re creating private spaces Do you sew? Would a set of heavy insulated drapes work in the space? A good layer of heavy felt insulates sound at least as well as a door. I did that in a rented apartment once and it worked great as a temporary solution to a need to carve out separate space.

re butt ugly propane heaters Yes. We've long had a substantially more attractive, more expensive tall top hat version (where the tank is encased, like restaurants have). They work too, but the heat is thrown off *up high,* head-height. So they're really designed to be under a canopy and/or in contexts where folks are *standing,* like milling around at a wedding. The ugly short ones throw the heat off at chair height, and are also easily moveable. We first got one, to check it out; then got three more. And we cart them around the yard and have even thrown them in the trunk when we've met up with friends in other locations. I'll be hosting Thanksgiving out on the terrace under two canopies, three family-group tables, with multiple heaters aimed at different clusters. I'm reasonably confident this will work unless there is an unseasonable below-25 degree cold snap or sleet. Which naturally is what I'm now dreading.

Not very zen or attractive, but those propane heaters do the job. I'm planning on coffee on my terrace through the duration.

This is wonderful! I hope you find it restful and grounding.

I like the idea of a 12 mile cheer very much -- feeling a need for some boost as well. Just signed on to @Slache 's 20 miles in 20 days, and resolved to do it OUTSIDE rather than on the machine, to which I tend to retreat (with political/legal podcasts, which is not-so-great mental healthwise) when the days get shorter and colder. We invested in two large canopies and a bunch of patio heaters so we can continue to meet up with people out on our terrace. I'm going to get a bunch of big-bulb light strings as well since it's already dark by 6:15, le sigh. Recently figured out that -- as we can't travel, as we ordinarily love to do -- a second-best but nonetheless enjoyable "virtual glimpse" into other places is foreign telenovelas. We just finished Rita (Denmark, hilarious and poignant, pearl-clutch alert re non-marital sex) and last night started A Thousand Goodnights (Taiwan, absolutely astonishing). MOOCs. MOOCs and knitting projects. I'm trying to figure out a way to get a bunch of far-flung family and friends to do a Watch Party for the play What the Constitution Means to Me, which I was planning to see in NYC before Broadway shut down for the foreseeable future. I have to figure the logistics. At the moment, the nearly-adult kids, who were all here from March-July, have all drifted back to their apartment/schools. For Thanksgiving, they, my husband and I, and my mother are all going to get PCR-tested, quarantine awaiting results, then (assuming everyone's negative) she will come here and we can all bubble together, inside, unmasked, living off deliveries, for 2 weeks. Just having that out there as something to look forward to, something that will feel nearly-normal, is huge for her (we've seen her, but only outdoors for brief/weird visits, camping in the parking lot of her independent senior residence). At the moment, it's not assured that either my son's school (in Pittsburgh, where cases are spiking) or my daughter's (eastern CT, ticking upward) will run any on-campus classes between Thanksgiving and March. If they don't, I'm considering trying to find an airBnB with good wifi in cross-country VT for a couple weeks in January, so they can do their classes remotely while we all get a change in scenery.

ALL HAIL VIOLET CROWN THE CONQUEROR! That is awesome! Nonetheless you may not count either miles, or kilometers, logged in before November 1. I don't make the rules.

Sure! It'll hopefully give me a boost to do it OUTSIDE. When the days get dark my exercise motivation ebbs.

We used to rent on rare occasion; then bought -- and I agree with pp that the home models work about as well, and are much more convenient to have on hand. re technique... Definitely second the second rinse and not-too-much-soap advice. And I actually run a basement shop vac over the damp carpet once I'm done to suck as much out as possible. More oomph. This thread has *almost* motivated me to pull the dang thing out, sigh, not what I was especially looking for...

Oh (( Carrie )) . What a blessing, to have had Marcia in your life and your son's. And I'm crying myself.

re definitions, and whether or not "mitigation strategies" are affecting IFR: IFR measures the proportion of deaths among infected individuals. Mitigation strategies aimed at lowering transmission -- masking, distancing, doing stuff outdoors, individuals avoiding and/or policies prohibiting large gatherings -- all of those strategies aim to reduce the number of infected individuals. But that won't affect IFR. Even if those strategies, or a near-complete lockdown, reduced what is today 73K new cases down to just 730 infected individuals -- which would, obviously, be a *massive improvement* for affected individuals, their families, hospitals, downstream health conseqquences, downstream bills... it wouldn't necessarily affect the IFR. Just the denominator on which IFR were calculated. As a language thing, I'd call what you're calling "medicinal" strategies either "treatments" or "vaccines." Vaccines are also aimed at reducing the number of affected individuals, so -- like what you're calling "mechanical" strategies like masking and distancing -- would actually not reduce the IFR (just the denominator). Effective treatments *would* affect IFR, by reducing the number of people who do become infected from dying.

I got mine at CVS a week or so ago. I usually *try* to, but don't always get around to it. This year I've been harping on all family members to do it (4/5 have so far, as has my mother). I'm more determined about it this year because I'm so acutely conscious of hospital overwhelm due to COVID. Though the odds of any of us being hospitalized for ordinary flu are slim... it's an easy enough thing to do, to bring those odds down even lower.

re "what does 100% clean out" mean Yeah, OK, the later responses are making me feel a little better about my slacker hygeine. To me, "100% clean" means, "taking out every single item AND every single shelf in the main section and on the door, and scrubbing every shelf in the sink and then with Chlorox spray." And, I only ever do that, furiously, after an extended power outage. Going through the *contents* and tossing stuff... I do every time I have new produce coming in; wiping down a particular shelf when it gets sticky I do... often; taking out a single shelf or crisper drawer and washing *that one shelf or drawer*... I do whenever there's a spill or other grossness. But completely taking 100% of the stuff and shelves out -- only after an extended power outage. (I would do it if we were gone for a month and wanted to unplug, also... but that's never happened.)

That's a lovely painting; your son must be very proud. My daughter produces a *prodigious* number of canvases.... and some principles we've gotten to over the years... First and foremost, let the artist decide. Every now and then she does something *I* think is marvelous and want to frame (but for whatever reason she's unsatisfied with it and doesn't want it displayed at all); or *I* think it would look best framed in a particular color or floating or whatever. But it's the artist's work. There are a lot of very simple, very inexpensive ways to make a piece look "finished." My daughter often mounts paper pieces on cork, or cuts a piece of plywood a few inches bigger all around, paints it a color that makes a canvas pop, and mounts the canvas on that. If the artist chooses entirely unframed or floating, it shows better *once it's mounted* if the canvas side edge is painted (it doesn't have to be a complicated matching exercise -- in your son's painting just a plain mid-gray all around would be fine). Otherwise *once it's mounted* you get glimpses of the white edge with messy spilled-over brush marks. We did this wrong (on a complex expensive floating frame) before working this out.

I don't end up throwing very much out. The strategies that I've found to help are: Making dinner from whatever's on hand and perishable. If that's clementines and chicken thighs, cook the chicken in the clementines and maybe throw on some toasted almonds or something, it'll be fine. Having a bunch of go-to dishes that use up random leftovers. Soups, stir fries, fajitas, rice pudding, a basic tea bread base that I can jam in zuchinni or slightly overripe banana or half a can of pumpkin or whatever. Having a husband and 2 (out of 3) kids who are happy to eat dinner leftovers for lunch so long as I pack them away attractively arranged in a *clearly visible* glass container in the fridge. Buying and stowing away fresh stuff in 2 categories: "needs to be eaten quickly" vs "will hold on for 5+ days." I've gotten a LOT better on this point since COVID, where I'm only getting fresh stuff every 14+ days. Not being overly fastidious about *slightly* wilted produce or *slightly* past "best by" dates. I throw slightly soft tomatoes into cooked dishes, cut the brown spots off apples and throw them into baked goods, don't worry for one second if the dried pasta or mustard is a little past "best by" date. YMMV but I haven't killed anybody yet. (I don't do this with meat.)

Loved it as a teenager, loved it more the second time around in my late 40s. Much of what I loved, both times, is how Lewis is playing -- having real fun -- even as he tackles very substantive ideas. He's an intellectual giant of course, much to admire, but his best-known works can veer towards self-important hectoring rumination. The ones I to which my own thoughts most often return -- Screwtape, Till We Have Faces, Great Divorce -- are the metaphoric storytelling; and Screwtape is definitely the most FUN of even that bunch. To me that is an extremely important (serious) element of living a faith tradition -- picking up and examining and discussing and parsing religious ideas needn't be turgid analytical drudgery; there is room for play and joy and joking and satire as well. Relatedly, Screwtape also fits into a very large genre, ranging from Paradise Lost to Damn Yankees, where the Lucifer character is more *interesting and sympathetic* than the counterpart in the light. There's substantive insight there as well.

every 2-3 years, cursing mightily, after a multi-day power outage, is there any other answer to this question ?

(( regentrude )) That sucks. This is such a hard time. So many people feel both overwhelmed and simultaneously isolated. And as hard trials go, it's sort of unusual in that this one is harder for extroverted / always-in-motion types to hold up; relatively more bearable for introverted / hunker down and endure types. I wish I were close enough to meet up for a walk. I don't think I'm up for your level of endurance hiking, but a distanced stroll clutching a travel mug of mint tea would be just the ticket.

what does "worse" mean Yeah, this is essentially what I was trying to get at in the beginning of the thread about where the hot spots are in geography and in time. It's hard to feel it fully when it's other areas that are being hit -- to some people the risk feels remote and the magnitude maybe exaggerated; to others it feels like an outright "hoax." It feels "worse" when it's hitting close to home. My own area was among the hard-hit in the early weeks, and at the time it was pretty disheartening, how dismissive other regions of the country were. These days my area is (compared to then) much "better"... but we definitely remember what "worse" looks like. Perhaps the silver lining is, once every pocket in the country lives with "worse" for a while, we'll manage to move the mark a bit on consensus around comparatively easy/ low-cost measures like masking and distancing.

Yeah, the logistical challenges of some of the efforts underway (extremely cold temperatures throughout the supply chain, vaccine must get from manufacturer all the way into arm within 2 days) are really daunting, and unlike any other vaccine that has ever been deployed at scale. Several of these will NOT be available, ever, at CVS or your local doctor.

re difficulties in finding trained personnel to staff COVID and ICU beds / staff trained for particular pulmonary procedures What happened during the Northeast crisis showed multiple layers of the staffing crisis -- not just getting enough doctors / nurses / technicians to the facilities, but also housing them (people from out-of-area did volunteer to take on extended shifts... but they needed to be he housed in order to do so) and getting their basic food/ laundry needs taken care of, and also, over the long haul, how to ensure they weren't by volunteering to support the needs of the sick, infecting their own family members. This was all taking place while medical PPE was severely constrained, so the latter issue is less worrisome now than it was then. But the other issues remain -- even to the extent that there is "excess" nursing and other medical sector capacity in less-badly hit areas, and even to the extent that medical workers are willing to pick up and travel to other regions to serve in times of excess overflow capacity, there are real logistical issues and substantial extra costs associated with that. Let 'er rip is extremely bad public policy.

re medical sector constraints Yeah, it's the TRAINED PEOPLE constraint that is, and will continue to be, the hardest to fill. There really were severe PPE constraints in the worst days of the NYC/surrounding area crisis, and that issue has been largely resolved. With reasonable leadership, overflow sites can be found/built and beds can be brought in from civilian or military sites. There are new portable/specialized HVAC capacities that emerged out of the NE crisis to allow for rapid and effective conversion of non-specialized spaces to hospital purposes. But you can't just create trained medical workers. That is the most difficult capacity constraint to deal with.

re direction in which COVID 19 virus may be mutating -- "better" or "worse" Ah, thank you. Sounds like that study didn't find that the virus has mutated toward lesser lethality (="better" from humans' point of view), but rather that it may have become more efficient in transmission (="worse" from humans' POV). That is to say, the mutation that the Houston study looked at appears to have made the virus more easily transmittable (sigh), NOT less likely to kill us. He did say last night that as a general matter, over the long run, viruses tend to mutate toward *less likely to kill most hosts.* As seems to have ultimately happened in 1920. But I don't think we're at the long run point yet, however interminable it already seems.

re Fauci on mutation has mutated, or can reasonably be expected ultimately -- in the future -- to mutate to a less virulent form? I heard him say something last night on 60 Minutes that the general pattern of viruses is (eventually) to mutate toward less virulent forms. I did not hear him say, last night, that he's seen evidence that the COVID 19 has done so at this point. To the extent that overall death rates seem to have ticked down, that seems to be largely because younger/ less fragile people are getting it and surviving. Within any given age cohort, the improvement is fairly modest and -- I think -- mostly being attributed to better treatment protocol (not so much new wonder drugs like the antibody cocktail, whose quanitites are still too limited to drive the numbers, but more mundane protocols like body position and oxygenation protocols and ordinary steroids).

The spring crisis was extremely geographically concentrated. That affects whether things look "better" or "worse" in our particular area and circumstances. For people living outside the NY/NJ/CT and west coast pockets, it didn't feel real. Now that it's spread, things actually ARE worse in other areas. And (despite ongoing partial closure, and continued cases) things are better in NYC, which is no longer facing extreme medical sector overload.) There are still cases to be sure, but it feels now like a war of attrition. But elsewhere in the US, when back in April this all looked like an overblown hoax, things are very much worse. At the big picture level, there are aspects that are clearly much better now: the early PPE and mask shortages have eased, medical professionals have learned better treatment protocols (apparently just having sick patients lie on their stomachs makes a material difference), there is vastly greater testing capacity (albeit unevenly accessible in different parts of the country). But where 6 months ago vast parts of the country weren't seeing it up close... so it's natural that once it comes closer, things feel worse. Things *are* worse, locally. The flu epidemic of 1918-20 lasted over two years and ultimately infected a third of the world's population in ~4 rolling "waves," before the virus (apparently) mutated to a less virulent form. So long as "naturally occurring herd immunity" is the de facto plan, that is the most on-point model we can look to as to what to expect.

I think "this" likely *will* be at least another two-ish years from now. There may be a vaccine within a year, but given who we are as a nation and how we think about vaccines, it'll take at least a year to get to 70++% vaccination rates. How that will affect the lives my husband, and to a lesser extent our nearly-adult kids and our elderly parents? Well, first and foremost, keep on strengthening those muscles of patience, fortitude and resilience. We've already become more explicit and open about the language of mental health, about what each of us values most highly, about differentiating needs from wants and wants from crankiness, about prioritizing the needs within the concept of a "risk budget" that several posters have outlined on other threads. We'll continue to get better at figuring out reasonably-safe ways to connect in real life, in small groups, outdoors, spaced, masked. We'll support businesses that have successfully pivoted to delivery and curbside and/or online business models. We will start using testing differently - not merely diagnostically (if we experience symptoms, or know we've been exposed to someone who has COVID) but also as a lifestyle tool, before visiting my mother or my husband's parents, or when the nearly-adult kids come back from school terms. We will not travel by air (we used to be quite frequent fliers). We will not eat inside restaurants or stay in hotels (we used to be rather consistent hospitality industry consumers). We will not go to concerts and plays (we used to be consistent patrons of the arts). We will experience this as a great personal loss. Since such places need customers like we used to be to support their businesses, they will experience the loss of like-minded customers as a business problem. Some may adapt by re-designing their business models around COVID-safety (forex: airlines could make rapid testing conditional for anyone boarding the plane); and if so we will re-visit our strategies. It SUCKS. We're not alone. The whole world is enduring it. And we may do relatively better under different leadership. And treatments may get somewhat better even as we're still waiting on vaccine.