PhineasC

Their governor is a joke.

Hope we aren't already seeing the breakdown of vaccine efficacy due to variants. This is a huge, very rapid vaccine rollout (surely fastest of all time?) so I think we are just seeing the kinds of little blips that happen with vaccines but are usually spread out over many years compressed into a couple months, so it seems like a lot of issues but not really.

70 on my PWS. Looks nice through the cam. 53 and overcast in MD. Opposite Day.

Your school sounds pretty awesome just based on your posts here. It gives me hope that even butthead districts like Fairfax County, VA and San Francisco will eventually come around and do what is right for kids.

The prior flu epidemics ravaged healthy young people, though. This disease is by far most deadly for sedentary, elderly, obese, sick people, of which the industrialized world has an abundance. That's why it seemed to make no sense to quarantine the young, healthy workers and kids we need to keep the economy going and protect our future society. Locking them up gained the sick old people very little in the way of add'l safety IMO but wrecked millions of lives. The number one thing we did to reduce deaths was to protect the nursing homes, followed by better treatments and stopping the obsession with venting everyone. Obviously, vaccines have taken over the lead in the fight now. I do think we need to look really hard at the impacts of lockdowns so we don't make the same mistakes. To be honest, it is very easy to make the same argument to lockdown over a bad flu that we made for COVID. As for the numbers, it clearly was very bad, but I am waiting for the studies that come out in 3-5 years after the hysteria has passed and more analysis of actual causes of death can be done. We labeled a lot of people who had heart attacks after testing positive as "COVID deaths." The CDC has not denied this. This may be offset by the likely hundreds of thousands of deaths in places like China that have not been reported.

You'd have to be really ignorant of history to think giving the Federal govt all this power means they will never use it again once the current "crisis" has passed. LOL Whenever people tell me it'll all be back to normal once we have enough "jabs in arms" I ask them if they still have to take off their shoes at the airport 20+ years later. That always makes them stop in their tracks.

Deaths, or just cases?

That's the plan. They can bring COVID back whenever convenient to shut down dissent, close businesses, and restrict travel. Hell, they can probably just do that for the flu now.

Are civic leaders looking at hospitalization and death rates? I see a continued strong focus on "cases" as somehow the most relevant metric.

Hard to say. I haven't seen much of a pattern with people I know. Some who seemed like they would really be susceptible to reactions are fine, and then others who never have health issues are laid out for days by the vaccine with all sort of weird side effects. I am guessing those with strong immune systems are affected a lot more than those with weak immune systems. You can't usually look at someone and know how their immune system is doing, of course.

That's the best approach. I have just been chuckling when people say they got their "jabs" so now they can emerge into society again and travel, eat out, shop, etc. As if that stuff hasn't still been going on in many places without interruption since this whole thing started. The world kept moving, it didn't stop to wait for those who are too scared to get a haircut to come outside again. It cracks me up to see the reaction from people when I tell them planes and airports are routinely packed just like the old days. They can't believe it. Same for restaurants.

I wonder when the rubber band will snap back? I kinda hope this continues through the summer and then in the fall it snaps back to wet and cold.

It basically misses New England. Maybe NYC forum will care more?

The thing is...these people you describe who are too exhausted and overwhelmed to worry about massive govt overreach seem to always get a burst of fervent, almost religious energy directed at anyone who speaks out against govt serfdom and societal paranoia over COVID. They become relentlessly aggressive, in fact.

Definitely agree that it's pretty easy for politicians and the media to build whatever consensus they desire. That's why it is vitally important that we fiercely protect free speech rights and other freedoms. Amazing how quickly this virus has led to a large number of people willingly turning themselves into shackled serfs of the government.

That's a more complex argument. Not sure starving them to death or killing them in a ground invasion would have been better. Or leaving them to the Soviets...

This might be one of the few times in recent history (or perhaps ever) where a bunch of adults got together and decided it was OK to totally screw over the children because the adults were afraid for their own safety. Really says something about our society.

Some folks are still in denial. A few here even assert 2020 was "good for the kids." Just incredibly myopic and tone-deaf stuff.

Short version: You seem like the kind of parent who takes an active interest in the education of his children and will make sure to bridge the gap left by a couple years of dumbed-down remote schooling. Many, many kids (perhaps the majority in some places) do not have parents who are willing or able to help them in this way, and they have fallen into a very deep hole. It's being wallpapered-over right now by canceling standardized testing and automatically advancing all students. Eventually, the can will not be able to be kicked down the road anymore and it will become clear there is a large segment of children that is several iterations of educational attainment below where they supposedly should be based on grade level. I think this will start to be exposed in HS and people who thought all was well will be shocked. This applies to more than just grades. Behavioral patterns are also affected. Kids in some schools are literally being punished for sharing, helping, and interacting with other students. That can only harm them in the long term.

We tried to tell them about lagging indicators but they didn't listen... they are busy high-fiving over suicides supposedly being way down... Wait until the current cohort of middle school kids hits HS...

He does drive a lot of innovation, however. His behavior and business success drives aggressive competition and technological advancements by other companies that are good for everyone at the end of the day. Like him or not personally, he has been at the forefront of mainstreaming the current EV push and the drive towards the commercialization of space. I look at him like I looked at Steve Jobs and what he did with the personal computers, music players, and smart phones. Helps put him in proper perspective, IMO.

We are looking forward to seeing you all again out here...

Office space is a tiny expense compared to fringe costs such as healthcare. Those costs are becoming crushing now for employers. Keeping a leased office that is mostly empty is no big deal unless maybe it's a skyscraper in Manhattan or something like that. My healthcare costs positively dwarf my monthly rent for the office. It's insane how much we spend per employee on healthcare. Just nuts, and rising every year.

Haven't looked at models lately, but just scrolled the 18z GFS. Pretty hilarious how everything just misses NNE. Precip swirls around in all directions but dances away just before contact.

Many of those who push very loudly for permanent WFH are mid-level workers who have reached that "burned-out and jaded" stage. I get it, we all end up there at some point. But you need to remember that as a junior employee you were able to take advantage of in-person mentoring, shadowing, and the ability to watch and mimic more senior employees. That's a huge part of how people learn to survive and succeed in the adult world. By forcing junior employees into WFH right out of the gate, you rob them of that opportunity you had. It's pretty unfair and causes massive turnover for young people as they join a firm, quickly fail because they lack any sort of structure or accountability, and then get flushed.