A Dumpster Fire Week

~ Laura

At a local pub, for the second time this week, Steve and I talked about how we were going to keep sane this winter.

With a Black and Tan for Steve and some low-brow red wine for me, we reflected on our dumpster fire of a week. Between Steve’s aunt in Cleveland passing away, an upcoming Zoom funeral, nearly a dozen depressing interviews for some reporting for my magazine articles, Ian’s on-going medical issues, full time remote school for Ian, Jonah’s final week and just some routine three-year special ed testing protocols (which involve lots of parental coordination and emails), this week has sucked BIG TIME. I simply could not muster up the energy to cook and clean pots tonight, so we found yet another tavern with burgers and salads and booze and people. Real, live people. So glorious.

We’ve had a tough week, indeed, but it will pass. What won’t pass quickly are closed schools, isolation, boredom, and cold weather. We brainstormed various plans to keep normal until next spring.

Last weekend, a group of friends went running/walking/dog-walking on the Friday after Thanksgiving, in lieu of a Turkey Trot. We had such a good time that we vowed to go again every weekend, so we’ll hit the trails at 9:30am this Sunday.

We’ll take some driving trips within our state. Jersey has some new stuff to check out, I think. And we can always go in the opposition direction and get into Manhattan in twenty minutes. The museums are still open, so we’ll go. Art always keeps me sane.

I want to organize all the new recipes that I cooked this spring into binders and plastic covers. I want to do even more experimenting with food this winter.

I’ll do the usual reading and writing and hobbies, which I do love, but I also have socialize and see real, live human beings. I want to be out there in the world, and not cowering under blankets in my living room. I need to find a way to do those things safely, of course, but there are ways.

When this is all done, I think one of the first things we’ll do is buy plane tickets to somewhere. Wherever is available. We need more life and adventure in 2021, for sure.

Published by Laura

78 thoughts on “A Dumpster Fire Week”

  1. We pulled our 10th grader out of in-person school this past week, just in case, but left our 2nd grader in school. Early during Thanksgiving break, 10 kids and a teacher from school tested positive (presumably during the big pre-holiday testing rush) and 7th grade, 8th grade and several elementary school classes wound up remote this past week due to exposure. Our 10th grader found he was one of about 3 remote kids Zooming into his classes this week.

    So, what happened this week? It’s been hard picking up the pieces of the puzzle, as there have been a lot of interruptions in local COVID reporting, but the answer seems to be–not much. Our fall surge started 5 weeks ago (just before Halloween) and seems to have peaked 2 weeks ago (in the week before Thanksgiving). The ICUs are full, there are COVID patients occupying about 20% of total hospital beds, but new cases are down a lot, active cases are down, the suburban high school that had been having 2 or 3 dozen active COVID cases is down to less than a dozen this week, and the elementary and intermediate schools suddenly look really good again (10 active cases total over 8 schools). And vaccinations are presumably rolling out in a week!

    At least locally, Thanksgiving doesn’t seem to have been a disaster.

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  2. I have to admit that I am shocked that you go to restaurants and museums while we are in the middle of this incredible surge of cases. I’m trying to decide if I need a haircut badly enough to go see my haircutter (who has been working out of her home). I’m in absolute March/April mode right now.

    This week, a family friend (she lives in Queens; her sister lives in Suffolk County) lost her niece to COVID. Her niece was 13 years old. E is back home with no problems; S wants to come back home in about 2 weeks. My family is going to be upset that we won’t go to NY for Xmas, but I’m just not going to risk it.

    I know everyone is tired, but how can so many people be so blasé about all this sickness?

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    1. Yes, I was just about to get a haircut in mid-November, then I put it off for a week, now I’m too afraid. It’s starting to look terrible; I can’t imagine how bad it will look in another month.

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      1. I have a hair appointment for next week. Things are still okay here — 100% mask compliance and a work at home professional class — but the writing is on the wall. I think I will be able to get the haircut before the door slams shut. My big regret is that I didn’t have a chance to the routine doctors appointments this fall. I think I’m going to be too late for them.

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      2. y81 said, “Yes, I was just about to get a haircut in mid-November, then I put it off for a week, now I’m too afraid. It’s starting to look terrible; I can’t imagine how bad it will look in another month.”

        We ordered clippers this spring, and the guys in my household look OK with home haircuts, but it’s probably not up to Manhattan lawyer standards.

        I’m edging past “Little House on the Prairie,” on my way to “Lady Godiva.”

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  4. I haven’t set foot in a restaurant or bar except to pick up takeaway since February and have no plans to do so until at least next spring. It is excruciating to me that we haven’t shut them all down and prioritized the schools instead and I can’t for the life of me understand how eating in a restaurant is so important that we can’t defer this gratification for just a few months. We are apparently a nation of ADHD-riddled self-centered hedonists and anti-intellectual Trumpy “you can’t tell me what to do” morons. .

    The Germans have a brilliant ad campaign that encourages people to stay home. They have it exactly right. Their schools are open and their people aren’t dying at a rate of thousands per day like here and all they have to do to get this is for the rest of them to lie around on their couch and watch Netflix and eat takeaway for a few months while the government subsidizes the affected industries. Is it really that hard?

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    1. I’ve been stressing about the haircut thing (partly because S has asked for us to get a haircut when she gets home, so I have to make a decision), so I asked my husband, and he said he thought I was overreacting a bit because hairdressers have been an example of low transmission of COVID according to some reports (we can both be masked, for example). Then I asked a friend whose wife is a doctor at a large RI hospital, and he said she thinks the RI gov should have locked the whole state down this past week. So I am getting mixed messages. I will probably bite the bullet and go get my hair cut with S, if only to be sure to give my haircutter some business and a holiday tip before Xmas.

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      1. Wendy said, “I’ve been stressing about the haircut thing (partly because S has asked for us to get a haircut when she gets home…”

        Oh, man.

        I haven’t had a professional haircut in about 9 months now. My husband has doing my bangs, and he’s actually really good, but the back is getting harder and harder to dry or brush. I’m realizing that I missed the bus twice on getting a professional haircut. I could have done it either in late May/early June after reopening or any time this fall when we had 6% positivity. I was holding out for 5% (which never came), so I missed the window of opportunity.

        I have two options:

        a) have my husband do the back and wind up with the choppy 80s girl mullet that my husband did for our 2nd grader
        b) wait until it’s 6% again and get a professional cut….whenever that may be.

        Think, think.

        In your personal case, it looks like Rhode Island is peaking right now in terms of new cases. I definitely wouldn’t do it now, but things may be better in 2+ weeks. That’s a bit uncomfortably early, but the holiday season is awkward because they’ll be closed around Christmas and after Christmas may be higher risk and then there’s New Year’s, etc. etc. So I’d say either do it in 2 weeks or do it at least a week after New Year’s.

        You can probably cut your risk by not chit-chatting, not doing styling, and by coming first thing in the morning.

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  5. Jay said, ” We are apparently a nation of ADHD-riddled self-centered hedonists and anti-intellectual Trumpy “you can’t tell me what to do” morons.”

    How do you categorize the governor of California, the mayor of San Francisco, the mayor of Austin, the mayor of Denver, and all of the other do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do folk?

    The mayor of Austin literally did a stay-at-home-folks message…while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and the mayor of Denver did a stay-at-home message an hour before he jumped on a plane to Mississippi.

    “The Germans have a brilliant ad campaign that encourages people to stay home. They have it exactly right. Their schools are open and their people aren’t dying at a rate of thousands per day like here and all they have to do to get this is for the rest of them to lie around on their couch and watch Netflix and eat takeaway for a few months while the government subsidizes the affected industries. Is it really that hard?”

    At some point “watch Netflix and eat takeaway for a few months” becomes inadequate to describe a situation that has been going on since at least March. “A few months” simply does not apply to lengths of time exceeding 6 months. Also, kids shouldn’t be doing months of takeout and Netflix–and often simply can’t.

    https://www.dw.com/en/merkel-germanys-lockdown-light-to-stretch-into-january/a-55803597

    Here are the current German restrictions:

    “Since November, restaurants and bars across the country have been closed, except for takeaway. Entertainment facilities such as theaters and cinemas have been closed, as well as fitness studios and swimming pools.

    “Schools have remained open, although mandatory mask requirements have been extended. Religious services and protests have been allowed to take place due to constitutional concerns.”

    “Private meet-ups are currently limited to five people from two households, with children aged 14 exempted from the count.

    “Certain exceptions have been made for the Christmas holidays to allow for families to celebrate, albeit in reduced numbers. The so-called Christmas amnesty will relax the rules slightly between December 23 to January 1 — private gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed regardless of the number of households.”

    Frankly, it sounds a lot to me like California–even a bit looser, actually, now that parts of California have tightened up (no “unnecessary” walks in Los Angeles right now), and given that very few CA kids are in school.

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    1. I’ve been sort of amazed (and sadly, sort of not) that all our leaders have basically screwed up, sometimes right after issuing guidelines. But I’ve been close enough to elite people/upper class/people in power enough frequently enough to know that it’s almost a hazard of the breed.

      People who play by the rules the rest of us follow don’t often end up in those positions, whether it’s Old Boys’ Club related or just plain playing politics. I’d wish for better for sure, but.

      The other message is that the public health guidelines are really hard. We’ve followed most of them, and I’ve only seen my parents outside since March, haven’t gotten my hair done, haven’t eaten inside a restaurant, etc. But we did go camping and my kids are in in-person school, and I know their mask compliance etc. is not 100%. Maybe the fact that politicians mess up is actually…human.

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      1. Jenn said, “The other message is that the public health guidelines are really hard…Maybe the fact that politicians mess up is actually…human.

        You’re nicer than me. My read is that rules are for little people and for people who aren’t well-connected, and that it’s easy to make strict rules that you have no intention of following.

        This video has been going around:

        https://mobile.twitter.com/jakecoco/status/1334993874276786178

        It’s a CA bar owner giving a walking tour of her small outdoor seating area (which is now illegal), versus a movie production company’s identical but much larger outdoor seating (which is totally cool) across the street.

        Los Angeles County has just banned outdoor dining:

        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/l-county-official-seen-dining-outdoors-after-voting-ban-outdoor-n1249546

        LA County is, of course, one of the few places in the US that had some sort of shot at outdoor dining being feasible for most of the winter. On the bright side, a judge has asked the county to demonstrate that the ban is necessary:

        https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-02/covid-19-la-county-outdoor-dining-ban-judge

        “The county must return to court Tuesday to present evidence supporting the ban, L.A. County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant said at a hearing Wednesday morning.”

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      2. It’s a CA bar owner giving a walking tour of her small outdoor seating area (which is now illegal), versus a movie production company’s identical but much larger outdoor seating (which is totally cool) across the street.

        This story appears to be the rage in the conservative outrage media ecosystem but it is distorted anti-intellectual hyperbolic BS.

        The things being compared are not remotely the same. It isn’t even an apples vs. oranges comparison but rather a lobster vs. kumquat distinction. They differ in many meaningful ways:

        1. The studio dining area is not open to the public. It is only for the people on the film set. They have meaningful control over what is going on there and how, as opposed to bars that for the most part refuse to police their customers. They also have an incentive to make sure that things are done safely there as a covid outbreak means shutting down, whereas if a bar starts a covid superspreading event then that just means a different set of customers tomorrow.

        2. The studios almost certainly are obligated to have a place (especially since they have kick-ass unions) where their people can take breaks and eat. Better to have one under their control than to disperse their people to surrounding restaurants (when they were open).

        3. The studios are apparently regularly testing (Imagine! A willingness to spend money on setting up a test regimen.) so they are to some extent bubbled in. And, again, they have some incentive to maintain themselves covid-free, whereas the restaurants and bars do not. In fact, they have a disincentive to do so, since harassing their customers about bad acting just drives them to go elsewhere.

        4. The “restaurant” that the whiny woman is advertising appears (if you look at the menu) not to be a restaurant, per se, but rather a dive bar that serves a few food items. This sort of place (places that do their primary trade in booze) are exactly the places that should be closed and stay closed as drunk patrons and covid prudence most certainly do not go together. That, BTW, is the rationale behind all the recent curfews in so many places, as more reckless drinking occurs later in the evening.

        So what should be done? I don’t know if the film industry should be shut down or not, but this decision should most certainly be made independently of whether we should shut the bars down. An argument that “they are open so I should be too” is, like I said, just anti-intellectual distorted BS.

        And, again, this shows the failure of a robust federal response. In a country where this has been handled better (say, Germany, South Korea Australia, any Scandinavian country whose name doesn’t begin with “Sweden”) they would have stepped in with clear guidelines about how and when to open and close restaurants and bars, set up a huge testing and tracing regimen, and provided funding to pay them off to be closed. But our federal government (a) is led by someone who explicitly minimized the response to this and (b) in the hands in the Senate and executive branch of a party that doesn’t really believe in governing at all. So, this is what we have instead.

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      3. I don’t know if I’m nicer…maybe I’ve known more politicians, I hung out with the Trudeau boys for a hot minute in the 80s and a number of my classmates have served as politicians. It is somewhat different up here, just the scale of power/money/etc. and different controls on things, than the US.

        I actually don’t expect things to be 100% consistent. I have two locations of our martial arts place that are literally 10 minutes apart, but over a city line – essentially the same population and I meet them all at the local grocery store, to the extent that pre-pandemic, I used to joke that if I was buying any junk food one of my after-school program kids would catch me and ask why they had to eat fruit and vegetables for snack. 🙂 One is open, one is not. We have really strict guidelines in place, masks, 3m spacing, all of our attendance records are kept up to date, and parents aren’t allowed in the lobby, just students. That said, it’s group physical activity – no way around that. We have to meet /such/ a higher standard than the schools, and schools are open in both communities.

        But I understand why we’re shut down in the larger city and not in the smaller, and although I think schools should be meeting stricter guidelines, I understand why we’ve prioritized them differently – even if I know kids personally where they seem to make more progress with us in 45 min than in school all day, and I mean in their special needs. Our paid-for private classes are nothing like a public resource for all kids.

        However, we pulled my elementary school aged kid out last week. He can’t switch to remote until January so we’re now quasi-homeschooling, at least today.

        What is kind of angering me is that the half measures *aren’t working* that well, so it does feel like wasted time. But our Federal government has provided funding that means my business is likely to make it to the finish line, it’s just going to cost me more in taxes over the next 20 years.

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      4. Jenn said, “But our Federal government has provided funding that means my business is likely to make it to the finish line, it’s just going to cost me more in taxes over the next 20 years.”

        Yay!

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  6. How do you categorize the governor of California, the mayor of San Francisco, the mayor of Austin, the mayor of Denver, and all of the other do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do folk?

    I could put them in the ADHD hedonist category. Also, leaders setting a bad example category. But that doesn’t invalidate what I wrote. Honestly, I don’t see what finding a few examples of people you think I should like doing things I don’t like is an argument.

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    1. Jay said, “I could put them in the ADHD hedonist category. Also, leaders setting a bad example category. But that doesn’t invalidate what I wrote. Honestly, I don’t see what finding a few examples of people you think I should like doing things I don’t like is an argument.”

      It’s not a “few” examples. In CA, it’s a virtual epidemic of Democratic office-holders who are eager to make rules for little people, rules that they have no intention of living under, and which they are quick to carve exceptions out of for their important friends.

      See also NYC, where SNL has been filming with a studio audience for months.

      https://www.vulture.com/2020/10/snl-audience-members-paid-covid.html

      It kind of kills me how harsh you are to normal people who aren’t ideal COVID citizens, while ignoring all of the big, important people who are making and breaking the rules.

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      1. It kind of kills me how harsh you are to normal people who aren’t ideal COVID citizens, while ignoring all of the big, important people who are making and breaking the rules.

        I am not going to defend two (that is 2, two) bad behaving politicians in California and one in Colorado and one in Texas and the other members of the elite who are swanning about. Not going to defend them at all. And, to the extent that they provide cover for people with even less civic virtue to point to them and say “See. This means I don’t need to behave well either.” they are a serious problem.

        But look. The people who are causing *my* schools to be closed are not them. They are my Tumpy MAGAt neighbors who are throwing their (illegal, but not policed) superspreader parties and the people who insist on wandering around without masks or otherwise ignoring this and treating it like it is an inconvenient myth and the fact that our federal government hasn’t figured out how to (or been willing to) pay off risky small businesses to stay closed and set up a test and trace regimen so that we could possibly have gotten a handle on this and reopened our schools and allowed elective medicine and therapy again. I have the utmost contempt for such people and I apologize for nothing.

        I’ll tell you who I have even less patience for, though, who are the whataboutists, who, when this is pointed out, deflect this criticism by saying “but whatabout this, whatabout that, whatabout them.” Whataboutism is not serious discourse.

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      2. Jay said, ” the people who insist on wandering around without masks.”

        Are you talking about people walking outside who are no in dense urban areas?

        People who are outside and 6+ feet away from people from outside their households do not need a mask.

        “our federal government hasn’t figured out how to (or been willing to) pay off risky small businesses to stay closed and set up a test and trace regimen so that we could possibly have gotten a handle on this”

        Even the German test-and-trace operation has broken down, and every Northeastern state level test-and-trace program I have heard of is in some way unsatisfactory, due to incompetence and/or lack of public cooperation.

        https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-28/even-germans-have-lost-control-of-tracing-as-infections-surge

        That headline was 5+ weeks ago.

        I think some US colleges have pretty good programs, but state-level test-and-trace in the US and in most of Europe has been like perpetual motion–everybody talks about it, nobody can demonstrate it.

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    2. The fact that you use “Trumpy” as an all-purpose term of disopprobrium impairs your credibility, and those Democratic officials are an example of how your rhetorical choices make you look stupid.

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    3. Are you talking about people walking outside who are no in dense urban areas?

      No, I’m talking about the people wandering about in my grocery store with their masks pulled down, thanks for asking. Why on earth would you think otherwise?

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      1. Jay said, “No, I’m talking about the people wandering about in my grocery store with their masks pulled down, thanks for asking. Why on earth would you think otherwise?”

        Just checking!

        You didn’t specify, and after all, you are the guy who thinks that walking around outdoor exhibits at the zoo is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS AND IRRESPONSIBLE AND SELFISH.

        I’m a bit puzzled by your report, though, because I live in Central Texas, and (based on what I see) store mask compliance has to be in the high 90s here. Still ticking along at 50-60 new cases per 100,000 per day, though…

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      2. You didn’t specify, and after all, you are the guy who thinks that walking around outdoor exhibits at the zoo is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS AND IRRESPONSIBLE AND SELFISH.

        I actually don’t think I am that guy. I might have been the guy who had contempt for Bethany Mandel for whining about zoos being closed during the height of a pandemic but whatever. Still do have that contempt…

        I don’t understand, though, why you are so concerned with performing this amateur psychoanalysis of me. Seems like a waste of time and, anyway, why should you care what I think?

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  7. I’m absolutely with you that we should have prioritized schools over pubs. 100 percent. I’ve been tweeting that message for months and months.

    But we haven’t. My kid’s school has been shutdown for three weeks for one positive case. He is supposed to go back on Monday, but I doubt it will last.

    Now, why is that? Is it because of Trump? No, we have a Democratic Governor and live in a very Democratic state. It’s because of politics.

    The teachers’ unions want the schools closed. Perioid. And the business industry wants businesses open. There’s no money to pay for unemployed restaurant workers, but the local taxpayers pay the teachers’ salaries even if they aren’t working. So, that’s why that is.

    Now, why am I going to museums and restaurants? Well, I’m taking a calculated risk, for sure, but at the moment, it’s a small one. The biggest spreaders events are not coming from bars or from museums. (Museums are ghost towns. Seriously, the safest places around.). No, the problem is small, in-house parties of family and friends, which we haven’t done at all.

    In my town, the risk is still relatively low, because everyone wears masks and is vigilant about the rules. Even in restaurants, every table is at least six feet apart. There’s no menus. And so on. Our community numbers might change in a week or so, so I’m going while I can.

    The numbers are starting to go up around here, not because of the college students or Trump-types who won’t wear masks, but because of teachers and other workers in town who live in areas of the state with higher numbers. It’s the teachers who are making us sick, crazily enough.

    I don’t have firm policies, as much as informal risk algorithms. We stopped going to church two weeks ago, because the old people there weren’t wearing masks properly. I will probably stop the restaurants in a couple of weeks, but I’ll keep an eye on the numbers.

    And in our calculations are other variables, like the cost of isolation, especially when one kid has autism and this situation is destroying whatever flimsy social skills that he might have. So, I’m about to find some swim classes for him at the local YMCA for the winter, and we’re going to find an in-person social skills class, too.

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    1. Now, why is that? Is it because of Trump? No…

      It is true that this failure has many parents. However, this can be laid in a good part at the feet of Trump’s federal government for several specific reasons:

      1. Lack of abundant testing. There is no excuse for not having a regimen in place by now where we could be testing high school students and teachers at least weekly, if not more often. Yes, it would take a crapload of money and some effort, but the government refused to provide either. In fact, Trump *discouraged* testing because it would hurt his precious numbers and made signing the CARES act contingent on taking money out for testing.

      2. Weak guidance and lack of funding for remediation of schools that would allow more of them to reopen.

      3. Simple abdication of leadership on a personal level. Trump has encouraged his supporters to behave recklessly and not abide by public health guidelines. The behavior of these Trumpy morons has made this epidemic much worse and has made it much harder to reopen the schools. Contrast this with Angela Merkel, who presides over a government that is even more federalized than ours is, but who has personally exerted the Germans to abide by the public health guidelines, which they have largely done.

      The teachers’ unions want the schools closed. Perioid.

      Unions are a convenient punching bag but this can’t be laid at the feet of them entirely. Our schools have been virtual except for small SPED groups since March and it isn’t due to the unions. If our county ordered them open and the state reopening criteria were met the teachers would have no choice. And the reopening criteria was met for several weeks in the fall. However, over a quarter of our county’s teachers said they would resign before returning. The county could not adequately staff the schools under those circumstances and there is no way they could force the teachers not to resign, union or no union. In any case, we would have had to close the schools again this month anyway so better to be virtual than to yo-yo.

      The problem is that we refuse to do what we need to do to reopen the schools, not that the lazy teachers are doing us wrong.

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      1. I never said that the teachers were lazy. I have been talking to special ed teachers and staff non-stop for two weeks. They’re working really hard, even though providing support for Special ed kids through Zoom is basically impossible.

        However, the teachers unions in some states and the fear of teacher walkouts/strikes means that communities have been forced to close schools, even while they allow other businesses to remain open. With the teachers income basically guaranteed, there isn’t any downside to closing them, until parents get really pissed off and start their own rallies. Pubs and restaurants and other small businesses shutdown, there will be major economic ramifications.

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      2. Jay said, “Lack of abundant testing. There is no excuse for not having a regimen in place by now where we could be testing high school students and teachers at least weekly, if not more often.”

        I live in Texas, and we have at least one local suburban high school that is piloting a rapid testing program. They have kept their high school open all fall. It’s almost certainly not every kid weekly, but school testing is a thing. I believe NYC is doing it, too. It would be an excellent goal to have it more broadly available by the beginning of the school year in January. I have heard that my kids’ private school has applied to be part of a rapid testing program–not sure about the timeline for this.

        https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/14/texas-schools-coronavirus-tests/

        That October article says that there were 8 Texas pilot school rapid-testing programs and there was an Oct. 28 deadline for public and private schools to apply to join the program.

        I’d love to be wrong about this, but I have not seen Joe Biden say anything about school COVID testing. I don’t know that it’s on his radar.

        “The behavior of these Trumpy morons has made this epidemic much worse and has made it much harder to reopen the schools.”

        And yet, the “Trumpy morons” often have kids in in-person school and getting in-person therapy! Sad!

        ” In any case, we would have had to close the schools again this month anyway so better to be virtual than to yo-yo.”

        Our local schools opened in August with positivity in the neighborhood of 13-15% in the community and were open through a couple of fall months of around 6% positivity. The suburban district I watch has not closed at all. It got kind of dicey before Thanksgiving, but numbers look much better this week. The urban district I watch has had most schools open all fall, with maybe half a dozen (especially the high schools) closed for 1-3 weeks total. I don’t have exact numbers, but that’s my estimate. It is definitely true that none of the suburban schools have closed AT ALL. Again, our suburban district currently has a total of 10 total cases among the 8 elementary and intermediate schools. (That said, there have probably been a lot of cases of individual classes getting sent home.) Locally, school closures have been typically one week long. The suburban high school also shut down a lot of sports and extracurriculars, as they discovered that it was a source of spread–more so than the classroom.

        My rule of thumb on this is that K-5 should get the benefit of the doubt with regard to reopening, but that middle school and high school (especially high school) need a lot more scrutiny.

        Again, I have yet to hear Biden make any sort of distinction between elementary versus middle school and high school.

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    2. The Institute for Disease in WA state modelling did a simulation study examining the prediction of transmission/outbreaks with opened schools under different scenarios. An important finding was that when community transmission levels are “low” and counter measures are consistently taken, testing did not significantly change the number of outbreaks. News summary: https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/new-institute-of-disease-modeling-schools-report-released/article_11d519b2-1f9b-11eb-85d3-5f3a35a1600a.html (which cites the report).

      I couldn’t quickly figure out what community transmission being “low” meant.

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      1. bj said, “An important finding was that when community transmission levels are “low” and counter measures are consistently taken, testing did not significantly change the number of outbreaks.”

        That is interesting.

        Testing would make a lot of families and teachers more comfortable, though.

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    3. We have a weird situation with our teachers…the Toronto board (huge) came up with a 15 kids per classroom model for elementary school but it involved shortening the school day. The province said no. I’ve been angry about that for months, but a teacher pointed out to me the union (provincial) couldn’t get on board with a situation where large urban board teachers were teaching under entirely different rules than rural, smaller boards. It’s an interesting conundrum. Health is a big deal of course for unions, but so is equity.

      I’d agree with you on museums (Toronto’s are closed) but you couldn’t pay me to eat in a restaurant right now, I think there’s a USA Today piece on it.

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  8. One of my son’s classmates died of COVID this week – the first teenager in WI to die from it. That put all of our other troubles in perspective. It’s unbearably hard for the kids to process this. The school is trying to do zoom-support for counseling, but grieving over video chats is tough. It’s a very close-knit school community but school has been virtual since March. Teens need teens, it’s just hard right now.

    As for risks, we’ve decided we’ll each pick one thing to do to keep our mental health. I go to the hairdresser every 8 weeks (which is honestly like therapy for me). My son plays pick-up soccer with a small group of friends at a neighborhood field. My husband goes into the office 1 day/week where he can close the door and work in peace.

    But, we don’t go to restaurants. We get our groceries delivered. For us, those are risks we can do without. With no end in sight (until we get vaccines), we can’t completely isolate everything, all the time. I think we need to assess risk and make our own personal choices as to what is smart. (Assuming that all are wearing masks, washing hands, and staying socially distant all the time.)

    Laura, I’m sorry about the ongoing medical difficulties. that is so hard. It took us two years to find meds that worked for my daughter’s health situation. It’s frustrating how much of it is ‘trial and error’ – I imagine COVID only makes it more difficult to see doctors and be a priority patient right now. Sigh.

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    1. Yes, thank you. I don’t want to blog too much about Ian’s health issues, because… I don’t know…. it just seems like crossing a line for me. But we are having trouble controlling his seizures without putting him in the hospital again for medication reactions. He’s only been two weeks without a seizure, so we can never leave him alone. The doctor thinks that it will get easier once he is fully past puberty.

      Yeah, everybody has their own risk/benefit analysis. Since we don’t have access to after-school sports for Ian or an office for Steve, we have chosen eating out (responsibly) as our mental health release. I do think that maybe we have a week or two before that situation becomes too dangerous, and I’m back to cooking 24/7.

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  9. About schools and unions:

    Teachers want to teach in the classroom. Doing this all remotely sucks. The college professors are burning out and we don’t even have the Zoom load that the K-12 teachers do.

    I just asked my sister (whose best friend is the family friend whose niece died last week) about how the niece got COVID. She got it at school. There was exposure and they were closed down. Also, she was in special ed (she had cerebral palsy) and she got it in her special ed classroom where they didn’t use masks, just socially distanced.

    My sister also pointed out that yesterday 3,157 people died of COVID. That’s basically 9/11. Having read all this, I’m changing my mind about the haircut again.

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    1. Oh man, I got distracted mid-post.
      Re unions: Teachers want to teach in person. The job of unions is to make sure that teachers are safe while doing their jobs. The fact that teachers have protections isn’t a strike against them. It’s a reason to call for greater protections for other essential workers.

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      1. And if we had these protections for more workers, *maybe* we would have taken a far more effective approach to this pandemic.

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      2. “Teachers want to teach in person.”

        Well, let’s make that more precise. Teachers want to teach in person, but not at this current moment.

        But beyond little anecdotal stories, we don’t really know how teachers feel, because they’re no data. We do know how unions feel. They have said very publicly the they don’t want to teacher in person at the current moment.

        Now, that’s the basic truth. Whether they are correct or not in their sentiment is not the point. The discussion started off with the statement “Schools are closed and pubs are open, because of Trump.” I said, “No, it’s because the teachers are unionized and pub workers aren’t. And because the state would go bankrupt having to provide unemployment insurance and support services for the workers, while the local taxpayers are keeping the teachers paid. Also, business leaders want businesses open. And also the state legislatures want the tax money from businesses to come in, because they will soon going bankrupt having to pay for the COVID support services.”

        I just feel like we should be honest about all this.

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      3. “Schools are closed and pubs are open, because of Trump.” I said, “No, it’s because the teachers are unionized and pub workers aren’t. And because the state would go bankrupt having to provide unemployment insurance and support services for the workers…

        This gets to the heart of the matter and why Trump is, at least in part (and I would argue, mostly) to blame. Of course states would go bankrupt if they had to foot the bill for paying off restaurants, because states can’t run deficits and states can’t print money(*). That is precisely why this should have been a federal responsibility. Our national government should have stepped in, like the governments of most of the countries that had more favorable covid results.

        But Trump and his MAGAt lackeys in the senate were completely uninterested and unwilling in going down this road. And so people have flocked to bars and restaurants, spreading their plague(**), with the result that we haven’t been able to get a handle on this and get our schools open. Heckuva job, Trumpy.

        (*) Actually, the feds don’t even have to print the money any more. All they have to do is change the value in a cell on a spreadsheet and it’s done.

        (**) A recent study demonstrated that people who ate at restaurants were twice as likely to get covid as people who didn’t. I’m not sure about the causation vs. correlation here. Were people more likely to get covid because they ate at the restaurant or are the people who eat at restaurants just more likely to be reckless in other aspects of their lives? I suspect it is a mixture of both.

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      4. “Now, that’s the basic truth. Whether they are correct or not in their sentiment is not the point. The discussion started off with the statement “Schools are closed and pubs are open, because of Trump.” I said, “No, it’s because the teachers are unionized and pub workers aren’t.”

        Yes, so we agree. Unions are good. They protect their workers.

        “And because the state would go bankrupt having to provide unemployment insurance and support services for the workers, while the local taxpayers are keeping the teachers paid. Also, business leaders want businesses open. And also the state legislatures want the tax money from businesses to come in, because they will soon going bankrupt having to pay for the COVID support services.””

        All true, but I still feel like you are simplifying it too. Teacher unions giving up and saying “OK, go back to school, teachers” is not going to solve the problems. Teachers will get sick and will quarantine if directly exposed. Schools will need to bring in subs. Kids will be absent as they get sick and as their family members get sick. This is all disruptive to learning. The schools are basically just going to be extra-germy day care centers for months, with little teaching done.

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      5. To follow up on Jay and restaurants, I just came across this from NPR:
        https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/06/943559848/tipped-service-workers-are-more-vulnerable-amid-pandemic-harassment-spike-study
        I will bring it to my class today to ask my students if this tracks with them (we did a unit on restaurant work, and many of my students work in restaurants).

        “The title of the report, “Take Off Your Mask So I Know How Much to Tip You,” is a reference to one of several disturbing comments women workers say they’ve been hearing from patrons.
        “Women across the country who work in restaurants are being asked to remove their masks so that male customers can judge their looks and therefore their tips on that basis,” Jayaraman said.”

        I also did a unit on sexual harassment, so I get two-TWO followups in one article! Whee!

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    2. Wendy said, “I just asked my sister (whose best friend is the family friend whose niece died last week) about how the niece got COVID. She got it at school. There was exposure and they were closed down. Also, she was in special ed (she had cerebral palsy) and she got it in her special ed classroom where they didn’t use masks, just socially distanced.”

      That was a really hard choice.

      My cleaning lady’s youngest daughter is about that age. The daughter is medically fragile and tiny for her age, and her mom has kept her home from school all fall. Kid is starting to fail in her classes, though, so the mom has been wanting to get her back in school in-person–but by that time our fall COVID surge had started. The kid missed a bunch of school in Jan/Feb. due to a mystery respiratory bug, which I’d like to think was early COVID, but who knows?

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    3. “The schools are basically just going to be extra-germy day care centers for months, with little teaching done.”

      This scenario could have been true, before we saw the data of what happens when the schools do open and we still can’t be certain. But, the evidence and simulations don’t suggest such a dire scenario now that we are seeing data. Many schools have opened successfully with few outbreaks at the schools. We also now know that many many kids are not being served by remote learning. We have to be talking about ways to open the schools as safely as possible, not pretending that we are teaching the students (particularly the young children, the children with special needs, and the undeserved children) adequately with remote learning.

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      2. But you’re missing my point. We can open schools “safely” by tracing cases and quarantining those who have been exposed. But that itself is very disruptive to learning. Large numbers of absences are disruptive. A school that has several teachers absent is going to be disrupted.

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  10. I think the boat has sailed on keeping the majority of schools open. The argument about whether it’s safe or not, is moot, because the teachers think it’s not safe, and sufficient numbers of them are prepared to walk, rather than teach in person.

    The focus now has to be on remediation.

    When the vaccines are freely available, and widely taken – how are the schools going to ensure that the kids have the opportunity to catch up on all the learning they’ve missed out on?
    It’s surely widely acknowledged now, that for many kids there has been effectively zero education during the school shutdowns; and for others the quality and quantity of education has been significantly reduced. [Yes, there are outliers – often in private schools, with really effective online learning programmes, focused and tech-savvy teachers, and self-motivated kids – but it’s not the norm]

    For many kids, repeating a year of (in person) education will be the only effective solution. And for some of them, it may be more than a year.
    What planning are the schools doing? And what are the States (and/or Federal Government), doing to mandate this?

    Also the uptake of any vaccine is going to be a big issue – can/will schools exclude unvaccinated children from in-person classes – I bet the teacher unions are going to be pushing for this.
    I know there was a case in NY, where the mayor directed that only children vaccinated with the measles vaccine were able to attend school – during a measles epidemic. Are there any other times this has happened?

    Finally, I think many middle-class parents will be looking at the train-wreck of the public school system, and deciding to make sacrifices and send their kids to private schools.
    Which will pull even more money and support from the public school system…..

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  11. Good for Laura getting out and doing things. Mental health matters too. I am still angry that a friend had to wait three and a half months for her breast cancer surgery, because the governor decides it was elective. A second friend waited for colon cancer surgery. Their illnesses matter just as much as covid.

    On a lighter note: today I learned it is legal to hunt in AZ using an atlatl.

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    1. Yes, we’re starting to see the cost of the complete shut down of the medical system to anything other than Covid, now.
      Cancer surgery and chemo and radio is through the roof (I have a friend who’s just had a mastectomy, and is now being treated for colo-rectal as well). These were both delayed diagnosis (approx 6 weeks) – because no exploratory ops/biopsies, etc. allowed during lockdown. 6 weeks doesn’t sound like a lot – but it can be a life sentence for a cancer patient.

      And clinicians are still under enormous pressure to make up the missed appointments (6 months after we got out of lockdown) – you can’t just magic up more specialists to deal with the backlog.

      On a less-urgent – but typical routine care front. Dental visits/care for the whole cohort of Year 8 kids have been cancelled. That doesn’t sound like much. But this is their last year in the primary dental care programme (managed through schools), before they transition to private dentists. And it’s widely known that many poor kids simply don’t transition. So, if problems aren’t picked up at that visit – they won’t be dealt with until there’s an abscess or an extraction required under general anaesthetic. [NZ has some significant issues with poor teeth in kids – no one seems to have a really good handle on why]

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      1. [NZ has some significant issues with poor teeth in kids – no one seems to have a really good handle on why]

        Is there a difference between the communities that fluoridate and those that don’t?

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      2. Ann from NZ said, “On a less-urgent – but typical routine care front. Dental visits/care for the whole cohort of Year 8 kids have been cancelled.”

        Dental anecdote here:

        I had a couple of cancellations this spring, leading to a 10 month gap between appointments for me. I was supposed to have a couple of fillings done, it didn’t happen. By the time I got to the dentist this fall, things had gotten pretty bad. So, in about two weeks, I’m scheduled to have a 3 hour apt, about 8 fillings, with about $1,000 in costs for us after insurance.

        The only positive aspect of this is that I have promised myself a milkshake for dinner that night.

        One of my kids was so socially/medically deconditioned by the spring shutdown that it took all my diplomatic skills to get the kid into the dentist’s for a cleaning this fall. This kid insists that they won’t go back to the dentist in less than a year. I haven’t been able to talk this kid into seeing the pediatrician for a well visit. I had to call the doctor’s office and flake out when the kid balked the day of the scheduled visit.

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      3. Getting lost in all of these nested comments.

        Jay asked:
        “Is there a difference between the communities that fluoridate and those that don’t?”

        Sort of. NZ has chronically low levels of natural fluoride in our soils and water. Areas which don’t fluoridate the water supply tend to have kids with worse teeth.
        However, we’re now seeing kids (especially poorer kids) in areas *with* fluoridated water also having chronically bad teeth (we’re talking about pre-schoolers having multiple teeth extracted under anaesthetic – because they are literally rotting in the kids mouths).
        It seems to be diet related – and due to the prevalent (and cheap) availability of fizzy drinks and juices – and a socio-cultural acceptance in some areas of society of these as suitable for daily consumption by pre-schoolers and/or school children. It’s complicated by relative poverty and a whole batch of other issues.
        But *some* kids are fine and have no teeth issues, while others are really seriously affected – on what looks like the same diet and environment. So no good understanding of exactly what is causing this.

        But regular pre-school and school dental checks are critical – in catching issues before they become major. And, these are the families which are most unlikely to have a dentist themselves, or take their children to one, before the kid is in agony.

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  12. Dealing with uncertainty in a child’s health solutions must be so hard and I wish you every support in finding solutions.

    I love tour outdoor health program of getting together with friends. I do think that is one of the safest activities around and managing it regularly will be so helpful. I am trying to find equivalents but am hampered by really not being an outside person. I had some success in May setting myself the challenge of making a mini bouquet from my yard every day. I should look for a similar challenge now, even if all it does is get me outside for ten minutes.

    I strongly support the idea of risk budgets. In our case, we have.swimming at an outdoor pool, walks with a few friends in parks, occasional trips to the grocery.

    Our restaurants are closed for indoor dining, which I think is a decision everyone should be making — I think the unmasking to eat means that restaurants are one of the less safe spaces (say compared to museums or shops).

    An example of transmission from Korea: https://mobile.twitter.com/zeynep/status/1334641685154902021

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  13. A teacher at my kids school — all remote— dies by suicide last month. After, the kids in her classes were beating themselves up about not having turned on her cameras when she asked.

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    1. bj said, “A teacher at my kids school — all remote— dies by suicide last month. After, the kids in her classes were beating themselves up about not having turned on her cameras when she asked.”

      That’s awful.

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  15. Don’t use Germany as a comparison. They use a much tighter definition of a covid death than anyone else. Hence, fewer deaths. It’s also tricky comparing among states because the definitions vary. It seems like this should be easy, but when you get into the weeds, it isn’t.

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    1. I agree that country comparisons are complicated, but in what way are Germany’s definitions of COVID deaths different from other countries? I couldn’t find a quick answer looking at my standard sources for COVID statistics.

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      1. Must have confirmed test in order to count, France uses suspected, for example. Germany would probably still do better because of their contact tracing, but not to this extent. There are other differences in the counts, but I don’t have links because it is from phone calls at work to understand the data prior to analysis. We are not including Germany.

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    2. They probably do use slightly different definitions. On the other hand, some of our states are playing very fast and loose with the numbers as well (such as Florida not reporting a death as a covid death in their count if the person was not a Florida resident). In the end, though, I doubt it matters at a scale that is relevant. Germany has had less than half the deaths we have had per capita and a slight difference in definitions won’t change that scale.

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      2. Jay said, “On the other hand, some of our states are playing very fast and loose with the numbers as well (such as Florida not reporting a death as a covid death in their count if the person was not a Florida resident).”

        But presumably they are counting that individual as a Florida hospitalization, if they are hospitalized in Florida?

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      4. “I believe New York does a thing where deaths only count as nursing home COVID deaths if they happen in the nursing home.”

        As an FYI, my HS friend’s wife was a big mover of media coverage of nursing home deaths on LI back in April/May because of her mother’s experience in a nursing home in Nassau County. My impression is that the concern was that in-nursing-home deaths were *not* being counted as COVID deaths. FWIW. New policy in reaction to old one? Or something else?

        (My BIL’s mother recently died in a nursing home, but it wasn’t COVID. I’m at the age now where most everyone I know from LI has a relative in a nursing home.)

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    3. Washington state also reports only deaths with confirmed COVID + as COVID deaths and removes homicides/suicides even if the individual was +.

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      1. I know. We spent all last week talking to health department people in the US and abroad. It’s a mess. Definitions not only differ, they have changed over time.

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  16. Here’s an interesting thread from @politicalmath, a Seattle-area guy:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1335693192616763392

    He ate outside (for real) at a restaurant that also turned out to have “outdoor dining” that was completely enclosed. (A lot of “outdoor dining” these days is actually poorly ventilated indoor dining.)

    “Later that day, I asked a friend who is on the city council about the tents and he rolled his eyes and, in an exasperated voice said “they’re not supposed to be doing that” Therein lies the inevitable problem with many of the lockdown policies.”

    “You can have a rule, but is it enforced, and how strictly is it enforced?

    “This is also part of the reason why we should be *very* skeptical of “studies” that show us this or that policy is effective in reducing COVID cases. We often don’t know if those policies are being enforced or to what extent they are being followed.”

    “What seems likely is that a policy is implemented when it becomes clear that a population is already in the middle of an infectious spread curve. By the time the policy goes into effect, the infection curve is nearing its natural peak. We saw this with several mask mandates.”

    Or, I’d add, people have already noted the surge and taken their own precautions, which helps the surge to peak.

    Case in point: due to hospital COVID occupancy rules, my county has just put in new occupancy caps on restaurants and other businesses and closed bars–a couple weeks after the county peaked.

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    1. Although I agree with the principle that we should always be careful about our predictions and comparisons and that what we know now always needs to be revised again, this is the guy who predicted in April that we wouldn’t go beyond 20K deaths, and that if we go >100K, people should go to jail? And, I appreciate that he explains his logic, in that prediction from April, it doesn’t make me think he’s the go-to guy on the topic.

      I’ve also downgraded Trevor Bedford as a source because of his confident genetic analysis prediction connecting two cases in Washington.

      (I for example, was hopeful about California, but California has now returned to the first place in the nation in numbers of cases. Texas still has more deaths, but we’ll have to wait it out for the comparisons)

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  17. bj said, “Although I agree with the principle that we should always be careful about our predictions and comparisons and that what we know now always needs to be revised again, this is the guy who predicted in April that we wouldn’t go beyond 20K deaths, and that if we go >100K, people should go to jail?”

    He was projecting out of Washington, so it wasn’t entirely crazy at the time. For comparison, wasn’t there an establishment forecast of 2 million deaths around that time? It took nearly two months between identification in WA and NY starting to explode.

    If we go back to the spring and stop listening to people for what they were saying then (don’t wear masks, go to the theater, go to dinner in Chinatown, 15 days to bend the curve, don’t shut down travel, close the state parks, close the beaches, etc.), there’s going to be nobody left to listen to. The only way to avoid being wrong about COVID is to say nothing.

    Oh, yes, and I looked the “bad tweet” up. Easy to do, because @politicalmath literally has it (crossed out) as his pinned tweet.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1258099673497100288

    That tweet dates from March 18. To jog your memory, the NYC schools only closed March 16.

    That said, I try not to make oracles out of anybody. He puts out the facts and analysis, and if it’s wrong or doesn’t work, say so. I’ve never known @politicalmath to be dishonest, which is really all you can ask for these days.

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    1. @politicalmath did some follow-up tweets in early May, talking about his early error. They’re in the thread I linked earlier.

      On May 6, he tweeted, “My thought process was “I’m looking at WA and CA and we’ve had community transmission for almost 2 months already… if this was THAT bad (millions dead) here, we would already know” I assumed every place in the US would be as bad as CA and WA.”

      “After the 100K-250K projection, I started keeping track of state numbers and how close the state was to reaching it’s 100K ratio. So in my tracking, I started off April 2nd assuming every state would get hit roughly the same.”

      “If every state had been California, do you know how many deaths we’d be at right now? 19K deaths. My biggest error was assuming that the actually very good response we had seen so far would be replicated across all regions.”

      “By March 17th, New York had 7 deaths.”

      (That was the day before his “bad tweet.”)

      “Here is me 3 weeks later *defending* the 100K projection, saying that “We could still hit 100K pretty easily if things go bad.””

      The April 8 tweet says, “The original estimate of 1 million – 2.2 million dead was too high. The 100K-250K deaths was a better one that assumed a certain parameters. We could still hit 100K pretty easily if things go bad. There are signs that things won’t go that bad.”

      As it turned out 100k was too optimistic. But at the same time–other people’s early projections of literally millions dead in the US were too pessimistic.

      Another May 6 tweet from @politicalmath: “And in that thread, I specifically say that being wrong is ok, but admit it and think about why you were wrong and TELL PEOPLE! Don’t hide your wrongness, call it out and think about what you’re learned.”

      I think he’s lived those values pretty well (he’s literally stickied his March mistake to the top of his twitter account), and that’s why I keep reading him.

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    2. The one million projections were if we took no interventions; I am hopeful that targeted use of vaccines and other limits on behavior will mitigate the number of dead, but I’m thinking that the prediction now is 400-600K.

      His projections were worse and have proven to be worse. Projecting out WA & CA was not a justifiable tactic even then.

      Furthermore, he’s doing the same thing with the Iowa/MN comparison, comparing hot takes and gut impulses and not digging into the data.

      (And, yes, I also saw the pinned tweet. I appreciate not hiding a terribly incorrect early prediction, but he should still be judged by it, especially when he seems to be committing similar errors).

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  18. I think there are a few important points when naively looking at the data that is publicly available. I am a naive observer of this kind of data, not knowing a lot about how the public health system and its reporting works or how deaths are reported. And I’ve seen lots of takes from others like me, people who know how to download data, subdivide, graph, visualize, . . . . Those takes have to be taken with big grains of salt without greater knowledge (including the details of how data are reported and quirks in any data set that is being compared or projected). As an example, that IA & MN might be different in ways other than their degree of closure, or that CA & WA may not be representative of the entire country. (BTW, the assumption of months of community spread in WA was a Bedford induced error, because of his analysis connecting of the 1st Seattle teen flu case to the 1st US case using genetic analysis).

    These kinds of issues come up with the open sourcing of data, which is a good thing. However, random access to the data does result in errors from a lack of thorough understanding of the data by those who know how to manipulate numbers. The worries arise for the open source of psych experiment data, fMRI data, neural data, climate change data, polling data, election data, and all sorts of public health data.

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  19. Ignoring his analysis, he did make me think of the issue of rules and compliance and behavior. For example, its possible (though we don’t know yet) that cases decrease in SD because people will as they see people around them get infected and die, even though there are no mandates. We know that people staying at home decreases cases and deaths (in general, though the specifics of who needs to stay home are still not perfectly clear). But, what is the most effective methods of getting people to stay home? exhortations? rules? relying on personal responsibility?

    In the early epidemic, WHO and other experts feared that rules about border closures would backfire and that personal responsibility was all we could rely on (and, yes, freedom and consideration of other good, like access to health care may have also played a role). Were they wrong? potentially, especially for countries that could truly close their borders. SD is relying on a similar strategy of personal responsibility. Are they right? Well, I guess it will depend on the total number of SD dead in the end.

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    1. bj said,

      “For example, its possible (though we don’t know yet) that cases decrease in SD because people will as they see people around them get infected and die, even though there are no mandates.”

      Pretty much. Or, at least, that a lot of people do change their behaviors once they are aware that their specific area has serious problems. The “no intervention” hypothetical is kind of ridiculous, especially 8-10 months into this.

      One of the issues this year has been that the press does its big freak-outs right around the point that any particular area is peaking. Add in the desire to see red governors as uniquely villainous, and you get a media that a) misses problems in blue states (which does blue states no favors) and b) is so late to ID problem states that it’s not actually helpful. For much of the fall, the media also hyped the danger of schools and colleges in a very unhelpful and inaccurate way, just like previously they did huge freakouts about beaches.

      “But, what is the most effective methods of getting people to stay home? exhortations? rules? relying on personal responsibility?”

      I think we’re all pretty much tapped out on exhortation at this point.

      I’m open to closing restaurants and bars (with compensation), but I don’t think we’ve seriously tried “information” yet. There’s some information, but there’s not as much as you’d like to see. I’m a voracious consumer of local COVID news, and I have only the vaguest idea where exactly all the new cases are coming from. I know about school and college cases (because they each have their own local dashboards) and there’s also a nursing home dashboard, but I don’t know where the rest of the cases are coming from.

      Lyman Stone had a very good bit about how in Hong Kong, the public health authorities share maps of contact tracing results with the public, so that you you can check the maps to see where COVID+ people have been and decide to get tested or adjust your plans accordingly.

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  20. Oh, my complaint about the IA/MN comparison, which the tweeter uses as an argument against the assumption of effect of mandates/restrictions is the following: the tweeter compares Iowa & Minnesota to say that restrictions might be ineffective, but although Iowa is showing a downward trend in cases, they are also testing less and have a >40% positivity rate. Minnesota isn’t reporting as great a decrease in testing as much and positivity is 12%.

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    1. bj said, “Oh, my complaint about the IA/MN comparison, which the tweeter uses as an argument against the assumption of effect of mandates/restrictions is the following: the tweeter compares Iowa & Minnesota to say that restrictions might be ineffective, but although Iowa is showing a downward trend in cases, they are also testing less and have a >40% positivity rate. Minnesota isn’t reporting as great a decrease in testing as much and positivity is 12%.”

      Those are all fair points.

      I didn’t feel comfortable quoting that bit of @politicalmath’s tweet (I forget if I did or didn’t) because I looked into it, and I didn’t know if the Iowa/Minnesota bit held up. But I think it is true that a) we don’t know how well rules on the books are being enforced (local law enforcement has often expressed unwillingness to be the COVID police) and b) there are states with very different rules on the books but with essentially identical results. Also, as people have pointed out, there’s a strong relationship between a particular area getting burned and the populace getting really zealous.

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      1. We were being told this summer that the police shouldn’t be used for non-police stuff.

        I knew this summer that the defund-the-police stuff was going to wind up in a head-on collision with the need to get the police to enforce COVID rules, but I guess nobody else saw that coming.

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  21. For a more substantive analysis of the potential effect of restrictions, there’s the October 2020 IHME study, summarized in this NPR report for predictions for deaths through February 2021: https://www.iowapublicradio.org/news-from-npr/2020-10-24/universal-mask-wearing-could-save-some-130-000-lives-in-the-u-s-study-suggests (380K with universal masking, 510K with the likely prediction, and >980K if the trajectory of easing of restrictions continued). They also offer state level predictions in their paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9

    The predictions were made with data and restrictions through September 2020 when there had been about 220K deaths.

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  22. https://mobile.twitter.com/GovMurphy/status/1336011336246054919

    Apologies for not being caught up with the thread and for any possible duplication, but I wanted to quickly note that NJ’s Gov. Murphy says that NJ’s level of non-cooperation with contact tracers is now 74%.

    That despite having 30 contact tracers working per 100,000 residents.

    Contact tracing in the US has been a huge disaster, and when this is all over, we need to figure out what went wrong and if there’s any hope for doing it better in future.

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