How to take someone's mind off the pandemic or politics? Try Arctic cold as far south as the southern tip of Texas. The governor has issued a disaster declaration for the entire state. There is snow in Houston and Galveston. They know how to deal with a hurricane down there; I'm not so sure about a polar vortex. It's not just Texas either. Today one could travel from the Rio Grande on the southern border to the St. Lawrence on the northern and never leave a winter storm watch or warning. Actually, maybe some political hot air would help turn things around.
And there's always the distraction of Ebola. There are now three confirmed Ebola deaths in Guinea, the first in five years. Four more people are confirmed to have it. All seven attended the funeral of a nurse who had it. The bad news? These cases are in no way related to the ones in the Congo.
The US has currently had over 27.5 million covid-19 cases and recorded over 484,000 deaths. However, both Friday and Saturday saw fewer than 100,000 new cases. The daily average case count in December was 200,000, and several days in January saw more than 250,000. Various reasons have been offered for the drop in case numbers. Vaccinations are easier to find, more people are following at least some mitigation measures, the virus may be following a seasonal pattern, and, frankly, new cases may be going undetected. The caveats are that the numbers, while better, are still now good; the number of cases of the variant forms are increasing; and some states may be reopening things too quickly.
The CDC has issued new guidelines for reopening K-12 schools to very mixed reviews. The American Federation of Teachers supports the guidelines, though a number of individual teachers do not. Somewhat surprisingly, there are parents who feel the guidelines are too strict. The CDC views teacher vaccinations as a strategy but not a requirement. The guidelines put no emphasis on improved ventilation systems, something many school districts cannot afford to put in.
Once again, I try to place myself as a parent in the mix and see how I might feel. It doesn't help that The Sons did various virtual distance education classes and in most cases enjoyed them more than they did in-person classes. Son #2 might have missed the social aspect of school, but Son #1 would have preferred to work at home on his own. Neither son liked the group projects so popular in k-12 schools; they usually felt that they did the bouk of the work if not all of it. Given all that, I probably would be in the stay-virtual-as-long-as-you-can group.
Dr. Fauci mentioned in an interview that he did fear he could get covid attending so many meetings at the White House, location of multiple super-spreader events. He said he did not fixate on it, but it was usually in the back of his mind. He had not heard, nor had I, of the new term "fauci-ing" someone, or cutting off a relationship if you don't think the other person is taking the pandemic seriously. You won't wear a mask and you want to be close to me; prepare to be fauci-ed!
1 comment:
Our daily cases dropped to four figures yesterday, we're back where we were at the beginning of October.
I give thanks on a weekly basis that I am not in charge of a school age child. Mine had six weeks off with a broken leg and it was a constant battle over school work. If you have the self motivated variety of child all well and good but mine was a total slacker and would quite happily have spent all week not doing a sheet of spellings then having a meltdown at the completion deadline.
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