I'm enjoying this side conversation about AC, perhaps because I'm a little obsessive about ours all summer. Our upstairs unit can do whatever we ask of it, but we have this annoying sunroom with giant windows downstairs that makes the AC have to work really hard. We have to set it lower than we actually want it to be in the mornings (usually we go with 72) so it can get ahead of things....if we do that it can keep it to around 75 or 76 even on really hot, sunny days....otherwise it will slowly creep up to 78 while we watch helplessly. Being the first one up and forgetting to turn the air down before it starts to get hot is a terrible crime in our house.

Goodness, I hope not: if we don't even have wearing masks as a way to slow down spread, it will be even longer before we can get back to any version of normal. But I would expect if this were a widespread problem, we'd have evidence of it by now from countries where wearing masks has long been a cultural norm.

I did it at home a couple of years ago and will again not this coming year but the next year. AP lit is one that I didn't feel like I needed to really follow an AP syllabus...we mostly just did literature and added in some AP prep stuff, and it went well (he got a 5). But English is the subject I'm most comfortable with (I put in 3 years towards an English phD before I had kids and taught several semesters of freshman comp in grad school), so I don't know how much that had to do with it. I certainly didn't feel the same confidence about the history classes we've done. But, yeah, I just kind of taught what I wanted to teach, put a big emphasis on poetry and on close reading in general, and he did a bunch of practice essays (sometimes timed; sometimes I'd use the prompts for longer, untimed essays, too), and he went through a test prep book before the exam. Oh, one really helpful thing is making sure they have a couple of works that they know very, very well that have broad and complex enough themes that they can plan to use one of them on the open choice essay (I'm blanking on what it's called right now). Hamlet works with just about any prompt 🙂 DS ended up writing about Invisible Man on that one, though, which he had read recently.

Listen to the RV Atlas podcast and join the facebook group (full disclosure: I've been on the podcast a few times, so I'm biased, but I listened to it way before that). We were supposed to be doing a big Michigan trip this summer; we canceled it, but have done a couple short trips closer to home instead.

Ours are comfortable and seem to fit pretty well, but my glasses fog up immediately if there's any humidity. I think the wire is a must with glasses.

I found it on Johns Hopkins site: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/new-york

New York's positivity rate was MUCH higher at its peak. Florida's is, what, a little under 20% lately? New York state's was 50% in April (I imagine higher in NYC--I'm just looking up numbers quickly to get a rough idea)

If you're identifying more cases, the death rate will look lower than if a bigger percentage of cases goes undiagnosed. Florida is testing something like 7x as many people right now as NYC was at its peak (peak of cases, not testing). When you're doing less testing, it's the very serious cases that you're more likely to find, and those are the people who are more likely to die, so it will look like the death rate is higher than if you're catching a big percentage of less severe and asymptomatic cases. We can't know the true mortality rate unless we find every single case (and correctly identify every single death).

That's because Florida is doing more testing than New York was when things were bad and finding a higher percentage of cases. It might also be partially because treatments are better now, but I think it's mostly about testing. The positivity rate suggests Florida still isn't doing enough testing (you want it under 5%), but its outbreak happening when tests are more available means they can do way more testing. But my math is looking at the death rate compared to the entire population of NYC. Somewhere around .25% of ALL NEW YORKERS died (I'm not doing math again to find the precise number). I.e. it has nothing to do with the death rate for verified cases, because I was responding to the idea that NYC has herd immunity now. If they do, it took about .25% of the population dying to get there.

Even if that were true, if the US as a whole had the same death rate as NYC had, we'd be looking at almost 900,000 deaths in the US before we're finished. ETA: someone should probably check my math

yes. the math is staggering.

But do you think they'll ever get to the same point we're at? I think that especially in places that have already been hit hard, people don't want to go there again and will do what they have to do to keep it from happening. I don't think a New Zealand like scenario where there's no more coronavirus and everyone can have a big party to celebrate is realistic most places, but I do think we know enough now to keep things from exploding by keeping a certain level of precautions in place and stomping out fires when they pop up. I hope. But, yeah, winter will be rough. But I'd much rather be going into winter looking like Europe than looking like the US.

My college aged oldest will decide for himself whether to go back; for now he's learning toward going (if his school actually has in person classes). He'll be going from our hotspot state to a state with much better numbers, and his (very small) college has decent safety protocols in place. I'm more nervous on behalf of his professors and people like custodians and food service workers than I am on his (though of course I'll still be a wreck if he does get sick 1000 miles from home). But every professor was given a choice to only offer classes online, hybrid, or in person. My 17 year old is supposed to start dual enrollment this year, and we've decided he'll only do online classes at least for the fall. The others are homeschooled, and any outside classes they're doing have already announced they'll be online only for the beginning of the year at least.

I think the goal should be to do what pretty much every other wealthy country in the world has been able to do: get transmission rates low enough that it's reasonable to stop new outbreaks before they get out of control, so that we can maintain a careful new version of normal until there's a vaccine and/or more effective treatments. It's clearly not impossible, because most countries have done it already.

In my area deaths and hospitalizations stayed low for awhile as cases rose, but now hospitalizations are at record levels and deaths are rising steadily. Hospitalizations and especially deaths are lagging indicators. Deaths not only because it takes awhile for people to die of covid, but because deaths often aren't reported in real time. Cases are rising at a much faster rate than testing in much of the country. In some areas the increase in testing can explain much/most of the rise in cases, but it's easy to see that that's not true in many other areas. ETA I'm skeptical of the "cases are only going up because of testing" argument because we saw people say that about places like Florida long past the point when it was clearly untrue.

As an individual, I wouldn't trust any antibody test to give me useful information (for lots of reasons: accuracy of the test plus all the uncertainty about antibodies vs. t-cells....i.e. I wouldn't feel like I knew more about my individual risk or immunity for covid no matter what result I got from an antibody test). The better ones might be useful for getting information about a large population. Disclaimer: I took statistics a very long time ago. https://www.businessinsider.com/best-coronavirus-antibody-tests-ranked-by-accuracy-2020-7 FWIW (which is not much) we had a mysterious long lasting illness run through our house in March, the primary symptoms of which were a very persistent dry cough and brief low grade fevers, and both my husband and I have had negative antibody tests since. Based on that I've concluded that it's fairly likely we had something else but also that I still think the timing was really weird, and I don't trust the antibody tests, so who knows? I.e. the antibody tests were pretty much a waste of time, because I also wouldn't have trusted them if they'd been positive.

Why does she want you to stop the biologic if people on immunosuppresants are doing better? (my husband is on a biologic for psoriasis, and he's been wondering if he should keep taking it if he returns to in person teaching soon).

He's already planning to record lessons at home (he's been doing some of that for a couple of years now, and it really ramped up in the spring, of course) as much as possible. and, yeah--good point about normalizing masks for the students so it's no big deal when they get back to the classroom for everyone to be wearing them.

Thank you! It's super helpful to hear from someone else who's thought through the same issues. And, yeah, I managed to be very head in sand about it from when schools closed in March until recently, but things are getting very real now. Would love the details about the air purifier and mask (I ordered him some happymasks that so many people here have recommended, but I'd like for him to have a few different options and see what he likes best since he'll be wearing them so much)

He SHOULD be the only person who goes in the room other than custodians after school to clean, although he said last year they were saying they didn't have enough classrooms and some people would have to share this year. I hope they'll figure out an alternative to that given the circumstances. Good idea about the filter--we'll look into that!

not in Georgia! He's lucky; other counties in our area (with very high community transmission right now) are still planning to start in person, with no mask requirement for teachers or students and no social distancing, in a week or two.

DH is a high school teacher; his district will be starting the year online, but he's required to teach online from his classroom. Putting aside how I think this is really dumb and increases risks unneccessarily, should he be wearing a mask when he's alone in his (air conditioned, no windows that open) classroom, or would that be overkill? I'm thinking mask in public areas (they're saying all meetings will still be online) but not alone in his classroom? FWIW, he's in his mid 40s and generally healthy, but is on an immunosuppressant for psoriasis.

ah yes. I noticed ours have switched to 5 or more instead of needing to have exact multiples of 5, so that makes it a bit easier. I've mostly been just not worrying as much as usual about grocery costs right now, but....that can't really keep going forever.

that stinks--our Kroger only charges you for the cheaper thing if they substitute a more expensive brand (or even a bigger size)

We've been doing Kroger pick-up since March. It's super easy: the interface is very user friendly, and you can modify your cart up until midnight the night before. I used to have to reserve a slot a full week in advance, but now I can usually get a same day slot if I want one (I'm Atlanta metro). There are usually a few substitutions, which they text you about in advance and you can accept them or not. Most things I can get easily now, but some meat is hit or miss. A few weeks ago I had two different cuts of beef in my cart and they said neither was available and didn't offer any substitutes....so my husband went in to the store to see what he could find himself and there was a full meat counter. I think maybe they're not sure what to sub when you want a specific steak or whatever. Produce--yeah--it can be harder to figure out what to order, but they usually do a good job picking it out. We may stick with doing pick-ups even when things calm down--like maybe do a big pick up once a month and then a small weekly trip for meat and produce and milk. Mostly it's been a very good experience.