Thank you very much! I will certainly give this a listen. (For anyone else interested, it's on the BBC website and does not appear to require sign-in because it is a radio program).

If there was somewhere for people who received the vaccine to park for the "waiting" time, then a drive-through practise could work well... ...as long as there's a plan to reunite cars with any driver who needs transport to hospital.

The plan in the UK is for practices to get the vaccine from their hub hospital (which already has the necessary type of freezer) regularly enough that they can use their standard fridge system on site. The key issue in the UK is that the 15-minute rule means a vaccine is a triple appointment (standard appointments are 10 minutes, and it is unlikely a doctor would feel safe about accounting for the time taken to queue safely, explain the protocol and do the actual injection in under 5 minutes). That means it would only be possible to do 2 vaccinations per room, per hour, and that room cannot be used for other tasks the general practices are expected to provide. Even on the proposed contract of 12-hour days (itself a problem because practices are being told to have as many staff as possible work from home due to the pandemic - telemedicine has really taken off this year), assuming staffing can be found for breaks (not a given due to this alredy being 2 hours more of opening than the standard practice contract), that's still only 24 vaccinations per room, per day. When the alternative is to see 48 people for other matters (standard contract, assuming people get 1 hour of break and have 1 hour worth of no-shows in a day), and there's a minimum-staffing rule in place, it's easy to ask the hospitals to make other arrangements (even before this, stadiums and large conference halls were being organised to allow mass socially-distanced vaccination to go ahead).

Some of the Oxford/Astrazeneca participants got their vaccine in April. So far, I have seen no reports of the vaccine's effects wearing off. While I can't point to confirmation as yet, I am hopeful.

A new version of Shoseki was made available on Kindle last month (link to Amazon UK for the Grade 1 book), which may be why the old version has been withdrawn, at least from new sales. I have no idea if or when Amazon (or anyone else selling in English) will have print versions available. There doesn't seem to be separate textbooks and workbooks available either, so if you have the new Shoseki, it's possible you may already have all there is to the series in its present form. CD-Japan indicates it still has English-language Gakko Tosho books. Globaledresources has been down since 2015, and is not expected to return.

OK, this is bad. (Although the majority of UK vaccine was already planned to be Oxford/Astrazeneca, which hopefully won't have this type of problem as it works differently). It's two people out of several thousand, which is still fewer than for the flu jab. A fair number of clinicially extremely vulnerable people (i.e. those most likely to suffer if they catch actual COVID) have a history of allergies, and for one person I know, that includes some vaccines. (And for that matter, given that I had to go to hospital after the flu jab, I won't be able to have the Pzifer vaccine either). Although the people who got it first, apart from hospital workers, were over-80s who were already in hospital or who were invited in after meeting selection criteria (that tweet @Pam in CTcited was one of the latter). My guess is that if any other groups of people shouldn't take this vaccine, we'll know in the next fortnight.

Theatre was supposed to start back at my local venue in December, but then lockdown followed by strict restrictions followed. Theatres can be open in about half of the UK (most of them have an 11 pm curfew because they sell alcohol) and most of them will probably host their Christmas performances with a limited live audience in some format, but my area is in Tier 3 and theatre remains closed. There is a good chance theatre will still be back before the cinema near me is, because that's shut until there are new films to show (which they reckon isn't going to happen until Easter at the earliest because of the importance of the USA market)...

Depends which vaccine it is. Siome are 21 days (e.g. Pzifer), others are 28 days (e.g. Oxford). I assume vaccine cards will only be issued after the last dose is taken, and dated from 7 days after the dose is given (because that's how long it takes for vaccines to be guaranteed to protect at the level they are rated to protect). Vaccine containers, syringes, extra containers for fridge/freezer storage and disposable PPE. And yes, dry ice as @Laura Corin mentioned. At the moment, all the English distribution is through hospitals. I think the plan is to use them as distribution centres once everyone eligible in hospital has been immunised (at the moment, that's over-80s and healthcare staff identified as at unusual risk of spreading COVID due to the nature of their work). One of the issues with the Pzifer vaccine is that it is shipped in packs of 945 and at the moment cannot be split without starting the 5-day period that it is stable in a regular fridge. So having the main packs in hospitals means that when it is the turn of care homes to receive the vaccine, it will be easier to co-ordinate the doses' release. I can confirm that Margaret Keenan, who received the first vaccine in the UK, lives alone, because she said she hadn't seen anyone for most of the year, I suspect PR may be one of the deciding factors for early ordering - how else to explain the coincidence that William Shakespeare was the second person vaccinated? In tangential news, The Lancet has published an interim analysis of Oxford-AstraZeneca's Phase III trial.

In the UK, officially-recorded (registered) homeschooling is estimated to have increased 38% since a year ago (note: not all homeschoolers register; only students with documented disabilities and official accommodations that have already started school are legally required to register intent to homeschool, not everyone knows registration is an option let alone a recommendation, and many parents who started registering may have missed the cut-off to be included as registered homeschoolers on this year's census). 25% of this occurred since September 1 (the start of the school year, when students went back full-time). This is despite the fact that schools are required to meet in person, with internet-based options (which may range from emailing lessons home to joining the class via videoconferencing) for anyone not in a position to physically attend, plus a requirement for schools to set a full day's work in the usual range of subjects (and in England and Northern Ireland, that work is still required to build up to exams for students due to take them). Unlike in previous years, where the primary reasons given were mental health, encouragement by schools to start homeschooling and faith, this year's have primarily been due to COVID-19 and lack of confidence in the students getting a safe/sound education. (There seems to be some who think it's dangerous to send children to school, and others who would accept the risk but believe they can do a better job of teaching their children - or whose schools/classes are self-isolating so often that even "console-schooling" would provide a more consistent education than trying to learn at school). So I'm not surprised a lot of children also aren't in school where TravelingChris lives.

I think medical people who are not exempt should be required to be vaccinated. Otherwise, people should be given the option of continuing to be socially distanced or taking the vaccine, where that's operationally feasible. (I can imagine situations where an employer might say everyone must continue to be socially distanced, and others where nobody can be and therefore non-exempt people will have to be vaccinated). However, it will be difficult for any mandates to be put in place until the general community can have the vaccine. In the months where it is being rationed, it is likely that an employer won't be able to insist on vaccination unless they've been earmarked for priority (as I expect will happen for medical employment). Otherwise they'll risk getting prosecuted for discrimination on protected characteristics.

I've had one 2021 concert I was going to attend postponed until October of next year (it was originally going to happen in April 2020, but there is a lot of determination to make the concert happen, and everyone is in a position to wait until holding it becomes a reasonable proposition, which is why next spring got vetoed), and one other event is not-quite-officially cancelled altogether (because it can only happen in January of a given year, it is annual, and nobody seriously expects it to be legal - let alone wise - to have that big an event in January). Two running races have been delayed until spring 2021 and I anticipate they will move again to high summer or possibly even autumn. (Both, I expect to eventually happen, even if it means people doing the same race twice in the space of 3 months). I think the Tokyo Olympics will happen because too much has been spent for it to not happen at some point, but wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being 2022 or even 2023 (the latter if there's a reason it cannot be the same year as the Winter Olympics). Of course, some athletes who qualified will likely retire before then (and at least one British Paralympian who qualified has died of COVID), further complicating the qualification process. It may well be that, at least for some sports in some countries, the process will have to be started afresh. Even in the UK, there are children who have lost nine months of school at this point - most children received no teaching at all for 6 weeks (those in greatest need due to disability or social worker contact were among the exemptions), then a lot of children were taught online/via email for two months (which isn't accessible for around 20% of students), then this term, some schools have only managed to have children in school for two weeks due to isolation requirements. (Legally, face-to-face has to be offered to all students not legally required to isolate, but in many cases entire year groups are in a bubble and if one student is exposed to COVID-19, the whole "bubble" - in this case the whole year group - has to stay home for 10-14 days, depending on if the exposed child tests negative). Exams are confirmed as happening in a very watered-down state, with backup plans for individual students who miss all their exams. Schools have been told to make substantial use of the special circumstances part of the entry form to explain all COVID-19-related (and indeed any other) disturbances to education the student has experienced in the previous 24 months.

The downsides first: There is cartoon violence (the video @hjffkjlinked has all of it). There is a fear element; the objective of crew is to complete tasks and survive, the imposter objective is to kill the crew without being detected (I did once manage to win as the imposter without killing anyone personally, but usually some killing is going to happen...) Some of the language on public online games is quite unsavoury, and unfortunately this is a game which requires the chat function in order to be playable (this being where players justify their actions, accuse others and discuss strategy - co-operation is a requirement to do well in Among Us). The developers are aware of the language issue and are in the process of creating an account system to assist with this, but we don't know when it will happen. If bad language is an issue in your household, I strongly recommend instituting a rule that games can only be played with people who are known to you, on a private/self-hosted server (Note also the game is for 4-10 players). Oh, and it requires some sort of internet. If, knowing all this, you decide to go ahead with Among Us... ...it is a very good game in its genre, with even fairly young children being able to play (the recommendation for the phone app is 9+ because it's not an especially complex game to learn). If feasible, have everyone practise the tasks in Freeplay mode before starting a game - while it's pick-up-and-play, it's more fun if everyone starts with a basic understanding of how to do the tasks. It is very rare for a game "round" to take more than 10 minutes and the majority last less than 5, so it's a good game for gradually building mastery. I also recommend a house rule that everyone wears a different "hat" if there are likely to be any colour-blind players (this allows better accessibility). Final note: the phone versions are free, the PC version costs (a small amount of) money, the minimum requirements of the PC version are low enough that most computers less than 10 years old can easily manage it, all non-beta versions have the same features and all play seamlessly together. So it doesn't matter if you have a mix of desktops, laptops, Apples and Androids in your house, they'll all be able to play in the same game.

Ear savers are the best thing I've seen. You can get a length of fabric (or crochet or knit a length of material) appropriate for the back of each child's head and the masks they have, sew a big button on each side, and that automatically gives the ear loops the correct tension (as well as making the whole process comfier on the ears). Which is basically what you were going to do anyway (they can be bought, but I think homemade has its own charm) 🙂

I mask unless I can't see anyone who is in a position to come near me faster than I can mask and I'm exercising. The mask goes on before I leave the house and unless I'm exercising a long way from others, stays on until I'm where I'm supposed to be. (If that place is not home, it only comes off if absolutely necessary, for example to eat). I'm perfectly comfortable walking, or even lightly jogging, with the mask on, and there doesn't seem much point in taking it off when that leaves the question of where else it can hygeinically be placed. (That's easier to solve indoors, since I can leave a space to put down a mask that I will later clean if, for example, I am anticipating a delivery and I decide to drink some water while I wait). I try to stay more than 6 feet away from people outside my bubble even outdoors and masked because this feels safer. However, beyond a certain intensity of exercise, the mask has to come off or I can't get enough oxygen into my lungs. Obviously, if anyone looks like they're going to be anywhere near me, I slow to a comfortable speed and reapply the mask until I have enough space again. (My criteria for this is "in sight and coming towards me, or looking like they might change their direction without warning - in both cases, regardless of distance - or in a place where people could come within about 16 feet (5 metres) of me without me noticing") TL;DR Having to take off the mask for no particular reason only to put it on again feels like too much flaff... ...exercise is a reason but I like my space.

Because one of the things the "good hygeine practices" are supposed to do is prevent COVID (or anything else that could make anyone ill) get into the food.

I think it's more of a "you can't get your risk to zero, but you can get it low". While I cannot say zero people get it from wiped-down groceries, I suspect it's a lot lower than the number who didn't wipe it down or take other precautions, or forgot to do it that one time. Consistency may be more important than taking out the last possible %. Pandemic burnout is a thing (and may be the cause of some pandemic apathy out there). Takeout can be wiped down, at which point it should be as safe as regular groceries provided you pick somewhere with good hygeine practices. (Phoning places and asking seems like a good move). Thinking about risk is good. However, good core practices are helpful for avoiding it. If you had asked me about the average person I know who's had COVID, rather than the most precaution-taking, I'd have answered with a good solid category 4 (because COVID-unsafe workplaces, getting drunk in the pub and illegal parties/gatherings are the three biggest sources I've seen between lockdowns).

I recall one such case being traced to dustbin lids. I live in a building split into 4 flats, where I only know any members of 2 out of my 3 neighbours. We have an unspoken, informal rota for the bins, where one person takes them out and another puts them back (we've sort of noticed that 3 people, in the entire building, do anything with the bins). So if someone brings back the bins someone else took out (especially if it was shortly after the bin was emptied), and the weather is dodgy (in dry, warm weather, the half-"life" of the virus is under 5 minutes, but that rises considerably if it is cold and/or damp), and that person forgets to wash their hands before carrying on with their day (something it's advisable to do after handling bins regardless of pandemics), then it's possible to catch COVID-19 that way, without knowing the neighbour. (It's hypothetically possible to catch it from the refuse workers that way too, though given the PPE they use it would take a lot of bad luck).

In the community, the most isolated person I know who has caught COVID was in a bubble with people who were leaving the house to go to work and the store, but nothing else (no medical appointments occurred during the potential infection window). That person is 95% sure it was picked up at the store, because in that phase of the virus, they were struggling to locate any shops bothering to uphold the masking law in their area (I should say this person does not live in the USA, and they have since found a suitably safe store) and the workplace of the person in bubble who was working was taking a lot of COVID precautions. However, I know quite a few people in care homes who didn't leave their rooms and still got COVID. That's a bit trickier, since depending on definition of "bubble", they may be support-bubbling with staff, who obviously can't be isolating to the same extent they are... (Hearteningly, I also know someone who hunkered down when they saw their fellow dorm members weren't following good practise. This was successful, resulting in her being the only person on that dorm floor who did not get COVID. That person is currently waiting to see if their family starts following COVID best practise as a result).

Three of my friends have had COVID on multiple occasions, despite two of them being careful about safety precautions before, during and after both (all three in one case) occurrences. It makes sense because there are already six variants of COVID-19, and viruses generally mutate further the longer they exist. (The good news is that the more a virus mutates, on average the less lethal it becomes). Catching and fending off one grants immunity (probably, for most people) to that variant - but only resistance (at best) to others. Now, for a lot of people, that resistance is going to be strong enough that they might as well be immune. However, the amount of resistance people build up varies dramatically, and doesn't always tally with how severely they had it in the first place. So there's no way of knowing if one is going to be resistant enough to a particular variant or not, especially as we know the threshold for transmitting the virus isn't always the same as the threshold as getting any sort of symptom from it. (Any of us might have had COVID, but we can't guarantee everyone else has if any strangers are present). Masking is a good habit, especially for people who go to lots of busy places, and by this point, I think most people who are going to get into that habit are doing so. It seems silly to stop masking when it's probably still beneficial.

Some people definitely hit a cognitive ceiling (for a few, it's bevfore algebra, for a rather more substantial group of people, it's some way into algebra and statistics). For most people, I think it is less a question of there being a cognitive ceiling as a cognitive scaffolding assembly. Some mathematical concepts (easy ones) are well within one's grasp, and can be done with a small amount of scaffolding (or even with the ladder you keep in the shed). Other concepts (difficult ones) require every piece you have, a boxful of attachment pieces and a crew of assistants to ensure it's safe and doing its job correctly. In short, the more complex the concept, the longer and more difficult it is to support the concept's construction successfully. If your relatives have borrowed your scaffolding kit (i.e. you have lots of demands on your time), no capacity for difficult maths until they've finished and returned it, and you've documented that everything is back where it belongs. As people age (up to a certain point), they gain more resources they can use to help them mathematically. So a practical restriction now is by no means obliged to still exist a year or three later. If you know you're building somewhere, you may leave the scaffolding in place so you can build on it. But not forever because if it's not doing anything useful, it just looks ugly and perhaps it's more needed elsewhere. Any of these can lead to a situation where it's reasonable, given someone's personal situation, to stop building maths. They could go further, but it's not efficient for them, or their resources are needed elsewhere.

I disliked discovery methods in all subjects that are going to be assessed by outside parties, simply because no matter how it was framed, what I learned was invariably not what I was supposed to learn - and invariably the teachers would have no idea how I'd managed to get from what was in the discovery text to whatever idea I'd ended up with. (I did learn some useful maths that way, just never whatever it was the discovery exercise was supposed to teach me). In maths, I encountered it in one year of maths - possibly not a coincidence that this was the first year of algebra, though my difficulties with algebra continued in direct instruction - and also the statistics course. Managed an A in the latter purely because I found a direct-teaching statistics book. However, I've found discovery methods to be far more common in "life skills", English and history classes than maths - possibly because there's a set canon in maths that everyone has to learn regardless of preferred teaching style (which means books are more likely to be direct-teaching, with perhaps some discovery-based material from the teacher preceding it). Even in cooking, discovery methods led to no confidence and a lot of wasted food (never anything edible). I had to have very explicit instuction, and then I taught myself to experiment without ever needing or benefitting from discovery teaching in that field. Some students learn well from discovery. Some find it inimical to learning. Know your student and teach accordingly.

Precisely!

I had not seen Pzifer's press release. Do you have a link to it, please? No, I mean 10 people in Phase II got given a half-dose of vaccine in the first dose and a full dose of vaccine in the second - that's the accident that @Ausmumof3was referring to. This is important, because the preliminary phase information given by the BBC implies the prime-full regime might be more effective at protecting against COVID than the originally-planned version (the BBC interpretation indicates that the prime-full is 90% effective in the preliminary Phase III, against 62% for the original two-dose version. This indicates both versions were in use in Phase III). I'm wary of confirming those numbers because journalists (and press release writers) don't have time to peer-review their news items the way scientists do.

I've found a draft landscape of vaccines PDF file (unfortunately dating back to November 12, so not including developments from the last fortnight or so) featuring a lot of the phase result information links from the main candidate vaccines. Hope this helps.

If you've seen preliminary Phase III stuff from a source other than the BBC, possibly. Especially since the BBC is only reporting on confirmed trials in the UK and Brazil - the USA one, as well as a few others, weren't mentioned. (I only have Phase II to hand, as I'm waiting for Phase III to be peer-reviewed). The Phase II data is linked to the Lancet link I initially gave (repeated here to spare scroll fingers), and the data it linked to is in this PDF supplement (because it's not easy to tell which of the supplements the Lancet linked to has the data, and which the methodology PDF). There were 10 people on the non-randomised prime-full option (the term of art these scientists are apparently using for "oops, the first dose was half-strength by mistake"), versus 533 standard-dose and 534 controls.