Trump wants to reduce testing counts to “reduce the number of infections” and make things look better for him. He seems to fail in realizing reducing the number of reported infections doesn’t acually reduce the number of real infections and only reduces states’ ability to respond adequately to outbreaks, thereby again increasing the real infection count.
I forget - have you checked out Amazon Prime? They have a whole Pantry sub-category with a lot of staples.
1 Like
On the flip side, it’s apparently woke a lot of folks up about how bad this deal has been run, especially seniors. And they vote.
And by November we may have 200k+ deaths, mostly seniors, and they’re definitely voting Democrat 
.
Of course they will.
My most recent Staples fruit order just arrived. Overall I would give Staples a high score on both the bananas and the oranges. It is my very great fortune that the weather between Indiana and here has not been overwhelmingly warm. This is such a help. However:
Bear in mind if you order such as this, from Staples, that these are intended to be “break room” items; strictly business. Hence, the bananas arrive fully ripened and ready to eat . . . . ready for some company to set out in a break room as an employee perk.
It is different here at home. There is not the need for so many bananas, all ripe, all at once. When store shopping I usually buy some green bananas, along with a few ripe ones. Staples does not ship green bananas. Period. Also, they contain the bananas in closed plastic bags. This traps the ethylene gas, but it does exclude oxygen.
Retardation of banana ripening is almost a chemistry class in itself. But I have so many, I will be trying out some of the ideas here:
1 Like
Last week I bought some green and some yellow bananas. The green ones actually developed dark spots at a faster rate than the yellow ones.
Two good articles on school risks based on those that have been open already during the virus times,
1 Like
@xerty on schools, are you really implying europe and other countries opening schools where they have crushed community infections to near zero and have an actual sufficient surveillance testing and contact tracing apparatus in place means they should be opened in the US in areas where the pandemic is out of control? Sure, the WH repeatedly pretends that’s an equivalent situation. But it doesn’t seem like you would.
IMO, The places with open schools and sporting events is just showing where we could be if we didn’t waste the past four months in abject failure. We Americans (or at least some of us) endured significant personal and economic costs throughout this year and those sacrifices have all been made close to meaningless.
I did notice that in the WaPo photo of the Japanese school kids, they were all wearing masks. I dunno if we can replicate their results in the current climate on masking.
I agree Bendr. It’s soul destroying to me that the last three months were for nothing.
1 Like
Yeah after that meeting in Utah where most of the audience protested against mask by not wearing masks when they were required, you gotta wonder if it’s believable that schools will be able to enforce mandated mask wearing.
We’re also nowhere near the level of spread as in the countries mentioned. If we were, certainly returning to in-person schooling would look a little safer.
I don’t have a view yet on if I would want my kid to go to school in the fall, but I’m working on it. I don’t think the virus is different in EU vs US, so hopefully whatever lessons can be learned about the risks of schools resuming can be applied here, by people who are paying attention (possibly separate from the schools and politicians).
1 Like
It’s not a completely crazy idea to send the kids back when you strip away all the hysteria about it. I mean, we do pay nurses and doctors to suit up and be around people with Covid all day long.
Ultimately, I think it will be up to the teachers whether they will do it or not.
We just need to buy 50 million of these in child size.
WE probably gave more in forgivable PPP loans to doctors and dentists then that would cost us.
It also would contribute to overall spread being even more out of control than currently. At least that’s our own government’s assessment of the largest risk increase being to return schools and universities to fully on-site. That’s why it’s much different in countries that quashed the infections and are in containment, and now have schools fully open (usually with social distancing and/or masks, and shut them down when there’s new outbreaks).
Just like most everything else virus related, it is NOT simply an individual risk/reward trade-off.
If you want some much longer term perspective on the history of disease, this was a good article with some nice charts.
One point is that this pandemic is more of a psychological shock than a medical one, since until the last 50 years or so brought lots of vaccines, people faced and often died from disease fairly regularly.
2 Likes
It’s up to the kids, the kids’ parents, the administrators of the district, etc… not just the teachers. If parents tell their kids, it’s useless or anti-american to wear masks and kids remove them in period 1, what are you gonna do as teacher? Send them home? They’ll put the mask back on for a few minutes, they’ll remove them the second they are in corridors between classes. Teachers will have other things to do than be the mask police.
Also the difference with doctor and nurses is that they cannot treat COVID-19 patients remotely (otherwise they’d definitely do it). If you flaunt the hospital rules, they’ll declare that you’re a health danger to staff and other patients and have you arrested and kicked out. Teachers do not generally have this kind of authority. So it’s not a very good analogy.
Personally, I’m working from home anyway (at least until the end of the year) and my kids did just fine in the Spring with their classes (grades, AP exams) so I have little incentive to send them back to the school petri dish to endanger them and myself indirectly. Especially not with the 3 ft distancing that’s proposed because 6ft is too costly and impractical.
2 Likes
Sounds like your kids are in high school or upper level. Another thing, yours are probably capable of handling most situations, either at school or working on a computer.
Big difference in very young children & lower ability students. These need direct contact with a teacher every school day. Plus many parents must work outside the home & its very expensive to hire babysitters.
4 Likes