My son leaves tomorrow for the USA. He lands in CA, has to walk through the airport, and pick up his bags. He will get a ride from a friend to the hotel. He has to check in, be in an elevator, sleep in his room, take a hotel shuttle to the airport, check in his bags, fly 5 hours across the country, get his bags, take an uber to his apartment. His hotel is leaving rooms dead for 24 hours after a guest leaves. Then has a standard cleaner come in and then a Covid cleaner to wipe down doors, remotes, surfaces etc with disinfectant. Any non-obvious ideas to make this as safe as possible? He will be wearing an N95 mask and goggles in the airport and on the plane. He will not eat on the plane. He will obviously use hand sanitizer a lot. What else?

So funny that we are off by 6 months. My younger son is taking midterms next week, and you guys are just starting up!

My vote is for less work. I'm a believer in life over 'full highschool load." Homeschooling allows for a lot of flexibility, so I would look to create courses out of stuff my child does for fun, and limit the number of formal classes in the load. My kids never did more than 4 formal classes at a time with 2-3 additional classes as unschooled courses. Mental health, especially during these times, is paramount.

New info on the bus journey in NZ: The positive case infected 2 people on the bus (not just the 1 we knew about before). But the bus was stuck in traffic so the trip was an hour (not the typical 15 minutes it usually takes). They don't know how close together the 3 were sitting. They were not wearing masks. There were 17 people on the bus, and the others have tested negative.

She tested negative today so she is feeling a bit more positive. Unfortunately, her doctor will not sign off that she is at risk. I've told her to get a new doctor, but this is the one that has been treating her and her sinuses for 2 years.

She is close. But finances are an issue.

She is required to observe the students during her lunch break. So we spent an hour trying to figure out how she can eat. She won't use the shared microwave, so is making soup, heating it at home, and bringing it in a thermos. She is using one of those very fat straws under her mask to eat. And it is actually worse than just soup through a straw. She has converted her windowless storage closet into an office so she doesn't have her desk out in the main room. She has all the Biology lab gear in there and a sink. She won't use the shared bathrooms, so she is peeing in a cup in her office and dumping it down the sink. A 47 year old woman, stooping to this to keep her job because they are requiring she show up in person. My poor sister has had a sinus infection for 2 full years. Bacteria, fungus, 2 surgeries -- she has had it all. The only way they got rid of it in March is by blowing balloons up inside her nose to break the sinus cavity up and open up space for drainage. All done while she was awake! She cannot get Covid. Her immune system is shot. Now she finds out 2 of her students have tested positive. And she is still required to teach in person.

They brought the military in to run the quarantine operation.

My sister is a teacher in a private school in KY. 2 of *her* students have tested positive and there are 2 teachers also. They have not closed the school and they are not testing the students and staff. She is close to quitting. ETA: she is never removing her mask, so is eating her lunch through a straw. She brings soup in a thermos.

Yes, of course. But this was in a quarantine facility system, where 40,000 people have passed through and no other transmission has occurred that they are aware of. So they must be doing a bang up job wiping down surfaces.

Unfortunately, they were masked on the elevator in a quarantine facility, and there was 2 minutes between the trips. They are not sure this was the vector, but they have nothing else connected these two people that genome testing has linked.

Well, they were NOT masked. That makes a difference.

I think that if we get back to elimination status (which they think we will), they are likely to change a few things in our Level 1 restrictions. Currently, they only require quarantine for returning people--the Level 1 restrictions do not ban any size gathering. My guess is that they will revisit them in light of what they have learned. I think they will mandate masks on public transport as that is by far the worst type of spread as it goes everywhere and you are with strangers. They can't really mandate masks everywhere, as there would not be compliance because we have eliminated Covid. People would just not think the inconvenience would be worth it. But if they just mandate masks in particularly risky situations, it would be followed and keep people less complacent. Also, I'm guessing they will lower the max number of people at events. Currently, Level 1 is unlimited, so 43K people were at the stadium the weekend before this happened. My guess is that they will try to manage this in some way. Not sure how, as those events are very good for the economy.

Luckily, Auckland buses uses a swipe card that is registered to the individual. So they know that there were 17 people sharing the bus and sitting near the person who had it (apparently it records seat?). 16 of these people have been contacted, isolated, and tested. 1 person had an unregistered card, so they have put out a call with the details to hopefully find that one person. All they know is that there appears to have been a covid transfer on a bus. There was no masking at the time as we were a covid elimination zone. They were on the bus together for 15 minutes.

I bet someone will do a public health study on this cluster, because where else has there been no Covid where you could watch a single case spread in a population. I'm hoping they learned some really valuable lessons that they can share.

So in the first 12 days that it spread without restriction, the index case was at home on sickleave for 9 of those days. But he passed it to someone at Amicold before he started on sick leave, and the index case's 3 family members passed it to another workplace and 2 schools before they knew they had it. Then from the 2 workplaces and 2 schools, it passed to their families, and then to 2 churches and to 2 people who take a bus everyday. (we were not masking on public transport at that point). And then the index family went to a different city for a holiday and went to tourist attractions and restaurants and then went to visit their granny at the retirement home. They did all this before they knew the dad who was home sick had covid, and before these family members showed any symptoms. It has been a fascinating investigation to watch unfold over the last 10 days. They moved fast! All this while they ramped up testing within 2 days to double what had been our previous max.

Did you see that this cluster was 1 to 93 cases in 22 days; and during the last 10 of those days, Auckland was in lockdown (work from home, all churches/shops/restaurants closed). Also during the last 10 of those days, they were running around like crazy doing contact tracing and moving people into the quarantine facilities. 1 to 93 is fast especially with this kind of containment effort. So it only had 12 days to spread without restriction.

My understanding is that everyone in the quarantine facilities are masked. They are not sure that it was the elevator, but that is the only know link between the 2 people that have the same virus genome sequence. The imported case who likely gave it to the maintenance worker could not yet have tested positive, because once positive, you are required to stay in your room (so no daily outside exercise so no being in the elevator). They test all residents on day 3 and day 12, and even then they say that 4% of positive cases will still receive 2 negative tests, which is why they require 14 days quarantine regardless of your testing status. But if you get a positive test, you get transferred to the more strict facility where you can't leave your room. They have gotten 40,000 people through the quarantine facilities with so far only this one know transmission within the facility. They must have amazing protocols. I've been very impressed.

Yes! I have been very impressed! They did a very good job planning, and then actually implemented the plan. They found it about 10 days after the first person caught it (they think), and the cluster grew to 93 people by day 20 even with the city in lockdown for the last 10 days. What a nice example of exponential growth! Once elimination was accomplished in May, it is now cheaper for us to lock down a city for 2 weeks and spend a ton on testing to reach elimination status again. Our economy really got going again quite rapidly during the 100 days without Covid. My guess is that they may start surveillance testing of waste water so they can catch it even earlier than they did. Our testing had also fallen off because people just got complacent. So I'm guessing there will be more public awareness and government encouragement to get tested if you have symptoms. We have also been put in the purchasing pool with Australia and the Pacific Islands to buy the vaccine coming out of Oxford.

They are not clear if the Amicold employee was the first case. The index case is now considered infected on the 31st of July, 10 days before he got tested (he had been home for 9 days on sick leave). That was long enough time delay that if it had come in on cold storage, they would not have been able to find active virus by the time they were testing. They know that this strain is from the UK or possibly Australia.

So in the past 10 days we have tested 10% of Auckland and a good percent of the rest of the country. This is what has been found: 1) They have not found the source for the cluster of 93 people that started at the Amicold cold storage shipping company. The genome does not match the 1st wave (so not from 100 days ago), and it does not match any imported cases from quarantine. Plus, all environmental testing of Amicold came back negative. They have contact traced 2000 people and have massive testing in any regions where they expected spread. There was 1 new case today that was a family member of a previous case, so expected. They believe that they have ring fenced this cluster, and have put all the positive cases and their families into quarantine. 2) They have tested all 5000 of the quarantine/dock/airport staff, and have found 1 positive test. This test is not linked to the cluster, but is linked to an imported case. They have used swipe cards and CCTV and know that the maintenance guy went in an elevator 2 minutes after the imported case was in it. That is the only link they can find. The maintenance guy has not passed it to anyone. This has shown that the quarantine procedures are robust and well implemented, but also that this virus is tricky given it was passed possibly through the air of an elevator when the two people were sequential and not concurrent. 3) I think most of us are expecting that Auckland will come out of lockdown on Wednesday, 2 weeks after going in. Basically, the government had a resurgence plan, and acted swiftly and competently to implement it. There is a good possibility that by acting fast and hard, the job will be done, and we can go back to regrowing our economy. Keep in mind that the largest city in the country was locked down after 4 cases were found, and was locked down within 5 hours of the positive results from the family coming back. When I say fast and hard, I'm not kidding. The government will decide tomorrow about 1) the Auckland lockdown (work from home order and school closures) and 2) the rest of NZ's 'be careful' status which limits gatherings to under 100, and turns bars into seated restaurants. 4) The PM delayed the election by a month to give all parties a chance to do their politicking without the largest city being in lockdown. The PM has this right under law, so nothing fishy here. She has said that she will not delay it again, although the electoral commission can if they deem it unsafe.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake is also one of my all time favorites. It has The Most Beautiful Language of any book, ever. Here is the first sentence to whet your appetite! Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its Outer Walls.

The Luminaries won the Mann Booker prize a few years ago. It is a wonderful (but long) story about the gold rush in NZ in the 1860s. What made it win the Mann Booker prize was that Eleanor Catton set herself an unusual task of having structure dictate plot and characterization. She created 12 characters to represent the star signs and 6 characters to represent the planets. Then took the star alignment of the year the book was set, and wrote the book based on what she was told to do. So if Mars was in Capricorn in that month, those two characters would have to meet in that chapter and the Mars character would influence how how Capricorn's character interacted, so more warlike. Each chapter has the star sign wheel rotate to the next month, and then Catton wrote the plot plot and characterization based on this. Added to this, she required each chapter to be half of the length of the other, starting with 300 pages and ending with 1 page. So once again, forcing external structure on her creativity to see what was possible. My older boy and I had so much fun thinking about how the star signs were impacting the characterization. We learned a lot about star signs! It was wonderfully clever, plus it is a murder mystery set in gold rush times in NZ's South Island and is reasonably historic. Super awesome. But it is long. 🙂

I actually had tourists ask to hold him as a baby for a photo op. Like oh, here is my baby. I don't know you, but you can have him. And of course we should all expect that he will be fine with it. Quite odd.

Wash is super hot water and dry on high heat. Freezing also works. If you can find a way to let your house freeze over for a week, you will cut the population off each year. My MIL's cottage at the lake in MI is not winterized, so freezes each year on the inside. My dh *loves* going there as his allergies stop.