Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of July 27

Personal update again:

My coworker who tested positive is entering week three, and she said it's lingering but she's overall doing well. Still no smell or taste for her though. She said that she tests her senses by eating pickles, and they're still completely bland to her. It's wild to think that something with such a sharp, aggressive taste wouldn't come through, and really speaks to how powerful COVID-19 is even outside of its more debilitating symptoms.

Beyond that, I have a union meeting this week where we'll undoubtedly cover school reopening plans. It's probably going to be ugly, but hopefully we can channel some of that into action for ourselves.

I've already purchased some KN95 masks for myself, some standard masks for students, and a good amount of individual packs of hand sanitizer so that my students can clean their hands without sharing a bottle or all touching the same pump. There's a good chance this is unnecessary -- either on account of us going remote or if the district provides us with supplies -- but I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I've seen teachers who are getting theirs wills made, and I'm at the point where if I felt a pressing need to do that I would just choose to not go back. Again, I am not dying for this job. I will be taking out the supplemental life insurance policy that rattled my cage two weeks ago when it showed up in my mailbox. I'm doing it not because I expect to die this fall (not that you ever really know) but because this whole situation has taught me that life insurance is a sensible thing to have in place, and it's cheaper when you're younger.

I've seen a number of really ugly discussions online between teachers and parents. Teachers are scared, and parents need relief. I was on a call with one of my fellow coworkers and she broke down about how difficult it has been with her kids this whole time and how worried she is, for them and for her, if they don't reopen. My heart goes out to all parents out there.

The current situation has parents and teachers turned against each other, but the reality is that we're aiming at the wrong targets. If schools fail to reopen it won't be because teachers didn't step up to do our duty; it'll be because our country failed to do so in the months we had to act on this, and the shoulders that most directly falls on is our leadership. The government failed to take the requisite steps to handle this pandemic, and consequently, a direct result of this is that a large number of schools cannot safely reopen. Parents that need relief should not be aiming their ire at teachers, who are simply asking that we not martyr ourselves. Instead, they should be aiming their ire at the people who through denial, negligence, and even outright malice, allowed the very issue that so created the need for parental relief to continue to spread unchecked.

Thirteen Miami Marlins Test Positive for COVID-19, Which Is Bad News for Baseball, Football, and Having School in the Fall

The Marlins, after completing their first series of the year against the Philadelphia Phillies, are now stranded in Philadelphia after having canceled their flight home (presumably because putting the entire team inside a plane for several hours would only hasten the spread of the disease). The Phillies’ scheduled Monday game against the New York Yankees has been “postponed.” In Boston, pitcher Eduardo Rodríguez has been diagnosed with inflammation of the heart; he had previously tested positive for COVID-19.

These developments, though they have escalated quickly, are not surprising; the group of critics who didn’t believe that MLB’s protocols would be able to keep players safe included several high-profile players who opted out of participating in the season. Playing baseball in empty stadiums, it turns out, doesn’t prevent the coronavirus from spreading uncontrollably, it just means the virus spreads uncontrollably among a smaller group of people.

WNYC Radiolab had a recent episode where they share a series of stories about the subsequent effects of the 1918 Spanish Flu, as a way of trying to understand our current pandemic. It's about an hour long, with different stories ranging from US politics to radio ghosts.

An Elite Group Of Scientists Tried To Warn Trump Against Lockdowns In March

Stanford University scientist John Ioannidis has declared in study after study that the coronavirus is not that big of a threat, emboldening opponents of economic shutdowns — and infuriating critics who see fundamental errors in his work.

But even before the epidemiologist had any of that data in hand, he and an elite group of scientists tried to convince President Donald Trump that locking down the country would be the real danger.

In late March, as COVID-19 cases overran hospitals overseas, Ioannidis tried to organize a meeting at the White House where he and a small band of colleagues would caution the president against “shutting down the country for [a] very long time and jeopardizing so many lives in doing this,” according to a statement Ioannidis submitted on the group’s behalf. Their goal, the statement said, was “to both save more lives and avoid serious damage to the US economy using the most reliable data.”

Although the meeting did not happen, Ioannidis believed their message had reached the right people. Within a day of him sending it to the White House, Trump announced that he wanted the country reopened by Easter. “I think our ideas have inflitrated [sic] the White House regardless,” Ioannidis told his collaborators on March 28, in one of dozens of emails that BuzzFeed News obtained through public records requests.

Germany is looking at what might end up becoming a big old nothing sandwich or a second wave. The number of covid-free districts is dropping, total counts are rising. This seems to be the result of (1) decreased vigilance in the wake of recent relaxations and (2) tourists returning home covid-positive.

It has not gotten completely out of whack yet. We'll see what the coming weeks bring. In the meantime, returning tourists will soon have to submit to Covid tests. You'd think we'd have mandated that months ago.

From a Stanford professor on twitter sharing what is allegedly Stanford's official (I guess? god I hope not) advice.

Other creative solutions may be a necessary this fall, including:

...

"leveraging teenagers"

Americans, Go Home: Canadians Track U.S. Boaters Sneaking Across The Border

Cat-and-mouse game that would be hilarious if it weren't also sad. British Columbia residents tracking yachts and sailboats coming north from the Seattle area, using the legally-required transponders that all such boats must broadcast, and reporting them.

American boats start turning off their transponder signals in an attempt to hide (in what is also a flagrant violation of international maritime law). So Canadians start looking for boats that aren't broadcasting a transponder signal.

Americans Mostly Support Voting By Mail

65 percent of adults said that any voter should be able to vote early or absentee without an excuse. Furthermore, an additional 14 percent thought a documented reason should be required, but that COVID-19 should count as one of the reasons. As a result, only 19 percent of Americans believed that voters should need an excuse other than the pandemic to vote absentee.

However, as on so many other issues, Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on this. While a whopping 83 percent of Democrats supported no-excuse absentee voting (and another 11 percent thought COVID-19 should be a valid excuse), only 44 percent of Republicans thought so. Another 17 percent thought COVID-19 should be an acceptable excuse, but that still left 37 percent of Republicans believing voters must provide a non-pandemic-related excuse to vote absentee.

You might be tempted to chalk up this divide to President Trump’s recent rants against voting by mail. [...] But absentee-voting access has actually long been a partisan issue: The party splits in the Pew poll were similar in October 2018. (That said, Republican opposition to no-excuse absentee voting has grown a bit since then.)

However, just because voters want the option to vote absentee doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it. The ABC News/Washington Post poll also found that 59 percent of Americans would prefer to vote in person in this year’s election, while 38 percent would prefer to vote by mail.1 And there were stark differences along demographic lines, which could put heightened stress on our democracy this November.

Republican respondents told ABC News/The Washington Post that they preferred to vote in person, 79 percent to 20 percent. But Democratic respondents preferred to vote by mail, 51 percent to 46 percent. [...] That could mean that votes cast in person will skew toward Republicans this fall, while mail-in votes skew toward Democrats. [...] initial results on Nov. 3 might be overly favorable to Trump — perhaps causing him to claim victory prematurely.

60 percent of parents with schoolchildren wanted schools to wait to restart in-person classes, while only 34 percent wanted schools to reopen sooner. This preference was largely driven by parents of color, 91 percent of whom were worried that their child will catch COVID-19 if schools reopen.

Only 55 percent of white parents shared that concern.

After Delays, Republicans Rolled Out A New Pandemic Relief Bill. Democrats Balked

"We have produced a tailored and targeted draft that will cut right to the heart of three distinct crises facing our country: getting kids back in school, getting workers back to work and winning the health care fight against the virus," McConnell said from the Senate floor.

...

McConnell didn't immediately unveil the cost of the bill, but it has been estimated it will cost around $1 trillion.

Serious question, how the hell does the government suddenly just conjure trillions of dollars from seemingly thin air to pay for this stuff?

Now, Democrats say Republicans should instead start with their proposal, known as the HEROES Act, approved by House Democrats more than two months ago.

Comeon now, pull your collective heads out of your asses, pandemic relief should be one of the easiest slam-dunk bills to pass.

The bill also includes nearly $1.8 billion to design and build a new Washington, D.C., headquarters for the FBI — a project that has been debated for years and something President Trump said last week was needed because the existing building, located across the street from one of his family's hotels, is in disrepair.

Oh FFS.

"But I'm not so sure it's COVID related. It doesn't have to be technically COVID related, I just don't know why we're doing it."

First Dog to Test Positive for COVID-19 in the U.S. Has Died 😔

https://time.com/5873992/dog-dies-covid-19/

The CDC released a report today looking at a summer camp in Georgia that reopened as it was allowed to, and attempted to run a week-long camp from June 21 - 27 for 363 campers (age 6 - 19) with about 120 staff: SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Infection Among Attendees of an Overnight Camp — Georgia, June 2020

It's an interesting case study and even had some relatively strong precautions taken, including everyone needing to provide proof of a negative viral test from within 12 days before arriving. They still ended up with a major outbreak and had to start sending campers home on the 4th day, with at least 44% of the Georgia-resident people testing positive within two weeks of leaving the camp (49% of campers and 56% of staff, offset by 19% of trainees who left when campers arrived).

There are obviously some significant differences between camps and schools, but there are a lot of similarities too, and this could be a preview of the kind of outbreaks that could happen if schools reopen.

Google employees will work from home until at least summer 2021

Herman Cain has passed away from Coronavirus after attending Trump's Tulsa rally

https://apnews.com/8173fe14f7cf7095ced3b55fdc65581e

COVID-19 is to blame for under-staffed and closed Berkeley post offices

Eight post offices have been left without sufficient staff to operate fully after two postal workers in the Berkeley/Albany service area tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-July, prompting some of their co-workers to self-quarantine. Another worker based in Oakland who delivered mail to Berkeley has also died.

One of the women who tested positive worked at the Albany post office on Solano Avenue. The other worked mostly at the Detached Delivery Unit (DDU) office on Eighth Street but delivered mail and packages to other post offices, thereby potentially exposing others. For the last two weeks, some of the eight offices have opened late, been shut for lunch, or have not had anyone working at all, prompting a slew of customers to complain.

Greenfield, Indiana: One of the first school districts in the country to reopen its doors during the coronavirus pandemic did not even make it a day before being forced to grapple with the issue facing every system actively trying to get students into classrooms: What happens when someone comes to school infected?

Just hours into the first day of classes on Thursday, a call from the county health department notified Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana that a student who had walked the halls and sat in various classrooms had tested positive for the coronavirus.

In Indiana, where the middle school student tested positive on Thursday in Greenfield, an Indianapolis suburb of 23,000 people, the virus began to spike in mid-June, and the caseload has remained relatively high. This week, Indianapolis opted to start the school year online.

The Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation, with eight schools and 4,400 students, gave families the option of in-person or remote learning. At Greenfield Central Junior High School, which the student with the positive test attends, about 15 percent of the 700 enrolled students opted for remote learning, said Mr. Olin, the superintendent.

Other coverage if NYT is paywalled for you: 1 2

45 police officers were injured in Berlin on Saturday during a demonstration of about 20,000 people protesting coronavirus restrictions.

As the coronavirus increasingly reaches red states and areas, Republicans are becoming moderately more concerned with it

This month, for the first time since April, our tracker of public opinion around the coronavirus shows that the share of Americans who say they are “very” concerned that they or someone they know will become infected with COVID-19 is higher than the share who say they are “somewhat” concerned.

That rise in concern is understandable, too, when you consider the spike in new coronavirus cases that began in mid-June, especially in the South and West. Just this past week, California, Florida and Texas, along with a handful of other states, saw record spikes in fatalities.

And the fact that the geography of the virus is changing — it’s no longer just a blue-state virus — may mean behaviors and political attitudes are shifting once again. To be clear, there are still deep political divides in how concerned people are about the virus, but there are also some signs that Republicans may be growing more concerned.

As you can see in this chart, the share of Republicans who reported staying home as much as possible has ticked up by at least 10 points since the start of July.

So COVID's gonna go from partisan to not partisan to partisan to "not partisan because all the Republicans are dead?" Based /s

Co-Founder of turning point USA Bill Montgomery has died at 80 from coronavirus

So the leaders are clowns too, not just the followers. Okay then.

Four Costco stores in Bay Area report a total of 31 cases

[Santa Clara County] confirmed the Gilroy location reported six cases between July 24 and July 30, the store in Mountain View four cases between July 15 and July 29, the San Jose store at Senter Road eight cases between July 17 and July 22 and the Sunnyvale store 13 cases between July 23 and July 26.

All four stores remain open.

The initial investigation revealed, "Costco is complying with social distancing and other protocols and that many of the cases have been caused by community transmission and most likely not internal transmission among employees," according to a statement from the county.

I'm putting this here rather than it's own topic, since that's the level of recognition a tweet from a Useful Idiot deserves.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53597975