I found a weird overlap between people who were overly concerned about their kid being snatched at Walmart and people who refused to put their kids in car seats.

This is what I have learned too. If a virus is very lethal and kills quickly, it will not have enough time to spread to other hosts. The less lethal versions of a virus tend to become the dominant ones over time. How much time? That probably varies due to many factors. Could be a few years, could be many years, and in the mean time, a lot of people die.

It's gaslighting. I've started referring to the QAnon people as cult members. And I've been ignoring (here and on fb) the people that insist I'm being petty and narrow minded for not allowing cult members more influence in my life. No thanks! I'll go make new friends instead.

I've snoozed and unfollowed people. Those are the good people that just wont.shut.up. about politics on fb, but in person talk about all sorts of more interesting things. I unfriended the QAnon cult people. Interestingly, my MIL unfriended me. Disappointing, but not surprising.

Update on my husband's friend (from the old thread: male, about 50, overweight, non-smoker, respiratory therapist). He is still alive and still in the hospital. He's been there for THREE MONTHS, and the doctors are saying he is likely to be there for several more months because covid has wrecked his heart and lungs. He's been on and off ventilator and ECMO. His heart rate dropped into the 30s and they were afraid he was going to die, but he pulled through and stabilized. It sounds like a Nick Cordero situation. Based on what I've been told, it sounds like the hope is to get him well enough for potential heart and/or lung transplantation.

I can't go into many details, but a friend and their family are all sick with covid: Two parents, 2 older kids in the house. It sounds like Parent A caught it and passed it to Parent B and Kid 1. So far Kid 2 has no symptoms. One of the adults has several risk factors and is now hospitalized.

Exactly. We have the ability and talent to not only handle it on our own shores but provide guidance and support to countries with less advantages, but instead 7 months in this mess hospitals are still fumbling for PPE and people are playing the "But what about..." game in regards to masks. And the defense of this is always "Well, other countries are messing up, too!" Like "It's not my fault! He started it!"

We are NOT talking in this thread about governments the world round. We are talking about the US government response and the administration's idea of "herd immunity". Do NOT put words in my mouth. THE POINT IS THE US GOVERNMENT IS SUPPOSED TO ACTUALLY TRY TO IMPROVE PUBLIC HEALTH AND NOT UNDERMINE IT. YES I AM YELLING. It is NOT a global conspiracy, because MOST OTHER COUNTRIES ARE HANDLING THIS BETTER THAN WE ARE. Other countries are demonstrating that it is possible to have a better response to the pandemic that we are having. The country's pathetic response to the virus isn't because "leadership" doesn't understand or it's too hard to manage or no one knows what to do or the virus is just so tricky and weird because it picks on the vulnerable. It's because of a lack of will power to make necessary changes. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO TRY TO PROTECT THE VULNERABLE AND WE'RE NOT DOING IT.

They know the death toll would be enormous. It's kind of the point.

The plan is for all those drains on medicare, social security, and other public programs to shuffle off this mortal coil. It's been the plan the whole time.

I have seen this as well. One mother explained it as choosing to raise her children to prioritize "people" (literature) rather than "machines" (math and science). 🤷‍♀️ Their math education was cooking and baking (fractions!) and keeping a running tally of how much money each child had in their piggy banks. Middle school age kids. 🤷‍♀️

Probably. You guys were in Austin, which isn't all that far away from me. Maybe homeschoolers in Houston or Dallas are doing amazing things. I have a friend in Ft. Worth that has homeschooled on and off over the years, and her experience has been very different from mine.

I know of several families where formal education basically stops around age 12. The boys are then shuffled off to learn farm/ranch work, and the girls stay home with mom to help with the younger siblings. The families do not see a point in learning math beyond what you'd need to make change at the store. Around here, Acellus is the "rigorous" homeschool option. It's not the norm for members on this board, but it's pretty typical for people in the groups around here.

Yes, and I was just coming here to say this. There are definitely homeschool kids who are doing amazing things and have pursued robust educations. A lot of them probably would fit into the "relaxed" category. I know of one that ended up in medical school! His education path was fascinating. There's also this slice of the homeschool world, (and I suspect I live right in the middle of it), where people view school and most education beyond the 3 R's as "suspect". I know parents who've told me that they don't know all the names of the planets in our solar system, and don't see a reason why they need to, because after all, they'll never visit another planet, so what's the point? If the kids went to public school, the parents would probably still be just as disinterested, but at least the kids would have more opportunity to be exposed to interesting ideas.

Going off what I've seen locally and in fb groups, there is a lot of math aversion among the parents. I can find lots and lots of posts from mom saying the only fractions kids will need to learn are for cooking, and all other math can be handled with a calculator, so why spend all this time on math?

I'm having trouble keeping track of time. It feels like time has sped up for me. I would have expected the opposite, that time would feel like it's moving slower these days, but it's the opposite. A weird side effect of this is that I'm forgetting to drink enough water and I got pretty dehydrated. I felt really awful (tired, headache, bad muscle and joint pain), and had almost convinced myself that I caught covid, but realized that I wasn't drinking nearly enough. It took a full day of setting reminders to drink some water and eat some soup before I felt better.

I bought a boatload of books for kiddo for Christmas, some re-usable silicone straws and lids, a pasta maker, craft paints for kiddo, and a small slow cooker, (the one I have is too big for 3 people unless I'm making a roast or a lot of soup). I'm going to make life easy on myself this year for Christmas and send my niece and nephew checks.

I think those homeschoolers are still out there, but they are lost in groups like "Relaxed Homeschooling" groups, and even a smidge in less-radical unschooling groups. The people that seemed to be doing something similar to me were often in these groups, although those groups were never a perfect fit either, because IMO, there was often an anti-intellectual vein running through them.

This is very interesting to me, and I agree with you. Up until very recently, I really didn't understand what people meant by "creating a curriculum". I was imagining parents writing their own books and tapping into wells of deep knowledge on all topics under the sun, and crafting elaborate scope and sequence statements. I mean, I don't have that sort of deep knowledge on every topic that I think my son should learn. I'm re-learning a lot of things along with him. This intimidated the heck out of me until I finally asked the stupid question "So what does "build a curriculum mean exactly? Can you describe this to me?", and someone described it like you just did. Hurrah! That's what we've done all along! But that vocabulary doesn't exist in the current homeschool world, (or at least, it doesn't exist in the forums that are popular on facebook). I struggled to describe how we homeschooled because it didn't fit into anything that I saw out there.

What do you think has changed since 2009 that would make your advice no longer relevant?

It's not a waste for the people that are newer, though. If the veterans feel very "been there, done that" on a topic they can simply not participate. I do find it off-putting when veteran homeschoolers say "That's been covered so many times; use the search feature". I think that shuts down conversation.

I'm perusing the book options for my bookworm for Christmas. It will be hard not to give them to him early!

I'd make a pasta salad with it. Chop all those things up, add cooked pasta, some Italian dressing, and you're done.

Ha, no, I don't feel nitpicked by you. Even if you are nitpicking me, I don't take it personally. I feel like I "know" you well enough now that we'd probably be friends in real life if we were closer. It's all good. It's more of a general vibe.

Sleep and water. Honestly, those are the two biggest helps when I have colds. I always underestimate how much better I will feel if I drink more water.