Coronavirus

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I found this twitter account when the architect I talked about earlier in the thread that was in the WSJ article made it on here.

https://twitter.com/SusanSchutte2

It's a really [expletive] reminder that numbers aren't just numbers but actual people. Terrible to see so many gofundmes associated with the links as well. Sure, it's easy to think the people dying are unvaxxed and they made their choice. Boo hoo. Still, I bet none of them expected to be the whatever small % it is that suffer the worst outcome. And, even of those that aren't vaccinated, few will die from covid in the foreseeable future.

Then you see videos like this one, and, yeah he made it. But, many don't. Tough to imagine what it would be like to be in a hospital thinking you're going to die. Away from everyone you love. Nothing but regrets going through your mind. Feeling sick as [expletive]. Thinking about all that you're going to miss. Must be absolutely terrible.

[mikechamp]

An update on the school situations, from a variety of (southern) locales:

Mississippi quarantines 20,000 pupils at start of new school year

Just days after the start of their academic year, over 20,000 pupils from 800 Mississippi schools have been told to quarantine due to Covid exposure. Some 4,500 children became sick with Covid during this first week of school.

Across the US, states like Mississippi with low vaccination rates and relaxed mask rules have asked thousands of students and staff to quarantine.

In one school district in Florida, over 10,000 children and staff are being told to stay home. The outbreak made the Hillsborough County School Board vote on Wednesday to require masks in schools.

Elsewhere in the US:

Georgia's Ware County has closed all government-run schools after a "sharp increase" in cases saw over 800 students and faculty quarantining

Nearly 1,000 students in Nashville, Tennessee, are in quarantine or isolation

The New Orleans School District says over 3,000 student and staff are quarantining amid about 300 active Covid cases

Alabama, another southern state with low vaccination rates, reported every hospital bed in the state was occupied as of Wednesday

Several school districts in Texas have had to temporarily close due to outbreaks among staff or students

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58272083

[Joe Shlabotnik]

America is a hollow shell just waiting to be crushed. One of these days the proverbial butterfly wing beat will cause it to fold like a cheap suit.

[Jocephus]

America is a hollow shell just waiting to be crushed. One of these days the proverbial butterfly wing beat will cause it to fold like a cheap suit.

we are averaging around 130k cases per day and we had 1700 deaths yesterday. gonna be...umm...interesting? to see how this fall and winter go

[heyzeus]

What if, and hear me out because I'm part of the problem -- but what if instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to litigate mask mandates, my government was instead using that money to fund testing and contact tracing programs, and delivering high-quality masks that actually work to schools and community centers for people who can't find or afford them?

[G. Keenan]

What if, and hear me out because I'm part of the problem -- but what if instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to litigate mask mandates, my government was instead using that money to fund testing and contact tracing programs, and delivering high-quality masks that actually work to schools and community centers for people who can't find or afford them?

Because that would be communism, you radical socialist lib dem commie.

[Fat_Bulldog]

What if, and hear me out because I'm part of the problem -- but what if instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to litigate mask mandates, my government was instead using that money to fund testing and contact tracing programs, and delivering high-quality masks that actually work to schools and community centers for people who can't find or afford them?

This is [expletive] dumb. Why did you post this?

[MrCrowesGarden]

Remember how we could have just sent almost every person a mask in the Post Office with Trump's name plastered all over it and he could have taken credit for everything... and then we didn't so we're still in hell?

[G. Keenan]

Another thing that would be really helpful at this point, cheap and accurate self-tests. The current ones you can get are like $25 a pop. If we could get these down to like $2 and make them available at every pharmacy, gas station, 7-11, etc. we could all keep a bunch in stock at home and self-test before going out. Meeting friends for dinner? Take one of these cheap tests before going out and stay home if you're positive.

Seems like that would be so much easier than trying to contact trace a gazillion exposures once community spread gets too big to really trace.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Another thing that would be really helpful at this point, cheap and accurate self-tests. The current ones you can get are like $25 a pop. If we could get these down to like $2 and make them available at every pharmacy, gas station, 7-11, etc. we could all keep a bunch in stock at home and self-test before going out. Meeting friends for dinner? Take one of these cheap tests before going out and stay home if you're positive.

Oops... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/a ... tests.html

For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for Covid-19 were given a task that shocked them: take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags.

Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a work force of 2,000. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing, saying it wasn’t their fault. “This is all about money.”