yeah, it's just not going to work. Like the surgeon general said this morning, the number one thing you have to do is get transmission rates down before you can open schools. Right now many, many parts of the country are looking at starting school in a couple of weeks and almost certainly, based on the numbers, having undiagnosed cases in every single school. Georgia has had over 300 cases since June in high school athletic programs, and school hasn't even started yet. There won't be enough subs. People will give their kids ibuprofen and send them to school sick because they're positive it's just a cold and they don't have enough sick leave to stay home. Teachers who would normally come to work with allergies or a mild cold will need to stay home this year. And, again, not enough subs. Put aside how there's still so much we don't know about long term complications. Put aside the fact that teachers exist and just focus on how very few kids will die. It's still just not going to work logistically. An overnight camp in North Georgia had an outbreak that started with one counselor and 18% of campers and counselors (all under 23) ended up testing positive, even though they shut the camp down quickly. Even though they tested everyone before camp started. Even though it was mostly outside. I've told that to people and had them respond, "sure, but how many of them are okay now? Was anyone hospitalized?" It doesn't matter when you're talking about keeping schools open. Imagine school after school having 18% of students and teachers out sick at any given time (not just for a day, but for many days or weeks in most cases). Imagine quarantining (or deciding NOT to quarantine) people who in were close contact with the 18%. It's not going to work. Get the transmission rates down, put every reasonable precaution in place, and be ready to step back if and when outbreaks pop up. Otherwise it won't work no matter how much we want it to.

My mother was pretty excited when I turned 18 (or maybe it was 17 then?) and could buy her cigarettes. And when my Dad was in high school, kids could smoke at school if they brought a note from their parents. And now we've just raised the age to 21 a few months ago, right?

And that makes me think about how much more restrictive the US is than a lot of countries about all kinds of public health and safety issues (the drinking age comes to mind, as well as smoking in public places and traffic laws). I don't think the argument that the US is uniquely unlikely to impose laws about nonviolent public health issues holds up.

As recently as when my oldest (19) was a baby, I remember being asked if we wanted smoking or non-smoking in restaurants. The fact that I (and, say, my asthmatic 14 year old) can go to enclosed public spaces without breathing in cigarette smoke makes me feel much MORE free, not less.

Georgia's governor defended not mandating masks this morning by comparing it to speed limits and saying people still speed. This seems to so obviously and clearly contradict the point he was trying to make that I can't quite believe he said it. Except that I totally can. I breathlessly await his executive order banning speed limits in the state.

2 4s for my 10th grader here (art history and european history); we were both relieved, particularly since I think multiple choice is more his strength (he's a good writer, but a SLOW one--being able to type probably helped). I wasn't too worried, though--I figure there's an asterisk by everything this year anyway, and if he hadn't done well no one would hold it against him.

And let's not forget that this is the guy who tweeted a picture of himself at a crowded restaurant back in March, encouraging everyone to get out there and have a great time. People who have power and influence and used it to tell people the virus was no big deal literally caused people to die by doing so. "Suffering" in this case means having a tough week of feeling crappy and lying in bed watching TV.

Thanks! I was wondering about that (but too lazy to look into it myself, apparently)

Mine is supposed to be starting dual enrollment part time, but I seriously doubt I'll be comfortable letting him go in person this fall in our area. So things are a bit up in the air right now, but tentatively: Math: AP Calc AB at home (DH is a high school calculus teacher, so this is all on him) History: AP US history at home (I'm putting this together; I'm doing a very thorough planning job compared to what I usually would, since it's been one of my quarantine projects. His 9th grade brother will join in, too) English: American Lit, which I'm also putting together to go along with APUSH Science: he's supposed to be taking "introduction to landforms" class DE (I wanted him to take physics, but the prereq rules are annoying, so that will have to wait for senior year). This might get pushed back to next semester or maybe he can do it online. We'll see. Spanish: again, supposed to be DE. He's done 2 years through Georgia Virtual School, so it's possible I could sign him up to do that again, but he'd much rather do it DE. I'm planning to do a fairly casual Spanish at home with my 9th grader, so he could always join in on that and still get plenty of Spanish in DE spring and/or next year. Music Theory: Well Trained Mind Academy He's also supposed to be playing clarinet in at least one youth symphony and auditioning for another one next month, but...we'll see. He'll take clarinet and piano either virtually or in person. He's planning to major in music, so that part is really tough. I'm SO glad he's not a senior this year, at least.

And if someone DID want to inflate the numbers, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to falsely report positives for people who actually took the test and were really negative? If you did that the people you were claiming were positive would never know the difference. Why do it in a way that makes it so easy to uncover? It doesn't make any sense.

This really highlights the enormous challenges of opening schools. A lot of teachers are prone to sinus infections (or mild colds. Or allergies). My husband (who's a high school teacher) had a sinus infection last week. He's had a mild cough from allergies for the past 2 weeks. Even putting aside the cough, last week when he had the sinus infection (so cough, swollen sinuses, generally feeling run down, maybe a slightly elevated temperature, but not an official fever). I went online just to see when he'd be able to get a COVID test, mostly out of curiosity for how it would go down if it happened two months from now when he's supposed to be back at school. I checked on Friday and he could have made an appointment for Tuesday, and results would be back in no less than a week. So if he started staying home from work and scheduled a test on the first day of symptoms, he'd be out at least a week and a half, assuming his test came back negative. I can count on one hand the number of sick days he's taken over the past 2-3 years put together, but if he has to stay home and get a covid test every time something like that happens....but of course, the consequences if you DON'T take those precautions are potentially fatal.

Isn't protecting public safety one of the only things most people can agree IS the government's job?

Churches were never required to close. Georgia never had a particularly hardcore shutdown. The state parks have all stayed open; the governor famously ordered the beaches reopened after local officials had shut them down. We refilled (curbside!) our CO2 tank that we use to fizz water a couple of weeks ago, because apparently the home-brew store is an essential business.

Probably not, and that's a whole other issue, and I would say that going forward we need to reevaluate who and what we value in our economy. Georgia is not following ANYONE'S idea of when and what it's safe to reopen, though. It has the 12th most cases in the US and is the 14th worst state at testing per capita. It doesn't come anywhere close to meeting the federal guidelines about when to start reopening. And bowling alleys? Movie theaters? Tattoo parlors? It doesn't make any sense and if/when it backfires then we're back to worse than where we started.

But if someone who worked at the bowling alley down the street and is collecting unemployment is called back to work (again--the bowling alley by my house is reopened as of today--it's not theoretical) wouldn't they no longer be eligible for unemployment if they didn't feel safe going back?

My understanding is that the issue is when the business DOES decide to open back up but employees don't feel inclined to risk their lives for a minimum wage job handing people bowling shoes.

There are (still to be announced, last I heard) social distancing and sanitation requirements. Still not a good plan. I doubt many theaters will actually open, particularly since most of them are part of national chains AND there are no movies being released right now. But movie theaters are one of the types of businesses explicitly allowed to reopen, which sounds like "advocating" to me. The bowling alley closest to us sent me an e-mail this morning telling me that they're open again as of today. I'm not bowling anytime soon, even though the e-mail reassures me they're only using every other lane. I can get a tattoo again now, too, but I'm also holding off on that for the time being.

Movie theaters are allowed to reopen in Georgia on Monday. Bowling alleys today. So you can put the governor of Georgia on your list of people advocating going to sit in a movie theater.

DS's college sent out an e-mail saying that online classes are a last resort and that they're considering shifting the calendar to start later in the fall if necessary. They also say they're planning to make a decision by June 1, which seems...optimistic. We'll see. I don't know that a November start date vs. a September start date is going to make much difference. It's a small college in a state that seems to have a pretty good handle on things, so I think they have a better shot at restarting safely than some places. But it's still a college campus with dorms and dining halls and all that.

There are a few random food things I have trouble getting in my Kroger pick-up orders...cage free eggs (but plenty of conventional eggs, it seems), gluten free Mac and cheese and chicken tenders...and then a lot of brand substitutions, but that's fine with me. I haven't had trouble getting meat or produce the past few weeks (except I keep trying to get the sale priced ham and not, but I could see that being sold out under normal circumstances, too). I haven't actually been inside a grocery store in over a month; it seems to be getting a little easier to schedule a pick-up time here--they schedule a week out, and I grab mine when they open up, but I've noticed that there are slots available 4 or 5 days away a lot of times now. I've been adding in an occasional Whole Foods delivery through Amazon, and so far I can always get a same day delivery, though I usually have to refresh the page a few times to find it. The system never lets me add paper products to delivery or pickups, but I've found everything on Walmart over the past couple of weeks and had it shipped. I can't compare prices--they seem about the same for individual items, but I'm shopping so differently than how I usually do that it's hard to say. We're certainly spending more on groceries than we did before, but I have an extra (college) kid home, I'm not paying attention to sales as much or using coupons, not going to Aldi for stock up trips, eating at home more, etc.

Some of our local Home Depots are doing curbside pickup. We had to go to the second closest one to find it, but we got stuff that way a couple of weeks ago.

yes, ours, too. We got $$ for our soon to be 17 year old, too, which was a nice surprise since I'd read the cut off was turning 17 before the end of the year.

I read that half of the people who tested positive on the Diamond Princess were asymptomatic, and presumably that was an older population. It's really interesting because everyone got tested on that ship whether they were symptomatic or not....even in places like South Korea where they're testing very widely it's my understanding that a fever is generally what triggers testing. And the 50% asymptomatic figure fits in with what we're seeing from Iceland, which, last I checked, is testing the biggest percentage of its population. So I think that our perception of a mild case in the US, where tests are very difficult to come by for most people, is probably off and there are a lot more people out there having truly mild symptoms and not just "I felt like I was dying but I didn't have to go the hospital" symptoms. Anecdotal evidence from celebrities and politicians and athletes who can get tested easily seems to support this. We all passed around a mystery virus that manifested as the worst, hardest to shake dry cough I've ever had in my life starting in early March (and STILL dragging on, though much better now). My husband and I both ran a low fever for maybe 2-3 nights but my kids didn't even though they had the same terrible cough. Assorted other mild symptoms varied by person--some people had sore throats, some digestive stuff, my husband had a really bad headache that kept him in bed all of one day. I tried to pass it off as allergies for awhile, but Zyrtec didn't touch it, I don't usually get allergies in spring (I'm a ragweed person), and I had no congestion even though that's always my number one allergy symptom. Who knows? I hope I find out someday!

We've been doing pickup orders, and it's been getting progressively better. Order before last there wasn't much produce or meat; last time the only things I didn't get were ground beef and, mysteriously, gluten free macaroni and cheese (but got other GF pasta and no problem getting pork or chicken). I have another pickup scheduled for Thursday and they're finally letting me put toilet paper in my order! We'll see if I actually get it or not. Atlanta metro area.

My two oldest both went from Jacobs to Foerster's for Algebra 2 (and then pre-calc/trig). It's worked well, although they liked Jacobs better.