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Steve

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We had unofficial "flood days" where if your community or locale was either isolated by flood waters or the water was up over the tops of the telephone poles (like it was in one community at least once each year) and the school busses couldn't run into your area, your absence wasn't counted against you.

 

There was no telling how many days or weeks a kid might be out of school. Even after the waters receded, it might take a few weeks to get the roads restored enough for a school bus to be able to pass through.

 

I have no idea how they handle it there in this era where they expect a kid to get so many days of school per year or not get to move on until the next grade level. I know it still floods like that.

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Snow days were overrated, far as I was concerned.  Not like you could sleep in...because you didn't know for sure if your school was open until you heard over the radio.  So we were still up much too early and getting ready.  

 

And in my case:  neighbors?  What neighbors?  At that time, we were in a mountain subdivision where the minimum lot size (out of necessity) was 2 acres;  we were, IIRC, the 6th home in the entire subdivision (a couple hundred lots total) and there were VERY few kids close by.  

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There is one teeny, tiny, interesting bit of positive news.

 

From WorldOMeters...there were fewer new cases today than there were last Sunday.  By a decent amount...about a 7% decline.

 

This might not sound like a big deal, but it is actually the first time that has happened...a reduction in the week-over-week numbers for any day of the week...in about 5 weeks.  It'll likely happen Thursday too, but that's a data point I'll ignore.  Obviously this Thursday is a very atypical Thursday;  and even to a decent degree, this week is a tad on the odd side.  But not so much today.

 

Now of course, big home gatherings might erase this...but we can hope perhaps we've hit the top of a crest for at least a little bit.  Yes, I'm grasping at straws.  It's Thanksgiving Week, might as well.

 

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9 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Snow days were overrated, far as I was concerned.  Not like you could sleep in...because you didn't know for sure if your school was open until you heard over the radio.  So we were still up much too early and getting ready.  

 

And in my case:  neighbors?  What neighbors?  At that time, we were in a mountain subdivision where the minimum lot size (out of necessity) was 2 acres;  we were, IIRC, the 6th home in the entire subdivision (a couple hundred lots total) and there were VERY few kids close by.  

Nowadays, I think my local schools close down for a week over a snow flurry. Wish they did that in my day.

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4 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

This is exactly what needs to happen. The only thing wrong is that the family should be asking for $30 million rather than $30,000.

 

Companies need to learn to take public health problems seriously whether it's COVID, ebola, the next bird flu, or the next global pandemic. 

 

Publix might not be flagrantly wrong. But some company needs to take a major financial hit during this crisis over not protecting their employees/customers so that all the companies in the next crisis will understand they need to be pro-active in protecting everybody.

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17 minutes ago, archer said:

 

This is exactly what needs to happen. The only thing wrong is that the family should be asking for $30 million rather than $30,000.

 

Companies need to learn to take public health problems seriously whether it's COVID, ebola, the next bird flu, or the next global pandemic. 

 

Publix might not be flagrantly wrong. But some company needs to take a major financial hit during this crisis over not protecting their employees/customers so that all the companies in the next crisis will understand they need to be pro-active in protecting everybody.

 

I imagine they already know -- isn't one of the major Republican "must haves" for an additional stimulus bill liability protection for business so they can't be sued for things like this?

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3 minutes ago, Tom said:

 

I imagine they already know -- isn't one of the major Republican "must haves" for an additional stimulus bill liability protection for business so they can't be sued for things like this?

 

Well, there's a difference between knowing and knowing.

 

For example, businesses know they aren't supposed to have a hostile work environment.

 

I used to work at a car dealership.

 

In the repair area, the mechanics were given girly calendars with naked ladies on them as promotional items by various vendors who work with the mechanics at the dealership. The mechanics would display those calendars in their work area.

 

The only convenient way to get from employee parking into the rest of the dealership was to walk through the repair shop. So everyone including the female receptionists, sales women, operators, etc. had to walk by this gauntlet of naked ladies on the way to their desks.

 

I took the local paper every day and one day there was an article about a car dealership which was successfully sued over the way that they created a hostile work environment by having girly calendars displayed.

 

I cut out the article, waited until the next morning when I was one of the first people to arrive, and pinned the article to a bulletin board close to where a lot of the female office staffers worked. And the boss had to walk by that same bulletin board on the way to his office.

 

I honestly wasn't expecting anything to happen. But before lunch, they stopped work in the repair shop for a meeting and when I went home at the end of the day, there were no longer any girly calendars on the walls.

 

There also was no longer a newspaper article pinned to the bulleting board.

 

Knowing vs knowing

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Sweden Sees No Signs So Far Herd Immunity Is Stopping Virus

 

...according to the country’s top epidemiologist, “The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell said at a briefing in Stockholm on Tuesday. “We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now.”

 

every third Stockholmer tested has antibodies, according to figures published this week

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/sweden-says-it-sees-no-signs-herd-immunity-is-stopping-the-virus

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2 hours ago, archer said:

Sweden Sees No Signs So Far Herd Immunity Is Stopping Virus

 

...according to the country’s top epidemiologist, “The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell said at a briefing in Stockholm on Tuesday. “We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now.”

 

every third Stockholmer tested has antibodies, according to figures published this week

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/sweden-says-it-sees-no-signs-herd-immunity-is-stopping-the-virus

Wait. The thing that all the experts were saying turned out to be true? And the glib contrarian was wrong? This cannot be!

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And now the minks are undead, because 2020 is not finished with us yet.

 

Quote

Dead mink are rising from their graves in Denmark after a rushed cull over fears of a coronavirus mutation led to thousands being slaughtered and buried in shallow pits – from which some are now emerging.

 

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1 hour ago, Clonus said:

 

 

"Let's open the schools," the premier of Alberta said.  "It'll be fine..."

 

Alberta tends to be home to the same kinds of political thinking as many of the Red States in the American West. That their rate of coronavirus infection follows the same trend as their counterparts in the US is not entirely surprising.

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2 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

Alberta tends to be home to the same kinds of political thinking as many of the Red States in the American West. That their rate of coronavirus infection follows the same trend as their counterparts in the US is not entirely surprising.

 

To a degree that's true, but Alberta has about 60,000 total cases out of 4 million people...about 1.5%.  Georgia has a bit over 450,000 cases out of 10.6 million...about 4.5%.  Arizona is a bit better; they're closer to 4%.  Utah is worse at close to 6%.  It's also true tho, that from the sound of things, they're not doing enough to check this spike...and apparently their health system's running near capacity.  That argues for strong measures so it doesn't explode, and the stories I'm reading say they didn't go far enough.

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When you're talking about political/social "conservatives" in Canada, you usually have to walk back a ways from what the word implies in the States. ;)  But Alberta is a part of the country that tends to skew to the right the most often and strongly, and where the American anti-mask etc. sentiment has leaked across the widest. It doesn't help that there are long-standing issues between Alberta and the federal government, particularly their two current respective governing parties. The former seems to see political points to be scored in resisting the latter's pandemic measures.

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