and WWII made a big effort to have people sacrifice, ration, enlist, and create victory gardens it was with a huge marketing push, and that is what would be required now but we do not have that kind of leadership.
We have a lot of marketing and teaching to do if we want society to be able to think of others as equal let a lone being capable of putting others above the individual self. No wonder we can’t get everyone on board about masks.
Just want to point out to those discussing school issues:
The CDC Guidelines are just that - guidelines. Not laws or even rules. Cruella Devos has made it clear that there is not going to be any monitoring or enforcement.
Also - the CDC Guidelines are flawed because Twitler et al have their fists so far up the CDC's a$$ that the CDC can't even get the basic parts of its job done.
@laura-f Yes, they claim the CDC guidelines are good enough to open schools, but everything else the CDC says is a lie. Funny how that works, isn't it? ;-)
I feel some concern for the way this pandemic will affect women and teenage girls around the world. I was driving in my car thinking about all the unplanned pregnancies that might occur during the lockdowns and I asked Spirit if there were more likely to be situations occurring now because of the shutdowns that would lead to more teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies to women in general. A couple of days later I did seem to get the message in a dream that yes this was likely. The dream suggested that sometimes young girls who are too young for consensual sex will be put in vulnerable situations. In the dream I was observing a teenage girl staying with family members who weren't her parents. The male head of household was being very attentive and nice to her but there was some physical touching that was not appropriate--it was not overtly sexual but seemed to be a test of her limits. He was exploring how she would react to some gentle caresses first. The teenager trusted the male relative and didn't want to offend him by asking him to stop...she was no longer feeling protected and she felt she needed his protection. In my dream the male relative did manage to control himself and stop the touching but the girl was confused by it all. I felt like if he had kept it up she might have submitted to his touching. I woke up and thought about how the man in the dream was purposely shown as physically unattractive but wealthy and somewhat powerful...in the beginning of the dream he told the young teenage girl he was a lawyer. He even told her he was a lawyer who helped people by defending their rights--I felt like he wanted the girl to look up to him. He was telling her he was a "good guy" and yet he was thinking about doing something that could lead to life long negative repercussions for the girl...
There are articles that talk about this topic. The UN predicts there may be seven million unintended pregnancies in the coming months:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062742
There is also increased risk of gender based violence increasing but with the lockdowns there will be no safe place for the women to go. They are trapped with their abusers.
Good news about Covid treatment to remind us there is hope. A WAPO reporter added up the positive developments so far:
- "Therapeutic treatments (in addition to what we already have for the most sick patients) will arrive before vaccines. Scientists have now engineered clones of these antibodies — what we call monoclonal antibodies — and they are showing to be effective both therapeutically and to prevent infection.
- The debate is finally over: Masks work.
- Consensus has finally emerged that airborne spread is happening.So they will begin healthy building strategies, such as higher ventilation, better filtration and the use of portable air-cleaning devices.
- There is some science showing that past exposure to common-cold coronaviruses might be playing a protective role for some people.
- Vaccine trials seem to be working"
This article explains why the U.S., the richest country in the world, has been the least able to stop the coronavirus. As it rages here, almost every other country is getting it under control. I wasn't going to read the article because I know what happened. Donald Trump and the GOP happened. But I read it and am posting here anyway in case anyone here falls prey to GOP/Donald Trump lies about what happened. I've already heard the GOP/Hannity spin from some Republican friends.
Other countries have managed to avoid the kind of dramatic viral resurgence that is happening in America. Spain, Italy, Germany and France — all devastated by the virus months ago — drove coronavirus cases and deaths to relatively low levels. And in Asia, the picture is radically different. In Taiwan, baseball fans sit in the stands and watch their teams play. Japan has had fewer than 1,000 deaths from covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. South Korea has had fewer than 300. Vietnam has recorded no deaths from the virus. These are crowded countries with nowhere near the wealth of the U.S.
Before the pandemic, a Johns Hopkins study had ranked the U.S. number one in the world for preparedness.
"How did the nation get caught so flat-footed? By not really trying, said Beth Cameron, who was senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council and helped write a pandemic response plan under President Barack Obama. The team Cameron led was disbanded after Donald Trump took office.
"'I just never expected that we would have such a lack of federal leadership, and it’s been deliberate,” she said. “In a national emergency that is a pandemic, spreading between states, federal leadership is essential. And if there was any doubt about that, we ran that experiment from March and April until now. It failed. So we have to run a different experiment.'"
I came across some further good news regarding a 'promising' Covid-19 treatment:
Trial of Covid-19 drug given via inhaler 'very promising', say scientists
Like many others here, I am still mulling over the wisdom of opening schools. As @michele-b outlined many forum pages ago, it is such a confounding and complex problem. My view is that it is only a sensible option if an 'elimination strategy' was successful and good safety measures are in place. But globally very few places are in that position.
In all other cases, it seems incredibly hard to implement and inherently risky for students, households and families. The major point I can't seem to get past when I read the research is that most studies about children and transmission include children in their data if they exhibit symptoms. I have not found good data on whether or not children transmit Covid-19 if they are asymptomatic, and it seems to me as though many children under 12 years of age are asymptomatic when infected. One (primary and high) school in Melbourne currently has a growing outbreak of 173 cases. This includes students, school staff, and family members. In cases where there is high community transmission, I just cannot see how how teaching face-to-face indoors can be done safely.
Before our first Australian lockdown in March, 75% of parents in 2 states had already pulled their children out of school. It is terribly inconvenient for parents, kids, teachers, workers, (politicians, economists). It is inconvenient for everyone, but the virus just is what it is. I feel like saying 'to hell with this type of economy' we really do need to radically rethink everything.
Like many others here, I am still mulling over the wisdom of opening schools. As @michele-b outlined many forum pages ago, it is such a confounding and complex problem. My view is that it is only a sensible option if an 'elimination strategy' was successful and good safety measures are in place. But globally very few places are in that position.
In all other cases, it seems incredibly hard to implement and inherently risky for students, households and families.
I so agree! And with numbers increasingly not decreasing even riskier.
Here in Oregon, it really looks like we will go with a hybrid/choice plan. Where its safe to open in isolated counties with few or no cases--they'll consider opening especially in underserved areas with limited wifi for virtual classes.
But we are averaging 400 new cases a day in our bigger more populated counties and that would be fool hardy to even consider. Doubt our leaders would
So sorry to read about the school with the sick children. The transmission from them into the community before the testing is scary in itself.
I think this will wake up the politicians. Its just taking them day by day with their constantly weighing the pros and cons with the odds and their own fears for the future state of their countries.
As you say, people are more important than the economy especially at this stage of things!