Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

My (Likely not Unique) Coivd Quarantine Quandary

Posted: July 20, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Mary Cooper: When your [Leonard’s] mom gets back, I’m gonna need to apologize for the way I spoke to her.

Penny: Well, come on, she did kinda start it.

Mary Cooper: Doesn’t matter. A good Christian would have turned the other cheek. On the other hand, a good Texan would have shot her, so I’ll just split the difference.

The Big Bang Theory The Maternal Combustion 2015

Last Monday after FINALLY my much delayed x-rays and face to face with my orthopedist I finally had a full clean bill of health to have the final restrictions on lifting on me lifted (and a letter to that effect) when I made a fatal mistake.

I finished my appointment at 1:45 and was scheduled to work at 3:30 about 15 min from my doctor’s office. I planned on getting a bite to eat before hitting work when I remembered that DaWife had a 2 PM because of what seemed like a Strep throat. I wasn’t all that worried as she gets these about every other year but decided that rather than go alone to eat I’d wait for her and as you were now allowed someone to go with you for appointments I’d join her and maybe just drive through a McD’s later.

Well she showed up and was delighted with my company. We waited until being called into the room and she saw the doctor (ironically the ex-wife of the gentleman I had just seen) who examined her and called for a COVID test and declared us both under quarantine until the results were in and gave us a letter to that effect.

I wasn’t all that concerned at the time. Because I had driven my wife to a drive through test in Lowell I had been tested for COVID with her once and presumed that we’d have the results in a day or two and I had four days of vacation/floating holiday time still left. My wife only had one but I figured it wouldn’t be all that long.

It is now a week later. While her Strep culture has come back negative the COVID results are still not in. DaWife has missed 2 days of pay and I one not counting today and if the test doesn’t come back before 1 pm for her or 2:30 for me the days will keep piling up until the results come in.

Even worse given the news of the reliability of tests lately I have little reason to trust whatever the results are, and of course if they come back positive, even if asymptomatic we’re stuck for another couple of weeks.

Unlike teachers we don’t have the luxury of the state paying us if we don’t work so things are likely to get thin around here and the extra COVID money the feds sent back in April went for bills a while ago.

Fortunately I did DaTaxes last month instead of in April so if the refunds come this week they should cover the days we’ve already missed but it’s going to get interesting around here real soon.

I don’t see an actual solution other than to wait things out and hope and pray for the best knowing that if this is the worst I have to deal with I’m pretty lucky but it occurs to me that I’m only one of millions who have had similar situations and headaches to deal with. I have a nephew in Minneapolis who was in the hotel industry and lost his job because of COVID and because of the lack of prospects at the moment is in no position to escape that city that has been given over to the mob. I could be in a lot worse shape.

All of this comes because of the actions of the Chinese Communist government and exasperated by the actions of American pols and companies who not only find the financial patronage of said Communist government too lucrative to object to their actions but publicly support positions and polices that aid and abet them.

While as a Christian I am required to forgive these enemies, and even pray for them as a Sicilian American I will not forget those who have done this not only to me and mine but to my countrymen.

A tribute to Thomas Sowell

Posted: July 16, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Last week marked the 90th birthday of Thomas Sowell, who is my favorite economic and political author.  He is way more than an author to me, he is a mentor and favorite professor.  No author is more responsible for my transition from a progressive-socialist to a Libertarian free market warrior.  I owe Thomas Sowell a great deal of gratitude. He has not only informed and inspired me, he has entertained me a great deal because he is an exceptional writer who makes even the dry subject of economics fun

Thomas Sowell has written around a dozen books and countless articles.  Because of the volume of his works it would not have been possible for me to read through all of it to find quotes for this article so I cheated by using his Wikiquote page.

The welfare state is often a main target of criticism by Thomas Sowell because of the disastrous effects it has had on the African American community.  Here is a quote from a discussion in Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” television series in 1980.

What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.

Thomas Sowell is a very harsh critic of the political left.  Here is one of his more colorful quotes on that subject. It is from the Forbes article “The Survival of the Left” which ran Sep 8, 1997.

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays is one of his best books.  Here is a quote from the essay Social Deterioration.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

Here is a quote from an article that appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on December 26, 2003.

To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.

Random Thoughts was a running article he wrote.   Here is a quote from Sep 03, 2007

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans– anything except reason.

When Thomas was young he was a Marxist.  The book Thomas Sowell, A Personal Odyssey (2000) chronicles his transition to a Libertarian philosophical giant.  Here is a quote from Chapter 5 : Halls of Ivy.  Emphasis is from the Wikiqoute page.

In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse’s room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.

Race is very frequent topic of Thomas Sowell’s.  The National Review article The Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community is a perfect example of his genius on this subject.  This quote proves that the Founding Fathers of the US were well ahead of the rest of the world when it came to the condemnation and abolition of slavery.

What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage. That was not yet a majority view among Americans in the 18th century, but it was not even a serious minority view in non-Western societies at that time.

Then how did slavery end? We know how it ended in the United States — at a cost of one life lost in the Civil War for every six slaves freed.

The welfare state was more responsible for the destruction of the African American family than even slavery. 

Were children raised with only one parent as common at any time during the first 100 years after slavery as in the first 30 years after the great expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s?

As of 1960, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent, usually the mother. Thirty years later, two-thirds of black children were being raised without a father present.

What about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s. 

The Website American Thinker wrote this tribute article Sowell At 90. Isn’t It High Time More of Us Listened to This Man? and I could not agree more

Point and Laughter the Best Medicine: NY Times, SF Art, Andrew Sullivan et/all, edition

Posted: July 16, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Can someone explain to me why I should do anything other than point and laugh when:

A “moderate” at the NYT finds it necessary to resign because the folks at her Paper of Record that has demonized and othered conservatives, believing Christians and supporters of this President for years are targeting her?

Or an art gallery director in San Francisco who after 20 years in the most wok city in the country resigns after stating that art by white people is still acceptable to be displayed?

Or Andrew Sullivan who after decades of working to redefine marriage and then going deep into “Trig Trutherism” concerning Sarah Palin suddenly find that he no longer fits in New York Magazine?

Or a Tina Fey who after years of going after Sarah Palin as well suddenly finds that her own show had “crossed the line” and has to pull episodes with apologies

Or a Jimmy Kimmel who has spent going after Conservatives suddenly find himself on hiatus because the mob has decided his past is unforgivable?

Or even Glenn Kessler the Washington Post fact checker who is shocked SHOCKED that president Trump might use an executive order on immigration but had no trouble with Obama doing the same?

Five years ago Kurt Schlichter warned the left that they might not like the new rules and as Victor Davis Hanson notes some of the left are starting to think this they might be next for the chop has gone too far realizing they are not immune from the wrath that they so readilly supported against folks like me

So you’ll forgive me if rather than feeling sorry I simply point and laugh and these fools who are now enjoying the fruits of their labors and votes that were not considered a problem as long as the right people were targeted..

Report from Louisiana: National Anxiety over Return to Schools

Posted: July 13, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By: Pat Austin

As we begin to explore strategies to reopen school this fall, teachers across the country are experiencing anxiety about their own safety, that of their students, and that of their own families. It is an agonizing position.

Many teachers feel they must choose between their health, and the health of their family, or their career.

Teachers are collecting Lysol wipes, pricing room foggers for sanitation, and stockpiling gloves and masks. Some are collecting page protectors that can be sanitized and plastic pencil cases.

Let’s be clear. If we are talking about putting pencils in individual plastic boxes so nobody else touches them, if we are worried about getting Coronavirus from a pencil, we have already lost this debate.

This back-to-school debate has exploded since the President spoke last week and said that schools must reopen or risk losing funding. I’ve been reading one article and study after another all week long, and they keep on coming.

Districts across the country are trying to figure out how to do this safely. It is a Herculean and perhaps impossible task and I do not envy these decision makers.

What absolutely must be done is that each community must decide if opening school is safe for them; to do this there must be low community spread of the virus. Currently, Louisiana has a 97% community spread.  As of this writing, cases are climbing as are hospitalizations.

Across the country, it is estimated that at least one-fourth of our teachers are 50 years old or older. Many teachers are themselves in a high-risk group and many more live with someone who is. While teachers are worried about their students, we are also worried about the health and safety of our own families.

For some teachers, a return to the classroom would also mean self-quarantine from their elderly parents to avoid risk of exposing them as well.

And yes, it is true that essential workers have been on the job for months. But unlike a grocery cashier, a delivery driver, or even a doctor or nurse, a teacher will be confined in a classroom with 25 or more students every single day for at least seven hours. Many of these classrooms are in older buildings with poor ventilation and windows that cannot be opened.

We are looking at returning to school with daily temperature checks of students and staff, seven hours in face masks, and a barrage of cleaning chemicals and heavy sanitation measures. Students will have to keep six feet apart (maybe three feet with masks, but I’d prefer six), there can be no sharing of materials like pencils or Chomebooks (what about library books?). Hand washing has been recommended every two hours. How many portable hand washing stations will that mean for a school with 1200 students or more?

And  all that hand washing goes right out the window once the kid pulls out his cellphone, doesn’t it?

It’s all very dystopian.

We can’t let our overwhelming desire for a normal return cloud our better judgement for safety of all of us.

Teachers across the country have come up with some sensible strategies, and while they are not always easy to do, some of them make sense, like keeping upper grades virtual for nine weeks, or until this is under control, and using our buildings and classrooms for lower grades where kids are less at risk, and for kids needing special services. This would enable classes to be quite small and spread out.

Teachers have a lot of questions and here are just a few of mine:

1. Who is going to wipe down my room between classes every day? Where will all of these disinfectant wipes come from? I haven’t seen any since March. Will we use bleach? How will this affect kids with asthma?

2. Will my classes truly be 10 to 15 students? I normally have 25 or more and we are literally on top of each other in my small room.

3.  Under our proposed Phase 2 hybrid model students will be on an A/B schedule and attend every other Friday. If little Johnny shows up on the wrong Friday, are we sending him home? Keeping him? In class? Who will watch him?

4.  Will there be an isolation room for kids with fever or symptoms to stay until a parent comes to get them?

5. Will there be daily temperature checks? At the front door or in homeroom? Once an infected person is in the building, what’s the point? By the time he gets to homeroom he will have exposed many other people.

6. Who will be quarantined if there is a positive case of COVID-19 in a classroom? For how long?

7. If students have to eat lunch in the classroom, masks will be off and there will be much talking; exposure will still be high. When will the teacher get a break?

8. When the inevitable teacher shortage comes due to early retirements and illness, where will all of the subs come from? Subs are often in high risk categories themselves.

9. Will teachers be required to cover classes when there are no subs?

10.  If masks are required, what of the student who shows up without one, wears it improperly, refuses to wear it, takes it off, shoots it across the room, wears a bra cup on his face instead of a mask, etc. Are we to be mask police, too?

11. What will be done to improve ventilation in classrooms with windows sealed shut?

12. How do we ensure students are washing hands every two hours as the CDC guidelines, and the Louisiana Strong Start guidelines suggest? Will there be handwashing stations throughout the schools? Hand sanitizer stations?

13.  Will schools be provided extra personnel to manage all of this?

I feel like I work at the absolute best high school in the world and I work for the best administrators ever born — no doubt. And our students? They are solid gold; they are loving, kind, wonderful kids and we all feel like family. I want normal school. Don’t be confused. I want normal school. I want to look my students in the eyes, I want to be able to tell if they are okay, and I want to help them when they need me to. I want to keep that crate of snacks for the hungry ones, and I want explain a concept in class so that everyone understands what we are learning and why. I love my kids. I love the hugs in the hall, the high-fives, the ones that come stop in on their way to the bathroom or office just to say hi.

School gives me joy. But how can we have that if we are worried about dying from a pencil?

How?

Here is a short list of some of the things I’ve been reading this week; it’s not homework, you don’t have to read them. But I decided I wanted to collect them in one place, so here they are.

Further Reading:

I Don’t Want to go Back: Many Teachers Are Fearful and Angry over Pressure to Return. (New York Times, 7/11/2020).

“Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students physically distanced and prevent further spread of the virus have not been answered. And they feel that their own lives, and those of the family members they come home to, are at stake.”

E-Learning is Inevitable for US High Schools Next Year (Medium, 7/10/2020)

“However, the only way to eliminate the risk of transmission during in-person school would be to know with certainty that no one who enters the building is COVID-19 positive. Unless schools can accurately test every person who enters the building every day with real-time results, the spread of COVID-19 in schools will occur and that type of real-time accurate testing capacity will not be possible by this fall for any school let alone all schools.”

Epidemiologist: Schools Can Open Safely, and Here’s How. (Sherman, TX Herald Democrat, 7/11/2020)

“The focus should be on protecting teachers. It begins with a robust testing program, so they feel safe in the classroom. We know that uncertainty about one’s health and the health of others makes it difficult to feel confident enough to return to work.”

No One Wins, but No One Dies: What School Must Look Like… (The Suitcase Scholar, 7/9/2020)

Because no matter how much you want this school year to look like any other school year, it can not and it will not. If we want to accomplish all three of these goals, here’s how it can be done…

How to Reopen Schools: What Science and Other Countries Teach Us (New York Times, 7/11/2020)

“As school districts across the United States consider whether and how to restart in-person classes, their challenge is complicated by a pair of fundamental uncertainties: No nation has tried to send children back to school with the virus raging at levels like America’s, and the scientific research about transmission in classrooms is limited.”

Nobody Asked Me: A Teacher’s Opinion on School Reopening (Teacher Life Blog, 7/9/2020)

“Remote learning isn’t most people’s first choice, but it is a safer solution in the meantime, while we figure out this global health crisis. It is also hard to imagine how much learning would be taking place in the classroom anyway after they wait in their 75 foot long lines to wash their hands for 20 seconds multiple times a day. School days are already crammed full and now we will be adding in disinfecting constantly, monitoring for symptoms, sending kids to “quarantine”, trying to get ahold of parents, dealing with masks, giving “mask breaks”, etc.”

Study of School Reopening Models and Implementation Approaches During the Covid-19 Pandemic (Covid-19 Literature Report Team whitepaper PDF, 7/6/2020)

“This document is a brief summary of the models and implementation approaches to re-opening schools that focuses on the approaches used in 15 countries for which we were able to identify data.”

One in Four Teachers at Greater Risk from Coronavirus (CNN, 7/10/2020)

“Nearly 1.5 million teachers are at higher risk of serious illness if they contract coronavirus, according to an analysis released Friday evening. These teachers and instructors, about 24% of the total, suffer from health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or obesity, or are older than age 65, which make them more vulnerable, the Kaiser Family Foundation report found.”

These Arizona Teachers Shared a Classroom for Summer School: All 3 contracted Covid-19, 1 died. (USA Today, 7/10/2020)

“The educators decided to teach virtually while together in the same classroom, but took what they thought were extensive measures: They wore masks, they disinfected equipment and kept distance between each other.”

The Case Against Reopening Schools During the Pandemic: by a Fifth Grade Teacher (Washington Post, 7/10/2020)

“Safety is the prerequisite for all learning. Ordinarily, we offer hugs and reassurance when a child is upset. We encourage students to walk their peers to the nurse’s office when they get injured on the playing field. We give high-fives and pats on the back when students achieve their goals. We provide private spaces for students to share confidential information, or to de-escalate from distress. In a social-distancing school setting, everything is inverted. Closeness and warmth are now dangerous. Students and teachers must remain hypervigilant, watching for face mask violations, friends too near, an uncovered cough, unwashed hands, and unsanitized surfaces.”

Nation’s Pediatricians Walk Back Support for In-Person School (NPR, 7/10/2020)

“The American Academy of Pediatrics once again plunged into the growing debate over school reopening with a strong new statement Friday, making clear that while in-person school provides crucial benefits to children, “Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics.” The statement also said that “science and community circumstances must guide decision-making.”

Covid-19 is as Deadly and Dangerous as Ever. (Medium, 7/8/2020)

“The idea that Covid-19 is becoming less dangerous or deadly is false, the latest data reveals. “The virus is as lethal as ever,” researchers at the Harvard Global Health Institute said in a statement. “Deaths and hospitalizations are rising in hot spots around the country. Exactly as public health experts feared.”

Mounting Evidence Suggests Coronavirus is Airborne–but Health Advice has not Caught Up. (Scientific American, 7/8/2020)

“Converging lines of evidence indicate that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, can pass from person to person in tiny droplets called aerosols that waft through the air and accumulate over time. After months of debate about whether people can transmit the virus through exhaled air, there is growing concern among scientists about this transmission route.”

Large Antibody Study Adds to Evidence Herd Immunity to Covid-19 is Unachievable (FOX-17, “Nashville, 7/6/2020)

To achieve what epidemiologists call herd immunity, mathematical modelers suggest at least between 60% and 70% of people would need to be immune to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. According to the Mayo Clinic, there are two paths to herd immunity for COVID-19: vaccines and infection. Vaccines would be the ideal approach, though experts say its effects can wane over time. Another path would be infection, but there’s much still unknown about COVID-19, including if having the virus makes a person immune to future infection.”

Spike in Cornavirus Cases Means some Schools Won’t Open at all this Fall (EdSource, 7/10/2020)

“As coronavirus cases spike across California, some school districts are making the decision to keep campuses closed to most students and to educate them online next school year. Districts in Los Angeles County, which has more coronavirus cases than any county in the state, are preparing for the possibility of classes being completely online at the start of the school year. In neighboring San Bernardino County, its school district this week announced classes would resume next month online.”

I’m an Epidemiologist and a dad: Here’s Why I think schools should Reopen (Vox, 7/9/2020)

The same will likely be true in schools. The potential risk to teachers, therefore, goes beyond the classroom. Staff risk in schools likely looks similar to the risk of any adult working in a crowded indoor environment during the pandemic. School opening plans must consider teacher safety in addition to the well-being of students.

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