wathe
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Posts posted by wathe
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37 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Ah-ha. The Canadian ones should do very well!
I remember writing these when I was in high school. They were fun!
I see that homeschools can participate. I think that's newish?
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20 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:
Did you get the flexi? Is it working without leakages?
Extreme (the rigid one). No leaks (once I got the knack, it did take a few tries). The rigid plastic makes it easy to worm it into place with minimal need to move clothing. I think the flexi would be harder to use.
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A stand-up-to-pee device. We spend a lot of time in the woods hiking and camping, and I am tired of squatting and getting my butt bitten by mosquitoes. It took a few tries to get the knack of it. It's quite liberating!
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2 hours ago, MeaganS said:
We do it almost exclusively as audio in the car as well. And that's all. I don't do any projects. Sometimes I'll get a library book on a subject we recently listened to, but we don't do any projects. We listen to a few chapters a week and when we finish the series we start over again. They will have listened to the whole series several times before middle school. They enjoy it. I do consider us as more unschooling history though. SOTW is just one resource we use informally.
Same.
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We did SOTW almost entirely on audio in the car. I would check out picture books from the relative time period to look at and read. We didn't do any structured formal activities, but we did do a lot of informal "activities" that we made up as we went along, as our mood suited us: the kids incorporated a lot of history into their free play, we made costumes, ate food from various times and places, baked hard-tack, built a trebuchet to fling apples, duct-tape weapons, etc. It was very organic and somewhat unschooly. They've retained a lot.
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32 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:
I don’t understand why more countries haven’t made the effort to work toward local production capacity - it was obvious that global supply was going to be an issue. In Australia they did but only for Astra Zeneca which now looks like a bad bet.
I think it just takes a long time. Canada has plans for a Novovax plant, but that's at least a year away.
mRNA vaccines are complicated to make. That kind of infrastructure takes years to develop.
We had a conservative government 2006-2015 that defunded government science and research programs. Now we are paying for that.
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1 hour ago, Cnew02 said:
At least Canada will be doing the right thing😥. Although there must be some leeway in that, we sent several million doses of AZ to Mexico a couple of weeks ago.
If we ever get what we've bought.
You are right that we've contracted for 4x as much as we need, and plan to give away the extra. But supply has been a serious issue - we don't actually have very much. We do not have any domestic production. We are at the mercy of export bans, including the US export ban @Lady Florida. posted about upthread. The US did send us a shipment of AstraZeneca (only because it's not approved there and would otherwise go to waste - which touches on @Farrar's point about countries not really feeling super grateful for getting what amounts to other countries garbage. There is some resentment here about that. And it's a loan, not a gift, we will have to pay it back - which would be fine but....having to pay for another countries waste and be thankful about it doesn't popularly appeal.)
My province is only 2% fully vaxed, and 18% have had their first shot. We have the infrastructure in place to mass vaccinate, but we don't have enough vaccine.
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12 minutes ago, melmichigan said:
Your graphs look very similar to ours. It’s hard to ignore the trend we are seeing with B.1.1.7. I’m glad you have stay at home orders. The local health department was able to convince school boards to close our schools, and the governor has asked for voluntary action.
We've kept schools open, for the most part (they are closed in Toronto and a few other hotspot health units). It's actually the best thought-out and sensible shut-down order we've had so far.
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Provincially, we are at about 2% fully vaccinated and about 18% have had their first shot. We desperately need supply. The forecast is that all adults who want to be vaccinated will have the opportunity by July. (Were now booking 60+ year-olds, with all appointments filled to April 18th.)
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Just now, Not_a_Number said:
He's not my favorite person any week 😛 .
Truth.
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1 hour ago, melmichigan said:
You hit a sore spot, I really don't need reports. Our local school moved most students virtual three weeks ago, with an attempt to keep the elementary open, they are now all closed until May, and will open only if our positivity comes way down. Our hospitals are full locally, and filling again statewide, with much younger people (I've posted the statistics in the last two weeks so I won't repeat that), to the point that U of M and other hospitals have been forced to stop elective surgical procedures.
This is my county, which remains the highest cases per capita, with a positivity of over 30%. We have predominantly B.1.1.7. community spread.
This was my state as B.1.1.7 has took hold last month.
This is now.
This was released yesterday:
The following statement is made on behalf of chief medical officers of Michigan’s community hospitals.
The safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccines continue to bring us hope. However, the current surge of cases in Michigan is troubling. While our healthcare workers are now safer because of vaccines and more personal protective equipment – and our facilities are safe for all who need care – we are concerned for our communities, including children, who are being infected with COVID-19 at all-time high rates. The variants are more contagious and deadly, infecting more adults and children, and bringing more young people into hospitals than ever. Daily pediatric COVID-19 admissions have increased by 237% since Feb. 19...
Covid ICU numbers are already hundreds higher than they were at the height of the last peak (572 today, vs 410 at peak of last wave), case numbers are higher, and the slope of our curve us ugly-steep. We are in a stay-at-home order that just started 3 days a go. Hospitals were all ordered to cancel elective procedures as of yesterday to make capacity, and the province just issued orders allowing for hospital transfers without consent, and allowing community HCW to be deployed to hospitals.
The Toronto pediatric tertiary care centre (Hospital for Sick Children) has opened its ICU to adults. ICU patients are being transfered further and further away as each region in the province goes over-capacity. My local hospital is expanding its ICU by taking over CCU and cath lab beds. Our parking lot field hospital is in use.
This is all due to variants, primarily B117 in my area (greater than two thirds of cases).
He is clearly not my favourite person this week.
Nationally, its the same story, "The rapid spread of more contagious coronavirus variants across Canada is driving a devastating third wave in much of the country and increasing the level of risk in situations previously thought to be relatively safe from COVID-19.".
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17 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:
Wouldn't they just tack on a test to the normal, annual sports physicals that are required to play sports? MD visits are happening anyway.
"Sports physicals" aren't really a thing here for youth recreational sports. They might be for elite athletes (I don't know), but that's not most kids in sport.
And presumably these would be extra visits for return-to-play clearance post acute covid. Some youth sports do have requirements like this for return-to-play post concussion.
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9 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Man, we're really doing a bad job of agreeing on everything, aren't we? 😂 It's almost like we actually each have our own opinions and risk assessments, and since we're all science-minded, we agree 80% of the time 😉 .
Nah, couldn't be.
Come on, sheeple, get yourselves together!! 🐑 🐑 🐑
Yes, we are 🙂
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4 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
We've been ridiculously careful about limiting contact. We do have a pod, but it's really almost airtight -- my SIL had a couple of masked pediatrician's appointments for the newborn and that's all. No one has gone to stores or seen friends or gotten a haircut or anything!
So when I say that we're careful... I really mean it. I know that's not true for most people, but so what?
It's like... I am pretty sure most people shouldn't teach their kids math without curriculum 😂. On average, it's a terrible idea. But that's not going to stop me 😉.
Oh, I know how careful you are, and I absolutely believe that you really are as careful as you think you are. And, if I were hypothetically pregnant in a similarly tight bubble, I'd still vaccinate.
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1 minute ago, Not_a_Number said:
Yes, but the probability of a single exposure resulting in COVID is low! High exposure people have REPEATED exposure. Each one exposure gives you a risk of like 1/1000 of catching COVID. Yes, all those add up (well, 1 minus those multiply down would be the way to say it, really), but I'm not all that worried about a few contacts with the outside world.
I've had a flu vaccine and so had DH, and I have to say that the level of immune response was just different from this vaccine. Now, it's possible this is anti-scientific nonsense, but I've never had a cold sore right after any other vaccine, either.
I'm not comfortable generalizing from the flu vaccine to this one.
Very mildly. Last I checked, infections in pregnancy were linked with all sorts of stuff later on, most of which you wouldn't be able to measure until the kids are actually grown. So... I'm glad that there's very mild evidence that the vaccine isn't causing miscarriages, but that's not the limit of what could go wrong with vaccines.
I feel worried about this one for the same reason I feel very worried about kids getting COVID, despite the fact that many kids have very easy initial infections -- when an organism is young, LOTS of things can go wrong in a way that affect the rest of their life.
All of this is valid, of course. What you would do during your hypothetical pregnancy, and what would worry you, sounds different than what I would do, and what would worry me. The individual R/B analysis will be imperfect, because the data are limited. Good individual R/B analysis might even be impossible for this right now, because we don't have enough granularity in the data yet. I think that we do have enough to make recommendations on a population level though. That strongly colours my opinion
(Obviously, everyone should weigh the risks and benefits for themselves and make a well-reasoned decision that makes sense for them.)
I think my main point in this thread is that, in pandemic conditions, waiting for more data is, in of itself, risky, and on a population level, in this case, waiting for more data is higher risk than vaccinating. People, in general, like to think that they are exceptional and that what's true for the population isn't true for them. And that they're often wrong about that.
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Also, my perspective on this tends to be from a population point of view. Populations are, of course, made up of individuals making individual decisions - I recognize that.
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21 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
@wathe -- but theoretically, let's say someone really DID have limited exposure, like I do. Would you still favor vaccination?
I figure my risk of catching COVID if I only go to doctor's appointments in a mask is quite low. Not, like, 0.1% low, but in the single percent. Whereas my chance of an unpleasant vaccine reaction is quite large.
Speaking for myself, If I were in your situation, during pandemic conditions, I probably would. Because the virus is a sneaky little devil. Because the actual vaccination data that we have, limited as it is, is reassuring. Because even the most careful can't control their future exposure - illness, accident, mishap, or situational emergency necessitating contact with the outside world can happen at any time (household emergencies necessitating repair people in the house, or medical emergencies including minor ones like for stitches). The probability of something going wrong in life that necessitates contact with the outside world, over the course of 40 weeks, is actually pretty high, I think.
We do have a lot of experience with flu vaccines in pregnancy, (which, like all vaccines, triggers an immune response) with reassuring data, FWIW.
Edited to replace "flawed" with "limited" - a better word for what I'm trying to convey
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2 minutes ago, SKL said:
Yeah - when I say I want more data - I want it to include not only what adverse effects occur, but also what time in the pregnancy, and to what specific groups of people (ages, races, blood types etc.). This for both Covid infections and the vax.
Sure, in and ideal world we'd all like that. But people who are pregnant ri now, i real world pandemic conditions now, have to make decisions now, with the data we've got now. Which favours vaccination. We have to do the best with what we've got.
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Just now, Not_a_Number said:
Oh yes, I know the "careful" people with their "pod" who go to restaurants "but only once a week!"
I'm not really arguing that people can assess this one well on average. I'm just musing about what I would do if I were pregnant...
Right. I do think that people in general, under-estimate their real exposure risk, over-estimate how "careful" they are, and misunderstand data and statistics. Which will lead to excess deaths and excess morbidity in pregnant women who decline the vaccine because they are "careful"
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2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Well, I don't know if all pregnant women SHOULD do that, but I would factor in my rates of exposure when deciding if and when to vax when pregnant. Currently, I have very minimal exposure. We stay home, all the time.
I think your definition (and practice) of careful might not match the popular reality 🙂
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The idea that pregnant women should instead be careful and limit their exposure (ETA as an alternative to vax) seems flawed to me. 1) lots and lots of pregnant women just can't - essential work etc and 2) even those who think they are being very careful usually aren't as careful as they think they are- limiting exposure is actually really, really hard. If I had a dollar for every covid patient I've seen who tells me "but I've been so careful" and "I don't go anywhere", I would have quite a lot of money!
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3 minutes ago, kand said:
That’s part of what frustrates me about people wanting it both ways—wanting everything open while advocating against the vaccine, while also advising at risk people to keep themselves protected from Covid. Those things are incompatible with one another.
Also, thinking again about having said I would probably wait until the second trimester, looking at the data again, I would probably be wrong to make that decision, even though on an emotional level, I can see myself doing that from a place of fear of doing the wrong thing. But, from looking at the data, I probably would actually be increasing my risk of something happening to the baby if I did that rather than get the vaccine.
Yes to the bolded.
Re what I would do personally if pregnant: I would vax. My exposure risk is higher than average and the benefit would clearly exceed the risk. FWIW, my pregnant (n=3) and breastfeeding (n=3) MD colleagues got vaccinated at the first opportunity (January for us). None declined.
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34 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:
They are new just released recommendations so it would make sense. I don’t think an ECG is overly intrusive/expensive so it’s probably just a precaution. They recommend them as a precaution here any time anyone has had an electric shock.
It is expensive at a systems/population level though. Most kids with covid have mild cases, and, here at least, most don't get any formal follow up at all (and beyond a test and a public health phone call, many may never have even seen an MD at all throughout their course of illness). And there are a lot of them. Necessitating an MD visit for return to rec level sport is a whole lot of MD visits that otherwise wouldn't take place. I'm interested to see if Canada follows suit - I suspect we won't.
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8 minutes ago, SKL said:
I would again remind people that the logical comparison isn't vaxed vs. symptomatic covid. It's vaxed vs. not vaxed. Most people who are not vaxed are still not catching Covid during the pregnancy timeframe, especially if sensible precautions are taken.
Vaxed vs not vaxed in pandemic conditions.
Lots and lots of people are catching covid during the pregnancy time frame.
Vs no evidence of harm from the vaccinec (and no plausible mechanism for harm) ETA and very good evidence of protection from the vaccine.
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Math contests similar to the AMC 8?
in General Education Discussion Board
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Looks like registration for homeschools is pretty easy. I'm going to sign us up. I'll let you all know how it goes.