about what? there's no dispute that they asked for the ventilators is there? I don't find "we're not out of ventilators NOW; we just anticipate that we might be soon" all that reassuring. Florida has more people hospitalized for covid now BY FAR than they have at any other point in the pandemic. It makes sense that they're concerned about their health care system holding up.

Not pleading, just asking politely as they shatter covid hospitalization records on a daily basis. I'd be curious to know which other states have made "routine" requests for 300 ventilators from the federal government over the past few days.

I sent my husband back to school; does that count 🙂 This was the first week; until a couple of weeks ago it looked like it would be masks optional, but at the last minute they announced that schools in cities with an incidence rate over 100/100,000 (over 14 days) would require masks. Which left ONE city masks optional because they were at 98/100,000. So they were masks optional for the first 3 days until the new epidemiology report came out and showed them at something like 150/100,000. Shocker. Masks optional county next door already went virtual for the whole 5th grade in one school because of too many cases. So I'm glad our county is doing something, even if it's a fairly wishy washy policy (99/100,000 isn't actually low!) He says compliance in his classes is mostly good, although with more noses sticking out than last year. His students find out quickly that he doesn't mess around about enforcing the mask policy, though. He says that when he ventures into the hallways, things don't look as good.

Yeah, I don't know to what extent masks and bell covers are safety theater, but I appreciate that they're trying and acknowledging that covid exists at least. My senior is applying to schools as a music performance major this year, so opting out of performing for another year would be a very big deal and not a decision I'd feel comfortable making for him, given that he's vaccinated. He's homeschooled, so he can limit his exposure elsewhere and limit how much other people are exposed to HIM...but I'll feel a lot better when this surge is on the wane and when his little brother can be vaccinated. ETA: I will say that I bought him a slitted mask last year and a different on this year, and the newer design does seem a lot better thought out and gives more coverage than the old one. And I like to see "learning to live with covid" looking like that--finding ways to do things as safely as possible--instead of it looking like, "oh, well--everyone's going to die sometime!"

Mine are doing masks inside, but they would do that whether I encouraged it or not (and I have immune to peer pressure types, too). I'm kind of resigned to masks during surges for the foreseeable future, vaccinated or not. But then, I really don't consider masks in climate controlled buildings to be a very big deal. It's not my favorite, but it's fine. That said, I am letting my vaccinated wind players go to youth orchestra this year. They'll have masks with slits and bell covers, which is...something I guess. That's the sort of risk vaccines are making me willing to take this year when I wouldn't last year.

couple more thoughts: This will be an interesting experiment in how effective masks are (not a perfect one, since I imagine the families going to maskless school would tend to be less cautious in general and probably less likely to be vaccinated...but if they have significantly higher transmission rates there it would be difficult for them to continue to argue that there's no reason for a mask mandate. And if they don't, that would be pretty convincing in the other direction (with other disclaimers about how they're probably less likely to test, etc). And word is a bunch of these parents are getting notes from doctors saying their kids are unable to wear masks, which seems like it's kind of given the schools an opening to do this: sorry, we can't safely accommodate your kids' special medical needs at their home schools, so we can offer you this alternative. Too bad your kids are all too fragile to wear masks!

Funny you should say that. Our county's new plan is to open up a masks optional alternative K-8 program for at least this semester. I have many questions. Like who's going to sign up to go teach there?! And how many people will really send their kids to plague school?! But I'm impressed that they're telling the parents who don't want to follow public health guidelines that THEY'RE the ones whose kids need to go elsewhere at least.

I'm sorry 😞 . And it all sounds very familiar. My husband won't miss teaching online and in person at the same time this year...except for how it means he has 30 kids in all of his classes. Our county is a weird case because it's sort of split in half by Atlanta (which is its own system. If Atlanta were part of the county schools there'd be NO QUESTION about requiring masks). The northern half of the county is largely rich white parents and the southern half is largely not so rich Black parents. And guess which group is protesting the mask mandate AND has time to organize protests and money to get lawyers involved and connections to somehow find doctors to sign medical waivers for their kids? I'm kind of surprised the superintendent is still hanging in there for now with the mask mandate, honestly. He doesn't strike me as a guy with a lot of backbone, but I will grudgingly admit that he has a tough job right now that I wouldn't take for a billion dollars.

Well, if THESE people were ready to get rid of schools, they'd already be homeschooling. Clearly they don't think they can do it themselves or they wouldn't need to send my husband threatening e-mails about how HE'S doing it all wrong. This particular group is all wealthy white parents who paid a lot for their houses and expect a highly ranked school system that bends to their will. And they're not used to not getting their way.

DH got his first vaguely threatening e-mail from parents protesting the mask mandate today. I had heard that such things were going around. Among many other things, it tells him that he's breaking the law if he enforces the mask rules by "practicing medicine without a license." It would be hilarious if there weren't so many people behind it and similar things. It ends by threatening that so many people are going to homeschool that "you won't have a school left." oh no--please don't pull YOUR kids out of school, angry parents who don't understand science! How will the schools soldier on without your awesome family's participation?! And given that there are teacher shortages all over the place this year, and my husband has the biggest class sizes he's ever had, I'm pretty sure students leaving isn't the biggest thing to worry about at the moment. People sure are going to miss teachers and nurses when they're gone.

I'd fly. 14 hours isn't a safe drive to do all in one stretch by yourself, and it sounds like that's how you'd have to do it. Realistically, I bet the risk of an accident making that drive would be bigger than the risk of covid. Wear a good mask, don't get to the airport earlier than you have to, don't eat on the plane, etc. But if I could, I'd wait until the current surge is over and you can get more time off and make the visit then. For context, my oldest goes to college a 20 hour drive away and has flown back and forth several times during covid. I'm not thrilled about it, but driving him isn't a realistic option, and I'm not confident that it's safer anyway given that we'd need to do hotels, lots of gas and bathroom stops, etc. etc. if we drove. He'll be flying back at the end of the month, double masked and all that.

Not personally, but the two I can think of hearing about in the past few days are my SIL's Dad and my friend's next door neighbor (she was a needle-phobia case. I have to admit I have a hard time understanding being that scared of needles AND making it so far into life (I think she's in her 50s) being able to avoid needles. I say as someone who's been pregnant 4 times and now has to get bloodwork twice a year for thyroid testing).

Probably someone has made this point already somewhere, but the percent vaccinated needed for herd immunity will be higher with a more transmissible strain. That's just the math. The 70% figure, in addition to always being an estimate, was thrown out there before Delta was dominant in the US.

Thanks, everyone! I ordered some of the bluna masks, and I'm going to hop on the next Happy Mask shipment in hopes of scoring some then.

I'm following their updates on social media; they say they're getting 2-3 shipments a week, but that the last shipment they sold in 3 minutes what they were selling in a week in June. It won't let me order anything and have it shipped when it comes in--everything is just listed as out of stock.

Happy Masks have been out of stock ever since I started checking a week or two ago. I bought Kn95s for my husband and my other adult-sized, vaccinated family members who'll have a lot of indoor exposure soon until I can get new Happy Masks (ours are all getting old), but I'm not sure what to get my 8 year old (his only inside thing will be an hour class once a week with a few other kids, all of whom will be masked...until a few weeks ago I'd have been fine sending him in a cloth mask, but now I'd like something more hard core). Everything I'm finding is sold out or won't ship for at least a couple of weeks.

Yep--we do this, too. My husband just eats them right out of the freezer all winter; a little mushy, but they still taste good!

My two who are at home did pretty well last year; they had each other; they had a lot of online stuff, and they had their good friend down the street who they hung out with (outside) a whole lot. The biggest problem was missing out on music, particularly for my oldest. One of his music groups did meet in person; we let him go when they were rehearsing outside before it got cold and then again after he was vaccinated in the spring. This year they're both vaccinated, and they'll be back to most things in person (they're homeschooled, but there's a bunch of music, DE, etc), and we'll hope that vaccines + masks indoors will be enough (masks indoors is a problem for two wind players; I just bought useless-seeming masks with slits in them and bell covers, but it felt sort of silly). We just found out that their D&D group at the library that was supposed to start back up after a year + hiatus is delayed indefinitely, so that's a bummer. They got an online group going last year, and that will likely continue.

I think it's hard to say, but that we'll know soon because a lot of schools in the south have already started. How soon does she need to decide? Last year in my area numbers stayed relatively low in schools with mask mandates and other precautions. In schools without them numbers were definitely higher, but I still didn't see situations where whole classrooms were getting sick (it was more small clusters of cases; when there were large outbreaks it was generally associated with indoor sports or with parties outside of school). But all bets are off with Delta, of course. I'll say that I just saw numbers on three metro Atlanta counties from their first week--all are reporting well over 100 cases the first week...but this week isn't the week when we'll see whether it's SPREADING in classrooms.

I used to be a total Nate Silver apologist. but, yeah--embarrassing is the right word for his covid takes.

Here, too. I'm pretty sure my oldest didn't start this early (although he had a draft of his essay by the end of summer), but my current senior has auditions to prep for (applying as a clarinet performance major), so I'm going to try to get him to get a little done every day with the common app with the goal of all apps submitted by October I think. Most of his schools require separate applications for the college and the music school. We made it to Bard and Baldwin-Wallace over the summer, so that leaves Vanderbilt as the only place he's planning to apply that he hasn't seen in person yet. And we just found out Vanderbilt has a new clarinet prof, so I guess he has another sample lesson to schedule to see if it's still a good fit. He'll likely only apply to 5 schools. My oldest applied to SIXTEEN, so this is making me nervous. But it's a completely different game with auditions and all that.

Maybe I'm the only one who'd never thought of it this way before, but this post on twitter last night was a lightbulb moment for me: (I'll leave out the part where Nate Silver came along and got upset because apparently now he not only believes that he IS an epidemiologist, but that he invented epidemiology. I can't with him anymore).

yes--I agree, in theory--but there was a lot of pick your battles going on with homeschooling that one 😉 . This was my kid who would have meltdowns when he was 6 because you can't erase crayon. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have broken him forever; he's still a perfectionist, but he's a lot more patient about it now. But, yeah, wariness of it happening again is one reason we're doing Beast Academy with my youngest (it either wasn't out yet or was very new and not on my radar yet with his brother).

Yes--it was a bad fit for my super perfectionist oldest because he was used to math being easy; being SUPPOSED to struggle to answer all the questions did not work for him. My youngest is my other mathy kid, and I'm hoping he'll fare better with AOPS because he'll get there through Beast Academy, so he'll be used to it.

That was true here last year, but not this year. But last year they had teachers teaching online and in person at the same time, so it didn't really matter, staffing-wise, how many kids did which thing. This year the virtual is all separate (which is good; DH didn't want another year of dealing with the split classes), so it won't work the same way.