This week, I’m in recovery mode after doing a couple of freelance articles. (My last one about boys’ mental health has been doing quite well.) After I take care of some writing housekeeping today (invoicing), I’m catching up on the book-selling side hustle (mailing out $400 worth of books, listing some fancy leather books), working on the non-college chores for Ian (chat with the community college and a private school), and managing our lives (vacation planning, a homemade dinner for the vaccinated parents).
When a friend told me about the super cheap airplane tickets to Florida — $55 round trip! — we briefly considered going down there for April Break. But every unvaccinated college kid in the country has the same idea, so we are now thinking about a Plan B. Maybe Washington, DC or Asheville, NC. This weekend, we’re going to the museums in Philadelphia.
Page Six of the NY Post said that Meghan Markle is networking with Democratic operatives, as she considers a run for the presidency in 2024. (Most people don’t think Biden will run for a second term.) The gossip blogs have been saying that she was thinking about this possibility, when her ambitions to become a Marvel superhero didn’t pan out. They don’t say she’ll win though, just that plans are in the works. Can you imagine what Kamala Harris would do to her in a debate? As I wrote last week, I blame Trump for this. It’s a good thing that she’s not thinking about political office in the UK.
After my insomniac reading habits got me turned onto the royal family, I got more interested in the English lifestyle. I began following various English gardeners on Instagram. The New York Times had a piece in Sunday’s Times about a British gardening show. My favorites on Instagram are Jasper Conran, Paula from Hill House Vintage, and Irene My Life. I’ve even started dressing more British with little earrings, rain boots, and a wax jacket.
I have not yet been successful in activating my ClubHouse account (not sad), so I’ve been getting my fix of the chatting class’s thoughts through various newsletters. Heather Cox Richardson has a nice one this week about the anniversary of Maine’s statehood, and the contributions of Maine abolitionists. Matt Yglesias talks about nursing homes and smart people.
Things that I’m thinking about: community colleges, workplace skills, private tutoring centers.
Watching: Stanley Tucci and Lupin.
Picture: Sometimes a room just demands a Dr. Suess plant in the corner.
Apt. 11d 
Laura wrote, “Maybe Washington, DC or Asheville, NC.”
Make sure that what you want to go to in DC is actually open.
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Laura wrote, “Things that I’m thinking about: community colleges, workplace skills, private tutoring centers.”
We once looked at Sylvan for study skills. OH MY GOODNESS they were so expensive. It was in the neighborhood of $50 an hour for a program with dozens of contact hours. I’m extremely dubious that they provide that much value.
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If you’re getting into the two sides of British culture, there are a few shows that I personally have caught on YouTube. The two that present the idyllic, white WASPy side are Restoration Home (Brits with more hope/money than sense buy historic falling down things and restore them – it may be on Amazon Prime too, not sure) and Escape to the Country which is sort of like House Hunters but they rarely buy anything at the end and you get a little tour of quaint villages and pretty country homes with gardens and streams and beams.
However, if you watch these on YouTube the algorithm will then kick up other British shows including Can’t Pay, We’ll Take It Away where you watch Brits, many of them racialized, getting evicted or having their cars taken away by what I believe are private security companies carrying out High Court orders.
For me once I’d seen that juxtaposition my little Escape to the Country escape felt a bit mingy, but hey.
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P.S. I own Hunter boots too and they are the bomb – 7 years of a lot of mucky walking and downtown slush and going strong.
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English people who garden and wear waxed coats get murdered and then Barnaby has to come by and figure out who’s a murderer and who is just sleeping with someone they aren’t supposed to.
He gets to keep his job because he promised to never figure it out before at least two more capitalist scum die.
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I have a suggestion for preventing post-pandemic high school drop-outs:
Pay the kids.
You could pay kids a small sum for high school attendance. I’m not sure what the market-clearing rate would be, but probably no more than $1 an hour of instruction. You might even be able to get away with $2 or $3 a day. Maybe host food trucks outside your high school after school so they have something obvious to spend on? (I feel that upperclassmen would have a lot of spending ideas with school open, though, given school trips, event costs, yearbooks, dresses for dances, and various senior expenses.)
I have a lot of concerns that more traditional remediation spending is going to wind up horribly wasted by the people who were responsible for the problem to begin with. We currently have a really round-about way of handling education motivation, where we pay A (teachers, etc.) to motivate B (students and families), but what about just directly motivating B by paying B? (You’d have to get parental permission for minors, of course.) Pay kids $1 per tutoring session that they attend and participate in.
This sort of thing is already done successfully in developing countries.
http://philanthropyaction.com/articles/paying_parents_to_keep_kids_in_school/
I’m partly inspired by what I’ve heard about these programs in developing countries, and partly inspired by Hometown U.’s COVID weekly testing program. Every time a student gets tested, Hometown U. hands out a $3 voucher that can be spent on campus, either in college businesses or at visiting food trucks. It’s not a lot, but we find that the vouchers really pile up, and our college freshman typically turns them into boba tea or churros.
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I love how the colors came together in your room!
We need to buy rugs but it seems overwhelming so we just keep doing without.
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Thanks! Lots of good inexpensive rug options now. I’ve gotten lucky on Wayfair. This one in the living room we got in Morocco on our honeymoon. It has a lot of sentimental value. Which is why I was thrilled when I discovered that someone dropped cherry jello on it last month.
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Philadelphia has many great museums! We also have many wonderful gardens/arboretums, both in the city and surrounding counties. Longwood Gardens is the most famous, but one of my favorites is Chanticleer. It’s in the suburbs, not too far from Villanova, but doesn’t open for the season until March 31st.
http://www.chanticleergarden.org/
Another great place to visit is the Tinicum National Wildlife Refuge, now named for John Heinz. I haven’t been there this early in spring, so I don’t know what you could see now, but you wouldn’t believe the bird, turtle, frog, and other wildlife species you can see there. We saw an otter once! Unbelievably this special place is within the Philadelphia city limits!
https://www.fws.gov/refuge/John_Heinz/wildlife_and_habitat/mammals.html
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Thank you!
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There’s something screwy happening in NJ right now:
NJ has 41 cases per 100k with cases and hospitalizations trending up.
NJ is the worst state for COVID right now, but both NY and RI have unusually high case rates compared to the rest of the US. (I like NY’s and RI’s charts for cases, hospitalizations and deaths a lot better than NJ’s, though.)
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I’m hearing of the new variants as a source of the NE surge.
Our drop has stopped and we are in the orange zone again. We are lower than the summer high, though. I am still worried.
But after the governor required it, our district has announced plans for bringing K-5 back for 4 mornings a week in early April. They are still negotiating for 6-12. I am now hearing of what people are planning for their families. A 2E HS senior decided to stay remote after having to decide quickly.
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We watched the “Full Stack Development/TMobile” internship session. The internship is specifically designed for people who want to go into the workforce and not college (a criteria for selection). Students apply in their junior year, and spent summer between junior/senior year doing an internship at TMobile, for which they are paid minimum wage, 40 hours, 8 weeks ($4800, at our $15 minimum wage). During their senior year, they take 3 community college classes through a program where students are simultaneously enrolled in CC/HS. Then, another internship in the summer after senior year, followed by a year of community college. There’s no guarantee of employment, but the program was designed with TMobile, and the TMobile coordinator said some students work for TMobile during the program and some are hired after. They are aiming for a cohort of 10, all from our district.
It’s not right for my kid, who wants to go college. But, I liked it for the right kid. I think its important that these programs have an investment by the employer, and I feel like this one did.
I also stumbled on Google’s Certificate Program through an add link somewhere: https://www.coursera.org/google-career-certificates (looks like they cost $40/month at Coursera?)
The kids I know are all college oriented (with the few exceptions of the professional athlete and the video game designer) but I really like the idea, of these certificates, if they really did create employable qualifications and were offered at sufficiently affordable prices. I wonder if there could be a business providing tutoring help for students who need more support with those programs?
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I have no idea what’s going on around here. People are vigilant about masks and schools are only semi-open. It might be an uptick in certain religious communities that have different views about the virus. Might be a different strain. Might be getting spread at youth sports, which are going strong. I suspect that there are major differences in infection rates between towns, depending on ethnic and religious populations.
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I’ve been thinking about houses a lot recently, and specifically, how we use them. I love house designs and house shows and design magazines but have always been struck by how little we see in those examples of how the house is actually used. While pondering, I found this study, that tracked families in 32 houses in the LA area. Bottom line conclusions: families with younger children spent all their time in the kitchen and the room with the TV and that many families have houses that have rooms (garages, spare offices that are literally filled with clutter). https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-american-dream-of-owning-a-big-home-is-way-overrated-in-one-chart-2018-05-21. I’ve skimmed the book based on the study and am struck by the disconnect between how architects imagine houses and how they are actually lived in.
Today, I am trying to track how I use my house by taking photos every time I change locations which I then hope to plot on a floor plan of my house. We’ll see how it works out :-).
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bj said, “I love house designs and house shows and design magazines but have always been struck by how little we see in those examples of how the house is actually used.”
Yeah. In fact, for photographic purposes, a lot of evidence of that needs to be tidied away.
“Bottom line conclusions: families with younger children spent all their time in the kitchen and the room with the TV and that many families have houses that have rooms (garages, spare offices that are literally filled with clutter).”
Ah, but that’s what you need your big house for!
More seriously, I am a big house person (3,000 sq. ft. for 5 people) and we use every single room. We can even park a whole car in our garage. However, it’s a constant battle against everybody’s stuff (husband and Middle Kid have a perpetually expanding collection of athletic paraphernalia), and I don’t think we’d do quite as well if I didn’t have the accountability of regular cleaning help. Also, all of our bedrooms are in use. The real test is what happens when a kid or two leaves home and we suddenly have a room or two available to shove things into.
“I’ve skimmed the book based on the study and am struck by the disconnect between how architects imagine houses and how they are actually lived in.”
No kidding.
For one thing, all of those big, unbroken expanses that contemporary architects love are a nightmare in terms of storage and visually containing clutter. It’s also not great in terms of noise pollution. My downstairs isn’t even that open, but if I want to have a private conversation with my husband, I invite him into the laundry room, ideally with the washer and dryer running…The traditional broken-up floorplans that people bellyache about are much better for dealing with a situation where you have a lot of people at home at the same time and they don’t necessarily want to hear and see everything that everybody else is doing.
“Today, I am trying to track how I use my house by taking photos every time I change locations which I then hope to plot on a floor plan of my house. We’ll see how it works out :-).”
If you mapped me during the day, it would be kitchen/playroom/laundry, with occasional forays to put away stuff upstairs. The rest of the family lives in the living room, which is where we have the TV, computers, and comfy sofa. I have a little personal station on one end of the big kitchen table and then another in the playroom (IKEA Poang and matching ottoman–ergonomically perfect for laptop use). In a couple of years, we need to reconfigure the playroom, which is becoming obsolete. The playroom was originally a dining room, but we didn’t need a dining room, so when our youngest was tiny, we gated it and turned it over to her as her personal space. Down the road, I’d like to redo the playroom as a sort of multi-purpose room, with a long desk for me and the 2nd grader for homework or art, some exercise stuff, and maybe a few toys for small visitors.
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“I’ve skimmed the book based on the study and am struck by the disconnect between how architects imagine houses and how they are actually lived in.”
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Darn it, I hate when I mis-hit a key and the response posts early – with no attribution!
Don’t know how I’m managing to do this….
What I *meant* to say:
“I’ve skimmed the book based on the study and am struck by the disconnect between how architects imagine houses and how they are actually lived in.”
My definition of ‘architect designed’ is ‘impracticable for daily living’
But then I’m anything but a minimalist – and I *need* my storage, darn it!
[I do have a friend who has a kid the same age, and *is* a minimalist – and I’ve been in awe of her ability to keep her open-plan house looking presentable for over 10 years]
Also, as an introvert who’s lived with extroverts (my partner, and now my son) – I *need* my space away from them.
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Ann wrote, “My definition of ‘architect designed’ is ‘impracticable for daily living’”
That’s not wrong!
There must be exceptions, but I know exactly what you mean–all of those high-end shelter magazine photographs with huge nearly empty rooms where (supposedly) nobody ever does anything.
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kiddo now uses a basement room as his zoom room so he uses the basement. But the rest of us don’t and Laura’s picture inspired me to think about how to make more use of the space.
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bj said, “kiddo now uses a basement room as his zoom room so he uses the basement.”
Smart!
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But don’t you think Laura’s house looks pretty good? Yes, maybe she’s moving clutter, but I do know at least one person who gets rid of clutter and cleans up immediate so that her house does look like a design mag. So it’s not impossible!
I still have a groovy girl doll collection, and my kid turned 20, so I am not that person.
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I didn’t move clutter, because undiagnosed OCD. My living room always looks like this.
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Love that you didn’t move clutter ’cause I can now officially add you to my n=1 of people whose houses do look like the pictures. There are some others I wonder about, but, I haven’t been in their houses often enough (or seen pictures, or asked), so I can’t include them in my n (and there are some who probably have live in household help, but I don’t count them).
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I’m crazy, I know. I allow Steve certain zones for his clutter. As long as he keep his crap in those designated areas, we’re cool.
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The other n is someone who literally lives in a house that was profiled in a book (for “empty nesters”, so it is a smaller sized house). And, she’s lived in different size houses through her life and they have always been bandbox clutter free. Having watched her, I see an intense desire to always put things away (she never leaves dishes in the sink, even in our house) and an entire willingness to get rid of things if she is not using them. She loves e-books and doesn’t buy real ones anymore (though she did take the book that has her house in it as a gift).
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I do not consider this crazy at all. I aspire to it, and, though I do think the rest of the family contributes to clutter, I am definitely not what I aspire to be (case and point, a groovy girl doll collection). Some architects/minimalists/urbanists seem to think everyone should aspire to it, and they are wrong. In the book I mentioned, there’s a page where they show a shadeless/bulbless lamp (you imagine with some horror). But, the person in the house said, “I inherited that from my grandmother and every time I look at it I remember her and her house.” Some clutter is loved. But, I would, personally like to live much more sleekly.
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There is a big story of potentially national importance that is going unreported in the national press. I’m worried about the impact of PA’s poor vaccine rollout, especially in the Philadelphia collar counties, on to midterm elections. We have a democratic senate pickup opportunity, a governor’s race, and of course our repub-to-dem switchover districts (several since 2016!) are an important part of the House majority. But our Dem Governor has done an absolutely terrible, terrible job of the vaccine rollout. The Philadelpia Inquirer has 1-2 articles per day on the mess, and people around here are piping hot mad. Local state reps are very, very worried, but the Governor’s Office–in the same party!–is not responding to requests for information, and of course the statehouse has many Trumpers and our local reps don’t want to team up with them to go after a Dem governor. Our local officials have asked FEMA to help us, and the National Guard, they consider it such a bad situation. There are many, many 80-plus year olds who can’t get appointments!
For some reason we are one of the worse states, and Bucks, Delaware, Chester, and Montco counties are among the worst in one of the the worst states, having received fewer vaccines per capita than many rural counties. The new Secy of Health (we lost Rachel Levine to the Biden administration), who is a lawyer, not a doctor, has canceled meetings with local health departments and is denying there is any problem. She seems to think the numbers out of her own department are fake news because the vaccination rate isn’t terrible in our counties even though she admits we received way less vaccine. Of course that’s because (a) wealthy people in our counties are travelling 3 hours to go to Rite Aids in the West and North where the vaccines are. The poor and elderly can’t do that. (I havea covered health condition and finally have an appointment 2 hours away in Summit Hill PA on Tuesday! So that is 8 hours of driving for the 2 doses), and (b) People who work in Philadelphia can get the vaccine there. Philadelphia is being supplied by the Federal government, not by the state, and those who don’t work there are not allowed to get the vaccine there, unless they are cheaters. (I just noticed that Phila is feelng sorry for us in suburbs and is adding some suburban zip codes to its approved list–unbelievable–the governor can’t help us though we delivered his governorship, but Phila/the Feds can).
I just don’t get it. It’s one thing not to give preferences to those who elect you, it’s another thing to outright prefer those who didn’t vote for you over those who did. It’s just mind-boggling incompetence.
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Now that vaccines have started to be rolled out for essential workers, we’re starting to have a few issues being raised in the media.
* All staffers in isolation facilities – everyone from nurses through to cleaners (perhaps especially cleaners) have been offered vaccination. It’s just hit the news that 21 of them have turned down the vaccine. The government and the employers are now in discussions about moving those staff *out* of isolation facilities to be redeployed elsewhere. [Typically the unions are very concerned that they are not disadvantaged….]
We don’t know (yet) if any of those are nurses – but if they are, I’d be very tempted to give them the graveyard shifts in A&E (my personal definition of hell) for the foreseeable future.
None of those people have co-morbidities (or they wouldn’t be working in isolation at a heightened risk of catching Covid). So their only excuse is either religious or ethical (I’m being kind here) objection to vaccination. And in either case, they don’t belong in a modern health system.
*Rural (i.e. small town) GPs (general practitioners – is that family doctor to you?) have been offered the vaccine. That’s not silly – many are in significant tourist areas (either domestic tourism, or NZers arriving home, and touring the country) – so heightened risk of Covid. But, the nearest place they can actually *get* the vaccine is more than 2 hours drive away, and it’s only available during the week.
So the GP either has to miss out, or shut up their practice for a day, so they and their nurses can drive to get the vaccine. And they have to do this twice (since all of NZ is going to have the double dose vaccine).
It’s been very poorly thought out. Really our Government just doesn’t mentally grasp the idea the many people do not live in big cities……
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My mom’s home is shut down (no visits again) because a staff got covid. This surprised us because we thought they were all vaccinated in January. Apparently, about 15% of the staff refused. I don’t know the numbers for the residents.
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Oh that’s terrible
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I’m expecting a big fight soon. Now that everyone there has been vaccinated (or had the chance), there is going to be lots of pressure to allow actual visits without distancing between grandma and the little kids. My sister is livid and, having had to do things like sit through meetings where co-workers did not wear masks, in no mood to delay things to protect someone unvaccinated by choice.
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Articles:
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-pennsylvania-pa-philadelphia-suburbs-tom-wolf-joe-biden-20210315.html
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/covid-19-vaccine-supply-problems-suburban-philadelphia-pennsylvania-wolf-beam-20210306.html
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Well, at least we’re doing better than Europe, which is reportedly in a third wave, with a total bungle of vaccination.
EU Threatens To Halt UK Vaccine Exports As COVID “Third Wave” Intensifies
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eu-threatens-halt-uk-vaccine-exports-covid-third-wave-intensifies
COVID: Several European countries halt use of AstraZeneca vaccine
https://www.dw.com/en/covid-several-european-countries-halt-use-of-astrazeneca-vaccine/a-56835406
So, the EU wants to prevent the vaccine from going to the UK, but multiple countries in the EU are refusing that same vaccine due to safety fears.
Forbes has a handy list of restrictions in various EU countries that Do Not Welcome you right now, so you can reassure yourself that you aren’t missing anything by not traveling to Europe right now: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/03/17/third-wave-proving-hard-to-stem-march-eu-travel-restrictions-covid-19-test-requirements-quarantine-by-country/?sh=95b2fee3a41b
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Cranberry said, “So, the EU wants to prevent the vaccine from going to the UK, but multiple countries in the EU are refusing that same vaccine due to safety fears.”
Some of my twitter people (especially the ones living in Europe) are losing their minds over the EU’s treatment of Astrazeneca.
Meanwhile, we’re sitting on literally tens of millions of doses of the stuff that we don’t even really want and just starting to get around to thinking about sharing it with Mexico and Canada, where it’s already approved…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mexico-vaccine-idUSKBN2B820O
By the time Astrazeneca gets approved in the US, we will be swimming in deliveries of other vaccines.
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PA vaccines/100K seem the same as WA’s and better than Texas, state wide. I sometimes fear that the rhetoric about vaccines/cases/restrictions (which matters for politics, so I’m not ignoring the concerns Lisag reports) about are based on difficult data (and, sometimes on our own bubbles).
Our vaccines are still very restricted (we’ve just expanded to those with specific disabilities — like Downs, but still haven’t expanded to covered conditions/comorbidity). So, the folks I know who are vaccinated are doctors/nurses, teachers/child care workers, and some folks who work with the Indian Health Service, and over 65s. I think the plan is to open to those 50+ with 2 comorbidity in April. And they are telling us that they still don’t have enough vaccines for those currently eligible, and thus do not want to expand (i.e. vaccines are not going to waste).
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It’s widely reported we are in th 44-46th range in the U.S. per capita for full vaccination, better for partial. But we are also the seventh oldest state, so being 44th in the country is much worse than it appears–we have many more citizens who are vulnerable to covid. I also believe Texas is one of the worst states right now, but isn’t it a state with a relatively large young population?
My county department of health says that it will take three months (as of yesterday) just to vaccinate the county’s residents in 1a, a category which includes the elderly and those with covered health conditions, the backlog is so huge. That’s June 15th, long after the deadline for all adults in the country to be vaccinated, according to Biden. That’s assuming no increase in supply to the county, but the state has been asked if the supply to SE PA will increase and has refused to answer affirmatively. Something’s wrong. Maybe it’s just terrible messaging, and all the press reports are fake news, but then why isn’t the Governor doing something about the messaging? Very worried the democrats will be devastated here in a year and a half.
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lisag2 said, ” I also believe Texas is one of the worst states right now, but isn’t it a state with a relatively large young population?”
Right. Median age in PA is 40.8 and median age in TX is 34.8.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_age
Among US states, only Alaska (34.6) and Utah (31.0) are younger than Texas.
“My county department of health says that it will take three months (as of yesterday) just to vaccinate the county’s residents in 1a, a category which includes the elderly and those with covered health conditions, the backlog is so huge. That’s June 15th, long after the deadline for all adults in the country to be vaccinated, according to Biden. That’s assuming no increase in supply to the county, but the state has been asked if the supply to SE PA will increase and has refused to answer affirmatively. Something’s wrong.”
Oh my goodness! Pennsylvania’s stats don’t look that bad (in terms of shots given and percentage of vaccine used) and there’s supposed to be a lot of vaccine arriving this month, so I think/hope this may be just bad messaging.
Texas is vaccinating a lot slower than Pennsylvania, but it has just opened up to 50+. I got my first Moderna shot March 13, just as a 45-year-old with 30+ BMI. I’m waiting for my husband to become eligible.
My personal suspicion is that a lot of people who are eligible for vaccination don’t realize it. In the states with the 30+ BMI eligibility, a lot of people have to be eligible who don’t know it. I was looking at the WA guidelines and realizing that my BIL is eligible (50 and multigenerational household), but my sister had no idea.
I’ve recently heard a lot of CDC PSAs on the radio, and I think that they’re making a mistake by repeating the SAME EXACT MATERIAL over and over again with different voices. I think it would be a heck of a lot more useful to explain local vaccine eligibility. (I was about to say that they should publicize their guidelines about what to do before and after getting vaccinated, but frankly, the less said about the CDC guidelines, the better.)
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My county’s currrent full vaccination rate is 8.3%, siginificantly under the U.S. average of 12%, but our average age is 41.2, while the average age in the U.S. is 38.1. Keep in mind that rate includes people in my county who travel 6-10 hours round trip to get one dose, while it is likely few if any are travelling to our county, AND it includes all the people who work in Philadelphia who got the vaccine there, as they are allowed to do so and many have. In any case, why not address the discrepancy? Why not agree to meet with lawmakers to discuss? It’s baffling.
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Bethany Mandel has a thread on the question of whether current airline policy (universal masking on everybody 2 and up) makes sense:
https://mobile.twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/1372517662035689475
The news hook for this is a non-verbal autistic 4-year-old just got booted off a a Spirit Air flight because his parents couldn’t keep him in a mask. They had a doctor’s note.
Bethany writes:
“Can we have a conversation about why America is alone in requiring young children to wear masks? Nowhere else in the world does. The @CDCgov
guidelines are wildly different than the WHO, which the rest of the word follow.”
“I have been in communication with various Congressional offices about this and I’d like to talk to more. I have a mountain of data and anecdotes I’d like to share with staff who will listen. Hill people: Please DM me.”
“I wrote about it for the Daily News in the summer and it’s only gotten worse.”
The WHO standard (which Bethany cites) is that kids 5 and under should not be required to mask.
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I don’t find this terribly convincing. The family of the child that purportedly couldn’t wear a mask showed up at the airport without a mask, but with a “doctors note”. Scare quotes because the scrap of paper that says they don’t need to follow the rules is the first play in the anti-masker playbook. The ADA does not give the doctor the power to exempt someone from a mask mandate. So even if a real doctor really wrote a note that says under the ADA the child is exempt from the mask mandate, that doesn’t make it so.
The ADA does require reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, provided such accommodations do not cause undue hardship. I’m not at all sure there is a reasonable accommodation possible for someone who wants to fly without a mask. At best, it exposes other passengers and crew to risk and raises the possibility of disruption on the flight.
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Just as an FYI, I’m fairly plugged into the autism/parents community. They don’t care about this.
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Shannon Des Roches Rosa has talked about her mask intolerant autistic son: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/05/11/some-autistic-people-cant-tolerate-face-masks-heres-how-were-managing-with-our-son/
She also has a blog post in which she discusses the balancing act of addressing different needs: http://www.squidalicious.com/2017/06/sometimes-autism-means-missing.html
She mentions a doctors note, and I too am dismissive of doctor’s notes (as we see with the finally shifting trend on emotional support animals on airplanes).
We’re coming from a background of stigma and lack of acceptance of differences, so I understand the need to push on accommodations.
Also, it is reasonable to consider whether young children need to be masked
BTW, Emily Oster says you can take your little one traveling: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/go-ahead-plan-family-vacation-your-unvaccinated-kids/618313/
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bj said, “Also, it is reasonable to consider whether young children need to be masked.”
Yeah.
“BTW, Emily Oster says you can take your little one traveling.”
I plan to fly with my 8-year-old this summer, even though it won’t be possible for her to be vaccinated yet. I’d really, really like it if my parents would cooperate with this plan by getting vaccinated, but we have 2+ months for that to happen. I’d like for my teens to get vaccinated before flying, so I’m crossing my fingers on that. I’m seeing so many states right now opening up vaccine eligibility to everybody 16 and over. (Of course eligible doesn’t equal available.)
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We’re hearing from WA DOH there will be a lot more availability in April, double the doses we’re getting now. So, I’m hopeful that vaccines will be available. But, who knows. I think some states are definitely encountering hesitancy — I don’t think this is going to be a voluntary vaccine that will get to 90%. I was thinking about measles and small pox, and, honestly, with both of those, you know when you have them. You are literally covered with spots. So, taking a shot and then never seeing that is easier to explain than take this vaccine and maybe you won’t get the vague symptoms associated with a really bad cold/flu.
I am wondering whether vaccine passports will become a thing, notably for travel.
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bj said, “I am wondering whether vaccine passports will become a thing, notably for travel.”
It really should happen for international travel, so as to avoid inconvenient quarantines.
The problem with requiring it for internal US travel is that vaccines aren’t yet available to whoever wants them, so only a fraction of the public could travel right now. And then as more and more people get vaccinated, it becomes more and more of a moot point.
Although come to think of it, some parts US (like Hawaii) have been requiring quarantine this past year. Hawaii could easily switch to requiring a vaccine passport for entry.
I told my husband this evening about the twitter kerfuffle over Emily Oster’s Atlantic piece. (A bunch of people thought that it was incredibly irresponsible.) My husband pointed out to me that for a child to spread COVID, that requires two other people: somebody to catch it from and somebody to give it to. That’s getting progressively harder, at least with adults.
I think that people ought to be more chill over Oster’s piece, because “summer” implies a trip 2-5 months away. With the US doing 2.5 million shots a day, 60+ days will bring incredible progress. Who knows, there might even be a big kid vaccine available before the end of the summer!
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I didn’t read Oster carefully (actually just the headline, since I don’t have a young child) so I haven’t followed the twitter kerfuffle. But, I think that Oster’s specialty is decision making under risk and uncertainty and while considering the risks and uncertainty as alternatives. I think it’s more important to read her framework, rather than what she says is OK (even though I linked to the article saying what she says is OK).
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Our county 14 day rates are creeping up and I am freaked out. They aren’t taking off, but they aren’t moving down. We saw all three waves and I was so hopeful before the second two and am now unable to just hope for the best. But there isn’t much I can do.
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