No one was distancing during protests. Many were masked, but not all.

I'd argue that as open as possible without spread, the better. Also, I hadn't heard the Oregon church was outdoors. Everything that I read said they were in the church dancing and signing and violating all kinds of distancing rules.

It's not tit for tat. I am not saying that protesters got to go outside in groups so people should be able to go to the beach. It's that everyone is saying that the protests didn't cause spread. I have seen pictures of these protests, complete with tear gas, no distance, hundreds of thousands of people, people screaming in other people's faces (with and without masks), and people eating, congregating, and socializing under pop up tents and tarps. All those people were using port-a-potties provided by the city. They were all going to the bathroom somewhere, some were going home to vulnerable people in their own households, some were drinking and doing drugs, some were camping outdoors. I know everyone likes to say they were well masked. I am not going to to go find all the examples of how not masked they were, how close to each others faces they were, how much yelling in each others faces there was...but it happened. If all of those protests caused the rise in numbers we are seeing in the younger age groups right now, then I'd agree, beaches closed. We have our case study and outdoors is no bueno. If the proests did not cause spread, Miami Beach or any beach or park or outdoor space is lit-trally not a concern. I would be more concerned about being indoors in one of the high rises with all those elevators and circulated air, to be honest, but that's where people live. Droplet spread is not like a fog. It is not gas settling into a WWI trench. In an ocean breeze, on a hot day, it's going to dissipate in the limitless quantity of air coming from the ocean almost as soon as you breathe it out. I honestly cannot really believe that people are arguing to close beaches at this point. I thought it was ridiculous before the protests, but NOW? After saying over and over again that the data bears out that the protests were not a problem? This is so brazenly political I can't even (as the kids say. do the kids still say that?).

Again, I think you might have been able to make this case before early June and maybe it would have made sense. I have seen too many non distanced protests to even raise an eyebrow at Miami Beach and people grilling or drinking under open air tents. CHOP, anyone?

It's an open air pavillion?

I guess outdoor spread is a concern again.

I think that was the goal until about the beginning of June or so.

Did I just hear npr correctly... Miami is closing beaches for the 4th?

This has actually been a topic of discussion in a few other places...are hospitalizations and hospital usage being recorded as with covid or because of covid, and if every patient coming in for elective and incidents is being tested, are those positives giving us a better idea of asymptomatic cases?

I know that was the question in the OP, but my answer wasn't really about the relative attractiveness of the people involved. I am a middle aged woman who has birthed 5 kids, I have no illusions about my attractiveness, but I still have a good relationship with my DH. So it's not purely about that. It's more the specific situation of starting a business and all that entails... long hours, working toward a common goal, riding out failures, rejoicing in successes, maybe having a drink or two together, alllll one-on-one. And I know that it would be a hugely different dynamic if the person my DH was doing this with was his best bud from childhood or if it was a woman who was a family friend. It just would be a different thing. I'm not saying no one can do it or I would never, ever consider it, but I'm not egalitarian about these things either.

Right, I agree with all of this. I guess I just got the sense that people in this thread were saying they were at no risk of this happening to them. Like millions and millions of people haven't thought that before about their own partners. Those people were ignoring red flags, and those people were delusional, and those people, well, their partners were always slimy and we all knew it, obviously that's true because they cheated. Like upstanding-looking people who have all their ducks in a row and love their families have never compromised their values and shocked everyone. I know this is kind of niche, but did anyone else here ever read The Common Room blog?

I don't really understand the people saying they are sure they or their partners would never cheat or are incapable of cheating. I wonder, do you (general) think people who were cheated on were in marriages where they were thinking their spouse *would* do such a thing? Because I know for a fact that isn't the case for a lot of people. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone's spouse or relationship, but I bet the percentage of people who thought their spouse would never cheat and yet were cheated on is not small.

I know people who were surprised by their own infidelity...as in it was never ever something they would think of themselves as capable of, and yet, they spent a lot of time with someone who grew on them and it happened. I mean, eventually over the course of events it wasn't a surprise like, oops I just fell down and there she was, but the actual overall occurrence for someone in a happy marriage that loved their family. I think it can happen to anyone. I would not be okay with the situation, but my husband and I are on the same page as far as that goes.

I have a friend who was warning about this because she has two kids with T1 who "got it" as teens when they both came down with a viral or other infection that triggered onset. So genetics + viral trigger?

Yup, the two people I know who have had it have both been women over the age of 40. One had a scratchy throat for a couple days, one had a 99* fever and sneezing for a day. Opposite sides of the US. In the former case, she got it and no one else in her family did (husband and three kids; they were all tested at least twice once she tested +).

I loved reading his whole interview. Thank you.

The Empty Pot -- Courage and honesty

Well, yeah, that's why I mentioned other people in leadership. I honestly have never been to a church where Sunday school teachers are allowed to teach whatever they choose without at least one second set of eyes on the lessons/materials, but maybe it's more common than I realize. My current church is tiny and doesn't have a children's ministry director either. The SS teacher of my kids' classes still has to tell the elder board what she is going to teach, but she is allowed to make her own plans.

I can't tell if these two things are related, good news or bad news, total hogwash (80 times?!), or what, but putting them here for discussion and analyzing https://news.psu.edu/story/623797/2020/06/22/research/initial-covid-19-infection-rate-may-be-80-times-greater-originally https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1232134?__twitter_impression=true

As a Sunday school teacher I would be asking the children's ministry director or pastors and elders for denominationally approved curriculum and resources. Or at least some kind of input from church leadership or maybe a committee of teachers and parents if that sort of resource doesn't exist. I wouldn't strike out on that on my own, or if I did, I'd want to check for approval first. If I as a teacher didn't approve of church resources, I don't know what I would do, but it would be a choice between submitting to leadership as a God given authority, or not teaching Sunday school. That would be a tough one. As a parent, I'd not expect individual Sunday school teachers to be picking topics current to the day for the kids unless it was an older class...and even then I'd expect the primary lesson (in Sunday school) to be from the Bible and race to be addressed as it came up in context (the good samaritan, for example). But that is a personal preference, I guess, more exegetical, less topical. Because I think there is more room for error if we start with a topic and look to the Bible to fill it in, rather than the other way around. ETA: I started this when there was one reply and less info in the OP, so it's less than useful now!

I guess I do wish I were a tiny country with non-porous borders or surrounded by ocean right now. I'm not sure I'd trade for an authoritarian government that can violate my privacy via my phone/face recognition/social credit systems/etc and put me in jail for non-compliance even if it means giving up my safety. That has always been an aspect of the USA that has baffled other countries, though, that many of us would not trade liberty for safety. We are socialized differently. In a pandemic I think this is kind of a more pronounced issue but being laughed at for having more deaths or sickness isn't, I don't think, the indictment that maybe some think it should be.

Why not redesignate at least one field hospital, or have the national guard set one up for this exact problem? That's just one option off the top of my head. I don't feel like I personally have to think up all the possible solutions to this simply because it is obvious to me that it is a bad idea at best. Again, it simply wouldn't occur to me to deliberately put covid+ people into a confined living space with dozens of other vulnerable people. Again, they were *releasing* prisoners for that exact reason.

I think that it's a combo of problems, including locking down too early, opening before it was wise because we locked down to early and other things. I hope my posts didn't imply that I thought that it was one policy issue that would save us all. I also think that trying to do our best with data is a matter of perception in some places and has turned super political. I think what some people see as the US's first wave was largely just major cities on the east coast. So the rest of us flattened our curve for a time but even the slightest opening will result in the same growth patterns seen elsewhere. Without very costly lockdowns, it's hard to see how a lot of this can be avoided when the virus is circulating, even on a low level. On the other hand, it seems like in LA county, close to me, we have a major uptick in cases, but also a huge uptick in testing. So it seemed like positivity was still relatively low yesterday, if I am looking at things correctly. I do think that all epidemics to a certain extent follow a curve that is somewhat inevitable shown throughout history (not that mitigation is bad, I'm obviously taking precautions), and we like to think we are advanced enough to beat mother nature with some sort of effort, but I'm not so sure, minus a vaccine, which I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about these days. Especially not with something like this where we are trying to quarantine the healthy because we can't tell the difference between them and the carriers. I don't know if you could engineer a better virus for widespread disaster, honestly.

Nope, not the point of my post. The point is that after 30k deaths and people leaving during the peak of that, maybe acting like people from other states are a problem is not well received. Perhaps NY may have a problem with people coming there, and hopefully they quarantine when they return to their homes. But I don’t think a lot of us are itching to go on a NYC vacation or something.

Square, NY was not counting nursing home deaths the same as every other state. As in, they weren't counting people who got sick in nursing homes if they died in a hospital as nursing home deaths and other states were. This made their numbers look relatively low. And maybe there are no effective policies, but I'm pretty sure putting a person with covid in the facility on purpose is what I would consider ineffective at best. I know nothing about nursing homes but I can think of at least two or three other options off the top of my head before ordering that as a governor.