[At what point would you lock down again?]

1 hour ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I really hate to write this because I'm afraid it will turn out to be true but someone is going to suggest that untreated water is superior because it's "natural." Someone will probably suggest that drinking "natural" water is a cure for COVID. 

You’re probably right. 

[Is owning a home still the American Dream?]

It is where I live and nearly all of my friends own, but housing is way less expensive.  $100k-$200k can buy a very nice 3 bed 2 bath with a garage and yard in a good school district.  $200-$300k can get you something fancier or bigger.  There’s really no reason not to own with prices like that.   

[And, just to distract me a bit, I need some living room furniture advice]

IKEA has couches with really nice slip covers.  Tons of bloggers swear by the white slip cover being super washable because you can bleach them.  They are relatively inexpensive to replace too. If you can deal with washing everything every so often you can probably make white furniture work.  

[Afghanistan question - no partisan politics]

If anyone is interested in really thought provoking analysis from a historical perspective the podcast History Hit is looking at the war and withdraw this week.  It’s been really balanced, certainly non partisan.  

[Regeneron]

6 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

I can see a benefit to having them in a place other than the hospital to receive that treatment. We know they're covid positive and they're not able to spread it at the hospital to people who are there for other reasons.

I kind of think that by the time someone is sick enough to lay on the floor in public that more medical care is needed.  That’s a very ill person.  

[The Vaccine Thread]

2 minutes ago, Syllieann said:

The argument for school vaccination requirements isn't that the unvaccinated kids present a risk to the vaccinated kids.  The argument is that the unvaccinated kids present a risk to the kids who can't be vaccinated or don't mount an adequate immune response.  Without a mandate, the onus is on the kids who can't be vaccinated to stay locked up.  With a mandate, the onus is on the unvaccinated to stay out of the school if they won't be vaccinated.  It is still a balance between these things.

Am I thinking right here?  Would the kids who are medically contraindicated from getting the shot be protected under the different disability acts?    

[At what point would you lock down again?]

2 hours ago, hshibley said:

I agree I just would like to wait a few more months until the under 12 crowd can be vaccinated. Where I am the unvaccinated want to let it rip now and really don’t give 2 figs about the under 12’s. Yes the risk to under 12’s is low, but after the vaccine is available to them it’s significantly lower. 

I know.  I keep getting mad, then reminding myself of the kids and the immune suppressed.  It’s just frustrating to always be in the group that needs to be extra good because so dang many people can’t be bothered.  

[Regeneron]

I keep looking at that picture and thinking…this is DeSantis’s grand plan?  Hospitals over run and sick people laying on the floor of public spaces trying to get treatment?  He’s been toting this as some sort of brilliant plan but it feels dystopian.   And people in Florida are happy with this because….freedom?

[At what point would you lock down again?]

14 minutes ago, hshibley said:

Honestly I like that response. In my opinion once there are effective vaccines for the under 12 crowd and ample time for them to be vaccinated we will have to let it run its course. I have unvaccinated relatives. There is nothing you can do to change their minds (they are over 75yo so by definition high risk). I live in an area with a low vaccination rate where currently over 90+% of covid cases are the unvaccinated nearly all covid deaths and hospitalizations are unvaccinated and still the unvaccinated are not changing their minds or masking up. The vast majority of the unvaccinated are too deep into their conspiracy theories to be helped. 

And “run it’s course” and “you do you, I’ll do me” is what most of the unvaccinated folks have been asking for since the beginning.   My vaccine drops my risk of severe illness to a level I’m comfortable with.  Haven’t they been crying about everyone doing their own risk analysis?  Giving what they have been crying for does not make me a bad person. 
 

[Regeneron]

15 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

I don't understand this.   You have people in your circle who are shaming vaccinated people for getting sick?    

 Not who you asked, but I have unvaccinated/anti vax people in my life blaming vaccinated people for spreading the delta variant.  Shaming them for acting as though the vaccine is 100% and not taking enough precautions to prevent spreading. The unvaccinated are apparently just blameless victims of the vaccinated meanies.  

[Early Marriage]

I wonder if it’s indirectly related to the pandemic. Maybe with parents at home more the kids are finding less available, ahem, unsupervised alone time and are feeling “pushed” into marriage because of it.  

[At what point would you lock down again?]

7 hours ago, TarynB said:

I live in Oklahoma. I don't know what's going on with the numbers, but we suspect there is pressure at the state level to keep testing limited (really dumb). So a side effect of that pressure is that mild cases are being missed and only the obvious/more severe cases are actually getting tested, hence the very high positivity rate.

Here, especially if you are vaxxed, it is "up to your healthcare provider's discretion" as to whether or not you get tested for covid. It is hard to find a place to get tested here locally and up to an hour away (one-way) in the nearest big-ish city.

My DS18 was sick in June, had covid symptoms, and went to his doctor. His doctor didn't think his illness warranted a covid test and unfortunately I was not there to advocate. Dr's reasoning was that because DS was already vaccinated he probably didn't have covid. (!!!!!) He got scripts for an antibiotic, an inhaler, and a steroid, so the same meds as if he had covid. (We still don't know if he had covid but fortunately within a few days he was fine.)

Then about two weeks ago, DH was a direct, prolonged close contact to a co-worker who was unvaxxed, unmasked (against company policy), and tested positive for covid. DH proactively tried to get a covid test. But he was asymptomatic. So our county health department said since he was vaxxed and asymptomatic, they couldn't get him in for a test for 3 days due to lack of appointment availability (and this was allowing a few days for the optimal testing window post-exposure). Two urgent care locations also said he didn't need to be tested since he was vaxxed and not showing symptoms. **They talked to him like he was dumb for even asking to get tested.** So DH gave up on trying to get tested, and stayed masked and isolated. He never did get sick, thankfully.

The people I know of who are able to get tested are not getting their results back for 3 or 4 days.

OK is also only reporting data once per week, instead of daily. And there have been weird data dumps at random times, unexplained data corrections, suspicious data. No one here trusts that everything is being captured. Under-reporting of case numbers and deaths is pretty much certain. Same as some other places, I guess.

It really is insane. But not surprising that Oklahoma is on fire now too. Delta has been building dramatically here locally for a few weeks, spillover from Missouri and Arkansas.

(Our governor has also banned mask mandates and schools are not allowed to go remote. As an aside, we are moving out of this state as soon as we can. Not hard to see why.)

Arkansas is the same way. 3 hour wait times at the only place within an hours drive to get tested, so most people aren’t bothering unless they have to.  Lots of stories of people being refused tests even if they have symptoms. And 0 masking. Seriously I didn’t see 1 person masking the whole time I was there.   The whole state has their head so far in the sand…
Where as in VA I have multiple ways to get tested within 10 minutes of my house, most would take less time than a doctors appointment, none require symptoms. 

[Thanks!]

3 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Can I gently point out that you didn’t fail to keep your middle son alive? His body was affected by a lot of issues and nothing you could have done would have changed the middle to longer term outcome. Same with my daughter. Terminal stuff is terminal. You maybe could have rearranged the deck chairs differently, and who knows what that would have done, but the ship was always going to go down.  Likewise, your GFIL is in his 90s. That is well beyond the median lifespan for men. His passing will not be your failure to keep him alive. There is no bubble that keeps death away that you can somehow magically conjure. It’s not in your power or mine and God doesn’t seem to be in the business of interfering with natural processes much either. Our bodies are clay. 
 

Maybe relabeling would help? When he recognized that he didn’t want to take a water break, did he consciously tie that to anxiety? He wanted to control his anxiety by denying himself water rather than acknowledge it and work through it. 
 

No one can be 100% and trying to be that is an unfair burden to put on himself.

 

Hugs!!

 

QFT. 

[The Amish (and other), population growth, and effects on society]

7 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

The problem you have is that the population of Amish in this country came from a small number of families to begin with, and without conversion of other families to the religion, the Amish from Lancaster are many generations of 1st cousin marriage and half brother/sister marriage (very much allowed within Amish society until the 1900's) all intertwined for hundreds of years. Mingling with Amish from Lehman Ohio is just mingling with people whose genetics are pretty darn tight to their own. The communities themselves are very closely, genetically related. This has also happened in the Hutterite communities of Canada. Cohen's disease is one genetic disorder that is profoundly rare in the general population, less than 100 cases per year among non-Amish, but 20-30 cases per year among Amish whose population is roughly less than 300,000 in the states. Though for now, large families may spur growth on paper it is predicted to decline significantly as so many children will not be having children in the future and those that do will have even more unhealthy children.

Thanks for explaining!  

[The Amish (and other), population growth, and effects on society]

6 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

Here, large corporate farms bid higher for land than the Amish can pay, so they are running out of land. But, their bigger issue is related to the fact that they are so inbred after centuries of pretty much no conversions to the sect, that they have a 1:4 rate of significant genetic disease in offspring, most of whom are significantly unhealthy if not very disabled and will not marry and have offspring in the future. Some have been particularly hard hit with multiple children having significant disabilities. No one converts to Amish really, so they do not have "new blood" as the saying goes. They have high fetal/infant and maternal death rate because they severely limit modern prenatal care , god's will and all, high rates of severe injury and death from accidents, and the local group refuses to put any lights on their buggies and wagons, just one single reflector, but won't stay off these country, unlit roads at night so usually two or three times a year, a buggy gets hit and whole families get wiped out. This group is most certainly not growing.

I wonder why they don’t have a big gathering once every year or so for different communities to mingle, just for this genetic reason.  Surely that would help. 

[Beth Moore]

5 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

The reasoning I’ve heard is that God designed our body and immune system so we shouldn’t mess with it because he already designed it good.  Which of course ignores the whole garden of Eden thing I think.

Just *once* I’d like to hear a rational, thoughtful contrasting of “God designed my beautiful immune system so I don’t need a vaccine” with the concept of the Black Death, smallpox, Ebola, people in iron lungs from Polio, etc.  I just want to hear it attempted so I can watch the cognitive dissonance in action. 

[My brother got Covid]

2 hours ago, Janeway said:

My brother was vaccinated in January when I was. But he has Covid. <sigh> I do not know if it is the Delta variant. He did get fully vaccinated and his last shot was before my first. My first was January 14. (I think he did, but it was close, he worked for a hospital though so his was super early, before anyone else it seemed). Just thought I would share. It is kind of interesting. I wonder if it is Delta or if his vaccinations have worn off.

 

 

Reports are saying that 83% of new cases are Delta, so odds are that’s what it is.  
 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/20/delta-variant-now-accounts-for-83percent-of-all-sequenced-covid-cases-in-the-us-cdc-director-walensky-says.html

 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/07/delta-covid-19-variant-now-83-us-cases
 

 

[S/o Sick Shaming]

29 minutes ago, busymama7 said:

Does anyone know why this is? What would cause a virus to do this when most(all?) Others mutate to be less lethal?

I think it’s because it’s not that lethal to begin with.   Killing around 1% of those it infects isn’t going to risk burning through the hosts.  If it mutates to killing 1.5 or 2% of its hosts, it’s fine, from the perspective of the virus.  
 

I think we are also looking at it over too short of a time period.   Over time viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal, but we’ve only been at this for 18 months.   In a decade we’ll probably be looking at less lethal Covid, with some more lethal variants popping up here and there as it moves in cycles.  

[S/o Sick Shaming]

53 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

Nope. All online. Mostly social media. Sometimes on here.

Most people are unaware of just how much of that type of stuff online is from bots.  Foreign countries put a lot of effort into sewing discord in our country, Russia and China especially, North Korea to a greater extent than you might other wise guess.  How sure are you that this is coming from real, live Americans?  

[How do you accept your spouse?]

42 minutes ago, TexasProud said:

You are right for probably the majority of people.  But for me, I would say, learn to speak out loud. I did not voice enough of my opinions. Hubby knew that when we were dating, but figured because we were married I would just speak honestly. Nope. I will pick peace over speaking anytime. Now he is back to dragging things out of me again and it works much better.  So a few wives might need to speak more. (;

I think I could use some improved discernment over when to speak less and when to speak more.  I have a hard time talking about the important stuff, but no problem with nit picking.  

[How do you accept your spouse?]

3 hours ago, GracieJane said:

I am very happily married, and I attribute it primarily to how little we say things out loud. If I had to pick my guiding life principle, it would probably be: „speak less“. 😉

Most (negative) things in marriage do not need to be vocalized. 99% of frustrations have a life span less than 24 hours and the unfortunate consequences of speaking them aloud last much longer. When you have learned to restrain your speech, your words carry much more weight, which is what you need to address the remaining 1% of serious problems.

Could you follow me around and remind me of that every 2 seconds or so?  Maybe I’ll tattoo it somewhere prominent.  I really need to follow this way more often.   

[The “vaccination divide” in the US]

4 hours ago, TexasProud said:

Let us wait about 5 years and see. Without vaccinations, this surge is going to be much more deadly.  We have lost 600,000 so far.  I am guessing another million in the next 6 months for the US alone. We really do not know how bad it was in India, Russia or China or many, many other places in the world.  It will keep mutating since people can get it more than once and after they are vaccinated.  it is going to kill many, many more before this is over. We have only begun.

Is that million deaths figure just your feeling or something you got from somewhere?  I’m curious, I haven’t seen any future death estimates since we hit 500k.    My gut feeling/guess is that we’ll hit a million total, but that’s based on nothing really. 

[So what is productive?]

My podcast listening habit really took off after we moved and I was lonely. It helped keep me company while I was doing pretty much anything and kept my thoughts busy so I didn’t ruminate too much.  

[Update: I saw a counselor. :) What is acceptable? Grandparent “parenting” adult grandchildren]

2 hours ago, popmom said:

I learned very early that I couldn't leave my kids alone with her. 

I've tried to get counseling. I was blown off last time. I never went back. I will have to find someone else. I have some names. I want to do a phone interview before I waste anymore time seeing someone who won't help me.

Betterhelp online counseling has been beneficial for my family.  It’s cheaper, easier to schedule and you can change counselors any time.  Being easier to schedule made it easier to actually keep doing it.  

[The “vaccination divide” in the US]

17 hours ago, GracieJane said:

I‘m curious about people who chose not to get vaccinated: how do you feel about those who have gotten vaccinated? Do you think they made a mistake?

A few here have expressed the “concern” thst the vaccinated are now a danger to the unvaccinated  due to “shedding” harming the fertility of young ladies around them.