Coronavirus

[megaplayboy]

[Michael Hopcroft]

16 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

I walked down to the local hot dog eatery today, decent foot traffic in the place. Hot dog with kraut & mustard, and a Racer 5. Everything was very weird, plastic barriers and a laminated hot dog placard that said "clean me" to leave on my table after. Masks and gloves all around, and you can only take off your mask when eating. Everyone standing on floor markings, and they'd pulled half the tables out so social distancing was in full effect. Hand sanitizer required before completing your order. The workers were just happy to be at work again.

 

Was a good hot dog. It reminded me of better times than this.

 

I want this to be finished, I miss fear not being a constant element in every human interaction I see around me. This may be the most depressing thing I've ever witnessed, and I want to be able to hug my friends again. And go to parties, and hang out with folks listening to good music. To be able to travel, and not have to constantly track where my mask is before I go out. To be able to see my mom without worrying about her maybe getting sick accidentally. And none of that is going to happen any time soon. This disease is taking so much from us, and this is time we will never get back. The world is on pause, full of terror and danger, and it's appalling, for going on months now... with probably more than a year to go.

 

God, this is awful. Tastes like despair.

I imagine either restaurant prices will have to soar to bring in enough to make payroll on reduced capacity, or restaurants that weren't interested in takeout and delivery before will be interested in it now.

 

I miss going to a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, putting down $4, and walking out with a floppy slice with a think layer of delectable cheese hot out of the reheat oven. And I'm going to miss walking to the bus stop while nibbling at it.

 

I'm going to miss conventions. The one I bought a badge for recently is scheduled for November, which is right when the second wave is expected to crest. I can;t imagine crowding that many people in a medium-sized hotel for three days. I don't even know if that medium hotel will still be in business.

 

I'm hoping these things aren't lost good, but I'm not optimistic about it.

[Iuz the Evil]

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I imagine either restaurant prices will have to soar to bring in enough to make payroll on reduced capacity, or restaurants that weren't interested in takeout and delivery before will be interested in it now.

 

I miss going to a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, putting down $4, and walking out with a floppy slice with a think layer of delectable cheese hot out of the reheat oven. And I'm going to miss walking to the bus stop while nibbling at it.

 

I'm going to miss conventions. The one I bought a badge for recently is scheduled for November, which is right when the second wave is expected to crest. I can;t imagine crowding that many people in a medium-sized hotel for three days. I don't even know if that medium hotel will still be in business.

 

I'm hoping these things aren't lost good, but I'm not optimistic about it.

I would literally rather die than live in that world. We absolutely must recover what we have lost, or as much as we can. 

 

Edit: as soon as vaccination or resistance allows us. 

[Pariah]

I think it's inevitable that we are going to lose some things as a result of all this. The key, I hope, is that will figure out the right things to lose. The things that don't work. The things that are unnecessary and really have no place in a modern civilization, save for cultural inertia.

 

The fact is that things will never be the same after all this. But that can mean one of two things. It can mean things will be worse, or it can mean things will be better. I hope by the time we're done with all this, we will have figured out which is which and chosen accordingly.

 

( Now, without drifting too far into Political thread territory, that outcome is going to depend a lot on how we choose our leaders in the next election.)

[Pariah]

An example of what I'm talking about: Distance learning. That's been my life for the last 10 weeks. And I hate it. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it takes away the things I love most and leaves me with all the annoying stuff. That's how it affects me.

 

However...it works really well for some of my students. There are some kids who just aren't built to start the day at 7:30 in the morning. (Like pretty much everybody in my first-period classes, it seems.) For those kids, if it works better for them to access the material at a different time, then that's probably what we should do for them.

 

There are other kids, I've learned, who need the structure and just can't function very well in a completely asynchronous environment. For those kids, having class in a traditional classroom during the traditional school day is the better choice.

 

Even with an increased commitment to educational technology, most public schools operate more or less the same way they did in the 1700s. The current crisis has forced us educators to reevaluate what public school should look like. It turns out we don't have to do things the way we've always done them.

 

There's still a huge learning curve ahead of us, and educators are more susceptible than you might think to academic inertia. But we can do it differently, and we might just be able to do it better. If we can do it better, then that's something worth striving for. And I feel that is something good that could come out of this crisis.

[unclevlad]

45 minutes ago, Pariah said:

I think it's inevitable that we are going to lose some things as a result of all this. The key, I hope, is that will figure out the right things to lose. The things that don't work. The things that are unnecessary and really have no place in a modern civilization, save for cultural inertia.

 

But "cultural inertia"  also means "has many people vested in its existence."  Which means many things that probably should go away, won't be allowed to.  At least not quickly;  they'll eventually get so outmoded that they slip away quietly, and this period will likely accelerate it, but for many things not as much as one would like.

 

And many of the things I'd love to see disappear, are just too messy.  Clean up government rules/regulations?  Ha.  Our system's more of a tangled mess than Windows 10, with similar amounts of bloatware, legacy code, and personal-preference elements (not user...programmer) moshed together.

 

Plus, of course, anything you try to excise, will draw *HOWLS* of protest from *someone.*

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Pariah said:

Even with an increased commitment to educational technology, most public schools operate more or less the same way they did in the 1700s. The current crisis has forced us educators to reevaluate what public school should look like. It turns out we don't have to do things the way we've always done them.

 

There's still a huge learning curve ahead of us, and educators are more susceptible than you might think to academic inertia. But we can do it differently, and we might just be able to do it better. If we can do it better, then that's something worth striving for. And I feel that is something good that could come out of this crisis.

 

I caught part of an NPR discussion on this topic with Frederick Hess, resident scholar and director of the Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  He made the same points--that the biggest problems with remote learning are structure, communications, and learning teamwork, as well as enhanced inequality.  But there is also an opportunity to remake school and take it out of the Industrial Age.  Many types of learning--reading, rote learning, repetitive math--can be better taught online and.or at home.  The main obstacle is that school has been rigidly coded into legislation, regulations, union contracts, and school boards.  Here, class schedules here are negotiated down to the minute in the union contract.

 

I have no idea what to do with my kids this summer.  They're already bored out of their minds and there's still a week of remote "school" left.

[Old Man]

Will the U.S. reach 100000 (official) coronavirus deaths on Memorial Day? 

[Iuz the Evil]

39 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Will the U.S. reach 100000 (official) coronavirus deaths on Memorial Day? 

Almost certainly.

[Doc Democracy]

6 hours ago, Pariah said:

An example of what I'm talking about: Distance learning. That's been my life for the last 10 weeks. And I hate it. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it takes away the things I love most and leaves me with all the annoying stuff. That's how it affects me.

 

However...it works really well for some of my students. There are some kids who just aren't built to start the day at 7:30 in the morning.

 

My son is fifteen, his school is delivering a full teaching week and has been since the first week of lockdown.  He loves it, he is actually doing better as he has fewer distractions, has a bit more time between lessons when he grabs a coffee or chats with friends.  He gets ALL his homework in on time.

 

He is a social kid but I don't think he is looking forward to going back.

 

Not fit for all, he has the space, tech and interested parents to make it work but it is a completely different model.

 

I could see a school making it work, small modern office for staff, technology given to children to use, resources developed for that.  Could be a hugely leaner operation than a brick and mortar school.  Works best for wealthier parents who don't both work (and for poorer parents who don't both work).  It lacks the childcare aspect of normal school but even that could be dealt with.  It could also take children from anywhere in the country.

 

Doc

[Cygnia]

[Clonus]

[Old Man]

[Pattern Ghost]

I can't believe someone littered the ocean with that piece of rope. I'm glad that guy was able to fish it out with those masks.

[BNakagawa]

16 hours ago, Old Man said:

Will the U.S. reach 100000 (official) coronavirus deaths on Memorial Day? 

 

No. they're going to suspend the counting because it's a federal holiday.

[Cygnia]

[Old Man]

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 5/25/2020 at 6:52 AM, Cygnia said:

How do you put that on without poking yourself in the wrist multiple times?

[ScottishFox]

The Texas re-opening is looking reasonably good after a scary bump upward initially.

 

At least wave 1 of this plague will pass over us without too much destruction.  Hopefully wave 2 will be even less awful.

 

I will say that being able to sit at a table of fellow RPG fans (spread way out at the new jumbo sized double table) and have an actual in-person game beat the pants off the Roll20 BS I've been surviving on.  It was like moving from a feeding tube to a New York Strip.

 

Still doing the basic precautions (masks, neurotic hand sanitizing, etc.).

 

[Simon]

11 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

At least wave 1 of this plague will pass over us without too much destruction.  Hopefully wave 2 will be even less awful.

With 100k dead (and not seeing the peak yet), I'm curious what you would consider "too much destruction"...

[death tribble]

Well America has about 8 times the UK's cases and only 3 times the number of deaths so it is not that bad yet.. And despite the number of deaths it is not as bad as it could be.

We have been conditioned by science fiction and fiction to expect devastation and it has not happened because there people prepared to obey the rules for the most part.

Could we have done better globally ? Yes.

What I woul;d like to know is why Germany has such a low rate.

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, death tribble said:

What I woul;d like to know is why Germany has such a low rate.

 

Germany was one of the three countries hardest hit when the virus spread out of Italy.  They got it under control with a lockdown much stricter than anywhere in the U.S., plus an unemployment system that pays 2/3 of salary, plus widespread testing and contact tracing.  The testing is what has allowed Germany to mostly reopen--even their schools are back in session, with all students being tested every four days.

[Old Man]

[Michael Hopcroft]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Germany was one of the three countries hardest hit when the virus spread out of Italy.  They got it under control with a lockdown much stricter than anywhere in the U.S., plus an unemployment system that pays 2/3 of salary, plus widespread testing and contact tracing.  The testing is what has allowed Germany to mostly reopen--even their schools are back in session, with all students being tested every four days.

The normal method of testing for COVID-19 seems at best undignified and art worst painful. Having to endure that every four days would be a bit much to ask of notoriously stubborn Americans.

 

Universal masking is important, but is not going to happen in the US. We tune out what we don't want to hear, and generally respond to threat by sticking out thumbs in out ears, waving our hands, and shouting 'BLEEBLE BLEEBLE BLEEBLE!". Which is not helpful, but is something we seem to find encouraging.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The normal method of testing for COVID-19 seems at best undignified and art worst painful. Having to endure that every four days would be a bit much to ask of notoriously stubborn Americans.

 

Universal masking is important, but is not going to happen in the US. We tune out what we don't want to hear, and generally respond to threat by sticking out thumbs in out ears, waving our hands, and shouting 'BLEEBLE BLEEBLE BLEEBLE!". Which is not helpful, but is something we seem to find encouraging.

 

Which is why America is and will continue to be the epicenter of the pandemic.  America is literally doing as badly as authoritarian regimes like Brazil, Iran, and Russia, or countries that did nothing, like Sweden.  The authorities that could have saved us are instead actively disseminating misinformation and preventing measures that could save lives.  And that gets us back to "despair".