COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[Jack Parkman]

4 hours ago, Texsox said:

So how fast is everybody going to get in line for a rushed to market vaccine? I'm not an anti vaxx person, but as someone who took a drug that was later pulled from the market for causing an increased in cancer rates, it's not as clear cut as it may appear. But, of course there only humanitarian reasons for working so hard on finding a vaccine. Not profit or politics. 

not me. I don't trust anything on the market in less than 30 months. 

[bmags]

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/893227088/growing-body-of-evidence-suggests-masks-protect-those-wearing-them-too

this is the good stuff.

[he gone.]

Vaccine question : like anything I"ll balance the positives and negatives of both taking and not taking a vaccine. 

I agree though, basically if you thought the mask discussion was tough - that was just putting something on your body. Wait for the vaccine discussion and putting something IN your body. Gonna be a hot mess. 

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

16 hours ago, Texsox said:

I'm skeptical of both. I'm more skeptical of a vaccine working based on the promise of a HIV vaccine (and others)  in the 1980s. I've seen more new drugs come on the market to treat diseases than vaccines to prevent them. Perhaps it's ignorance but treatments seem to be easier to develop than vaccines.  

It's not that I'm skeptical that they'll get one - although I do agree since there has never been a COVID vaccine that expecting one as a guarantee seems odds - but I am skeptical about taking one if it's pushed out this year or even early next.

The process for testing takes 18 months - that's what every doctor said before this and etc. If they push one out that means there wasn't adequate testing, and I'm not going to be this administrations guinea pig. It's sad that the lack of trust in the government has led to that thought, but I think you'd be batshit crazy to take anything that was pushed out in the next 6 months.

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

26 minutes ago, BrianAnderson said:

Vaccine question : like anything I"ll balance the positives and negatives of both taking and not taking a vaccine. 

I agree though, basically if you thought the mask discussion was tough - that was just putting something on your body. Wait for the vaccine discussion and putting something IN your body. Gonna be a hot mess. 

If they rush the process, I think you'd be a fool to take it. Scientists have determined the process takes a certain amount of time, and accelerating that process artificially doesn't make me feel real good.

[Jack Parkman]

5 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

If they rush the process, I think you'd be a fool to take it. Scientists have determined the process takes a certain amount of time, and accelerating that process artificially doesn't make me feel real good.

Bingo. 

[caulfield12]

This Hospital Cost $52 Million. It Treated 79 Virus Patients.

Brian M. Rosenthal  New York Times

July 21, 2020, 7:13 AM

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hospital-cost-52-million-treated-121337052.html

[Texsox]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

This Hospital Cost $52 Million. It Treated 79 Virus Patients.

Brian M. Rosenthal  New York Times

July 21, 2020, 7:13 AM

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hospital-cost-52-million-treated-121337052.html

Stimulating the economy.

[Texsox]

So nine months from now we have a vaccine that a portion of the population isn't rushing to get.

What will diagnosis and treatment look like? 

[Dick Allen]

Kansas added to Chicago travel ban. Stay away, Greg.

[StrangeSox]

 

 

[bmags]

A number of the individuals who have tested positive have informed public health officials that they engaged in some of the same activities. Specifically, four individuals told public health officials that they participated in events or were close contacts of participants in events involving the party bus company the “Shakin’ Shuttle”

Public health officials are also concerned with reports of large gatherings without social distancing taking place in the region. Specifically, Hidden Lake Winery in Aviston is reported to have hosted several large events, contrary to public health guidance.

http://www.dph.illinois.gov/news/covid-19-region-4-hits-7-percent-positivity-public-health-officials-urge-local-businesses

?

[The Beast]

Captain fat orange still says that the virus goes away, which diminishes his credibility even after he says masks make an impact.

[RTC]

On July 20, 2020 at 4:51 PM, Texsox said:

I'm not rushing to be treated either. ? My question was genuine. If we are banking on the vaccine fixing everything then everyone is going to have to line up and take the vaccine. I'm wondering how quickly that will really happen. I'm probably going to trust my doctors at MD Anderson and if they say go for it, I'll go for it. I've basically had to put my lifespan in their hands already. But what about the average worker drone? 

Confused? I have cancer (Leukemia) after being on a drug that was recently pulled from the market for an increase in cancers. Using known drugs in new ways seems less risky than a vaccine, but that could just be my ignorance. New drugs, new vaccines, new anything has me skeptical. 

Since you buried the lede ..... hope you're doing as well as can be hoped for.  Best wishes. 

[StrangeSox]

 

[Texsox]

14 hours ago, RTC said:

Since you buried the lede ..... hope you're doing as well as can be hoped for.  Best wishes. 

Thank you. I'm in the best shape I've been in since my 20s. I'm asymptomatic and will probably stay that way for many years. Overall the diagnosis has been a positive.

[StrangeSox]

Restore Illinois IDPH Plan, Phase 3, "HOW WE MOVE TO THE NEXT PHASE"

https://coronavirus.illinois.gov/s/restore-illinois-phase-3

Quote

Tracing: Begin contact tracing and monitoring within 24 hours of diagnosis for more than 90% of cases in region

Illinois moved to Phase 4 on June 25th, almost a month ago.

JB Pritzker, today:

Quote

Pritzker was asked about contact tracing and said tracers were currently reaching about 61 percent of people identified “within a reasonable period of time.”

https://capitolfax.com/2020/07/22/pritzker-extends-evictions-moratorium-through-august-22/

I still remain baffled and frustrated that Illinois completely ignored this key requirement and nobody seems to be holding the public officials accountable for the completely predictable rise in cases.

[southsider2k5]

Indiana is going to a mask mandate starting in 5 days.

[greg775]

On 7/21/2020 at 1:41 PM, Dick Allen said:

Kansas added to Chicago travel ban. Stay away, Greg.

Thanks for info. Damn ... I never thought in my life if I returned to my city I'd immediately be quarantined 14 days in the hotel. This is the worst situation in America in my lifetime. Unbelievable. Add to that the social unrest. I won't get into this for obvious reasons (ban) but I can't take my eyes off the Portland riots every night and have a million opinions so if anybody needs info on what's going on in Portland DM me. GO SOX! Enjoyed watching the Cub game the other night. Couldn't figure out how to work NBC app to watch the second Cub game.

[MEANS]

Hi Greg, I live in PDX, I need info plz.

[StrangeSox]

oof 

 

[caulfield12]

One Republican who paid close attention to the rise in distrust of science among the party’s base was Donald Trump, to whom the language and concepts of anti-scientific thought have come naturally. He has always arrived at his beliefs by intuition, rumor, and anecdote rather than any respect for evidence and study.

During his career as a free-form pundit and huckster, Trump related naturally to the right’s suspicion of scientific authority — not only the concept but the language. Trump has frequently rejected not only the consensus view on scientific matters but also the very idea of expertise. Sometimes his source would be a “report.” (“I saw a report the other day, you may get AIDS by kissing,” he told Howard Stern in 1993.) More often, he would cite unidentified people. “I think the vaccines can be very dangerous,” he said in 2009. “And obviously, you know, a lot of people are talking about vaccines with children with respect to autism. And every report comes out, like, you know, that does not happen. But a lot of people feel that the vaccines are what causes autism in children.” He has denounced wind turbines on the grounds that “they say the noise causes cancer.”

Trump recognized the financial possibilities of exploiting medical illiteracy as early as 2009, when he signed up to be a pitchman for a vitamin business, which was then renamed “the Trump Network.” Vitamins are unregulated by the FDA and are thus a lucrative opportunity for hucksters, who can sell billions of dollars in nutritional supplements to customers who — by and large — don’t need them. (The vast majority of people can get all the vitamins they need from a healthy diet.) The Trump Network took the basic vitamin scam and piled additional scams on top of it. The network sold a kit for $139.95 that would supposedly test customers’ urine, and the Trump Network used the results of the test to tell customers which pills they needed to buy from the Trump Network for another $69.95 a month, plus $99.95 every six months for additional testing.

“They make an outrageous statement, which is that this testing and supplement regimen, this process, are a necessity for anyone who wants to stay healthy,” Dr. Pieter Cohen told Stat news four years ago. “That’s quite insane.” For good measure, the Trump Network created a multilevel-marketing structure — the colloquial term for this arrangement is pyramid scheme — to attract sales-people. “With cutting-edge health-and-wellness formulas and a system where you can develop your own financial independence, the Trump Network offers people the opportunity to achieve their American Dream,” he promised in a videotaped pitch.

 

https://medium.com/new-york-magazine/american-death-cult-6e36338271bb

American Death Cult     from New York Magazine

 

[caulfield12]

My cousin who teaches and is an instructional coach in Plano shared this on FB

 

“I know there are A LOT of people with mixed emotions about starting the school year remotely. It’s hard. Every option at this point is hard.

My job title has been Instructional Coach/Title 1 for the past few years. While I haven't had my own classroom since 2015, I have worked closely with many teachers and many students.

From March to May, I saw classroom teachers work day and night trying to make their virtual classroom as effective as possible for their students. It breaks my heart to hear people claim that teachers had the last few months of the school year off. If I can make one general statement about teachers, it’s that they ARE NOT lazy. They ARE NOT paid by the hour, yet many work nights and weekends to squeeze as many difference making opportunities as possible into each 7 hour school day.

Just as many have shared, neither remote learning nor “in-person spaced-out mask-wearing pandemic style” learning is a teacher’s preference. They want their small groups back. They want NORMAL social interaction back not only for themselves, but more importantly for your children. They want hugs back. And, most importantly, they want to help your kids grow as much as possible.

While neither choice is optimal, what I wanted to share today is my opinion on virtual learning.

I wasn’t planning on teaching summer school this year. I had vowed to take the summer off for the first time in 12 years. I was going to focus on my 1 year old, take him on playdates, make memories, maybe travel. All of those plans changed with COVID.

I decided that teaching summer school was something that I just had to do. I wanted to see what it was like to have my own class of students in a virtual setting. I wanted to be able to help teachers with the virtual platform this fall, and that’s really hard to do without real, first hand experience.

The days leading up to our 1st EVER virtual SS, I questioned my decision. I had convinced myself I made a mistake. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I had zero experience teaching live-virtual lessons. I had joined Zooms with students and hosted Zooms with my teammates, but I had ZERO experience leading a zoom with my own students.

While fear consumed me at the beginning, I always tell my students, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

Last Friday was my last day of summer school with my 4th graders, and I seriously had to fight back tears saying good-bye to the kids. In the fourteen days of summer school, I got to know these ten year olds in such a different way than students in the past.

They learned from me, and I learned from them. I learned about their favorite foods, hobbies, past teachers, personal virtual learning experiences, siblings, pets, and favorite super heroes. They taught each other concepts. The students would help explain technology solutions to their peers using personal experience from the student viewpoint. When a student asked a question in the comment section on Google Classroom, their classmates would reply with feedback before the teachers even saw the comment. Whoever says that students can’t collaborate virtually, hasn’t seen a virtual classroom.

When it came to technology, we ALL (teachers and students) learned together. Our mistakes enabled the students who might be afraid of being wrong to see that we ALL have a learning curve (and that’s ok). We stressed that we might not always have the answer, but the learning is in the trying. As my teammate would frequently tell the kids, “Practice makes progress!”

Last Thursday I was leading a Guided Reading group when my computer suddenly died. As quickly as humanly possibly, I grabbed my charger, restarted my computer, logged into Google Classroom, and clicked on the link to the reading session. I expected the students to have left (we were near the end of the session anyway). What I saw when I logged back in is something that will stay with me for a long time. Not only were all the students still on, but one of the kids had become the host (it automatically assigned him host-status when I was booted off). This particular student had divided the students into break-out sessions to discuss whether or not their previous predictions were accurate. When I logged back on, he had just ended the break-out rooms and the kids were reconvening on their partner turn-and-talk discussions. Seriously?! Yeah- a 4th grader.

I know I am BY NO MEANS an expert (NOT EVEN CLOSE), but my virtual classroom/ live-learning experience was one of my favorite teaching experiences to date. I will genuinely miss the connections we made with each other and how much we ALL learned together.

I also know it’s not just me who feels this way. Our principal led a SS wrap up Zoom last week, and the teachers K-5 reiterated those same feelings.

Out of the two fourth grade classrooms, there was only one student I have actually met in person. To make such strong connections with a group of people who (for the most part) have NEVER MET EACH OTHER is amazing to me.

I know the state of the world is scary right now, but there are also really amazing things coming out of this. We are becoming more technologically advanced, real-world problem solvers (students and teachers alike).

So I, for one, can’t wait to see what comes out of remote learning this year (for whatever amount of time it consumes our teaching). From March to May we were all in survival mode. We were living day to day, week to week. We learned a lot, but we were just getting the hang of it when the school year ended. I am predicting big strides for remote learning across the nation.

Whatever happens, just know there are a lot of anxious students and teachers out there who genuinely want the best learning experience possible. Support the people around you. Be kind. Be patient. And remember, “If it doesn’t challenge us, it doesn’t change us.”

[bmags]

This was similar to reports from Hong Kong in spring:

 

 

[bmags]

2 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

My cousin who teaches and is an instructional coach in Plano shared this on FB

 

“I know there are A LOT of people with mixed emotions about starting the school year remotely. It’s hard. Every option at this point is hard.

My job title has been Instructional Coach/Title 1 for the past few years. While I haven't had my own classroom since 2015, I have worked closely with many teachers and many students.

From March to May, I saw classroom teachers work day and night trying to make their virtual classroom as effective as possible for their students. It breaks my heart to hear people claim that teachers had the last few months of the school year off. If I can make one general statement about teachers, it’s that they ARE NOT lazy. They ARE NOT paid by the hour, yet many work nights and weekends to squeeze as many difference making opportunities as possible into each 7 hour school day.

Just as many have shared, neither remote learning nor “in-person spaced-out mask-wearing pandemic style” learning is a teacher’s preference. They want their small groups back. They want NORMAL social interaction back not only for themselves, but more importantly for your children. They want hugs back. And, most importantly, they want to help your kids grow as much as possible.

While neither choice is optimal, what I wanted to share today is my opinion on virtual learning.

I wasn’t planning on teaching summer school this year. I had vowed to take the summer off for the first time in 12 years. I was going to focus on my 1 year old, take him on playdates, make memories, maybe travel. All of those plans changed with COVID.

I decided that teaching summer school was something that I just had to do. I wanted to see what it was like to have my own class of students in a virtual setting. I wanted to be able to help teachers with the virtual platform this fall, and that’s really hard to do without real, first hand experience.

The days leading up to our 1st EVER virtual SS, I questioned my decision. I had convinced myself I made a mistake. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I had zero experience teaching live-virtual lessons. I had joined Zooms with students and hosted Zooms with my teammates, but I had ZERO experience leading a zoom with my own students.

While fear consumed me at the beginning, I always tell my students, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

Last Friday was my last day of summer school with my 4th graders, and I seriously had to fight back tears saying good-bye to the kids. In the fourteen days of summer school, I got to know these ten year olds in such a different way than students in the past.

They learned from me, and I learned from them. I learned about their favorite foods, hobbies, past teachers, personal virtual learning experiences, siblings, pets, and favorite super heroes. They taught each other concepts. The students would help explain technology solutions to their peers using personal experience from the student viewpoint. When a student asked a question in the comment section on Google Classroom, their classmates would reply with feedback before the teachers even saw the comment. Whoever says that students can’t collaborate virtually, hasn’t seen a virtual classroom.

When it came to technology, we ALL (teachers and students) learned together. Our mistakes enabled the students who might be afraid of being wrong to see that we ALL have a learning curve (and that’s ok). We stressed that we might not always have the answer, but the learning is in the trying. As my teammate would frequently tell the kids, “Practice makes progress!”

Last Thursday I was leading a Guided Reading group when my computer suddenly died. As quickly as humanly possibly, I grabbed my charger, restarted my computer, logged into Google Classroom, and clicked on the link to the reading session. I expected the students to have left (we were near the end of the session anyway). What I saw when I logged back in is something that will stay with me for a long time. Not only were all the students still on, but one of the kids had become the host (it automatically assigned him host-status when I was booted off). This particular student had divided the students into break-out sessions to discuss whether or not their previous predictions were accurate. When I logged back on, he had just ended the break-out rooms and the kids were reconvening on their partner turn-and-talk discussions. Seriously?! Yeah- a 4th grader.

I know I am BY NO MEANS an expert (NOT EVEN CLOSE), but my virtual classroom/ live-learning experience was one of my favorite teaching experiences to date. I will genuinely miss the connections we made with each other and how much we ALL learned together.

I also know it’s not just me who feels this way. Our principal led a SS wrap up Zoom last week, and the teachers K-5 reiterated those same feelings.

Out of the two fourth grade classrooms, there was only one student I have actually met in person. To make such strong connections with a group of people who (for the most part) have NEVER MET EACH OTHER is amazing to me.

I know the state of the world is scary right now, but there are also really amazing things coming out of this. We are becoming more technologically advanced, real-world problem solvers (students and teachers alike).

So I, for one, can’t wait to see what comes out of remote learning this year (for whatever amount of time it consumes our teaching). From March to May we were all in survival mode. We were living day to day, week to week. We learned a lot, but we were just getting the hang of it when the school year ended. I am predicting big strides for remote learning across the nation.

Whatever happens, just know there are a lot of anxious students and teachers out there who genuinely want the best learning experience possible. Support the people around you. Be kind. Be patient. And remember, “If it doesn’t challenge us, it doesn’t change us.”

This is sweet. That said, it's not that I don't think teachers and students can't handle the situation gracefully. It's that I'm still not convinced the learning outcomes are near as good, and that's a big issue.

Spring was bad, but I do think many don't realize how difficult it was to navigate the technology gaps among students. What made it worse was wuhan's shutdown had caused a supply shortage of laptops, which made the bulk orders difficult to acquire.

Some of that is resolved, and the plans for online learning are much more disciplined and rigorous than what was thrown together in spring, often designed so that students who may not have access to a computer all day could do it on own time. And many bulk Chromebook orders have been put through by school districts in meantime. 

That said, still think the youngest kids need to be in class for some period. Maybe 10 is realistic cut-off for online learning, and use the entire school for k-3.