The good news is that everyone here in Maskachusetts is wearing a mask in nearly all indoor and most outdoor venues. Thanks to 52+ governor’s orders, much remains shut down and/or capacity-restricted. We have an endless river of Chlorox for sanitizing and those schools that are vaguely open, for example, discharge students early so that the sanitizing process can begin at 12 or 1 pm.
The better news, for the viruses that cause common colds, is that none of this has prevented the common cold from thriving and hopping from human to human. The Boston area seems to be in the grip of a full-scale cold epidemic (of course, because colds are not COVID-19, nobody is bothering to gather statistics).
Half of the parents whom I meet when out walking Mindy the Crippler or interacting with folks at the airport, etc., have now been presented with the task of keeping children home for 14 days following the sniffles, an upset stomach, a headache, or any other symptom that might conceivably be COVID-19. An alternative is to get a child tested for coronaplague, but that turns out not to be simple. The state, with its infinite river of IT $$, has a web site that shows testing centers near a given zip code. But it is not integrated with availability from those centers. So the hapless parent then gets to work a web browser and telephone for several hours trying to find an available test slot. This is nearly impossible because every other parent whose child had a symptom is also trying to do this.
I’m wondering now why we didn’t start the school year in June, at which point the coronavirus was mostly burned out here in Massachusetts (restaurants reopened then, for example) and set things up with outdoor classes under shade structures and a break from November through February, the prime cold/flu season.
(How am I doing? After consuming more Sudafed than a meth lab, my congestion is mostly resolved.)
Related:
- Join the teachers union if you don’t want the government sticking needles in your arm (Maskachusetts students are required to have flu shots this year because of paranoia that flu will rage in tandem with coronavirus (masks, distancing, and sanitizing won’t stop the flu, but they are pretty much guaranteed to stop coronaplague?))
now that we’re not teenage farmers, this makes sense except in no-airconditioning venues.
i don’t think the sep-dec cold-flu boost is 100% weather; it’s also a return to classroom commingling. worth a shot to find out how much is just weather.
Open school in June. Haha. Teachers would have loved that.
“After consuming more Sudafed than a meth lab, my congestion is mostly resolved.”
Did you get the real Sudafed, that puts your name on a DEA list, and not the fake one (Sudafed PE) that doesn’t work?
https://www.goodrx.com/blog/sudafed-vs-sudafed-pe-whats-the-difference/
I do remember 10-20 years ago that some pharma company patented a version of pseudo-ephedrine with opposite chirality, that supposedly has the same decongestant properties, but not the stimulant properties. They decline to market this, as expected profits would no exceed the costs of FDA approval. But a websearch does not readily let me find the company.
Re: Testing
Can you not just order a home swab test from LabCorp? Here in Texas, heretic Gov. Abbot made sure that anyone who falls into one of a handful of very broad risk profile buckets can get a test mailed to his or her (sorry Phil, I don’t participate in zis/zer/their) home for exactly no cost at all. Even at the height of the panic in July, it only took three days to get results back.
Here’s a link for anyone interested. Maybe readers in other states can find out whether it’s possible to order and report back.
https://www.pixel.labcorp.com/covid-19
I do not understand the mania for flu shots this year. Our anti-coronavirus precautions are beyond the wildest dreams of the flu-fighters of 2 years ago. Is it literary foreshadowing of the mass inoculations we will all endure next year? What is it? The flu should be on the ropes! All the vulnerable people are already isolated. Everything is getting sanitized to a Japanese standard everywhere. It makes no sense.
If this stuff is supposed to be permanent, you might as well just close the schools completely and start winding down civilization, which I suspect was the point of the exercise.
Whether or not it was the point of the exercise, in terms of its actual effects, what it all means is that everyone in this country is going to become even more deeply and permanently dependent upon the government. You should hear NPR’s commentary today on the stimulus package. They’re suddenly concerned about all the businesses that won’t make it through the winter, the mom and pop shops, the restaurants, and everything else from the airlines to the teachers.
“why we didn’t start the school year in June”
Because the teachers labor agreement specifies September.