Coronavirus

In Melbourne, Australia, we have just entered into our severest lockdown yet. Our city got through the first wave with minimal fuss and we were looking good and reopening, but then it jumped the quarantine lines and spread through the city.

Now we have a curfew, can't go more than 5km from our homes and are only allowed out once a day. Most business apart from food and medicine are shut. I really hope this is just a 6 week curfew as it is damn scary.

And our numbers aren't that bad compared to so many US cities which are happily reopening (~500 per day in a city of 4 million).

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: . . . compared to so many US cities which are happily reopening (~500 per day in a city of 4 million).

The last couple of days have brought a couple of pretty dire warnings in the U.S. I haven't heard of anyplace loosening restrictions at the moment, most are staying put, and everyone is preparing for tightening.

Here's hoping Melbourne gets positive results from you and your neighbors' discipline.

dysjunct wrote: My wife's a SPED teacher at the high school level and the whole thing is just an epic cluster. She was really surprised at the number of teachers who either have health conditions themselves (cancer survivor, CPOD, or something else that could make contracting COVID dangerous) or live with someone who has health conditions. Of course, people don't normally discuss health problems with their coworkers so she thought there would be some, but it was far more than she expected.

The school board is refusing to enforce mask wearing for students on the grounds that they don't want to get sued. Which is stupid; the school could just make it part of the dress code. The teachers want mandatory mask wearing as a minimum requirement for teaching on campus. So it's looking like distance learning again. Which is probably safest, since even with a mask policy as part of the dress code, horny teens aren't going to socially distance.

For my wife's students, distance learning is very bad -- many children in the special education system are there because of a horrific home life. Maybe it caused emotional problems, or maybe mom drank during pregnancy and never stopped. But sending them home is not a solution and will make it worse.

Well, the local school board is stupid. In-person only. My wife went to set up her classroom for next week when students return. Given (a) the number of students in her class and (b) the size of her classroom, it is impossible to put six feet between everyone.

She commiserated with her boss. The answer was “well, I can’t say this publicly, but look on the bright side — you only have to teach in-person for two weeks before we follow Israel’s trajectory and shut down again.”

Good times.

^I think that's basically right. Our students are starting to move back into the dorms and it won't take long for a significant outbreak. For us, the "good" news is that spread is so bad in AZ we already got pushed online till August 31st. I can't see the future, but I think by August 31st after a month of students behaving like students there'll be coronavirus running rampant all over campus and it'll be pretty unthinkable to restart school in person.

dysjunct wrote: Well, the local school board is stupid. ...

She commiserated with her boss. The answer was “well, I can’t say this publicly, but look on the bright side — you only have to teach in-person for two weeks before we follow Israel’s trajectory and shut down again.”

This is what we found out yesterday as well. The data for Hennepin County as a whole would have dictated a hybrid model district-wide, but Hennepin is a huge county that lumps in Minneapolis and some inner suburbs that are currently among the hottest of the state's hot spots--so the superintendent requested and received a waiver based on more local data that allows them to do in-person for the K-4 elementary schools and hybrid for the middle and high schools.

So my wife is currently planning on being in the building. Long-term sub positions have already been posted on the K, 1st, and 3rd grade teams, so some are taking leaves of absence. The special ed team at the other elementary school has already seen a wave of paraprofessional departures--they don't make anywhere near enough to justify the risk, I can't blame them. It remains to be seen how many parents opt-out and request distance learning, or pull their kids out and go private or home school. Plus, the whole plan could still shift in the month before school actually starts if the data gets worse. We are very conflicted about what to do with our kids (starting K and 3rd at her school). I have every expectation this will boomerang and we'll all be back to full distance learning soon enough, it's just a question of how long. You can't legislate for what all these parents have been up to all summer. The pictures making the rounds yesterday of the packed hallways in that north suburban Atlanta high school were terrifying. We might not be Georgia, statistically...but I don't see any compelling reason why our arc for education won't eventually be the same.

Saw those pics as well, they made me clench up involuntarily.

It's a really bad situation, I have great sympathy for all the parents here.

A 2nd grader in Cherokee County, GA tested positive on day 2 of school. The teacher and the 20 student class are hurled into quarantine for 2 weeks.

My son goes back to school on September 14th.

Hoping for the best, but this may be unrealistic.

Don't worry guys.
According to the officials down here, kids can't get it or spread it, so being at school should be fine.
Got told yesterday that as a staff member I can't spend more than 1 hour in the staffroom. I don't quite understand why, I guess to try and reduce contact with other adults.
It was easy to do of course, I just avoided the staffroom and went to my timetabled classes where I have 30 odd kids packed into my classroom several times a day. Oh, and I'm the adviser to a senior class of 150 kids, many of them 18, and we had a meeting altogether, but, you know, they're school kids, so, it should be be fine.

If schools close, the economy collapses, something something.

So, I was forced back to China, where thankfully the virus is (for the time being) completely under control. For the kids elementary is a full week, middle 4 days/week, high school 3 days/week. Thankfully our employer has a blanket 10 hours a week for childcare issues arising directly from COVID-19. Bad news is my wife isn't willing to negotiate with me over who will that that day of childcare a week.

The office is really depressing though. We are a visa mill that doesn't issue visas so literally 60% of the people are twiddling their thumbs. I manage the IT section so while we still have work, my priority is going to shift to fending off bored folks who want to work on special projects (which means they want my staff to do special projects while they "supervise").

mc wrote: Don't worry guys.
According to the officials down here, kids can't get it or spread it, so being at school should be fine.
Got told yesterday that as a staff member I can't spend more than 1 hour in the staffroom. I don't quite understand why, I guess to try and reduce contact with other adults.
It was easy to do of course, I just avoided the staffroom and went to my timetabled classes where I have 30 odd kids packed into my classroom several times a day. Oh, and I'm the adviser to a senior class of 150 kids, many of them 18, and we had a meeting altogether, but, you know, they're school kids, so, it should be be fine.

If schools close, the economy collapses, something something.

I'm really sorry.

Cheers gary heh. it's alright - we are in fairly good shape over here really (Melbourne notwithstanding, where they are in full lockdown). It's just there are some really bizarre policy decisions around schools.

Update:

So, six months on, my wife and two kids have no lasting effects of COVID-19 illness, but I do. We moved into a new house recently and this one has 2 flights of stairs that I seem to be continually ascending and descending. Going up two flights has me winded for no appreciable reason. I'm not super fat and a year ago that would not have been a problem.

So, I'm thinking my lungs are probably slightly damaged now. I quit smoking two years ago, come November, and my lung function had noticably improved up until COVID.. Thinking of seeking a pulmonologist, to figure it out.

I will also AGAIN encourage you to sign up for the C3 (Chasing Covid Cohort), a stufy from CUNY that just (finally, 5 months later) got Federal funding so they can take the samples they've acquired and test them.

That is so terrible, I'm sorry.

If our country's healthcare wasn't such a shitshow I'd definitely second going to get an MRI and imaged, this thing can do some extremely bad shit to your heart that you should know on the chance it did happen.

I got my COVID antibody blood draw yesterday from a university of arizona study (better antibody test than the one that totally sucks, fwiw), so I'll be curious to hear the results back.

Neighboring state North Dakota is about to host a superspreader event, with potentially 250,000 bikers hanging out for up to a week with no masks or social distancing. Hopefully most of them won't spend much time in Minnesota on the way.

www.foxnews.com/media/south-dakota-gov-n...ld-citizens-freedoms