Have you tried baking soda and water? It works well to get tea stains out of mugs.

I would encourage your DC to answer the "Who cares?" and the "So what?" questions -- to consider the larger consequences of the claim. Why does it matter? Why should readers care? What was the impact of that influence? What repercussions did it have down the line? To answer these questions, you would have to link the claim to other things the readers care about or deem important. "Although ... may seem trivial in the grand scheme of history, their influence has persisted in... ...marked the beginning of a pivotal period of history that led to .... ... actually touches on the larger issues of... Although...may seem to be of concern only to ...., in fact anyone who cares about .... will find...

Bizarre explanations for the school absence crisis & teacher shortages, Household spread, The greatest trick and more (roundup of recent articles, posts, and studies)

What COVID-19 Does To The Body (Fourth Edition, Pandemic Accountability Index, 130+ Studies On COVID-19 Effects & Prevention) Since our last edition in December, the CDC has now empowered employers to force workers sick & contagious with COVID-19 to work through an active viral infection, spreading pestilence to others. Along with an uptick in LongCOVID as a result of this past year’s pandemic mismanagement, we also have a growing body of research showing the many harms that even “mild” (not hospitalized) COVID-19 infections can leave on the human body. This round, the largest number of developments have come from understanding COVID-19’s effects on children, the brain, the immune system, and Long COVID - a disability afflicting millions of Americans, including kids.

The Greatest Trick: Most governments are trying to trick us into believing we don't need to adapt to COVID-19. They can't sustain the illusion forever. (The John Snow Project) Governments around the world did not tell people it was safe to resume their pre-pandemic behaviour. Most official guidance said it was up to people to assess their own risk and decide what they were prepared to do in light of the existence of a novel pathogen. Many people took this to mean it was safe to resume pre-2020 behaviours and have learned the hard way that there is a big difference between 2019 and now: a new virus has been added to the landscape of pathogens and it is one that can still exact a hefty toll in the form of Long Covid. While telling individuals to assess their own risk, many governments have removed the tools for people to do so, dismantling testing regimes, free vaccine programmes, surveillance and free treatment provision. Anyone who wants to understand the true risk posed by COVID-19 is effectively flying blind.

I've been seeing bits here and there about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, too (as I understand it, it's a prion disease similar in some ways to mad cow). The link below is for a study of N=1, but it's not the only one I have seen. Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease Associated with E200K Mutation and SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Pure Coincidence or Neurodegenerative Acceleration Clinical and Translational Neuroscience. N = 1. From the Abstract: “In our opinion, the rising global prevalence of neurodegenerative complications following COVID-19 disease adds urgency to the study of this potential relationship, mostly in elderly patients who may experience worse long-lasting outcomes systemically and within the nervous system.”

Cost of Covid, Sore arms & cold bodies, Abandoning the vulnerable, Impacts on brain health, and more

Yes, the highest level for the date; obviously not the highest level overall.

If you look at the COVID "year over year" numbers on the Biobot chart, you'll see that this spring, infection is the highest ever.

And some are linking the rise in shingles to Covid itself. In 2020 I used first principles to note that where there was T cell death, there would likely be dysfunction of the immune system subsequently It is still highly contentious but there are deniers that would prefer you not attribute shingles to Covidhttps://t.co/PLFdz2h3WK — AJ Leonardi, MBBS, PhD (@fitterhappierAJ) March 21, 2024

I wonder how that happened, but it's fixed now. Here is the link again.

NM

The History of COVID-19 Immune Evasion and the Increasing Pace of Evolution (A chronological survey of studies focusing on immune evasion from vaccines and infections)

We never did a formal geography curriculum, but we all enjoyed this series of map drawing books (the link is to the Draw the World book, which is fine if you want to learn the names of the continents and oceans, but the books focusing on the individual continents are much more useful for learning names and locations of individual countries)-- We did them all years ago, and the kids each created their own atlas (and so did I, actually). They are HS age now, and we are working through the series again to refresh our memories.

Media celebrated Long COVID Awareness Day by denying its existence (Julia Doubleday; The Gauntlet)