I had similar experience with the brief cough after my second last week. I’ve seen everything say cough isn’t a side effect from the vaccine, and when others have reported it, I’ve wondered if they actually had Covid at the time they got their shot, but I know I didn’t, yet still I had 1-2 hour of a slight cough. Then gone. Such a weird thing. I can’t even think what the mechanism would be.

I used WWS with my older kids when they were starting middle school, but I can't see it with my current rising 6th grader. She's a decent natural writer, but I'd like to start introducing a bit more structure to her writing. Something like IEW would not be a good fit; it's too rule-based. WriteShop Junior has so many pieces and parts, which never fits our style. What else is out there right now that might be worth me looking at? I'm looking for materials for us to use at home, not online classes.

Right. I knew that was why it was like that, but thought it might be helpful to point that out for anyone skimming. It’s good to see that strategy has been very successful there.

It looks like the study only addressed transmission after one jab, right? Which is very good news to see so much reduction after a single shot. Someone else shared a link yesterday about the significant increase in benefit provided by the second dose, which improves transmission reduction even more.

That’s unfortunate. Hopefully the university will update that to 6 months, with more recent trial data showing that immunity is still holding strong at 6 months. I should have used different words than “promising potential”. I meant something stronger. I didn’t know of any others with evidence as strong as Regeneron. The budesonide study was interesting. Hopefully they will repeat on larger populations and get similar results. An interesting statistic near the end of the study that seems relevant to this discussion of risk: “our population reflects the general global population, in whom we found a one in seven risk of harm from COVID-19”

So much this: 😥

Oops! Sorry, I didn't anticipate that undesirably side effect 😂. We will get there, but the fastest way to get there really is for everyone who is able to be vaccinated to do so. The reason not many measures have been able to be lifted yet, is because not enough people have been vaccinated. It's the reluctance to vaccinate that is holding everyone else back from normality. I think the first benefit the vaccinated will see, besides not being hospitalized or dying, will be being able to attend vaccine or exempt only venues that don't require mitigation measures. Like, my dd will be able to return to her college campus and live in a dorm and eat in the dining hall and have in person classes and meet with others to study in the library and all those other good college student things, because everyone will need to be vaccinated to be on campus, thus they will be able to enjoy the benefits of being in a population with local herd immunity.

I need to find where I read about it initially. I read about it back when Regeneron was getting a lot of press after its use during the White House outbreak. It is given as a potential effect at the end of the Regeneron patient info sheet, though: https://www.regeneron.com/downloads/treatment-covid19-eua-fact-sheet-for-patient.pdf I was going to give my best guess for a mechanism, but my thought on that doesn't necessarily hold up the more I think about it, so I'm going to keep thinking on it and looking for info. On the bright side, though, I did come across this on trials of an injected version of Regeneron, which would vastly improve the logisitcal issues, allowing it to be administered by quick injection. On the other hand, it's still costing $1000 per injection, and there is not nearly enough of it to be given to everyone with Covid. Again though, this hasn't been tested even as long as the vaccine has, so for people hesitating for reasons of concerns about testing, the vaccines have better data (and have the benefit of also contributing to ending this pandemic). https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/monoclonal-antibodies-coronavirus-regeneron-phase3-data/ ETA: Also finding some really promising data about the Regeneron injection preventing infection in household contacts. If only it was easier and cheaper to produce, that would be so good. It doesn't have FDA approval for that use yet.https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/phase-3-prevention-trial-showed-81-reduced-risk-symptomatic-sars

Regeneron is the only early therapy that so far shows promising potential, but it has proven difficult to implement for a number of reasons, because it has to be given by infusion in a medical setting. That introduces all sorts of logistical challenges, such as needing to have a separate area for Covid posiitve patients to be receiving infusions away from non-Covid patients receiving infusions (like Cancer patients), separate staff, etc. This is doable in an area with low covid rates, but as soon as an area has burdened hospitals, it becomes almost impossible. If the anti-viral pill being worked on by Pfizer is effective, that would be a game changer. Right now, the US has three very effective pharmaceutials to prevent people from being hospitalized with Covid, and those are the three vaccines have been approved. There is nothing else even close to them for preventing serious Covid illness. As an aside, there's also no more long term data for Regeneron than there is for Covid vaccines. In a way there is more for the Covid vaccine, because we know there is no vaccine that has been used before that has had side effects that don't appear until more than several months after vaccination, and the Covid vaccine has been in use much longer than that at this point. All that said, I would accept Regeneron for myself or my husband if we got Covid (but not my kids, since they are lower risk). The biggest downside is that once you've taken Regeneron, your ability to fight off a future Covid infection may be lowered, and your body may not mount a strong immune response to vaccination. So, that would be a bummer. I'd much rather have immunity via vaccination and not take that risk.

I gather it's more what wilrunner is getting at in her final paragraph--I pick up that this is a teen mad at her parents' decisions about when to start kindergarten. I'm wondering if the motivation is that this student really wants to go to college out of state, but her parents don't support that, and she's looking for a reason to back up why it's so important to go out of state. Otherwise, I would expect she would just apply out of state and go. We can't afford out of state for our kids, so unless they get scholarships, they have to choose between any of the public instate schools. Fortunately, there are many good choices. I can imagine many other parents have the same stipulation. I could be guessing totally wrong on that, but that's how it's reading to me.

A lot of systems have the option for a recirculating line that keeps the hot water circulating through the pipes so it’s always ready and hot. We didn’t do that, because using propane to keep water always hot is more of a concern for us than running water while we wait for it to warm. Ours doesn’t take any longer than it did to wait for the hot water to get to the tap from the hot water heater, though.

How many hours total did his symptoms last? I'm trying to count the hours backward from your post, but am not doing very well with that. Was his shot yesterday morning, or the day before?

I had a slight preference for Pfizer, but was going to be relieved and grateful if I could get Moderna or Pfizer. JJ was a very distant 3rd for me, but I would have taken it if that was going to be my only option. By the time I was eligible in my area, vaccines were still hard to get, and Pfizer was especially scarce. So, I got Moderna, and am glad to have had it. My only reason for preference was the possibility that Moderna has a little bit higher rate of side effects after the second dose. Plenty of people have those after Pfizer though, and plenty of others have nothing after Moderna. I ended up feverish and achy after the second Moderna, but my young adult dd had no side effects at all. Unpleasant, but worth it for the protection.

One of mine didn't get rhyming by the expected age, but did become a great reader. She is a (stealth) dyslexic and her spelling is one of the main areas affected by it. She can spell well enough now for it not to be appalling, but it was pretty bad until she was in her mid teens. All my other kids, none of whom are dyslexic, learned to rhyme by 3 or 4. Late rhyming is frequently given as a potential sign of dyslexia.

We love ours. We bought one that has a really high throughput, so we don’t have trouble with multiple showers at the same time. We do get a temporary drop in water pressure if we’re running a laundry load on the extra hot sanitary mode in our washer at the same time. Which is annoying, but not enough to ruin a shower. Previously, our tank water heater couldn’t handle two showers at the same time or back to back without running out of water. Now people can just shower whenever without clearing their plan with everyone else. Ours is a Navian.

I agree it's possible to have productive conversations, and I find those very interesting as well, but some people don't and I think trying to force someone into a productive conversation who doesn't want to have one is probably counter-productive. I saw something that suggested a mechanism which seemed plausible. It had to do with the endometrium actually being part of the immune system, as it has to deal with a wound monthly, in addition to at birth, so it makes sense from that perspective that the endometrium could be affected during the vaccine immune response, and cause spotting or an odd period. I can't think of a mechanism that would make it continue to have an effect after the immune response to the vaccine died down, though. I expect it won't take long to see if people who have period-related side effects have their cycles go right back to normal after. I would expect they likely will, since nothing showed up as affecting fertility in any of the trials, but it will be good to have that info. If I were still planning to have more kids, I would want to get the vaccine done and recovered from, so that I wouldn't risk getting Covid while pregnant. The latest data on that is very concerning, with greatly elevated mortality and morbidity for the mother, and worse outcomes for the baby.

Yeah, I get worried that there will be too many people in "wait and see mode" to keep us from having another crisis level surge somewhere, and suddenly everyone will want to be vaccinated, and it will be too late at that point for vaccination to turn a surge like that around. It seems many people use current low rates where they live as a reason vaccination doesn't feel worth it, but this week that reasoning makes me think of India, who was doing so well also, until they weren't. Now it's too late to prevent what has happened. In addition to that, is the very real concern that because lack of herd immunity will allow the virus to continue to transmit, we're going to increase the risk of having a variant emerge that escapes the vaccine entirely (and is possibly more dangerous), and we're going to be right back at the beginning of this thing. I desperately want us to get this behind us, so that thought is so frustrating/discouraging.

We most often put them in mashed potatoes. They go in with the potatoes in the last ten minutes of boiling, and then get mashed in with the potatoes. I also put them in a frittata along with some kind of greens with some frequency.

I agree social media has been so important in helping people find hospital bed, oxygen, etc, but it's also so heartbreaking that that's what it is taking, and obviously a lot of people won't have access to do that. Seeing the posts, desperate to find oxygen for their ailing family members, giving all their info publicly on social media, in hopes someone will help them, it's just tragic.

In this thread, it seems that OS and Sneezyone are the ones with the not-favored opinions, yet they're also being accused, it seems to me (not necessarily by you), of being the ones piling on and causing other people to be afraid to post. Which is interesting to me, when to an outside observer, it could just as easily be described that other people are piling on OS and Sneezyone, with their minority viewpoint. I'm not actually defending OS on this thread, as I think they are viewing a more nuanced situation through a very black and white lens (ha--unintentional, but apropo). I see where that's coming from, but I think there's more to it than that in this situation and it does a disservice to reduce this particular episode to being primarily about race. Though as I said before, I understand the knee jerk response to view it that way in this particular thread about it.

Yeah, it definitely would add more time for trips like that. I still have little kids, so our stops are longer anyway. Range keeps increasing and charge time keeps decreasing, so I expect we will get there. I agree much of the country does need better infrastructure, and it will get there. ICE=Internal Combustion Engine—a gas-powered car 😊

Well, if we’re talking dream cars, the range and charging time on a Tesla makes it comparable to an ICE. I mean, how often are you going to drive over 300 miles without needing to stop for a bathroom or food break (I can’t personally go more than a couple hours without a stop)? Easy enough to combine those with a charging stop, and the superchargers charge really quickly. Other, lower-cost makers are quickly catching up. I drive a low-cost electric, but you’re right it’s not what I would use currently for a long trip, because mine is an old model that only does 100 miles per charge. Works perfect for my needs, because I’m never driving 100 miles in one day. I just do my driving for the day and plug it in when I get home. The newer model years do more than twice that, though, making them practical for even longer drives. Anyway, that’s just me. I was surprised how much I love driving an electric. I was never a car person before.

Neither 😝. I’m electric all the way for my dream car. I never cared that much about kind of car, but the electrics I’ve driven have been by far the most fun. And I sure don’t want to have to be putting gas in my dream car.

I just read that India is expanding their vaccine campaign to everyone 18 and up on May 1. Demand is expected to vastly outpace supply at this point though. When they initially rolled out the vaccine, there was a lot more hesitancy. Now that they’re in the middle of this horrific surge, people want to be vaccinated. Hopefully people in other countries (including the US) will not make the same mistake by waiting until there is another surge to decide they want to be vaccinated.

They have vaccine there, but it’s such a large population, and vaccination has been slow, and now that this crisis is happening, the focus is on that over vaccination. Vaccination is too slow a strategy to be immediately helpful in the middle of this. They need oxygen and hospital beds. I’m not sure I’d even be willing to venture out to a vaccination clinic right now if I lived there. The chances of being infected there would seem too high. Meanwhile, huge religious and political gatherings continue to happen, with no masks or mitigation.