@dannyboy Back at the start of this school year, a good friend of mine and his wife decided they just were not going to deal with the back-and-forth and chaos of what was happening with their local school, and just completely pulled their kids out and homeschooled them with for the year with a curriculum they found.
They and their kids seem to be the most "okay" out of my friends with the schooling situation this year. Admittedly their kids are pretty small (I'm not sure how this would have worked if they were dealing with AP chemistry), but taking out the uncertainties of "Is school back? Do we have to go back? How is it going to work?" etc. really seemed to have helped everyone's mental health A LOT.
And my Governor JUST announced getting rid of all restrictions. Counties and cities are not allowed to enforce their own mask mandate either.
2 days ago he allowed everyone 16+ to get a vaccination so most of the state stilll hasn't even received a first dose and many can't event get an appointment yet.
He should not have taken away the right of counties and cities to enforce one. And he is about 6 weeks too early to lift all restrictions. Only Federal government buildings must still have them. This is going to create a lot of problems for business owners who can still require them own their own but have no law enforcement to back them up.
How are things going in your corner of the world regarding Covid 19?
I am staying low here in AZ. Now that our governor has opened back up the state and no masks are required, I feel less safe to go out than I did a week ago. I received my first vaccination Friday and am a long way from feeling comfortable out mingling with "the unmasks". I am putting off doing a home repair which needs to be done but isn't critical in the next couple weeks, because I don't want to go to Home Depot now with a bunch of unmasks. ( We found a slow leak in the bathroom under the sink. It is fixed now but our cabinet is now ruined. No mold thank goodness, I was able to dry it out, but it is majorly warped.) Finding a replacement is trickier than I thought online and it is turning into a plot from the children's book 'If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" because in replacing the cabinet, we will likely need to add some tile because I haven't been able to find a cabinet that will work with the original footprint of the old cabinet online. So I will need to go to someplace in person. But that brings me back to the whole "unmasked thing" in my state.
Pima County is keeping the mask mandate in place even though the Governor has ruled they can't do that. So it is a legal battle right now. I don't live in Pima County.
It is taking a long time to get vaccinated at our state sites (drive thru). My husband took 1.45 hours and when he was done the line was even longer than when he first got in it. I read there are a lot of factors in my state, including needing to switch out i Pads faster because of the warmer weather. It is also trickier getting volunteers because more people now have their first shot and aren't volunteering to get one. That and at our big NFL stadium, vaccinations are moving to overnight hours only, not many want to volunteer for the 11pm-6:00am shift.
A nice bright milestone happened last week when the Navajo Nation recorded their first day of no new Covid cases. That was huge.
@lovendures NYC is all over the place. We've got an uncontroversial mask culture here. Everywhere you go, inside and out, people are all masked up. Yet our infection rates have spiked and are pretty high again.
I'm fully vaxxed at this point but I'm not planning to ditch my mask, go to movies or any crowded places for now. I've stayed alive and healthy for this long, and have no desire to throw it away. I want to know more about how well my vaccination will hold up against variants before I start to make any major changes.
With 2020 behind us there's a lot to look forward to, including an emerging progressive country I've waited my whole life to see, and I plan to live long enough to see as much of it as I can!
I Love your outlook Lynn. SO much to look forward to indeed.
@lovendures Cases in my less-populated region of FL have leveled off. My (blue) county has a mask rule but the state will not allow enforcement of the rule. Nevertheless, I almost never see anyone indoors without a mask! Surrounding counties (red red red) are a different story.
This week the age for vaxxes is 40 and up; next week it will be 18 and up. It is becoming fairly simple to find an appointment with very little wait. Even my teenaged son got one-- he heard of a site that had so many doses available they were giving them to all ages, so he drove 2 hours and got Pfizered . (thank you Dannyboy for making "Pfizer" into a verb.) And he had no reaction to the shot beyond a slightly sore arm. So there's another exception to the generalization that young healthy people have strong reactions. (But of course we will see what happens with the second dose. )
Bottom line is there seems to be plenty of vaccine around here, but getting it into people's arms has not been as successful as it could be, and people in the very rural areas are not masking up. People need to WAKE UP and just do it-- both mask and vax.
How are things going in your corner of the world regarding Covid 19?
We went to visit my mom for a few days - first time since last July. It was mostly wonderful, though she's still a fan of the Former Guy and we had a couple of rows over that.
Masking in my home town is non-existent now, but we actually ate out in a restaurant and did a couple of quick shopping trips Muskegon and everyone was masked everywhere - this is a stark reversal from about a year ago when everyone in my county was taking things seriously and everyone down near her was treating this like it wasn't a thing.
Awaiting word of the extension of the MIOSHA order that has me working from home. I'm not ready for pants without an elastic band just yet (though this shutdown I gained far less weight than last shut down). I know the MIOSHA order will be extended because Governor Whitmer was planning on extending it three weeks ago when our numbers were still low. Now that it's exploding -- it'll happen, I'm just waiting on the "when" - I'll finish this school year from home and god willing be back to my old shenanigans next school year.
In Massachusetts, people are being careful but we have a lot of students due to all the colleges and covid is now surging again after spring break.
When I go out in public, everyone is wearing a mask. I have been to Home Depot several times this past week, and everyone wears a mask there too, including all those macho contractor guys who populate Home Depot. You simply may not go anywhere here without a mask on.
The governor, who got off to a very bad start with vaccinations, has now seen that he either shapes up and gets people vaccinated, or he can expect to get ousted. He has shaped up and has become the vaccine energizer bunny.
They were vaccinating thousands a day in Fenway Park until yesterday which was opening day for the Red Sox. (It was rained out.).They moved the whole operation over to a humongous conference center down the street in the middle of downtown Boston, and are prepared to vaccinate thousands per day. They are also vaccinating in Foxboro Stadium, a huge soccer stadium, and in the chain pharmacies and some grocery stores. The only thing limiting us now is the federal supply, and the supply has been a problem.
FYI, Here are some interesting articles. The first is about the side effects of the vaccines. It also talks about the similar effects of Pfizer and Moderna, which are manufactured using the same principle...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/health/covid-vaccine-side-effects/index.html
...and the second one is an update of yesterday's Pfizer statement. Yesterday's statement said that it was still effective after 6 months. Today's update gives us a percentage number, 91% effective after 6 months. No vaccine has been able to say how long it will take for our doses to wear out, because it hasn't happened yet. The people that are still in the study are holding on and it has not been a year since they started with the then experimental vaccines.
And I know the pill to treat the Covid is coming. Just a prescription from your doctor, a trip to the pharmacy, and it could be treated at home. I wouldn't mind another pill in my daily life, as long as it keeps me alive, and I don't get anybody else sick.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article250206305.html
FYI, News about Moderna vaccine. The response of the Moderna vaccine is robust after 6 months and still counting...