This post could be placed a few different places but I decided to put it here.
I heard from my eldest daughter today after her 6 hour school zoom meeting and social/emotional pandemic training workshop.
As I have mentioned previously, she is going to (eventually) be in a brand new school building. Their principal told them last week he had to quarantine because his mom had Covid and he had been in contact with her. So for 2 weeks he has not been very available. That is a bunch to manage and process with a new school opening in just weeks.
Here is the rest of the story she learned today.
His father had gone into either a hospital or a treatment center for a cancer treatment and picked up Covid from there. His father passed away a short time later in mid July from Covid. His mom and his sister were also infected from his father. His sister passed away from Covid a week after her father. His mom is recovering. He stayed with his mom who lives in a different part of the state to help her and to not infect his wife and children back at his own home. He is not infected thankfully.
What an incredible burden to bear. He will be opening up this new school in about a month with the full knowledge of how devastating and dangerous this disease is and he will be at the mercy of the Governor and then the school district on whether or not an extension of their 3 week online education learning will be granted or if the school will be opening up to the community for in-person education.
When schools finally do open their doors, everyone will need a whole bunch of pandemic social/emotional therapy. Everyone will have their own form of PTSD.
Wait! Make that OPTSD. Ongoing Pandemic Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Oklahoma here. First my Son-in-Law in Tucson has recovered from Coovid 19. He was off work for a month. I went to the doctor yesterday to get a refill of BP pills, There were three in the waiting room wearing masks, A lady came in without one. I asked her if she wanted one as I had one in the car. No. When I finally went in, the assistant and another were not wearing masks. I mentioned the lady without the mask. She said oh, none of the people were really sick. If one cames in, the take precautions. Doctor comes in, and shakes my hand. He shakes it going out too. He wants to do lab work. I told him I had that six months earlier, and I didn't want to go to the hospital until after Covid 19, and this is what got me. He said "AFTER THE ELECTION" To me, he thinks the pandemic isn't real.
@lovendures it's all of Georgia!! Remember who our Governor is??? brown nosing Trumper man? I expect BIG rise in Covid-19 cases and a bad outcome for our people here.
Looks just like the halls in the middle school where I worked. We were all required to stand in the hallway during passing time to monitor the halls. So glad I am retired. Here in Virginia, most of the districts are having online classes for the first semester which ends the middle of November. Then they will re-evaluate.
@lenor, you live in VA? Me too. I haven't been tracking all of the districts, but in Northern Virginia they've had a measured and sane response.
Let's continue holding all of our educators, students and their families in the light. They need our prayers right now.
I live just outside Richmond in Chesterfield. The tricounty area of Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico are doing the online. I have a teacher friend who lives in Waynesboro (just past Charlottesville) and she went back to school today. They have 160 cases and 3 deaths. She still is VERY nervous.
More news and research regarding kids and Covid-19 transmission. This article from the Guardian is worth a read for anyone thinking about teaching or sending kids to school:
Covid-19 may spread more easily in schools than thought, report warns
There is also the (warning: link goes to an article in German) emerging research from the Charite University Hospital in Berlin, Germany that comes to the conclusion that there is no discernible difference between children and adults when it comes to viral load (and therefore spreading the virus). This research is preliminary only and has not yet been peer reviewed. I can post more when it is published.
@unk-p I almost did last year when he failed to link all of my issues to taking the statin drug, but since we seem to have, don't do anything extra, doctors, I didn't think it would do any good, I wish I didn't have to take blood pressure pills. I think I felt better before I started to go to the doctor.
Hannah Watters called it "Good and Necessary Trouble".
The High School Student in Georgia who took the viral photo of a crowded hallway filled with students wearing no masks and no social distancing is no longer suspended nor will a suspension appear on her school record. Looks like she didn't really break school rules as the photo was uploaded after school and students are allowed to use phones in class.
I went to my local hardware store yesterday which is fully open for business, but I would not go inside. I waited until I could grab an employee's attention to come out and help me. The guy who helped me, Frank, is my favorite; he's been there for 25 years.
He told me that he has not gotten the virus but when I asked if he'd been tested, he said he had not.
Well, given this latest study, Frank, like so many others, may have contracted the virus and been unwittingly spreading it and never had symptoms.
The latest study out of South Korea shows what others have shown that the virus is carried equally in terms of potency by asymptomatic people. Only this study goes one step further:
That 30 percent of all of those who are infected never ever show any symptoms but still spread the virus as readily as those who are sick.
If you add to that that even with masks, especially the kind Frank was wearing - a cloth (not N95) mask, you can breathe out small droplets that can then float around and descend elsewhere in the store. So best to stay outside.
I've felt from the beginning that I should assume that everyone out there has it and protect myself accordingly. This makes it especially unfair and concerning for people who don't have any choice about working indoors where others come and go.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-transmission.html
I had one of my "flashes of insight" and was basically told that the Corona is a warning for humankind to step back and do things differently, stop the assault on nature/earth. That the earth is "a self cleaning oven" and worse has happened in the past and can still happen in terms of removing the offending variable. The earth will adapt and endure. There are worse viruses out there to be unveiled. We have basically been warned.
Later I found out about the Canadian Ice Shelf collapsing. So, that triggered kind of a weird feeling. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/weather/canada-ice-shelf-collapse-milne-manhattan/index.html
@Rowsella, I am afraid, really afraid that people still aren't listening.
We had a notice from the water company two days ago, to stop watering our gardens due to strain on the water system (it is very hot here right now). What do people do? They keep watering lawns and filling pools.
Nobody seems to want to understand that things can just stop. Water stops flowing through the tap, no more working sewers, garbage stops from being collected... The chain is very fragile. People need to step up and take responsibility and take care of nature.
The shock from Covid is already out of the system of many people here. Only the elderly and those of us with brains still stay at home... Until governments (that's how it works in the EU) force us to chance, it won't come fast enough.
Bill Gates: Coronavirus pandemic will end 'for the rich world' by late 2021 - CNET
"The innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive," Gates told Wired magazine in an interview published Friday. "And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022."
The disparities and polarities that we live in this world has never been more apparent to me than since the first month we knew about the coronavirus.
Suddenly, celebtities were all getting the first tests that we read about in the news when first available and others in higher income locations had them avaliable in their doctors.
Here in Oregon, 6 months later I don't know of anyone without severe symptoms getting a test just for peace of mind. It makes me realize just how long it will most likely be before we'd be eligible to be able to get a vaccine and far, far longer for peace of mind.
I am prepared but so many are still in such denial. It makes me sad for them and for all of those who have so far less than what we are so blessed to have even with all our problems here in the United States.