having had omicron is not the same thing as being immune to omicron.

We usually haven't done a formal writing curriculum after WWS....I guess that's not entirely true; my oldest kid went through A Workbook for Arguments, and my current 11th grader is doing AP lang using The Brief Bedford Reader. But mostly they just do a lot of writing in different subjects; we do a lot of AP social sciences and English at home, so there's necessarily a lot of practice with argumentative writing built in to those.

My sample size is even smaller, but my WWS kids (i.e. my own kids) have been prepared for and done very well with high school and college level writing. But, yeah, we've used WWS as a middle school course (and into 9th grade sometimes). I don't know that I even noticed they don't teach thesis (I probably noticed, but it's been a few years), but I see that as a high school skill that I start hammering into them by the time they get to 9th grade lit.

There's tons of stuff if you google keto or low carb dessert recipes (most of them will be gluten free). These brownies are super easy to make: https://www.gnom-gnom.com/fudgey-cocoa-paleo-keto-brownies/ ...I mean, if you're okay with sugar substitutes. Also Lily's bars. Otherwise, yeah, I do very dark chocolate a lot.

Yes. They have a very high vaccination rate compared to the us. Including one round of boosters. I imagine a strategy of only boosting higher risk people going forward will keep their death rate low. If death was the only bad outcome with covid, that strategy would be less controversial, I imagine.

Incidentally, I just checked, and Denmark ranks 11th in the world in cases per 1,000,000, so it's possible they're not the best country to look to for guidance on reducing transmission. just saying.

While protection against severe disease and death is lasting a lot longer than protection against infection, the CDC still reports an infection rate 2-3x as high for the unvaccinated as for the fully vaccinated over this past summer, a number that's been pretty consistent ever since omicron took over (about 5x as high during delta and 10-13x as high before that). There could be other things at play there (perhaps the fully vaccinated are also more likely to take other precautions, although my observation lately is that...they're not), but those numbers certainly make it seem that there is some protection against infection, just not nearly as much as pre-omicron. But I think it's important to note that the rate of infection is at least twice as high in the unvaccinated in the US right now. That's pretty significant.

That seems to be true, but I guess the question is are students being admitted at a lower rate because they didn't submit scores or is it because students who don't submit scores tend to be weaker applicants overall. I wonder how the data compares with schools that have been test optional for a long time as opposed to ones that have only gone that direction because of covid.

Pretty much every study I've seen that looks at real life situations says that masking helps. Here's a recent one from Massachusetts: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278385v1 Anecdotally, the only one in my immediate family who's had covid is my oldest son, who got it as soon as he started his study abroad program last winter, which involved lots of unmasked social outings. My husband is a high school teacher who's been teaching in person since fall of 2020; for much of that time he's had close contact notifications multiple times a week. He's one of the only teachers who's masked with a good mask the whole time whether required or not, and he's stayed well. We all mask indoors and have mostly avoided inside restaurants (with a few exceptions when numbers were low). On the other hand, two of my kids play wind instruments, and they've been doing that in person again for awhile now (with masks when not playing). Some of it is luck, but some of it is that we're more careful than most people are. I'll be surprised if the luck doesn't run out at some point....but if I can get covid once instead of 3 or 4 times, then I'll take that (and the lower risk of serious and/or long term complications that come with every case of covid).

It's the "within their 50%" wording that made me think she's talking about a range rather than a single number (and schools very often report their 25th-75th percentile score range). And it's true, he'd probably submit a 1500 no matter what (although pretty much any school where the average is over 1500 would be crapshoot territory for most any kid), so I guess my thinking on the topic changes depending on what score we're talking about.

It sounds like the math is. I’m taking “their 50%” to mean the 25-75th percentile range. ETA: although it sounds like other people are reading that differently. So I might well be wrong!

I'm surprised to see people saying she should submit them with a score under the 25th percentile. I've always figured my 11th grader won't submit his anywhere where he's below their average, but maybe I've been thinking about it wrong. Would the advice be different for a non-homeschooler?

I've read that it was a trade off between more complete data/human trials with the BA1 version vs. better match with newer strains (we hope) with the BA5.

It seems doomed to backfire, too....like it's very likely word will get out (if not this time then some other time when someone gets covid) and then parents are likely to be more upset about having the information withheld than about the actual covid. At any rate, hope you feel better soon!

My husband and I both did both together, but we've historically had pretty mild reactions to both, so we weren't too worried. Sore arm was the only side effect from either (interestingly, my covid arm hurt more but felt better faster; flu arm is still a little sore 3 days later)

You should ask those people why they still tout the vaccines; it might have to do with the death rate for the unvaccinated still being 6x as high as for the fully vaccinated even as protection against transmission has waned with the new variants. Anyway, my preference for not dying or being hospitalized is one of the big reasons I'm vaccinated, so wonder no more about me at least!

Yes--he and a couple of other anti-vax people on twitter are the only references I can find to it as well. That and the news from June that the INITIAL trial from Pfizer had 8 mice. To me "per group" implies the existence of more than one group.

Where are you getting 8 mice from? The only thing I could find is that Pfizer presented initial findings back in June based on 8 mice. Presumably there have been more since then and Moderna also did trials?

They're doing human trials now, but, yeah...there are no results from those yet. It's the same with the flu vaccine every year; there's no way to keep up with new variants and still do human trials before approval. From what I've read there are no safety concerns because the vaccines are so similar to the originals....but we don't have a ton of information yet about how effective they'll be (and, again, it's the same with flu vaccines every year; there's no way to know in advance how good of a match they'll be for that year's strains).

They're out now; I got one last night at cvs at the same time as my covid booster (TWO sore arms! but not too bad, particularly the flu arm)

My understanding is that the old boosters no longer have approval for people 12 and up (there's still the original 2 dose series or the J&J one shot for people who've never been vaccinated), so any boosters should be the bivalent. My husband and I and our 16 year old all got ours last night--we got Moderna (at a CVS) and my son got Pfizer (at a Walgreens). I just have a sore arm and maybe some fatigue; my 16 year old woke up with a sore throat and headache and just general crumminess, although it's gotten better as the day has gone on. He also just went to Dragon Con last weekend (but has had a bunch of negative covid tests since then) and has seasonal allergies (and ragweed's just getting going here)...so in this case I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he's having a worse vaccine reaction than he did for his other doses rather than covid.

Variations on "it goes by so fast!" said to people in the thick of parenting young children annoys me. It doesn't make things any easier, and it adds the layer of making you feel guilty for not cherishing every sleepless night and temper tantrum or creating enough priceless childhood memories before you run out of time!

yes; my 19 year old already got it, 3 more of us have appointments tomorrow. It's been nearly a year since my last booster (and no covid as far as I know), and my husband teaches high school, so there's never a time (except summer) when we can avoid a lot of exposure.

My understanding has always been that atheist=lack of belief in a deity and agnostic means you think it's impossible to know whether god exists or not. It seems to me that atheism could encompass a wide range of things; you can either firmly believe there is no god or just say that you don't personally believe in any particular god or gods but don't take a position on whether god/s exist. Whereas strictly speaking agnosticism isn't just saying that YOU don't believe in a deity but taking the position that whether deities exist is impossible for humans to know. I.e. you could feel strongly that people who insist there's definitely no god are as wrong as people who insist there is. But it seems like people generally use atheist to mean someone who believes there is no god and agnostic for people who aren't sure one way or the other.

complex geniuses are pretty much my favorite. Also presidents who sign the Civil Rights Act even when it's the hard thing to do.