I heard on the radio today things in Austin are pretty bad, wonder how that affects UT Football.

ICE has come down with rules stating that if students aren't taking in-person classes, they will not be given permission to enter the country.

Quite a few of the players have already tested positive

Revenue-conscious administrators will be up in arms, from what i gather about the financial impact they'd have propably allowed them to do whatever the fuck they wanted as long as they brought that full tuition with them. Not that many will be that crazy about going of course, unless they really are crazy or really, really, really need to get away from where they are.

EDIT: Actually even worse, even the ones still there would have to leave

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/...07487573069827

Bay Area hospitals receiving Imperial County COVID patients


Something to keep in mind when hearing about capacity being available, not every hospital is actually equipped to handle severe Covid Cases. Not that others are not having a hellish time of keeping things running themselves while workload is high ...

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/hos...oo-11594046342

Mayor Bottoms just announced she tested positive. Stupid virus better leave Mayor Momma alone.

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yeah, the sports bubble is getting pierced big time. FC Dallas has pulled out of the MLS is Back tournament and the entire team is on a mandatory quarantine after 10 positive tests came back.

Not as much as their players' refusal to play unless their list of demands for campus changes is met.

The ESE wing of the school my wife teaches at is now down 11 paraprofessionals 24 days before teachers are supposed to go back to work and 31 days before the start of school. They were down four on the last day of school.

Bolso confirmed positive for COVID.

Coronavirus: Brazil's President Bolsonaro tests positive - BBC News

No State Fair of Texas this year

2020 State Fair of Texas Canceled Due to Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Sincy Hydrochloroquine will not die* here's a look at how that story started and especially who it started with (older article butbi had not seen it before):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/m...loroquine.html



* The new study out of Detroit is obviously interesting, but also seems obviously flawed. Done after the fact and thus you also get discrepancies like the 'controll' actually not getting as much ICU care or especially People getting Hydrochloroquine also getting steroids and those not getting Hydrochloroquine also not getting steroids.

Which is doubly significant because apparently the steroid used was Dexamethason, which coincidentily vers recently been shown as very effective in a double blind study in the UK. So this might well be the factor making the difference, not Hydrochloroquine.

On what I feel is a related note, the superintendent of schools has decided that face coverings will be required when school reopens.

Speaking of schools:

The administrations attempts to bully schools into reopening without doing their part is very transparent. I'll post it here, because the issue really fits better here. Just consider me unpolitically bitching about it ;)
First the student visa thing, and wow, that Azar fella is a piece of work ... Saying Healthcare Workers don't get infected and there being no reason why teachers can take the same precautions is just unbecoming.


Really, no reason why a school can't be the same as a hospital ? None ?
Even if they could, it is another incredible lie. Part of why HC workers are so on edge is that unlike anything else they deal with this virus is spreading like mad in hospitals despite best efforts far beyond the usual. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 have died. Did they all contract it at work ? Unlikely. But a majority seems pretty likely.

To have the health secretary say that, just wow.

I mean, i am all for trying everything to open schools, but for the love of god realize and communicate that part of this is getting the level of infections to a more manageable level and stay on top of it. Not blow smoke up peoples ass, hoping they don't notice or bully them .

My daughter tested positive. Symptoms mild. Sore throat, cough, stuffy nose.

She said she is feeling well today and symptoms almost gone. This is day 8 and the health dept. said if it worsens, it worsens days 5-9.

Basically, she has a cold. She will be out of quarantine the 12th.

One of the many cases we will see in colleges soon.

This Florida attorney isn't taking any chances.

'I Don't Blame You, Man': South Florida Lawyer Turns Heads by Wearing Full Hazmat Suit to Federal Court

The whole open the schools thing is insane to me. My wife teaches high school at a very small high school, but she is still expecting to be there in close contact with kids daily. The school is staggering the days that the kids are in school to reduce class sizes, there will be masks and not masks. The low number of kids will give them a better chance than the larger schools. Speaking of larger schools. My son attends a larger high school. They haven't gone public with their plan yet it doesn't seem likely that it is much more than wishful thinking. With cases running rampant pretty much everywhere, kids will get sick, teachers will get sick. There is no chance this is sustainable.

I feel the same way with my daughter going back to college. She'll be a Junior, and she is a bio chem major, so hands on lab classes are regular her. Those are pretty tough to handle through remote education. All of the students living on campus will have their own rooms, but bathrooms and common areas will still be common. Again no chance that this plan makes it the whole semester. I've already told her and my wife that there is No way she is coming home for visits. I don't think colleges will fare any better than cruise ships did.

When all of these plans to open schools back up were made, people were largely optimistic. Economies were spinning up. We were predicting lower cases over the summer. I've got to hope that we really see where those predictions and that optimism have led us, and the people making the decisions start to realistically consider the risks vs the reward of in person education.

A lot of weird decisions being made right now in regards to the pandemic. For instance in my state the Health Department requires nursing homes to open back up for in person inside facility family visitors starting today. I hope this doesn’t start another round of wildfires in nursing homes.

Man that must be scary tarcone. I'm glad she is not seriously ill from it. Hope she recovers quickly.

Like Schools, this is an impossibly difficult choice to have to make. Because the flip side is, that them not being able to receive visitors is destroying mental health for inhabitants (but also family and friends).

All these things would have been reason to make a much more concerted effort to get the level of infections down and get systems in place to keep it that way. Now that that particular avenue is likely closed for good, you get these impossible choices.

There’s like a 99% chance my wife will get it teaching this fall. Her school is so backwards that it required them to show up in person to work remotely for the last month + of the school year. And they insisted on in person, indoors graduation. Hopefully she finds a lateral move elsewhere for the fall.

COVID Update July 7: I spent the last 24 hours with 3 scientists, all of whom have seen vaccine data, 2 of whom are former regulators, all of whom have opinion.

Will �� soon if interested.

— Andy Slavitt @ �� (@ASlavitt) July 6, 2020

A pretty optimistic but realistic thread overall. We aren't gonna flip a switch on vaccine day and get things back like nothing ever happened. But the news on vaccines and antibody therapy is pretty much all good at this point, and it seems very likely that we will end up in a place where we can manage novel coronavirus like the flu.

Our local school system still has not made a decision on how this year is going to work, but they have finalized the school schedule. It looks like they will have 2 options - regular in-person school and online. If you choose in-person, you can switch to online at any time. If you choose online, you can't switch until the end of the semester. And of course, the school may shut it down and go online at any point. Decision supposed to come in the next 10 days.

What I'm trying to understand is the school calendar. They contemplate a full year of in-person instruction. We are starting this year 2 weeks later than usual (August 26th versus 12th), They are still getting fall break, Thanksgiving, the regular Christmas break, spring break, and all of the teacher in-service days and holidays. We are ending as normal (right around Memorial Day).

So... where did those 2 weeks go? We aren't making them up at any point. Have we been going to school 2 weeks too long every year? Why do we lop off 2-3 weeks of summer break every year and go back to school in early August if we can now start a week before Labor Day and continue with the same schedule until Memorial Day?

I think this brings up a great point, what do you do here?

While many college courses can be taught remotely, what do you do for college labs? Those courses which are important to the major, require significant investment in equipment, this is not something a student should be expected to provide themselves. So how do you get this level of teaching in a safe manner?

My daughter is an education major in her 2nd semester junior year. She's supposed to be doing observations and in-class teaching in the local school system. She has no clue how or if that can happen. I suppose they have to figure out some way for her to meet her requirements, or else she's literally going to school this year for no reason. But she doesn't know how and no one in the education department has explained how any of this will or can work so she can meet requirements and, you know, learn things.

It's not just education. What do schools do about clinical placements? Required internships? Performance requirements for musicians and artists?

Meanwhile, Trump is tweeting that the CDC guidelines are too burdensome. I'm trying to make plans with the assumption that I or my H.S. daughter will catch the virus.

So how we been doin these past couple weeks?

Thread by @ashishkjha: Some folks arguing that rising cases of COVID no big deal because people aren’t getting sick And death rates still falling so its all harmle…

5 states with the highest number of new cases / population (7-day rolling avg).

Again, comparing today to 14 days ago.

In alphabetical order:

1. Arizona:
Testing up 12%
Cases up 36%
Current Hospitalizations up 66%
Dally deaths up 79%

2. Florida:
Testing up 80%
Cases up 162%
Current Hosps not available
Daily deaths up 37%

3. Louisiana:
Testing up 15%
Cases up 162%
Current Hosps up 50%
Daily deaths up 7%

4. South Carolina:
Testing up 56%
Cases up 65%
Current Hosps up 76%
Daily deaths up 62%

5. Texas:
Testing up 41%
Cases up 86%
Current Hosps: up 140%
Daily deaths up 52%

And what about next 5 states?

Georgia, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama, and California.

They all have big increases in hospitalizations

And 4 out of 5 have increased deaths...all but Georgia

It's almost as if something that has an incubation period of 1-2 weeks kills after the numbers start going up. SHOCKING!

SI

I'm struggling with what to do right now.

Travel softball has been going for about a month. Due to play in Youngstown, OH this weekend. Then we travel to Chattanooga for a week starting 7/20.

Every where is seeing a rise is cases. Do I have the brains to say we're not going? Not bragging, but this team won't beat good teams without my daughter pitching.

Then school. It seems like a risk not worth taking, to send her back to school. I think I am going to make her stay home.

I wish state governments would make the right call and cancel these things.

The shutdown in March/April/May almost feels like it was for nothing given where we are now.

I am so glad my travel softball days are over. Couldn't imagine dealing with that right now. Caitlin is participating in a local 8-on-8 scrimmage twice a week to keep sharp. I do not envy you having to decide whether to travel.

Disease/Illness/Virus all has a certain level of inevitability to it. We are humans, and I as guilty as anyone, of wanting full control over my situations, sometimes have to bow to the inevitable. That doesn't mean we give up, that we stop trying, that we don't research, or put protections in place where it makes sense to do so. It does mean that we address the seriousness of it, recognize that leadership has failed us to this point, and recognize that there will be consequences to those choices that were made. Life goes on. We go on. We're going to adapt, and do the best we can, however, we cannot put life on freeze. It just doesn't work like that. There will be deaths. There have already been many deaths, but accepting that we are at this point in time, in this place in history, and marking it with the reverence as such in the future is beyond a given now. Advancements will come and we will go on. We always do, we're just going to pay the price for it. The sooner that we can accept this mindset the sooner we'll all be able to function better with a sort of reverent humility of life.

Youngstown is turning into a virus shit show. They finally are requiring masks at least.

This is the non-political thread, so I will just note in passing that every other country did the hard work required for a few months, and now they are unfreezing.

The position we are in is not inevitable, and we don't need to treat it as such.

So the virus is catching up to the rest of the city? :lol:

It’s no Warren

I specifically didn't mean to imply that the position was. I was pretty clear about that. The reality that we are living in a time where a virus that is difficult to manage because of many things is inevitable. We can't go back and stop it from happening. It's a new reality and I think there are many people who would rather choose to imply that we can return to a period of life prior to it without recognizing the state we are truly in. The same is said for people who refuse to do anything unless we are safe to return to the period of life prior to it. It doesn't feel political. We should be doing everything that we are doing, but a mindset does need to change. People will get sick, and death is happening, and blaming one thing or another does nothing to mitigate it any of it.

Touche! :lol:

Kids will ask why my wife moved to Memphis, we'll drive them down Albert St. and they'll say "Oh, I see..."

It is not difficult to manage and none of this was inevitable.

Yesterday’s new coronavirus cases:

🇩🇰 10
🇳🇴 11
🇸🇪 57
🇩🇪 298
🇺🇸 55,442 https://t.co/txJrYwnRIr

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 8, 2020

I'm not arguing the failings of leadership, in fact, that's exactly what I said. None of those are apples to apples comparisons though either. The demo's of the US are far more diverse and far more expansive.

This is exactly what I said: It does mean that we address the seriousness of it, recognize that leadership has failed us to this point, and recognize that there will be consequences to those choices that were made.

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle right now though either. The mindset of the country is based on individualism, on capitalism, and neither of those things suggest that success in this situation is imminent. These are the limitations of working with the system that we have. There will be an answer somewhere along the way, but only one where working for the better of mankind succeeded, not because of individualism or because of capitalism.

We can't change yesterday to make today better.

But we can change today to make tomorrow better.

And I am getting the sense from a lot of people (not you) that the new message from our leadership and its enablers is some version of "we can't stop it or even reduce it, so we have to live with it."

And that is just flat out wrong. We can stop it. We can reduce it. We are, every single day, choosing not to.

And maybe that's what we will continue to do. Hell, I expect that is what we will continue to do. So my very small ask is simply that we keep admitting to ourselves that it is a choice. That we are choosing to make tomorrow harder because we want today to be easier. And that today is harder than it had to be because we chose to make yesterday easier.

We need to stop pretending we are some special nation that the rules are different for. Many other countries have capitalism and people who are independent. Many are diverse too.

I have a friend who works for the CDC. They had a presentation today that indicated there is no evidence that Covid is transmitted through surfaces - and it would be extraordinarily rare for anyone to get infected that way.

Oh, and the presentation also said even cloth masks help quite significantly when everyone wears one (but that's obvious).

Yeah that would scare me. Hotels, restaurants, gas stations, so many touch points where you could get it. Never mind just the actual field where the kids are interacting and the parents are all sitting together.

Our city has not had any organized sports at all yet. They are planning on hockey in September, but they haven't announced the rules. Rumor is there won't be parents allowed, and instead of 5 on 5, they may play 3 on 3 with smaller teams so that there is more room in the dressing rooms.

Hearing reports that there are no spare hospital beds, ICU or otherwise, in Houston. Patients are being shipped to Austin and San Antonio.

I have to disagree with this. And this is no defense of Trump who has definitely made things worse especially politicizing it the way he has. But we are a diverse country. Washington state, Texas, New York, and Missouri are like 4 entirely different countries. So (IMO) what we are seeing is outbreaks in other states now that weren't hit before. Not sure how this would be different than Italy getting hit first (New York and the eastern states), Spain/France next (Illinois etc), and then the Scandinavian countries. (Texas, Arizona etc) I mean is any state's death toll really that out of whack with the rest of the world except New York/New Jersey?

I thought I remembered reading somewhere earlier on (back in April probably) that coronaviruses historically operate by latitude. Seems to fit was is happening here sort of. Louisiana maybe got hit earlier due to Mardi Gras and Georgia is for sure an outlier.

It just seems to me politics aside if the virus moves from Italy to Norway that is no longer Italy's problem but if it moves from New York to Texas to wherever next that is still the United States' problem.

Nobody thinks this theory is plausible? It is that political that we can't look at things like this as a possibility?

I think that theory breaks down when you look at those individual states outbreak graphs. If you theoretically treated them as individual countries, some states (like Massachusetts) have graphs similar to many countries in Europe. The states that are having huge outbreaks right now are experiencing resurges so this isn’t their first wave. Other than Brazil, I can not find many countries that have a similar path.




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But if you look at Europe, it's gone down in essentially every country. France and the UK are at the high end seeing about 600-700 cases a day (we had 60,000 today). Even countries like Sweden who botched things early on have gotten it under control.

At this point, it is us, Brazil, and India standing out. Brazil did absolutely nothing and has a President who called it a hoax and shamed people for wearing mask. India has an enormous population and does not have the infrastructure to handle it.

I just don't see any way to look at the statistics and say this is natural. We are the outlier in the developed world when it comes to this.

Yeah. I’ll do amazon delivery a few days a week and any time I’m over in the East Side it pisses me off. Gotta shut off the vehicle far too much because only an idiot would leave it running there.

This might make sense if we had really low death tolls but were just now starting to approach the levels that other countries have. That isn't the case. Population-adjusted we are 9th-worst in the world, and two of the other eight are San Marino and Andorra who obviously aren't comparable. Sizable countries like Germany, Romania, and Austria have a quarter of our deaths overall, and the numbers aren't getting closer together but further apart.

If current trends don't change, we're on a path to be #1 in the industrialized world despite all the horrid things that happened in Spain, Italy, etc. early on. That doesn't scream 'normal'.

True but unless the deaths soar (and everyone is saying they will but they haven't yet) than maybe 60,000 is the true number and back in April we just were that far off. I mean the United States has 60K cases and 900 deaths while the UK has 700 cases and approx 120 deaths. So either the death rate is about 10 times higher in the UK or they just aren't testing the same right? It's pretty clear it has to be the latter?