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salaciousme · 1 year

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My father died on August 12, 2021. He had a COVID positive test a few days before my 30th birthday and quickly decompensated by my birthday. He was hospitalized and slowly going into multiple organ failure. Like most COVID patients, his lungs were the first to start failing. He was given all sorts of medication and treatments. By the end, they had maxed out all the legally allowed dosages. I was so angry with him for getting sick. His health has been touch and go since he had his first major heart attack when I was 14. The last 15 years of my life were filled with constant medical emergencies - 3 heart attacks and 4 strokes not to mention regular angina episodes. Needless to say, I was in the hospital a lot and this was just my father. This is not including my mother who has Parkinson’s . And my own health that suffered significantly because of the stress and constant worry.

My mother had gone to a church party on July 16 - the pastor’s wife’s 50th birthday. And yes, she really did throw a massive party in the middle of the pandemic. The last time I saw my father was on July 17, 2022. I had gone to visit my parents and have breakfast that Saturday morning. My uncle was visiting for the first time and my father was so excited, showing off all the things in the house to his older brother. My dad showed me old pictures of when he was younger and pictures of my brother who had passed. It was actually the first time he had ever spoken so openly about my brother. I remember he got really quiet and I just hugged him. This was the first emotionally vulnerable moment we had together. I left in the early afternoon to meet with my partner as per my usual routine. It’ is as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday how happy I felt. I had even called my partner to tell him I had a surprisingly great time with my parents and I was so happy that our relationship was improving. We had made plans to meet the next weekend for my birthday. Everything felt right in the world. Little did I know that I’d never see my father again. I’d never get another hug or another overly enthusiastic greeting that at the time I found annoying. Now I just miss it.

My mother called that Monday to tell me she was COVID positive and that I needed to get tested. My health is not great so being exposed to COVID was a big deal. I remember being so angry with her when she explained that multiple people at the party had tested positive and that most people were not wearing masks - her included. I asked her about my father and she said he was not sick and felt great. I warned her to stay away from him because he was a prime candidate for COVID complications. I was on speaker and I heard my father dismiss my concerns stating he was fine. This only for me to receive a call that Wednesday, July 21, that he was now COVID positive. My father went so far as to tell me that COVID was not as big of a deal as people had made it out to be and that he was going to be fine. I knew deep in my heart that the moment he was positive, he was not going to make it. I couldn’t tell you why but it was such an overwhelming feeling that I reacted like a child - I got angry at him. By the weekend, both my mother and father were hospitalized. Their oxygen levels were dropping and they couldn’t breathe. They were admitted into the hospital and placed in ICU together. My mother looked worse at first but made a recovery and was released by August 6.

My father’s condition suddenly began decompensating with no up tick. His lungs began to fail. The day he was placed on the ventilator, I remember seeing him on FaceTime and he could barely talk. The nurses had these iPads they used for patients to communicate with their loved ones who were on the COVID floors. He was unable to catch his breath despite being on max oxygen. He would make hand signs to try to communicate and ended up cutting the call short. I think he knew at that time that he was not coming home. I had never seen that look on his face before, not during any of the close calls in the last 15 years. And just like that he was transferred to ICU, put under sedation and placed on the ventilator. His condition looked hopeful for the first few days. We received dozens of calls a day from the hospital staff. I remember that Monday, August 9 we got the call - the “its not looking good” call, the “you should consider making arrangements” call, the “what life saving measure would you like taken” call. We were told he was going into multiple organ failure and his lungs were beginning to fill with fluid. They advised us the strain on his heart was getting too great and they had almost reach the max amount of medications to control his blood pressure. They said they can try life saving measures when his heart fails but advised against it because the damage to his organs were irreparable by this point. I never imagined having that conversation.

The next 2 days were surreal. I remember getting dozens more calls from the hospital including one the day before he died. The nurse called me early in the morning and said my father’s was not going to make it past that day and that she can arrange a FaceTime call so the family can say their goodbyes. I called my entire family to let them know what was going to happen and to tell them to be available for the call. I made the arrangements with the nurses and so many family and friends were able to join to say goodbye to my father’s sedated body. After about 2 hours the call suddenly ended. I immediately thought the worst. I couldn’t bring myself to call the hospital and I believe my sister did. He was still alive - if you could call it that. I will be eternally grateful to my childhood friend who worked at the hospital and somehow pulled magical strings and I was able to see my father before he died - in person. I remember feeling determined to see him because I could not accept this was real until I saw it for myself. I was allowed onto the COVID ICU floor where my father was admitted. He was on a floor in which each room was sealed off with negative pressure and no one was allowed inside except the assign nursing staff. Nevertheless I was able to stand outside his room and see him. He would have looked like he was sleeping if it were not for the multiple cables and tubes coming out of my father and into all sorts of machines id never seen before. His chest would rise and fall so unnaturally because of the ventilator. He didn’t look like him. It sunk in he would never come home. It sunk in that I would never hear him call my name again or give me a hug. He never got to visit my new home because I wanted it to be “perfect” before I finally invited him over. I started thinking of all the things he always said he would be there for and how he would never get to see any of those things. How this was it.

I don’t remember getting home or falling asleep. I remember receiving a call at 7:43 AM from the hospital. The moment I saw the number I knew - “no, no, no, no”. I remember saying that as I picked up the phone. The nurse was crying. Then the worst moment of my life unfolded. The words I was dreading to hear. It was official. He was really gone. This was real and this was happening. My father who always said he would like to 100 just to annoy me was gone at 68.

#covid19 #fuck covid #covid pandemic #covid deaths #cw grief #griefandloss #tw death #parent death tw #parent death mention #death #grief #pandemic #2021 #2022

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pepprs · 3 years

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mutuals i am hanging by threads. THREADS

#let’s recap. covid test tomorrow 8am. then 2 hr meeting in which the facilitation guide for the scariest session i will ever facilitate will #be (deservingly) torn to shreds by the two people who intimidate me most on the entire planet. then one hour of self-inflicted torture as i #attend an extremely important life changing town hall virtually while literally everybody else goes in person because my life is hell. then #two hours of retreat coach training DURING WHICH I HAVE JUST REALIZED LIKE 16 HOURS BEFORE IT HAPPENS I WILL BE GOING FIRST TO SHARE A #FORMATIVE AND IDEALLY TRAUMATIC MOMENT FROM MY LIFE AND I HAVENT EVEN PICKWD WHICH ONE OR PREPPED MYSELF FOR IT AND ITS 16 HOURS AWAY. and #also im like describing what all of the sessions are gonna bw and i have to study that and get it right bc i messed up so bad last week. the #then i go home suffer all weekend except for some brief multi-hour stretches of respite including hopefully the bonfire except i will be #constrained bc i won’t be allowed to go onto the field bc my parents will be there. then on Monday i have a root canal at 7 and then will ha #have to be late to work by an hour so i can go back to campus when my brother needs to be there bc my own responsibilities don’t matter #apparently. then i go to work class advising then go home again to celebrate my brothers bday then come BACK and go to work class meetings #etc normally Tuesday and Wednesday except tuesday is the scariest session i will ever facilitate and i have fucktons of homework. then #wednesday morning i get up early for ANOTHER covid test and then come home in the evening pack up eberything and thursday drive 9 hours to #new hampshire and miss school / work / homecoming stuff for 4 days so i can commemorate the loss of my grandmother and then drive back #9 hours home and get ANOTHER covid test and also there will be covid tests in New Hampshire too. so in conclusion my life is fucking awesome #purrs #delete later #probably cuz that’s like a lot of tmi. i am going to have a breakdown i am going to have a breakdown like literally there is no fucking way #i can do this without having a breakdown. god fucking help me LOL

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imaginesmai · 3 years

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heyy, thank you for answering the request!💜sending it again: I want to request a quarantine angst imagine with tom, something like the reader is alone in her apartment, while Tom is staying in his with the boys, so she is calling him constantly because she feels lonely and the boys start teasing, so he starts to treat reader differently and someday when he thinks the call is over he says she’s clingy or something, reader hear what he said, feel awfully and stops talking to him

This doesn’t come late, this comes completely out of time. I needed a time out of Tumblr, because I didn’t enjoy writing anymore. Hope you enjoy this! I changed it a bit since we’re not longer in complete lockdown, but it has the same basic plot!

Oceans between us

You waited patiently as Tom finished his conversation with Harry, who had just appeared through the corner of your call and had taken your boyfriend’s attention away. It was an important conversation, you could understand so much, because Tom had muted himself while they talked so you couldn’t hear what they were saying. You were okay with it, really, because you understood that in his line of work he had to keep some stuff hidden until the movies came out. And you had had your fair share of early spoilers from him to accept it.

The problem was that minutes were tickling, and now there was another person in the room – a boy you hadn’t met before, that was laughing behind Tom. It seemed that, whatever they were talking about, was funny.

“Tom?” you tried again in a small voice, not feeling like continuing the call anymore. You looked at the time above the screen – ten minutes since he muted himself.

Either he had turned off the sound, or he ignored you.

In a burst of irritation, you left the couch and went over to the kitchen, your dog following you close. He sniffed your legs and sat while you took a glass of water and leaned against the sink – if he wanted to talk to you again, you could hear it from there. Manchee, the adorable puppy you had gotten a year ago, seemed to catch that there was something wrong with his owner, so he rubbed his nose against your bare leg.

“It’s fine. We talked this morning, it’s not like I haven’t seen him for days” you smiled at him, trying to get yourself to believe your words. “Besides, he has every right to be busy too. Not his fault that I’m stuck”

But it wasn’t your fault, either. One of your classmates in college had tested positive in covid almost a month ago. Your class had been sent home the next day, and you had been quarantined for 15 days – but the quarantine passed, and the classes remained online because the situation in your country got worse, which meant you could only go out grocery shopping, go the doctor in case of need or to work if you were a essential worked. Since the two last situations weren’t given, you were stuck in your small, rented apartment, going out only once a day to take your dog for a short walk.

The first days were hard, and now it had only gotten worse. You were bored out of your mind, tired and sick of being inside. You cried more often than not, and since your family didn’t have the technology to facetime you, the only person you saw beside your reflection in the mirror was your boyfriend. Tom, who was away in another country filming and busy, and who lately seemed to ignore you more often than not.

As expected, because it wasn’t the first time you had to do so, you ended the call, watching a last minute of an empty camera because Tom had left his phone in the room as he went somewhere else.

“We could restart Vampire Diaries”

A bark.

“Watch Mamma Mia? A classic, never grows old”

Another back, this time louder.

“Not a huge fan of me dancing, fine. I respect that – I don’t share it, but alright. Baking?”

More dog noises.

“Of course, you’re up to anything that involves food. When this ends, I’m getting you on a diet. I promise” you said, and you swore Manchee made a protesting noise. “What was that? The greatest showman? You have the best ideas, Manch”

Manchee ran out of the room as you searched for the movie on Netflix, and you didn’t hear him again. As you watched the movie, you kept looking at your phone, hoping to see a message for him and imagining what would it feel like if he called you back. You didn’t want to be a possessive girlfriend, but it hurt when he wasn’t there now that you needed him the most. Rubbing the suspicious wet feeling on your eyes, you put the phone face down and tried to enjoy the movie, even if it was the third time you watched it in a month.

As expected, he didn’t call you. You held your pride together and spent the next day giving him radio silence – no calls, no messages, nothing. You took Manchee for a walk, who found a squirrel in the park and made you run behind him. You bought the essentials in the supermarket, that was empty, and went back to an apartment that wasn’t your home. As expected, Manchee ate half of your food when you went to the bathroom, and jumped into the shower when you were it. It seemed that he knew you were having a bad day, so he even cuddled in your lap when you sat down to do some college work.

Wednesday came and left, without talking to Tom. By then, your pride held some deep wounds because Tom hadn’t talked to you again. You had received two messages, a good morning and night, and if he noticed you hadn’t answered, he didn’t care. It was almost night time when you decided to call him. After the second try, you were met with the ceiling of an unknown room and voices you didn’t know.

“ – again. What is she? Three?” someone laughed, but you couldn’t see anything. “My nephew is more independent, and she hasn’t started school yet!”

“Dude, I remember a chick I went on a date with” another deep voice said, and you understood Tom had picked up your call without meaning too. Still thinking what to say, the new person kept talking. “She sent me a message right after I left her in her house. And when I didn’t reply, she called me in the morning. I mean, I know I’m irresistible, but I need space!”

“She’s not usually like this, I swear” Tom chuckled, and you smiled just from hearing his voice. Again, you didn’t have time to say anything because he kept talking. “She’s just… we’ve been away for a while, and Y/N’s country is in lockdown, so she’s bored”

“That doesn’t give you the right to call you every second of the day, dude! Last week she called you three times. And yesterday you were on the phone with her for a whole hour” the first boy said. You didn’t bother cleaning the gathering tears on your eyes. “She’s way too dependent”

“She’s big clingy, that’s all. We live in different countries, so it’s hard for us. And, I mean, if she – “

“Dude”

You let the phone fall on the couch and you moved out of the camera, barely in time to cover your mouth and cover the sob breaking free. Probably, you were exaggerating, but you felt as if the world was crashing down. Everything was blurry and you breath was stuck in your throat, and you wanted so desperately to dig a hole and die there. Yes, you were clingy. And yes, you called Tom three times a day. But you were alone, away from home and in an awful pandemic situation that could bring anyone down. Before you could move to end the call, the person who had interrupted Tom talked again.

“The phone – you’re on a call”

There was silence, so wide and deep that you could hear a pin drop. And now they could hear the muffled sounds of someone crying. You saw the camera moving from where you were sitting, and you went to hang up before anyone could see that you had heard the conversation – because if there was something worse than getting stepped on, is to know that people have watched it too. T

Tom’s face came into view, wide eyes and open mouth. He looked pale, shocked, and you had barely time to hear the begging of your name before you hang up. The phone rang again, twice. Two facetimes, three calls. Tom kept calling, messaging you, and you lost track of how many times he called you, until you finally turned off the phone.

Manchee came back to the couch, licking the tears out of your face and whining when your body racked with sobs. He looked surprised when the phone went crashing against the wall, but didn’t go after it. Instead, he squeezed himself in the couch beside you, and you cried your hear out.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

Tom Holland and Peter Parker Taglist

@delicately-important-trash

@lexxxistrips

@aikaterrina

@zalladane

@gypsystuf (since you didn’t answer me, I just put you on the general taglist. Let me know if you want to change!)

@nikkixostan

@galaxystern08

@justifymyfeelings

@dummiesshort

@marvelhoesworld

@wild-rose-35

@lou-la-lou

@avngrsinitiative

@zeppelin-2005

#tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland one shot #tom holland angst #tom holland fic #peter parker #peter parker one shot #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker fic #spiderman #th #spiderman imagine #spiderman one shot #spiderman x reader #spiderman fic #imaginesmai #imaginemai

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thessalian · 3 years

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Thess vs Limits

More update time!

Actually got some results fairly early this morning - tested negative for Covid, and went into the office at the usual time. And honestly, I kind of wish I’d lied and said my results hadn’t come in until the late afternoon. I mean, not really, but...

See, like I said yesterday, half the office was out. Temp and one of the staffers with Covid, one on annual leave, we weren’t sure about another (but she must have got her results same time as I did because she was in today) and Scruffman the line manager at a funeral in the afternoon. And we’d already had the office shutdown on Wednesday, my not being able to be in because of lack of results on Thursday... And the lab techs were still working the whole time, generating results at a rate of knots. This at least in part because of the massive backlog the NHS as a whole is facing right now.

(Side note: this is very much why we need to let people work from home, and soon. I know they’re working on it, but seriously, we don’t have the space for the staff we need to keep up with this, even if we could justify the expense of it. Hell, Temp’s only with us because one of our regular staffers is on long-term sick because of complications from surgery. If we had the ability to work from home, we could have more staff - some in the office, others at home - more workers for the office space we managed to cram ourselves into at the hospital, y’know?)

Anyway, point is that we were swamped. We were nearing 400 untyped reports when I came in; we were at 450 or so when I left. Because of course, I was the one who had to man the phones when Scruffman took his half-day for funeral attendance, so I found it hard to get much typing done - not to mention the pain of pushing myself a little too hard. Scruffman and a couple of others are planning to work overtime over the weekend. I mean, he even asked me - he looked sorry as hell for even considering asking, and knew I was probably going to say no (which I did, because ... seriously, if it was work from home, I’d do so happily because more money’s always good but I’m barely managing the commute on reduced hours as it is; I cannot do any more), but if there was any chance he’d get some help, he had to ask - hell, he was probably ordered to ask, probably by the serious high-ups that have never seen me hobble around the place with a walking stick or curl up in a ball of pain at my desk.

So of course, I feel intense guilt, and the stress of knowing that even if they manage to make some kind of dent in things over the weekend, there’s only so much people can do and it’s still going to be atrocious when I get in on Tuesday. And that stress and guilt on top of the pressure I put on myself today is causing pain flares and a serious mood-plummet. And while I know that this is largely down to the stresses of the gig economy and zero-hour contracts and no one should be in the position Temp was in ... I blame her. Entirely. I know that we need money to live. Just that shit is irresponsible. She infected a colleague, who knows who she infected on her commute, she shut down the office for an afternoon, she obliged us all to go through a stressful testing procedure, and all of that cost us man-hours and is causing untold amounts of stress - which, in my case, just exacerbates the difficulties inherent in my disablity. I hurt. I am bone-weary without being sleepy. I feel guilty, angry, stressed and depressed. And none of this would have been an issue if she’d just made the sacrifice I did back when we didn’t even really know how bad this was, just before the first and scariest lockdown when testing wasn’t even really a thing, and said, “I know these symptoms; I should get tested and self-isolate until I know one way or another because I don’t want to hurt anybody”.

It’s capitalism’s fault, yes. But it is happening because of her decision and I need to get past this by Tuesday because I feel like verbally bitch-slapping her up and down the department for this. And I’m probably the only one who really would, because Scruffman’s trying to protect her from the wrath of management. He fudged some data points in that Zoom meeting the other day to make her behaviour seem less irresponsible - mainly the thing where she quite often went maskless for extended periods in the office, when she was sitting less than a metre from people. (I admit I have done it from time to time, mainly when I’m snacking or drinking coffee - however, in my defense, I only leave it off until the cup is empty or the snack is done when I’m sitting on my own in this one corner of the office and not breathing on anybody; every other time, I take it off long enough to take a sip / bite and then put the thing back on again.)

There’s so much to enrage and worry me right now. Apparently the government is going to discontinue the practice of giving free lateral flow tests (the kind of tests you’re supposed to do for Covid if you don’t have symptoms and haven’t been exposed that you know of - the just-in-case tests for the asymptomatic so they don’t wind up silent carriers killing the vulnerable). So people are going to stop taking them. It smacks of Trump’s “We’d look great if it wasn’t for all that testing, so I said ‘SLOW THE TESTING DOWN!’” bullshit. On the heels of someone getting fired for insisting that UK TV be “more iconically British”, they’re now talking about reinstituting the Imperial system of measurement here - which, I mean, this is just cutting off our nose to spite our faces as some kind of display of Brexit ‘sovereignty’. I know Americans are used to Imperial measurements but a) we’re not, b) a base 10 system like metric is a lot easier than a base 12 system, especially when you’re not great with numbers and haven’t grown up with it, and they’re only doing it to c) gain a few distracting headlines to try to keep people from thinking about the policing Bill that’ll allow anyone to stop and search anyone for no reason at all and basically ban all protests and d) hopefully obfuscate the fact that we’re going to get less for our money because of supply issues. Oh, and we pissed off France again; something about basically stealing their contract for building nuclear submarines for the Australians to protect Taiwan from the perfidy of China. Which means we’ve pissed off the Chinese too. The only good thing is that the ban on puberty blockers for trans kids under the age of 18 got overturned.

I want to go home. Canada’s not the land of peace and equality and diversity and common sense that most people want it to be, I know, but comparatively, it’s a fucking paradise. I’d prefer Vancouver ‘cos my French has kind of atrophied and I’m not sure that a Quebecois winter would be good for me given my mobility issues, but honestly, anywhere but Alberta.

Anyway, thank fuck it’s Friday. I couldn’t take much more of this week.

#Thess has a day job #Thess on COVID #Thess on Brexit

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oimoi-op · 3 years

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when were you diagnosed with t1d?

Ok, so storytime! Short answer is, as of today, barely over two months ago.

(Very long post warning y’all, contains hospital mention and extensive, possibly upsetting descriptions of health conditions, specifically DKA)

My family doesn’t really have a history of T1D or even T2D, though my second-cousin-once-removed has had T1D for over a decade now. So, there was never any reason for me to try and get tests done for it. The only sign I really had up until last semester was two copies of a variant of an HLA gene that I knew about from a 23andMe report (which, according to the report, put me at a higher risk for celiac’s and nothing else), but of course at that time I had no idea that that could mean anything serious; after all, that sort of thing only happens to other people, right?

My college started in-person classes in the latter half of August. By October, I started feeling tired, having a lack of appetite, and needing water very, very badly. I actually went to my school’s clinic, and my erratic heartbeat prompted the doctor to recommend me for a Covid-19 test. My school’s protocols meant that I had to quarantine at my home (since I live within two hours of campus) until I got a negative test result. At home, I was drinking water all the time and sleeping constantly, and my parents had commented on how I’d been losing weight. I thought these were all good things. I had been slightly overweight at my high school graduation, and I’d always heard that drinking a lot of water is good for you, so I thought I was actually in excellent health even if I kind of felt like shit most of the time.

Well. Uh. I was wrong.

When finals came around in mid-November, I was just fucking tired. I’d get a decent eight hours of sleep and still have to take naps during the day. Hell, I was even late for work because I slept through one of my nap alarms. Studying was a pain in the ass. Attending classes was a pain in the ass. Staying awake for Zoom classes was a pain in the ass. I was waking up at 5 am to go to the bathroom, and then I would drink the rest of my water, refill it, drink half of it again, and then go back to sleep. Finally, November 20th rolled around, and I got to leave campus. It was my birthday (yeah I am a Scorpio and that weirds all of my friends out lol), and my parents took me to Fusion. And I just...couldn’t eat at all? I love hibachi, but I couldn’t even eat half of my food. The chef even got me a delicious banana split that I had to basically bully my younger sister into eating with me.

For the next week, I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. I didn’t think this was weird because I’d just had finals so yeah, it makes sense that I would be tired after exams and whatnot. I went shopping with my mom, sister, and sister’s bff. We were only out for a few hours, but I was fucking wiped out y’all, like in pain. Thanksgiving arrived, and again, I love food, I love eating, but I was not hungry in the slightest. I basically had to force myself to eat some of my favorite holiday foods just so I wouldn’t offend my mom, and then I didn’t eat for the day.

The very next morning, I was puking my guts out.

This started a pattern for the next few days: I would eat chicken noodle soup or some other food, sleep like the dead, and throw up every morning and every night. I started chugging large bottles of Gatorade constantly (which, if you know about diabetes and its health complications, did not help my situation in the slightest). I started breathing erratically after very little exertion. Like, I’m talking standing up and stretching brought about heavy, labored breathing. I weighed myself on my parents’ scale, and I was under 130 lbs. Now, for some people this might seem like a lot, but due to my height and build I could fucking see some of my ribs. That was when I started to realize that something was very, very wrong, but “losing weight is good” and I didn’t want my parents to laugh at me for voicing concerns (though, for all their faults, in hindsight, I doubt they would’ve). Yeah. Don’t do that, folks, that’s not a good mindset to have.

On Sunday, my mom took me to town to get tested for Covid. This was despite me saying that I didn’t have symptoms (which I knew very well due to some of my friends catching it at school). Rapid test came back negative, so I did a culture test. Hell, while I was sitting in the damn chair, I was about to pass out. I asked for a nausea pill but my mouth was too dry for it to dissolve. I got a cup of water, downed it all, and felt like my throat was on fire. For the rest of the day I felt so, so awful. At some point I was walking toward my bed in my room and I fucking fell. I’m fucking lucky there was carpet.

Regarding the rest of that night, things start to get blurry, for the lack of a better term. I legitimately cannot recall everything that happened that night or the following two days, so I will just try to explain it in the way I remember it best.

Around...midnight or one??? I was on fucking fire, so I went to my bathroom and decided to lie on the floor. The floor was hardwood and not at all cold, and it wasn’t fucking comfortable even in that state, but I was just in so much pain I didn’t even care. My mom must’ve heard because she found me there and asked me what I was doing. I said something about the floor. She asked me to go back to bed, but I must’ve scared her because she asked me if I wanted her to lie in the bed with me. I don’t remember what I said to her, but we were in the bed and she was trying to hug me, but she was too warm and so I told her to stop. I kept feeling this burning just below my chest, like there was acid in me (which I guess wasn’t too far off), so I would randomly sit up to try and alleviate the pain and not cry. I remember asking my mom to take me to the hospital in the morning.

My mom put me in the truck (I think around 5 am is what she told me). I remembered hearing my dad. I was lying down. Then I was awake, but I was on the floor. I thought this was wrong so I tried to tell my mom that but I guess I couldn’t talk. Then I was in a hospital bed, the ER I assume. My mom gave me some water with a sponge, and I was just so fucking thirsty. Then I was in the ICU hooked up to a bunch of machines. I didn’t know what was going on, but my mom kept giving me water with that sponge. That is all I remember from Monday.

I remember a little bit more from Tuesday. My mom said something about diabetes, but that didn’t make any sense to me because I wasn’t “fat” and I’d been losing weight, even! What had I done to get diabetes? I was thirsty and tired, so I slept a lot. At some point I really needed to use the restroom so I unhooked my IV???? (I mean I must’ve disconnected myself somehow but I can’t remember the details) which set off a shit ton of alarms and people were Very Concerned and kept asking me Why Did You Do That? But I just needed to go to the restroom, and they told me to use the Red Button to Call the Nurse (it was already there, and I now realize that we’d probably had a similar conversation about the Red Button to Call the Nurse possibly multiple times before this) in the future. A Chopped Teen Tournament from 2017 was playing on the TV nonstop. There were commercials for CGMs. I thought that God wasn’t being very funny about the whole thing.

As of now I remember even less of Wednesday, but I know that felt better. There was this diabetes specialist who kept talking about insulin and life at college moving forward, but I wasn’t really there, either because of being so out of it for health reasons, disassociating, or a combination of the two. My mom told me she had emailed a professor so he would give me an extension on an assignment that was due by then, and I remember crying because I thought that was just so nice of him. That night, this guy got me in a wheelchair and put me in another room, which I would later learn was the ACU. My night nurse was this nice woman named Tanya, who had a very thick Eastern European accent. She got me orange juice to take some potassium pills, but it felt like swallowing rocks. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep, so I was awake when the nurses changed shifts. I remember one of them expressing surprise that I was out of the ICU so early.

My mom took longer to come that day because nobody had told her I’d been moved. I’d had plain Cheerios and orange juice for breakfast, but I couldn’t really eat because my throat hurt so badly. I talked to a lot of doctors. I guess at this point or somewhere near it I accepted that I had diabetes, but it wasn’t really real until the same diabetes specialist was going over carbs. I thought I was never going to eat shit I liked ever again. I really wanted a fucking McChicken sandwich. I signed some papers for Medicaid because I had aged out of the CHIP while in the hospital. I finally texted my friends and explained to them what had happened. I was so fucking tired.

I got out the next day, so that was Thursday. Normally, I would’ve been in the hospital much longer (especially because my Medicaid hadn’t been approved, meaning no insurance had approved of my insulin yet), but Covid cases were on the rise and the hospital wanted me out of there. The diabetes specialist and one of my nurses snuck me two fast-acting and two basal insulin pens, and I was out. I ate half a McChicken, a small fry, and drank my first Diet Coke. It tasted like diesel mixed with piss.

That’s the gist of it. The hospital staff was very nice and thoughtful the entire time, I think. I felt as though everyone involved cared about my health a lot.

For those of you who aren’t T1D or just don’t know, what I experienced is called DKA, short for diabetic ketoacidosis. To simplify, I was very close to entering a diabetic coma. My sister later told me that our dad had said (I assume a doctor had told my mother, who, in turn, had told him) that I was “approximately 45 minutes” away from death. DKA happens when a diabetic (usually a T1D like me) has too much blood sugar in their body due to them lacking the insulin necessary to break the sugar down, so their body breaks down their fat reserves and muscle to get the energy it needs. This is why I lost around 50 pounds over the course of a few months (I was 118 lbs. when I entered the hospital, the lowest I’ve been since grade school). I was officially diagnosed with T1D on November 30th, just ten days after my 19th birthday, which is a little older than normal I believe. It’s...well, it’s not fun, but I feel very grateful for my large support system, and tomorrow I’m trying out a CGM for the first time and applying for both it and a pump, so things are really looking up

#personal #iamapincushion #t1d #type one diabetes #type one diabetic #dka #diabetic ketoacidosis #tw hospital #tw dka #i don't think you meant me for to respond with such a long answer #but #well #it's something i've been wanting to post for a while now and this seemed like a good opportunity

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sunflower-swan · 3 years

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Not fandom related. TW for Covid content. I just need to put this out there.

...

One year ago this week...

Wednesday, March 11, 2020: My HS Choir sang the national anthem at the opening game of the state basketball tournament. We had lunch on Mass Street. My Mom came to see me and have lunch together. Dad was busy with farm stuff. My kids were excited to meet my Mom. On our way home we visited the capital building because they had never seen it before.

Thursday, March 12, 2020: HS Music trip to St. Louis cancelled. We were supposed to leave in a week. The kids had been fundraising for a year. We still haven't taken this trip. I'm hopeful for next year.

Friday, March 13, 2020: All of my groups had fantastic rehearsals. We were on the right path to having another great contest season. I told my kids I would see them Monday. We had four more days until Spring Break.

Sunday, March 15, 2020, around 5pm: Schools in my state shutdown until further notice.

Sunday, March 15, 2020, around 5:15pm: Calls and texts from crying and hysterical seniors who just lost all of their lasts. Who had been practicing their solos for months because this was going to be the year they received top marks at state music. Who had their final day with their band and/or choir family and they didn't know it at the time.

And then...

November 2020: A staff member tests positive. I was sitting next to them in a meeting the day before. We were both wearing masks and socially distanced. I was not quarantined.

Also November 2020: Three of my students test positive. I sit next to one of them during band rehearsal the day before. We were socially distanced and I'm not quarantined.

Still November 2020: My BIL tests positive. Sister and kids are quarantined. Family Thanksgiving is cancelled. We'll get together for Christmas.

Day after Thanksgiving 2020: My Uncle calls me to say he was in the hospital a few weeks ago for Covid. My Uncle never calls me. I probably hadn't talked to him in... A year? It was nice to talk to him but apparently thinking you're going to die changes a person.

A week before Christmas 2020: My Dad and his parents admitted to the hospital for Covid. My Dad and Grandma come home. My Grandpa does not... He passes away on New Years Eve. We did not have family Christmas.

Two weeks ago: We made an impromptu visit to see my family. It did not suck as much as I expected it to, to be at my grandparents house. It was the first time had seen them in person in four months. My Grandma is having surgery to remove her thyroid soon. When she was in the hospital for Covid the doctors found early stage cancer.

It has been a real turd of a year for everyone. For educators I feel like it has had an extra special suck. In my classroom (band & choir), kids are literally projecting their breath forcefully into the air. Kinda scary in an environment where kids are often unknown carriers of a dangerous virus that is transmitted through droplets expelled from one's mouth.

In August, when I found out my school was going completely in person with no mask requirement, I did some serious soul searching for a couple of days. In the end, I took the gamble that if I got sick, odds where good that I would feel lousy for a week or two but ultimately be ok. If I wasn't at school, then my kids would not be able to play their instruments or sing, and what's the point in being in music if you can't do those things?

I still feel like that was an unfair choice I was forced to make. The choice between my future health and my students education. For many kids, their elective classes get them out of bed and at school every day. A couple of teachers chose to teach remotely. I'm glad they had that option. The way I looked at it, if I wanted my program to survive beyond this year, and I did, then I had to be at school.

Not gonna lie, that first month of school was rough on me. I hadn't been around anyone other than close family in about six months. I went to the store a couple times with my husband early in the spring. Apparently I don't hide my fear as well as I think I do because we got home and he said that he wouldn't make me do that again. And he hasn't, bless him.

Except... Our weekly trips to the store were fun. We don't really go out so that was our time together outside of home. And we lost that. He still does the shopping on his own. It's the only time he leaves the house other than when we walk the dogs in the evening. (His job allows him to work from home.)

Which brings us to today. I got my second Covid shot on Friday. Saturday I spent the day in bed. I didn't feel "bad" I was just too exhausted to do anything. Yesterday I felt better but still kinda tired. I don't like needles or shots, and the thought of receiving an emergency vaccine really scared the hell out of me.

Teachers in my state were part of group two, right after senior citizens and health care workers, to have the chance at the vaccine. Some of my colleagues chose to opt out. In the end I decided to get it because my Grandpa couldn't. He was gone before it was an option.

And then my Dad sends me this picture this morning:

I was probably about six years old here. And that's my Grandpa helping me ride a bike.

Tell your loved ones you love them every chance you get. Don't take a single second for granted.

...

This ended up way longer than I expected it to be. When I started it was just going to be what happened a year ago. And then it sorta snowballed into everything from the past year. If you've made it this far, well, congratulations I guess. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

#covid 19 #covid tw #covid vaccine #personal

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sea-salted-wolverine · 3 years

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Okay so last week was a shitkicker and was literally so bad I spent the better part of the week trying to delude myself into thinking it was a good day. Like, we're talking, "the sun is shining and I'm here to see it so today is a good day" and "I'm having a bad day- fuck me I am not haveing a bad day- I'm having a good day- I'm not having a bad day". Denial is a powerful tool for mental health, apply judiciously. I get that everyone on earth is kinda having a shitty year but it feels like things just kinda escalated in my little corner

The 7th had a huge snow storm that brought traffic to a stand still. No one could leave the house and university class was online anyway. Batshit customer demanded to pick up her gear anyway. I drove in because I was the only person with keys to the shop that could get to the building. It took me a solid 2 hours going 15mph on the highway. The snow in the parking lot was up past the fenders of my truck. Crazy lady gets 10 out of 18 of her survival suits back but the other 8 still have holes in them because our only repair tech is also the only one who answers the phone or runs the computer or handles customers or cleans or disinfects anything or stores gear. I'll give you one guess who that person is.

Did you guess me? Good for you. Fun fact this was not the case in October.

Crazy lady swans off through the snowed in parking lot and because she cant find the exit, blasts straight through the ditch and onto the road.

I say fuck it and leave. I've been at work for 2 hours. I have made 24 dollars for my trouble. It takes me another hour to get home.

The 8th is Saturday and I'm supposed to be at work. No one can drive. There was another 10 8nches of snow last night. I say fuck work and go to dig out the plow truck. The canopy over the plow truck collapses as I walk out to clear the snow of it.

I do not scream.

My partner and I get the truck running and go plow people out of their driveways and then go do the shop.

We come back home and the heater doesn't work. We just spent most of last week frantically trying to limp the thing along because no heat at -20°F is in a word fucking unpleasant. At least now its 40 degrees warmer because if the snowstorm. We take it apart again. The house smells like diesel. The house smells like exhaust. The house is not cold because the wood stove can keep up at 20 above zero but it won't keep us through the winter.

There is no saving the oil heater. We need a new one.

Its 730 and neither of us have eaten. I start rice in the pressure cooker so I can throw a tasty bite on top and call it dinner and that dies too. Explosively.

Dinner is half cooked rice and microwaved curry.

Sunday is spent finding a way to stretch our increasingly thin budget to buy a new heater. Between us we actually have 2275$ and we will still cover the mortgage. Somehow. All our Christmas gifts will be hand made this year. The next thing that breaks will stay broken.

Monday, power outages due to snow storm. No wifi, no zoom meetings. Another 8 inches of snow. This is now more snow than my city gets for the full year.

My boss calls sobbing. The dog died. Joey, an 11 year old, 130lb mastiff with a tumor the size of a football on his liver has been her constant companion for at least 8 years. The pandemic has confused the bejesus out of him because while he loves the lock down and going out to play every hour or so he doesnt really like the concept of strangers in masks. Hes a guard dog and doesnt understand that men in masks coming into the shop are not here to kill mom they're wearing masks so they don't kill mom.

Mondays the shop is closed anyway and I spend it installing the new heater. It doesn't quite fit in the space the old heater came out of but its warm.

Tuesday, I go to work, everyone cancels class, I once again gently explain to a regular that eugenics is bad. I would like to curse him out. I cant. He drops a grand on scuba gear and leaves, talking about how great his trip to Mexico will be.

I do not scream.

A friend calls to ask how I'm doing. Not great. Yea, her niether. She asks if I want to go out to the backcountry with her over the weekend. I explain that my leg physically does not move and I'm downing copious amounts of advil to remain upright. The doctor sent me in for an MRI but has not yet called back. Plus I'm supposed to go to Valdez for the weekend and actually go diving. That I can do with limited use of my leg.

She says yikes, take it easy, take care of yourself, I love you.

I say, yikes, I'm tired of taking it easy, I wanna play, I love you too.

Hit me up if your plans open up and we can do something gentle on your leg. She says.

God yes. The cold woods away from people sounds like paradise. I dont even care that it will cause me rending physical pain to get there. I need a break.

Its Wednesday. I go to school. I get pulled over. Miraculously I dont get a ticket. I'm white female and conventionaly attractive, maybe not so miraculous. I rolled through a stop sign but I'm pretty sure I couldn't afford a ticket.

I get a text in class. One of the instructors who works with the dive shop has tested positive for covid. I haven't seen the man in 2 months. I needed a spare instructor but he was nowhere to be found. But hey, evidently that's a good thing.

I go to work. I vacillate between doing the job a 4 people and having nothing to do.

I go to the grocery store because I misjudged my last monthly grocery run and even though I'm increasing my exposure I'm out of cheese and tea damnit.

The store is packed. Pandemic who?

My partner and I haven't had a date nite in a while and this week has been shitty. I want a nice dinner. I pick up a couple boxes of the carton sushi which isnt terrible and is about as nice as I can justify on the new budget. I grab a gallon of milk and a few other things. I forgot my wallet in the truck and the cashier is chill and sets my stuff aside while I grab it.

I pay and take my stuff home and realize I left one of my bags at the store. No cheese or tea for me.

Thursday. 10am my phone goes off with an emergency alert. The govoner has grown a spine in light of recent elections and is instituting a voluntary lock down. My state has 500 new cases a day. That might not sound like a lot but theres only 300,000 people in Alaska and we've got poor medical infrastructure.

Unfortunately Alaska is full of Alaskans and nobody can tell us what to do. Nothing changes. 7pm rolls around and I'm teaching scuba classes in the pool.

I load a few hundred pounds of scuba gear into the back of my truck. In a wet wetsuit. In the snow. In a fabric facemask. 6 feet apart. In the pool.

I dont get paid for pool time.

Over the summer we had 6 dive masters including me, all big burly dudes, much better suited to picking things up. Its November and I'm the only one.

The kids I'm teaching are going to Hawaii. They're 10 and 13 and so wildly excited about breathing underwater its beautiful to watch. And they're traveling to an island. In a pandemic.

Friday.

Unload scuba gear so it doesnt get stolen out of the back of my truck while I'm at class. Were doing a make up lab today. Hey of the five student in my class only one of us has covid so theres that.

My boss calls an let's me know that shes left for Valdez without me. If I'd like to make an 8 hour drive by myself in a snowstorm I'm welcome to follow.

I'm in class till an hour before shop closing. I'm not driving across town so I can run on the open sign for half an hour.

The shop stays closed on Friday.

Saturday.

I explained to everyone we had business with that the shop would be closed over the weekend and Friday. I planned on being in Valdez. Hell I canceled plans to be in Valdez.

I open the shop and immediately field calls about why we werent open. I start to explain about the Valdez trip and logistical difficulties and then I realize that shes not mad about that. The woman was here before I opened early this morning. We have never been open that early. The hours are on the door.

A regular comes in. Hes also confused as to why I'm here.

Sunday finds me curled up in bed, reluctant to leave. Getting out of bed has not played out well for me recently.

A friend comes over to chat with my partner about specialist rifle parts. This isnt that wierd, he works at a gun shop and they've been discussing upgrading my partners current rifle set up.

He is wearing a full Scottish kilt. Red tartan. Looks very lovely.

I make zucchini bread and my proportions are a little off because I have too much zucchini so it's a little over moist but it's good. I'm recovering from an asskicker of a week and next week will be better.

Monday morning:

Baby brother has covid

Dads getting the results of his rapid test tonight.

Mom isnt getting tested because she says she doesnt have symptoms but that's not the fucking point mom.

So, I'm not going home for thanksgiving. I'm not diving in Valdez. I'm not skiing backcountry.

I'm not sick. I'm not flat broke yet. I dont have a ticket. I have a job. I have people who care about me. Im managing my physical and mental health as best I can. Im just fucking exhausted.

#vent post #writing #holy fuuuuuck #2020

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anonsally · 4 years

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Days 94-96 of COVID-19 shelter-in-place

Various shelter-in-place restrictions are being relaxed, and, unrelatedly, I have had some pretty good birdwatching lately.

Day 94 was Thursday. We had failed to buy milk the previous day (and I feel this was not my job after my medical procedure Wednesday morning), so I ended up having a smaller bowl of cereal than usual (followed by some of Wife’s millet porridge made with almond milk) and then going to buy some. There was no line to get in! That was very lucky! The store will be resuming its normal hours this week and staying open later than it has been lately, which is a relief--we won’t have as many incidents of realising too late that we don’t have what we need for breakfast the next day.

Then I “went” to work: we had a long meeting during which we did not come to an agreement about various strategies for analysis. The biostatistics grad student is convinced that the method two of us are advocating is based on an incorrect assumption, whereas I don’t see where we are making that assumption. I worked out some probability calculations with pencil and paper and wrote to the group about what I thought we were trying to do and why I didn’t think it made the erroneous assumption. I don’t know if that’s where she thought the assumption was coming in, though.

After work, I took a neighborhood walk with my binoculars and ended up getting some good birdwatching in. About halfway into the walk, I heard some rustling in the dry leaves on the ground. “Towhee?” I thought, and looked around for the source, expecting to see a brown California towhee. But it turned out to be a spotted towhee! Such a pretty bird, and I got a really good view of it in the binoculars. Since it’s a comparatively recent addition to my repertoire, I was excited about it.

After that, I saw some house finches at the tippy top of a thin cypress (?) tree, and also saw a bird through the binoculars that... well, I couldn’t identify it, and I suspect this description is wrong because I couldn’t find anything in my book that matched it, but @lies, if you have any ideas please let me know! It seemed to be a smallish bird with a solid (possibly orangey-) yellow front and a long, thin beak. It was perched near the top of a tree, and something I assume was a hummingbird seemed to be divebombing it?

I walked back toward home but stopped at the house with the bird-feeders out front. There was a Nuttall’s woodpecker at the suet feeder! That was exciting (it’s another one I learned recently, and I’ve never seen one at a feeder). It got chased away by a scrub jay but hung out in the tree for a while and I got to watch it some more. There were also more chestnut-backed chickadees, goldfinches, and house finches, as usual, as well as a Steller’s jay. So I felt like I’d seen all the high-quality birds!

In the evening I solved word puzzles with my dad on a video call.

Yesterday was Day 95. I got up at 8am, and was really tired, but I had arranged to take a walk with my high school friend who’s visiting (and came over on Wednesday). We had planned to meet at 10am, but in a series of texts we postponed it to 10:15 and then 10:30, and then I didn’t manage to arrive at the meeting place until 10:40, and when I checked my phone on arrival, I saw that she was at least 10 minutes behind me! But eventually she turned up and we had a lovely walk in a park Wife and I have not been hiking in (it is a bit more crowded and less sunny than most of the ones we have gone to), but it’s the one this friend and I had both visited with our families as kids. This was just a very short, easy walk, but we saw ducks, turtles, chestnut-backed chickadees, a cute little periwinkle blue butterfly, and an amazingly well-camouflaged moth. It looked just like a leaf, but I happened to see it flap into position. I think it was an omnivorous looper? but the stripe along the back is blueish, which I haven’t seen in the photos online. Anyway, I was pleased with myself for not being scared of it. We also heard a woodpecker, but I couldn’t locate it. After our walk, we sat and chatted for a long time, and saw a couple of enormous ravens, a wild turkey, a bird of prey with a longish tail, and a couple of Steller’s jays. It was great to spend so much time with my friend. We did not stay 6ft apart the whole time, but when we were closer, we had our masks on, and when we were seated and talking, we were further apart; plus, we were outside the whole time. So I think it is fairly low-risk.

Afterwards, I drove down to my office. I had an appointment at 1:30, but I arrived a few minutes early, so first I ordered tacos to pick up at 1:45, and then I folded down the back seat of the car. I went to the door and waited for the building manager to let me in. I was there to collect my desk chair, in hopes that it will make working at home less of an ergonomic disaster. I also found Girl Scout cookies and some chocolate in my desk, so I brought them home too! The chair did fit in the back of the car (phew), and I picked up my tacos and came home.

I worked all afternoon, though I took some breaks to read about Juneteenth, too. I had heard of it before as a Black American holiday, but I don’t think I had realised what it was specifically celebrating. And frankly, it’s outrageous that it isn’t a national holiday. The abolishment of slavery is something we should all be celebrating (as a first step toward liberty and justice for all, which we obviously have not yet achieved).

After work, I went to buy some ice cream and noticed that restaurants with space for outdoor dining have resumed seating people outside, with decent spacing between tables.

I watered the plants that had to be put into pots, several of which are looking pretty shocked from the transplanting. And Wife and I did some heroic Adulting in the kitchen. I stayed up late.

Today was the Summer Solstice and also Day 96! Widget lost his lunch, or rather barfed his breakfast. I’m hoping an opossum will eat the vomit tonight, because I don’t want to have to clean it up.

I wrote to my city councilmember again, this time to ask about the fireworks we have been hearing every night for a few weeks. Last night’s fireworks may have been for Juneteenth, though. Anyway, I ended up going to the farmers’ market by myself rather late (Wife had a headache), but I ran into @llamapunk there and got to spend some time chatting and catching up with her while doing my shopping. Alas, I was too late for peaches! But in compensation, I bought lots of strawberries and some rhubarb.

After I came home and ate, Wife and I set off to a park for a hike. This wasn’t as satisfying as most of the hikes we’ve taken--the trails were very confusing and poorly marked at many of the intersections, so we took wrong turns more than once. Also, they were both narrow and somewhat heavily trafficked in some sections, making it awkward to maintain much distance between ourselves and other hikers. Still, aspects of it were nice, and we got some good exercise--there was a very steep uphill section. However, the most exciting part of it was that we saw a family of wild turkeys, including several babies! So the hike was worth it just for that! I heard a woodpecker but couldn’t find it, but I got to point out some chestnut-backed chickadees to Wife, who was charmed by how cute they are. There was a variety of plant life, too, including a dead tree with some good fungi, a bay laurel with fragrant leaves, redwoods (with miner’s lettuce and redwood sorrel at their feet, but we were not supposed to stray from the trail to pick them), ferns, eucalypti, wildflowers, and the first ripe wild blackberries of the season. Being outside in nature and getting a little exercise seemed to relieve Wife’s headache, too.

I’ve solved a couple of cryptic crossword puzzles in the past couple days.

It looks like my county’s daily COVID-19 new confirmed case counts have been higher since late May than they were before that time, but that might be partly because of higher numbers of people getting tested. And the deaths seem to have peaked in April. Number of people in the ICU has remained fairly stable since mid-April, but the number of people in the hospital has roughly been increasing very slowly. Still, it doesn’t look like the protests have resulted in a pandemic upswing.

#personal #birdwatching #wildlife #tacos #food #even though there is no picture of food here #epidemiology

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Trump Expected to Order Troop Withdrawal (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Donald Trump is set to order a dramatic and rapid cut in the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia as he seeks action from loyalists newly installed at the U.S. Department of Defense. A perception that Mark Esper, the previous U.S. Secretary of Defense, would not agree to further troop reductions on so quick a schedule, was seen as one of the reasons for his removal from the post shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Although the numbers are not yet public, several media reports signal a halving of current troop levels in Afghanistan from the 4,500 troops currently stationed there. A reduction in Iraq would be less severe, but almost all of the 700 U.S. troops stationed in Somalia are expected to return to the United States. Although Republican leaders are wary, a troop withdrawal appears to be popular among the American public. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute in August, 76 percent Americans supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, with almost half of respondents strongly supporting withdrawal. The number supporting U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq was 74 percent. The desire to end America’s wars in the Middle East and South Asia is felt similarly among U.S. military veterans. An April poll by another Koch-backed group found 73 percent of veterans surveyed supported a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, an almost 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Covid-19 origin remains a mystery (South China Morning Post, Tumori Journal) The virus that causes the Covid-19 disease has now infected more than 54 million people across the planet, but the question of just where it came from remains a mystery. Researchers may have found a new link in this puzzle after discovering evidence suggesting the pathogen had infected people across Italy as early as September last year, or months before it was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The unexpected finding “may reshape the history of [the] pandemic”, said the team led by Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a life scientist with the National Cancer Institute of Milan, in a peer-reviewed paper published last week in the Tumori Journal.

Hurricane Iota bashes Nicaragua, Honduras after Eta floods (AP) Hurricane Iota battered Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and flooded some stretches of neighboring Honduras that were still under water from Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier, leaving authorities struggling to assess damage after communications were knocked out in some areas. By late Tuesday, Iota had diminished to a tropical storm and was moving inland over northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras, but forecasters warned that its heavy rains still posed a threat of flooding and mudslides. The storm passed about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south-southwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where rivers were rising and rain was expected to intensify. In mountainous Tegucigalpa, residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas were being evacuated in anticipation of Iota’s rains, as were residents of hillside neighborhoods vulnerable to landslides.

Boris Johnson, in self-quarantine, says he’s ‘bursting with antibodies’ (Washington Post) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasted that he was “fit as a butcher’s dog” and “bursting with antibodies” as he began two weeks of self-quarantine after having close contact with a lawmaker who contracted the coronavirus. Johnson was infected with the virus in March—and struggled to breathe in an intensive care unit for three days. His staff did not say on Monday whether he had been tested this time, but cases of coronavirus reinfection have been incredibly rare. Johnson on Monday said that he felt great and that because he previously had the disease he was “bursting with antibodies” but that he would self-quarantine for two weeks as “we got to interrupt the spread of the disease.” He added that he would continue to govern by video conference.

After Trump, Europe aims to show Biden it can fight for itself (Reuters) The Donald Trump era may be coming to an end. But European Union ministers meeting this week to discuss the future of the continent’s defence will say the lesson has been learned: Europe needs to be strong enough to fight on its own. EU foreign and defence ministers meeting by teleconference on Thursday and Friday will receive the bloc’s first annual report on joint defence capabilities, expected to serve as the basis for a French-led, post-Brexit, post-Trump effort to turn the EU into a stand-alone military power. “We aren’t in the old status quo, where we can pretend that the Donald Trump presidency never existed and the world was the same as four years ago,” a French diplomat said. The EU has been working since December 2017 to develop more firepower independently of the United States. The effort has been driven mainly by France, the EU’s remaining major military power after Brexit.

Hungary and Poland Threaten E.U. Stimulus Over Rule of Law Links (NYT) When European Union leaders announced a landmark stimulus package to rescue their economies from the ravages of the coronavirus, they agreed to jointly raise hundreds of billions of dollars to use as aid—a bold and widely welcomed leap in collaboration never attempted in the bloc’s history. But that unity was shattered on Monday when Hungary and Poland blocked the stimulus plan and the broader budget. The two eastern European countries said they would veto the spending bill because the funding was made conditional on upholding rule-of-law standards, such as an independent judiciary, which the two governments have weakened as they defiantly tear down separation of powers at home. Their veto has thrown a signature achievement of the bloc into disarray, deepening a long-building standoff over its core principles and threatening to delay the stimulus money from getting to E.U. member states, if a new agreement can be reached at all.

Armenia seethes over peace deal (Foreign Policy) Armenia’s government is under strain after signing a cease-fire agreement with Azerbaijan in a Russian-backed deal a week ago. On Monday, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan resigned after a public disagreement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the direction of peace talks. Pressure on Pashinyan has shown no sign of easing in recent days: 17 opposition parties have called for his resignation as street protests against his leadership continue.

Kissinger Warns Biden of U.S.-China Catastrophe on Scale of WWI (Bloomberg) Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the incoming Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China that frayed during the Trump years or risk a crisis that could escalate into military conflict. “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. He said military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control” than those of earlier eras. “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way,” the 97-year-old Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.” U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in decades. As President Donald Trump stepped up his criticism of China, blaming it for the spread of the virus and the death toll in the U.S., each side also has ramped up moves the other sees as hostile.

Hundreds of fraudulent votes were discovered. Then a fat green parrot was elected. (Washington Post) A plump, waddling parrot has soared past its competition to claim victory in New Zealand’s Bird of the Year contest, a tense race marked by attempted voter interference during a divisive month of campaigning. In what event organizers conceded was “a stunning upset,” the critically endangered kakapo flew into first place to steal the title—ruffling the feathers of those who say the bright-green parrot unfairly secured a second term as chosen bird. The bird-of-the-year controversy took flight after data analysts working with Forest & Bird discovered that roughly 1,500 fraudulent votes had been cast. The “illegal votes,” which were submitted using a suspicious email account and came from the same IP address in Auckland, briefly pushed the country’s tiny kiwi pukupuku bird into the lead, a brazen meddling attempt that sent officials and campaign managers into a flap. Those votes were immediately disregarded, organizers said. “It’s lucky we spotted this little kiwi trying to sneak in an extra 1500 votes under the cover of darkness!” Laura Keown, spokesperson for Bird of the Year, said in a statement Nov. 10, adding that officials did not “want to see any more cheating.”

Israelis Take On Netanyahu And Coronavirus Restrictions In Wave Of Civil Disobedience (The Intercept) Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years. He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted, currently on trial in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, arising from abusing his authority to grant favors for, among other things, favorable media coverage. While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016, it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel’s economy that people—many of them in their 20s and 30s—starting coming out in droves. For more than 20 weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption, for failing to manage the pandemic, and for what many describe as his megalomania—doing whatever it takes to evade trial. They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence, many carrying homemade signs, chanting in unison “Go!” and “We won’t leave till Bibi resigns.”

Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel’s left-leaning peace camp, and a decade ago, others drawing attention to the high cost of living. What is happening now is different: With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million, culture and nightlife all but dead amid the pandemic, and people’s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted, a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis, spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds, is practicing civil disobedience. The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has not had their individual rights violated. At the same time, the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters. The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians, both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, whose protests are, prima facie, treated as suspect.

Ethiopia bombs Tigray capital (Foreign Policy) Ethiopia’s air force began bombing the Tigray region’s capital, Mekelle, on Monday in another escalation of the country’s civil war, now entering its third week. In a tweet he later deleted, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called for the two sides to negotiate and halt the conflict “lest it leads to unnecessary loss of lives and cripples the economy.” Redwan Hussein, a government spokesman, said the war would be a “short-lived operation,” and that mediation offers from Uganda or another country were not being considered.

Amazon opens online pharmacy, shaking up another industry (AP) Now at Amazon.com: insulin and inhalers. The online colossus opened an online pharmacy Tuesday that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills, and have them delivered to their front door in a couple of days. The potential impact of Amazon’s arrival in the pharmaceutical space rippled through that sector immediately. Before the opening bell, shares of CVS Health Corp. fell almost 9%. Walgreens and Rite Aid both tumbled more than 10%. The big chains rely on their pharmacies for a steady flow of shoppers who may also grab a snack, or shampoo or groceries on the way out. All have upped online services, but Amazon.com has mastered it, and its online store is infinitely larger. Amazon will begin offering commonly prescribed medications Tuesday in the U.S., including creams, pills, as well as medications that need to stay refrigerated, like insulin. Shoppers have to set up a profile on Amazon’s website and have their doctors send prescriptions there. The company said it won’t ship medications that can be abused, including many opioids. Most insurance is accepted, Amazon said. But Prime members who don’t have insurance can also buy generic or brand name drugs from Amazon for a discount. They can also get discounts at 50,000 physical pharmacies around the country, inside Costco, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and other stores.

R.I.P. whoopsie (Euronews) French broadcaster RFI has apologized after a bug on its website triggered the publication of obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II, Pelé, Jimmy Carter, Brigitte Bardot, Clint Eastwood and about 100 other prominent (and still alive) celebrities. RFI said in a statement that a “technical problem” led to the erroneous publications. Broadcasters often prepare obituary material in advance to publish it promptly when a death is announced.

#headlines #news

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scifigeneration · 4 years

Text

How big will the coronavirus epidemic be? An epidemiologist updates his concerns

by Maciej F. Boni

A security guard wears gloves while holding a basketball during halftime of an NBA game in Houston on March 5, 2020. The NBA has told players to avoid high-fiving fans and to avoid taking any item for autographs. AP Photo/David J. Phillip

The Harvard historian Jill Lepore recounted recently in The New Yorker magazine that when democracies sink into crisis, the question “where are we going?” leaps to everyone’s mind, as if we were waiting for a weather forecast to tell us how healthy our democracy was going to be tomorrow. Quoting Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, Lepore writes that “political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. We need solely to make up our own minds and to act.”

And so it is with the coronavirus epidemic. How big will this epidemic be? How many people will it infect? How many Americans will die? The answers to these questions are not written in stone. They are partially within our control, assuming we are willing to take the responsibility to act with commitment, urgency and solidarity.

I am an epidemiologist with eight years of field experience, including time on the front lines of the isolation and quarantine efforts during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. One month ago, I was under the impression that the death reports due to COVID-19 circulation in China were giving us an unfair picture of its mortality rate. I wrote a piece saying that the death rate of an emerging disease always looks bad in the early stages of an outbreak, but is likely to drop once better data become available. After waiting for eight weeks, I am now worried that these new data – data indicating that the virus has a low fatality rate – may not arrive.

Young passengers wear masks on a high-speed train in Hong Kong, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. At that time, it was hard to know how dangerous the virus would be. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung) AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Case fatality rate and infection fatality rate

By Jan. 31 2020, China had reported a total of 11,821 cases of COVID-19 and 259 deaths; that’s about a 2% case fatality rate. Two weeks later, the tally had risen to more than 50,000 cases and 1,524 deaths, corresponding to about 3% case fatality (the rise in the case fatality is expected as deaths always get counted later than cases). For an easily transmissible disease, a 2% or 3% fatality rate is extremely dangerous.

However, case fatality rates are computed using the officially reported numbers of 11,821 cases or 50,000 cases, which only include individuals who (a) experience symptoms; (b) decide that their symptoms are bad enough to merit a hospital visit; and (c) choose a hospital or clinic that is able to test and report cases of coronavirus.

Surely, there must have been hundreds of thousands cases, maybe a million cases, that had simply gone uncounted.

First, some definitions from Steven Riley at Imperial College. The infection fatality rate (IFR) gives the probability of dying for an infected person. The case fatality rate (CFR) gives the probability of dying for an infected person who is sick enough to report to a hospital or clinic. CFR is larger than IFR, because individuals who report to hospitals are typically more severely ill.

If China’s mid-February statistic of 1,524 deaths had occurred from 1 million infections of COVID-19 (counting all symptomatic and asymptomatic infections), this would mean that the virus had an infection fatality rate of 0.15%, about three times higher than seasonal influenza virus; this is a concern but not a crisis.

The IFR is much more difficult to estimate than the CFR. The reason is that it is hard to count people who are mildly ill or who show no symptoms at all. If you are able to count and test everybody – for example, on a cruise ship, or in a small community – then you may be able to paint a picture of what fraction of infections are asymptomatic, mild, symptomatic and severe.

Scientists working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Institute for Disease Modeling have used these approaches to estimate the infection fatality rate. Currently, these estimates range from 0.5% to 0.94% indicating that COVID-19 is about 10 to 20 times as deadly as seasonal influenza. Evidence coming in from genomics and large-scale testing of fevers is consistent with these conclusions. The only potentially good news is that the epidemic in Korea may ultimately show a lower CFR than the epidemic in China.

A quarantined cruise ship in Japan at the Yokohama Port in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Feb. 9, 2020. Cruise and airline bookings are down as a result of the coronavirus. AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko

Impact of the epidemic in the US

Now that new COVID-19 cases are being detected in the U.S. every day, it is too late to stop the initial wave of infections. The epidemic is likely to spread across the U.S. The virus appears to be about as contagious as influenza. But this comparison is difficult to make since we have no immunity to the new coronavirus.

On balance, it is reasonable to guess that COVID-19 will infect as many Americans over the next year as influenza does in a typical winter – somewhere between 25 million and 115 million. Maybe a bit more if the virus turns out to be more contagious than we thought. Maybe a bit less if we put restrictions in place that minimize our travel and our social and professional contacts.

The bad news is, of course, that these infection numbers translate to 350,000 to 660,000 people dying in the U.S., with an uncertainty range that goes from 50,000 deaths to 5 million deaths. The good news is that this is not a weather forecast. The size of the epidemic, i.e., the total number of infections, is something we can reduce if we decrease our contact patterns and improve our hygiene. If the total number of infections decreases, the total number of deaths will also decrease.

What science cannot tell us right now is exactly which measures will be most effective at slowing down the epidemic and reducing its impact. If I stop shaking hands, will that cut my probability of infection by a half? A third? Nobody knows. If I work from home two days a week, will this reduce my probability of infection by 40%? Maybe. But we don’t even know the answer to that.

What we should prepare for now is reducing our exposures – i.e., our chances of coming into contact with infected people or infected surfaces – any way that we can. For some people this will mean staying home more. For others it will mean adopting more stringent hygiene practices. An extreme version of this exposure reduction – including mandatory quarantine, rapid diagnosis and isolation, and closing of workplaces and schools – seems to have worked in Hubei province in China, where the epidemic spread appears to have slowed down.

For now, Americans need to prepare themselves that the next 12 months are going to look very different. Vacations may have to be canceled. Social interactions will look different. And risk management is something we’re going to have to think about every morning when we wake up. The coronavirus epidemic is not going to extinguish itself. It is not in another country. It is not just the cold and flu. And it is not going away.

About The Author:

Maciej F. Boni is Associate Professor of Biology, Pennsylvania State University

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#science #medicine #covid-19 #coronavirus

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twittany · 4 years

Conversation

Journal Entry from March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021 2:53 PM

I just got back from my morning run and I’m currently sitting by my pool while writing this. My new masks came in today!! Just in time before my run too. I was so excited to use them and show them off. I got a pack of disposable masks with some cute little flower designs. On my run, I was thinking about how it has exactly been one year since the day I got let out of school for the COVID-19 outbreak. It is currently March 13, 2021.

March 13, 2020 was the day everything changed. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was filled with joy and happiness when I heard the announcements over the speakers. I thought it was going to be such a nice two week break from school where I can do anything I want and hang out with all my friends. I was so naive. In the early months of 2020, I saw and heard the words corona virus and Wuhan, China being thrown all over the news and social media. I watched videos of hospitals being built in China and people crying over their family’s health. I didn’t think much of it. I thought I was safe and just carried on with my daily life of going to school and swim practice, and hanging out with my friends. In my head I thought carelessly that “People are smart. They’ll find a way to contain this in no time,” but that was far from the truth. It’s been a whole year and we are still being affected by this virus. It’s haunting us.

One year ago today, I remember going home and excitedly telling my parents that I have a two week break! My friends and I were making plans to go eat at all of our favorite spots during this “coronacation.” Before we were even able to do anything, the first case appeared in our county. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t understand how it even happened. It felt like a fever dream. My parents didn’t want me going anywhere or meeting anyone. We had to stay in our houses for not only our safety, but the safety of others as well. My mom still had to go to work. At the time, I remember she had a whole routine after work where she disinfected everything before she came in the house. I thought she was being a bit extra and silly, but now I do the same routine every time I enter my house. Oh how the times have changed.

A couple days after, the first death happened in our state. This is when I knew things were getting serious and I started to worry even more. I read somewhere that older adults with any thoracic cancers such as mesothelioma or lung cancer had the highest risk for developing complications with the virus. My grandpa has lung cancer, so of course I started stressing out. We couldn’t go visit my grandparents, which broke my heart. We would just drive by in our car and leave cute little gifts and baked goods for them on their porch while they watched through the window. It was hard, it was heartbreaking, but we knew that this was the best thing to do in order to keep my grandparents safe. Now during this time, my paternal grandparents were on a 6 month vacation in Vietnam. Vietnam didn’t have many cases at the time, but they still booked the first flight home. I haven’t seen them since they came back because they live in Massachusetts, but it was nice to know that they were in the safety of their own home.

Governor Tom Wolf closed all non-essential businesses and schools indefinitely. My mom got laid off from her work and didn’t have a job. I am so grateful that we are fortunate enough to still be able to have money to get food and pay our bills at the time. People were panic buying. It was scary to walk down the empty aisles of the grocery store. It gave an unsettling feeling in my stomach. People were fighting over toilet paper. They were crying over the fact that they wouldn’t be able to provide for their families and feed their children. My heart broke for the people who weren’t as fortunate as I was, so my family and I donated whenever we could. Looking back on this, there really was no reason to panic buy and stock up. Some families had eight children to feed and they were struggling while families of four had a pantry and fridge full of extra food. You would go to the store and see people with five carts filled with food. Now, they have a limit on food supplies because we are running low.

As for school, it got cancelled for the rest of the year. I wasn’t that phased about switching to online school. I was fortunate enough to have a laptop provided by my school, so I was able to adapt to online learning pretty easily. It was only my sophomore year, so in my opinion I lucked out. I’m not saying I was blowing off my grades and not giving care in the world, but I’m glad that it wasn’t my junior or senior year. I couldn’t imagine the stress of being a junior or senior during that time. Juniors had the stress of SATs and AP exams. Seniors missed their big milestone in their life of being able to walk across the stage and graduate. They missed their last prom, their last sporting events, and they missed probably the best three months of their senior year. There was nothing anyone could do about it. The pandemic was on a rise and we couldn’t stop it.

I’m in my junior year right now. Schooling is a bit different than it was before. We do something called “blended learning.” The idea started in Texas, and now it just became a reality for everyone. We do both online school and physical school except it is on a block schedule. For example, I go into the school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I do school online. This schedule is the same for half the student body. For the other half of the students, their schedules are reversed. This prevents overcrowding in schools. The classrooms have changed the set up of desks. The desks are no longer organized in rows. Instead, they’re only about eight desks spread six feet apart across the classroom. The days we get to go into class are generally the days we get to ask our teachers questions about assignments they have posted. We also have to take all quizzes and tests in school to ensure there is no cheating. If you told me a year ago this was how school worked now, I wouldn’t have believed you, but the sad truth is, it’s reality for everyone now..

Life now is completely different than how it was a year ago. The corona virus had a big impact on our day to day life. They haven’t been able to find the vaccine for the virus yet, but there aren’t as many new cases popping up. Any job that was able to, moved to online. Restaurants are still only doing delivery and pick up orders. Major cities are not as crowded anymore and Disney isn’t even open yet.

We are still taking precautions up to this day. Everywhere we go, we have to make sure we stay at least six feet apart. We have to wear masks and gloves everywhere we go whether we’re going on a run, to the store, or even a family member’s house. If you are caught without a mask and gloves, you will get fined by the police. Even though we are allowed to go out and do whatever we want, it doesn’t feel the same. It feels like there’s an empty void that needs to be filled.

I’ve learned to appreciate the little things like the times I get to hang out with my friends and family. I’ve learned to not go on my phone and actually talked to them. Quarantine was a rough time. I didn’t realize how much I missed just being able to see my friends face to face everyday. I was bored out of my mind. That was actually the time I started to write in a journal because it helped keep me sane. I didn’t have my friends to talk to everyday, so I just spilled my thoughts and worries out on the paper. I found new hobbies during quarantine. I always loved baking and cooking, but during that time I was really able to improve my culinary skills. Especially with not being able to go to the store all the time and using items in the pantry, I was able to get really creative. Another thing I picked up in quarantine was running. I never really liked running just because I am a swimmer and the water is where I thrive, but I learned to actually love it. There is a dike near my house that is 3.25 miles long. Whenever I felt like it, I would go on the dike and run. In the beginning, I wasn’t able to even run a mile, but soon enough, I was able to run the whole 6.5 miles. I kind of just added that to my daily lifestyle and to be honest it feels amazing. My family and I would go on a walk after dinner just to cure our boredom. Every once in a while, we would just get in the car and drive. We never knew where we were going, but we were on the road for hours with the windows down and listening to music. We would come back home and have a movie or game night to end the day. Quarantine brought my family even closer than we were before. Even though it prevented me from doing a lot of stuff, there were still positive things that came out of it. Quarantine lasted until about the middle of September 2020. When it was lifted, no one knew how to act. My friends and I went to all of our favorite spots like we said we would before quarantine started and cried the first time we were able to hang out. We made new friends everywhere we went and never took anything for granted again.

Actually, in a couple hours, I’m going to my friend’s lake. It’s only going to be a couple of us and I’m so excited. The water is still cold since it is only March, but we’re setting up a campfire and having a projector project a movie onto his garage door. We’re watching Tangled, which is the best movie of all time, and making smores. I’m going to take a nice long bath now and get ready to have the best night of my life surrounded by the people I love.

See ya tomorrow!

Twittany

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orbemnews · 3 years

Link

The Pandemic Work Diary of Margo Price, Nashville Rebel Though Margo Price has long seen herself as a counterculturalist — especially within Nashville’s country scene — she has been spending the pandemic like many people: stuck at home and patiently waiting for it to be over. “It’s kind of like the rug’s been pulled out from under me,” Ms. Price, 37, said in a recent phone interview. “I felt like this third album was going to be so fun to tour and play at festivals, and I had just taken so much time off after having a baby, too. I was really ready to get back to work.” Her third studio album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started,” was released in July, but on May 28 she’ll get to perform it live for the first time, at an outdoor concert in Nashville. Ms. Price is among many hopeful musicians who are collaborating with venues that allow space for social distancing. “The arts, in general, are really struggling,” she said, “and we need to figure out a way to get back at it and preserve the venues that we all play at.” And even during this pandemic, while raising her two children alongside her husband, Jeremy Ivey, and writing a memoir, Ms. Price has been in and out of the studio, recording two albums. “I’m a disciple of all things that are close to the ground — roots music, folk, blues, soul,” Ms. Price said of her new music. “I want to have enough genres that people can’t exactly put their finger on one thing.” Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited. Monday 7 a.m. I wake up and have a lemon water followed by a black coffee. I make the kids waffles and take my 10-year-old son, Judah, to Montessori school. I spend the next couple of hours playing with my 1½-year-old daughter, Ramona. 9 a.m. I put on some Miles Davis and start a fire in the fireplace. We stretch and dance and play with puzzles before going outside to enjoy the sunshine. 10:30 a.m. I’m driving to the Cash Cabin in Hendersonville. I’ve been working on two albums;being in the studio has given me a sense of purpose while I’m unable to play live shows. 11 a.m. Jeremy and I tune our guitars and do some vocal warm-ups. We play through a song a couple times to get a tempo and begin tracking it. We can overdub the rest of the band later. 1:15 p.m. We stop for lunch around the fire pit that’s burning here 24/7. 2 p.m. We track two more songs. 3 p.m. Jeremy leaves to pick up Judah. I stay to lay down guitar and vocals for another song. 5 p.m. I get home and take both children on a walk to the local church while my husband cooks dinner. (He does most of the cooking and is a phenomenal chef.) 5:30 p.m. We play hide-and-seek in an abandoned church. They don’t have services in here anymore, but our neighborhood pod is using it as a space to teach our children in. 6:30 p.m. We sit down to a home-cooked dinner. For the last five days, Jeremy was off recording his next album, so we’re celebrating him being home. 7 p.m. I clean up the dinner table, wash the dishes and throw in a load of laundry while Jeremy gives Ramona a bath. My mom, Candace, is helping Judah with his reading. She’s been here a lot during the pandemic, and we couldn’t do it without her! 8 p.m. I answer some emails and catch up on work while Jeremy reads to Ramona. 8:30 p.m. Ramona comes out and says, “Mama, sing to me” — she just started speaking in full sentences a couple weeks ago. She requests “Up Above” (that’s what she calls “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”) and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” 9:30 p.m. Jeremy and I listen to some rough mixes of his songs. 10 p.m. We sit down to watch “Nomadland.” 12:30 a.m. We move from the couch to the bed. Both of us fell asleep after the movie. Tuesday 8:15 a.m. I wake up to a phone call even though I was planning to sleep in. Jeremy and I tell each other about some crazy disjointed dreams. 9 a.m. Ramona and I brush our teeth and hair. We play Legos while I help Jeremy write a lyric to one of his songs. 9:45 a.m. I take my two dogs for a run at a nearby state park. 11 a.m. Jeremy and I just arrived at Frothy Monkey to grab some breakfast outside on the patio. I’m editing my memoir for the next few hours — I’m on the second draft and have to turn it in at the end of the month. (I’m on Page 30 of some 500.) 1 p.m. I take a Zoom interview with the “Poptarts” podcast for Bust Magazine. 2 p.m. I start editing the book again. Currently drinking my fourth cup of coffee. 4 p.m. Ramona wakes up from her nap, so we’re heading on a walk. My neighbors own these two horses that are rescues, so we like to feed them carrots. 5:45 p.m. Ramona is drawing, Jeremy is cooking, and I’m working on my book again. 6:30 p.m. Jeremy cooked veggie stir fry (rice, peppers and oyster mushrooms that were grown and given to us by John Carter Cash when we were over there recording). 7 p.m. We’re watching “Toy Story,” but the kids got distracted, so we’re all running around the house and wrestling to get some energy out. 8 p.m. I’m reading Mona books and doing the bedtime routine while Jeremy helps Judah with some homework. 9 p.m. Jeremy made a fire outside, and I cracked a soda water and rolled a joint. We’re sitting out here talking, listening to music and looking at the stars. Wednesday 7:30 a.m. Ramona’s playing with magnets, and I emptied out a piggy bank so she could put the coins back in. That kept her busy for about an hour while I made her breakfast. 8:45 a.m. Mona put on her red rubber rain boots, and we’re going outside to enjoy the weather. The ice is almost all melted, and we’re walking along the creek that runs in front of our house. We stop to throw in rocks and splash around in the puddle. 10 a.m. I’m driving to Golden Hour Salon for my first haircut since the pandemic started. Noon Back home drinking more coffee. I’ve been editing my book in a large walk-in closet that we converted to be a part-time office. 1:30 p.m. Jeremy took Ramona to the pediatrician to get immunizations. 2 p.m. I took advantage of the empty house and worked on a song. It’s so nice today, so I took a guitar outside to the swing and practiced finger picking while listening to the birds. 4 p.m. Everyone’s home, and we’re hanging out on the couch reading. Judah is whittling and sanding a stick he found — he wants to make a sword. 5 p.m. Jeremy and I pick up some suits from a place on Music Row called Any Old Iron. It’s owned by a local designer, Andrew Clancey, whose designs and beading are so psychedelic and artistic. I adore him. (He also makes great sequin and rhinestone masks.) 6:15 p.m. We pick up dinner from Superica, a great Tex-Mex restaurant, where I always order the shrimp tacos. They’re sinfully good. 7 p.m. My mom already put Ramona to bed since she missed her nap, so Jeremy and I are reading to Judah. It’s nice to give him extra attention when we can because the toddler demands so much. 8:30 p.m. I pour a tea and draw a bath. 9:30 p.m. Turned on the new “Unsolved Mysteries,” and I’m doing a little stretching and a free-weight workout. I used to go to the gym all the time, but since the pandemic, I’ve been forcing myself to work out at home. Thursday 8 a.m. Ramona isn’t feeling great and is running a little fever, so we let her watch a little TV. 9:30 a.m. My hair and makeup artist, Tarryn, arrives to help me do my hair for a photo shoot. This is only the third time I’ve had my hair or makeup done all year. 11 a.m. The photographer arrived, set up a blue backdrop and very quickly snapped some photos. Noon I’m eating lox for breakfast and having another cup of coffee. 1 p.m. Went outside to our picnic table and started editing my book. 2 p.m. I’m picking Mona up from the neighbors to put her down for a nap and go get a Covid test. I take one weekly just to be extra safe. 3:45 p.m. I’m back home, and the kids are outside jumping on the trampoline. 4:45 p.m. Jeremy’s making dinner, and we’re making a fort. 5:45 p.m. We put on Billie Holiday and sit down to eat. We hold hands, and Judah leads us in a prayer. His dinner prayers almost always include asking that God help the homeless and end coronavirus. 6:30 p.m. Judah and I went into the music room to play double drums. He makes up a beat, and I have to copy it and vice versa. 7:30 p.m. I read to Ramona while Jeremy and Judah build a fire and make s’mores. 8:30 p.m. Both kids are in bed. I go out to enjoy the fire, and my friend joins. We pick guitars and drink turmeric tea until 12:30 a.m. Friday 8 a.m. Back at it again with the kids and the morning routine. I make blueberry pancakes while Ramona plays with pots and pans. The house is really trashed — toys everywhere — but it’s Friday, so I don’t stress about it. I’ll clean later. 9 a.m. We go on a walk but get interrupted by the rain. Back inside we FaceTime my 90-year-old grandmother. She beat Covid a couple months ago but hasn’t been able to be out of the nursing home in a year. We call her often to check in. 10 a.m. Jeremy relieves me so I can work on editing my book. Noon Ate oatmeal for breakfast, thought about a John Prine lyric and came inside to pick some guitar. 1 p.m. Recorded a SiriusXM D.J. takeover for a Canadian station called Northern Americana. I made a playlist for International Women’s Day. 2:30 p.m. Ramona woke up from her nap, so we’re jumping on the trampoline. 6 p.m. My mom took the children on a long walk, but everyone’s back for dinner. 6:05 p.m. My daughter throws a huge tantrum (terrible twos are coming early here) so I spend some time calming her down. We take some deep breaths and sit in a quiet room. 6:20 p.m. I finally get her calmed and sit down to a cold plate of delicious food. 7 p.m. I give Ramona a bath and distract her with some washable bath crayons to paint on the bathtub while I sing and play guitar. Jeremy and Judah play Zelda in his bedroom. 7:30 p.m. The toilet overflows, Jeremy fixes it with a few choice four-letter words, I laugh. 8 p.m. We’re all reading books, kissing foreheads and saying good night. 10 p.m. We turn on “Judas and the Black Messiah.” The house is trashed, but I don’t care — I’ve cleaned all week, and I’m tired. We can worry about that tomorrow. Source link Orbem News #Diary #Margo #Nashville #Pandemic #price #Rebel #Work

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techcrunchappcom · 3 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-live-updates-thanksgiving-at-a-moment-of-national-peril/

Covid-19 Live Updates: Thanksgiving at a Moment of National Peril

Here’s what you need to know:

A restaurant with outdoor bubbles in Milwaukee. Deaths are surging in the Midwest.Credit…Tom Lynn for The New York Times

Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday with the pandemic at perhaps its most precarious point yet.

Coronavirus cases in the United States have reached record highs, with an average of more than 176,000 a day over the past week. Deaths are soaring, with more than 2,200 announced on both Tuesday and Wednesday, the highest daily totals since early May. Even as reports of new infections begin to level off in parts of the Midwest, that progress is being offset by fresh outbreaks on both coasts and in the Southwest, where officials are scrambling to impose new restrictions to slow the spread.

The national uptick includes weekly case records in places as diffuse as Delaware, Ohio, Maine and Arizona, where more than 27,000 cases were announced over seven days, exceeding the state’s summer peak.

In New Mexico, grocery stores are being ordered to close if four employees test positive. In Los Angeles County, Calif., restaurants can no longer offer in-person dining. And in Pima County, Ariz., which includes Tucson, cases have reached record levels and officials have imposed a voluntary curfew.

“What we’re trying to do is decrease social mobility,” said Dr. Theresa Cullen, the Pima County health director.

Deaths are also surging, especially in the Midwest, the region that drove much of the case growth this fall. More than 900 deaths have been announced over the past week in Illinois, along with more than 400 each in Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Health officials have worried aloud for weeks that large Thanksgiving gatherings could seed another wave of infections at a time when the country can scarcely afford it. In many places, hospitals are already full, contact tracers have been overwhelmed and health care workers are exhausted.

“Wisconsin is in a bad place right now with no sign of things getting better without action,” said an open letter signed by hundreds of employees of UW Health, the state university’s medical center and health system. “We are, quite simply, out of time. Without immediate change, our hospitals will be too full to treat all of those with the virus and those with other illnesses or injuries.”

More than 260,000 people have died of coronavirus in the United States. In a speech on the eve of Thanksgiving, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke of his family’s losses, and urged Americans to “hang on” and called for unity.

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Biden Calls for Unity in Thanksgiving Address

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. stressed the importance of unity and encouraged Americans to be careful with Thanksgiving celebrations this year to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.

You know, looking back over our history, you see that it’s been in the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged. And now we find ourselves again facing a long, hard winter. We’ve fought nearly a yearlong battle with a virus that has devastated this nation. I know the country has grown weary of the fight. We need to remember, we’re at war with a virus, not with one another, not with each other. This year we’re asking Americans to forgo so many of the traditions that we’ve long made this holiday, that’s made it so special. For our family, for 40-such years, 40-some years, we’ve had a tradition of traveling over Thanksgiving, a tradition that we’ve kept every year save one: the year our son Beau died. But this year, we’ll be staying home. I know how hard it is to forgo family traditions, but it’s so very important. I give thanks now for you, for the trust you’ve placed in me. Together we’ll lift our voices in the coming months and years, and our song shall be of lives saved, breaches repaired, a nation made whole again.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. stressed the importance of unity and encouraged Americans to be careful with Thanksgiving celebrations this year to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.CreditCredit…Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“I remember that first Thanksgiving, the empty chair, the silence,” said Mr. Biden, whose son Beau died in 2015. “It takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to even think of looking forward. It’s so hard to hope. I understand.”

A man prays on the steps of the closed St. Sebastian Church in Queens, N.Y., in March. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York accused the U.S. Supreme Court of political partisanship on Thursday after the high court rejected his statewide coronavirus-based restrictions on religious services, playing down the impact of its ruling and suggesting it was representative of its new conservative majority.

Regardless of the governor’s interpretation, the decision by the Supreme Court late on Wednesday to suspend the 10- and 25-person capacity limitations on churches and other houses of worship in New York would seem to be a sharp rebuke to Mr. Cuomo, who had previously won a series of legal battles over his emergency powers.

“You have a different court, and I think that was the statement that the court was making,” the governor said, noting worries in some quarters after President Trump nominated three conservative justices on the Supreme Court in the past four years. “We know who he appointed to the court. We know their ideology.”

Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, insisted that the decision “doesn’t have any practical effect” because the restrictions on religious services in Brooklyn, as well as similar ones in Queens and the city’s northern suburbs, had since been eased after the positive test rates in those areas had declined.

But less stringent capacity restrictions, also rejected by the Supreme Court’s decision, are still in place in six other counties, including in Staten Island.

Legal experts said that despite the governor’s assertion that the decision was limited to parishes and other houses of worship in Brooklyn, the court’s ruling could be used to challenge and overturn other restrictions elsewhere. “The decision is applicable to people in similar situations,” said Norman Siegel, a constitutional lawyer and former leader of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It’s applicable to any synagogue, any church, to any mosque, to any religious setting.”

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

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Instead of 42 giant balloons and floats, there were 30. Many of the high school marching bands from around the country stayed home. And the parade itself covered only a snippet of the traditional 2.5-mile route, confined to a single block of 34th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Manhattan.

But the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade kicked off Thursday morning, with organizers determined to not let the pandemic completely derail the pageantry. So with the New York City Rockettes — minus the famous kick-lines that were scrapped to adhere to social-distancing guidelines — Dolly Parton, and, of course, Santa Claus, the ritual marker of the start of the holiday season got underway on Herald Square.

Planning this year’s event was a singular feat of logistical legerdemain. Starting in March, the parade planners at Macy’s and NBC, which airs the event, had to rip up the carefully calibrated script and come up with an entirely new blueprint.

“What I knew about Thanksgiving Day a month ago is different from what I know now,” said Susan Tercero, who is the executive producer of the event for Macy’s. “How do you plan something in June that’s going to happen in November when you have no idea where the country is going to be at then?”

History set a high bar for canceling the parade, which has gone off every year since 1924, except for three years during World War II.

The planners kept in communication with city and state officials and responded as evidence of a second wave in New York mounted, reducing the number of participants to 12 percent of their typical work force from 25 percent. Instead of about 8,000 people working a packed parade route in a normal year, 960 people will work over three days of filming.

Delta Airlines will begin offering “quarantine free” flights between Atlanta and Rome starting next month. Credit…Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic swept across Europe and the United States, a pilot program will allow a limited number of passengers to travel across the Atlantic from Atlanta to Italy without having to quarantine upon arrival, according to a Delta Air Lines news release on Thursday.

The airline said it had worked with officials in both Georgia and Italy and that the program would rely on a strict testing protocol to ensure the flights could be conducted safely and “coronavirus free.”

Starting Dec. 19, all U.S. citizens permitted to travel to Italy for “essential reasons, such as for work, health and education,” as well as all European Union and Italian citizens, would have to test negative for Covid-19 three times:

Once with a polymerase chain reaction (P.C.R.) test taken up to 72 hours before departure.

Once with a rapid test at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

And once again with a rapid test upon arrival at Rome’s Fiumicino airport.

Passengers departing Rome would again have to pass a rapid test at the airport.

Travelers will also be asked to provide information upon entry into the United States to support contact-tracing protocols set up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Airlines, battered by the pandemic, have been working to establish travel corridors that are both safe and reliable.

The International Air Transport Association forecast this week that the sector will lose $157 billion by the end of next year.

“This crisis is devastating and unrelenting,” the organization’s director, Alexandre de Juniac, said in a statement.

Delta, in partnership with Alitalia, said the airlines worked with the Mayo Clinic to devise the protocols and hoped they could serve as a model going forward.

Global Roundup

London will move to the second tier of restrictions, but service in restaurants and pubs will still be limited. Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Almost all of England must adhere to the two most severe sets of coronavirus restrictions when a national lockdown ends next week, the government said on Thursday, in an announcement likely to stoke tensions with lawmakers.

London and Liverpool have escaped the most stringent curbs and have been put into the second of three tiers, each based on an assessment of the threat from the virus.

Restaurants and pubs will reopen for indoor dining, but they will only be allowed to serve alcohol indoors to those eating a substantial meal.

In Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Newcastle and Hull, cities that must follow the toughest restrictions, pubs and restaurants will stay closed except for takeout service.

Just a handful of areas in the south of England will be in the tier with the lightest rules.

The fact that much of Northern England faces the tightest curbs is likely to revive claims that the region is not being treated the same way as London and the southern parts of the country.

Across the country, some normality will return when the lockdown lifts on Wednesday in England, and stores, gyms and hairdressers can reopen. Religious services, weddings and outdoor sporting events can also take place.

But in dividing the country into three tiers of restrictions, based on regional data, the government is hoping that the system works better than it did earlier this year, when it failed to stem a surge in cases.

This time the rules have been tightened and Thursday’s announcement, made by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, underscores the government’s desire to keep controls on the hospitality trade in the run up to Christmas.

“It is vital that we safeguard the gains we have made,” he told lawmakers on Thursday.

Some critics, however, want regions split into smaller units to reflect local circumstances, and 70 lawmakers from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party have expressed concerns about the economic damage of restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the virus.

In other developments around the world:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and state governors agreed to tighten virus restrictions and extend the country’s lockdown through December. “Without a doubt we have difficult months ahead of us,” Ms. Merkel told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Amid a growing caseload, Greece is also extending a lockdown that had been set to end on Monday, until Dec. 7.

Prince Carl Philip and his wife, Princess Sofia, of Sweden tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a statement from the Royal Court of Sweden. Carl Philip is fourth in the line of succession to the Swedish throne.

South Korea reported 583 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, the biggest daily caseload since early March, as health officials struggled to contain a third wave that began earlier this month. In the past week, officials have banned gatherings of more than 100 people, shuttered nightclubs and allowed only takeout services in coffee shop chains.

Researchers working on AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in Oxford, England.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation. “Get yourself a vaccaccino,” a British tabloid celebrated, noting that a shot of the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, costs less than a cup of coffee.

But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether the vaccine’s apparently spectacular efficacy will hold up under additional testing.

Scientists and industry experts said the error and a series of other irregularities and omissions in the way AstraZeneca initially disclosed the data have eroded their confidence in the reliability of the results.

Officials in the United States have also said that the results were not clear. It was the head of the U.S. federal vaccine initiative — not the company — who first disclosed that the vaccine’s most promising results did not reflect data from older people.

The upshot, the experts said, is that the odds of regulators in the United States and elsewhere quickly authorizing the emergency use of the AstraZeneca vaccine are declining, a setback in the global campaign to corral the devastating pandemic.

Michele Meixell, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, said the trials “were conducted to the highest standards.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Menelas Pangalos, the AstraZeneca executive in charge of much of the company’s research and development, defended the company’s handling of the testing and its public disclosures. He said the error in the dosage was made by a contractor, and that, once it was discovered, regulators were immediately notified and signed off on the plan to continue testing the vaccine in different doses.

Asked why AstraZeneca shared some information with Wall Street analysts and some other officials and experts but not with the public, he responded, “I think the best way of reflecting the results is in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, not in a newspaper.”

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, center, speaking in January about the first reported case of the coronavirus in the United States.Credit…Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

It was 10 months ago that officials identified the first U.S. coronavirus case in Snohomish County, Wash. That area north of Seattle is now reporting its highest coronavirus case numbers of the pandemic.

Snohomish County has recorded an average of about 230 cases per day over the past week, about three times higher than a month ago. Dr. Chris Spitters, the Snohomish County health officer, said hospitalizations in the region have risen about 400 percent in just six weeks.

“Hospitals are rapidly approaching where we were back in March,” Dr. Spitters said this week.

On Jan. 21, federal and local officials announced that a person who had recently traveled from Wuhan, China, had tested positive in Snohomish County, setting off an extensive effort to isolate and treat the patient. Weeks later, the Seattle region emerged as an early epicenter of the virus, although it remains uncertain whether the outbreak was linked to that first person.

Washington State recorded many of the first coronavirus deaths in the nation in March but managed to contain its outbreak in the spring and has kept its numbers low when compared to other states around the country. But in recent days, case numbers have been jumping and setting records. Gov. Jay Inslee has restored coronavirus restrictions, closing fitness facilities and prohibiting indoor dining at bars and restaurants.

Dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer, said Wednesday the situation was “extraordinarily urgent” and urged all residents to take action to stop the spread of the virus before hospitals become overwhelmed.

“We must all recommit to flatten the curve now,” Dr. Lofy said.

San Quentin Prison in California has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The Thanksgiving menu behind bars in the United States this year featured extra helpings of loneliness and tension along with the processed turkey.

Most American prisons suspended in-person visits months ago — some as early as March — to try to limit the spread of the coronavirus, leaving many inmates able to communicate with loved ones only through mail that can take several weeks to arrive or costly phone and video calls.

This year, the threat of the virus and the long separations from families have added an extra layer of anxiety to one of the most anticipated days of the year, inmates and their relatives say.

Kelly Connolly, whose brother Rory Connolly is serving time in a federal prison in Ohio, said her family felt helpless to relieve her brother’s isolation and fear of getting sick.

The ban on visits “does seem extra punitive, on top of the sentence — the daily tension and terror, in addition to all the other aspects of prison,” she said. “This is by far the longest stretch my brother has gone without seeing family members or friends.”

Prisons, jails and detention facilities have often become coronavirus hot spots. More than 327,000 inmates and guards in have been infected by the virus, and more than 1,650 have died, according to a New York Times database.

The steep recent rise in infections around the nation has meant that a number of prisons and jails that were planning to allow family visits for Thanksgiving have canceled those plans.

Getting a free coronavirus test in Los Angeles on Wednesday.Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York Times

After more than two months of unrelenting growth, the United States is poised to see a steep drop-off in new cases on Thursday.

It will be a mirage, not progress.

At least 14 states have said they do not plan to update their data on Thursday as Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Other states will likely do the same. And many county and regional health departments will also take the day off.

“Out of respect for our O.S.D.H. personnel who have worked tirelessly since March in response to the Covid pandemic, we will not be reporting data on Thanksgiving,” the Oklahoma State Department of Health said in a statement on Wednesday.

The New York Times reports new cases and deaths on the date they are announced by officials in hundreds of state and local health departments. In a typical week, daily fluctuations are smoothed out by using a rolling average that accounts for spikes on Fridays, when many states report their highest numbers of the week, and drops on the weekends, when some places don’t report any data.

That analysis will become harder after Thanksgiving, which is almost assured to have far fewer cases than the 187,000 announced last Thursday, when 49 states reported fresh data. The country’s seven-day case average, now above 175,000, could fall sharply, at least for a day.

Harder still is knowing what to expect in the days after Thanksgiving. Some states are likely to report artificial spikes when they resume reporting on Friday, which could push the country past 200,000 cases in a single day for the first time.

But the blurry data could persist longer. Health officials in Vermont have said they will forego reporting both Thursday and Friday. And access to testing is likely to decrease for a few days, meaning more infections could go uncounted. In Louisiana, testing sites run by the National Guard will be closed both Thursday and Friday. In Wisconsin, some National Guard testing sites are closed all week.

Numbers aside, public health officials are worried about what the holiday may bring. For weeks, governors and hospital executives have been begging people to skip turkey dinners with people not in their households. The country’s case average is as high as it’s ever been, cases are rising in 40 states and deaths are reaching levels unseen since May, with more than 2,200 announced nationwide both Tuesday and Wednesday.

“Unless we unite behind the belief that each of us has a responsibility to protect others, we will face a devastating holiday season,” said Barbara Ferrer, the public health director in Los Angeles County, Calif., where cases have soared to record levels this week.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Dr. Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer, held a news conference on Oct. 13, the day after Canada’s Thanksgiving.Credit…Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Does Canada’s Thanksgiving, which passed well over a month ago, offer a preview of what the United States now faces in terms of the pandemic?

The differences between public health systems in Canada’s provinces and their pandemic rules make it difficult to generalize about the entire country’s holiday aftereffects.

Daniel Coombs, a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia and an infectious disease modeling expert, said that several “provinces have seen rises that are hard to directly link to Thanksgiving purely from case counts.”

But Professor Coombs said many provinces did find through contact tracing that some new cases were linked to Thanksgiving events.

Over the past six weeks, he said, outbreaks that started at Thanksgiving have continued to grow. “It is not really possible to say what fraction of current cases were specifically seeded by Thanksgiving gatherings but I think it is indisputable that the effect is there,” Professor Coombs said.

Since Thanksgiving, new restrictions have been imposed in many parts of Canada. This week an agreement between the four provinces along the Atlantic coast that allowed quarantine-free travel between them was suspended after a growth of cases in two of them. Manitoba, British Columbia and Ontario all imposed new measures in all or some areas this month.

But Colin D. Furness, an assistant professor at Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation of the University of Toronto, cautioned that Canada’s version of Thanksgiving is not an ideal proxy for the American version. It is not even a statutory holiday in some provinces, and Canadians generally wait until Christmas to travel for family get-togethers.

“So for the U.S., where Thanksgiving is the biggest travel weekend of the year, and where Covid is currently raging in many places, the threat posed by this holiday is enormous,” he said. “If we looked at the Canadian experience, we might underestimate the U.S. risk.”

About 60 students and parents from Scotch Plains-Fanwood School District in New Jersey protested last week after the superintendent announced schools would remain closed until Jan. 19.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

Gov. Philip D. Murphy has urged New Jersey school districts to open for some face-to-face instruction, repeatedly noting that the coronavirus spread among teachers and students was far lower than expected.

Last week, as New York City was reeling from the mayor’s decision to close the nation’s largest school district, Mr. Murphy joined with six other governors — including New York’s — to release a statement about the importance, and relative safety, of in-person instruction.

His own schools weren’t listening: While most districts in New Jersey had reopened for some in-person instruction, many announced plans this week to return to all-remote learning through all or part of the holidays.

The tensions point to the difficulty governors across the Northeast have had in persuading districts to reopen more fully — decisions that often require school boards to buck powerful teachers unions and to live with the inherent risk of outbreaks as the virus surges.

Parents and children are often caught in the middle, forced to quickly shift routines and expectations in a year already marred by the extraordinary challenges of remote instruction.

Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, has the power to shut down schools, as he did in March when New York and New Jersey were an early epicenter of the pandemic. And he has said that decisions about all-remote instruction need state approval and that districts must be working toward bringing students back to class.

Still, for all the governor’s public exhortations, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education could not point to a single instance when the state rejected a district’s plan to shift to all-remote instruction.

The governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut have faced similar pressure from districts and unions as they continue to stress the importance of in-person education. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo offered a plan to keep New York City’s schools open for at least a few more days, but the mayor rebuffed him.

The state of Texas limits attendance at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, to half its capacity of over 100,000. The team plays the Washington Football Team on Thursday.Credit…Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of fans are expected to be at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, when the Dallas Cowboys, as they have nearly every year since 1966, play at home on Thanksgiving, this time against the Washington Football Team.

To control the spread of the coronavirus, state rules limit attendance at the stadium to half its capacity of more than 100,000, and no game has approached that limit. Still, attendance has grown every game, hitting a high of 31,700 on Nov. 8, when the Pittsburgh Steelers were in town. Jerry Jones, the team’s owner, plans to keep selling tickets even as the number of infections surges in Tarrant County, where the Cowboys play home games.

“I see a continued aggressive approach to having fans out there,” Mr. Jones said last week on Dallas sports talk radio. “And that’s not being insensitive to the fact that we got our Covid and outbreak. Some people will say maybe it is, but not when you’re doing it as safe as we are and not when we’re having the results we’re having.”

Local and state authorities have ultimate authority over whether fans can attend games, and the rules in Texas are more permissive than in states like California and New Jersey, where teams have played without spectators this season.

But Mr. Jones’s approach runs counter not just to what other N.F.L. teams have done in recent weeks, but to what medical experts say is prudent public health policy. The number of cases in the county has jumped more than fivefold since the start of the regular season in early September, when there was an average of 1,500 confirmed infections a day.

On Wednesday, the N.F.L. has moved the Thanksgiving night showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers to Sunday afternoon after nearly a dozen players and staff members on the Ravens tested positive for the virus.

Pope Francis on Sunday at the Vatican.Credit…Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pope Francis, writing for the New York Times Opinion section, says that to come out of this pandemic better than we went in, “we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain.”

In this past year of change, my mind and heart have overflowed with people. People I think of and pray for, and sometimes cry with, people with names and faces, people who died without saying goodbye to those they loved, families in difficulty, even going hungry, because there’s no work.

Sometimes, when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it helps to focus on concrete situations: You see faces looking for life and love in the reality of each person, of each people. You see hope written in the story of every nation, glorious because it’s a story of daily struggle, of lives broken in self-sacrifice. So rather than overwhelm you, it invites you to ponder and to respond with hope.

To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

Credit…Vinnie Neuberg

Last week, David Leonhardt invited readers of his Morning newsletter to send six words describing what made them thankful in 2020. Here is a selection of their responses:

The crinkling eye above the mask.

A furtive hug with a friend.

The backyard haircuts are getting better.

My choir still meets on Zoom.

Friends who give me streaming passwords.

Family reunion in January, before Covid.

Miss family, but safer for them.

Saved a lot of lipstick money.

More homemade pasta, no more jeans.

No shame in elastic-waist pants.

Braless at home? No one cares.

Mom, 87, rocking pretty, pandemic ponytail.

Teenage son still likes to snuggle.

My parents live two blocks away.

No better excuse to avoid in-laws.

This stinking year is nearly over.

#covid #National

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livinginlandmarketing · 3 years

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Inland hospitals are preparing to treat more COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks than they ever have before — and they’re worried it could get worse after that.

Numbers from just before Thanksgiving show Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties on track to break records for the number of coronavirus patients — set this summer, shortly before record numbers of deaths were recorded — within the next few days. And holiday gatherings could push the number higher soon afterward.

Some hospital administrators say they’re not sure how they’ll handle the influx.

“I called a number of hospitals this morning in the western region of San Bernardino County,” John Chapman, president and chief executive officer of San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland, said Wednesday, Nov. 25. “And to a hospital, they are like us — they are bursting at the seams.”

The hospital is close to 99% capacity, and had over 35 patients in the Emergency Department — including eight critical patients — waiting for beds as of 8 a.m. Wednesday, he said. Most of that overflow group was sent to other hospitals.

A nurse prepares Friday, Nov. 13, 2020, to head into the emergency room at Riverside University Health System – Medical Center in Moreno Valley. Inland Empire hospitals are coping with a surge in COVID-19 patients and preparing for things to worsen. (File photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

“I think I’m good another week or two, but it can’t keep growing like this week after week,” Chapman said. “That’s why I’m praying that there are more restrictions put in place for our county.”

Emergency officials for Riverside and San Bernardino counties say that the system overall still has room to treat more patients, especially if they cut back on elective surgeries and other services.

In Riverside County, for instance, the number of COVID-19 patients still hasn’t gotten close to the number of people hospitalized in the worst recent flu year — December 2017 to January 2018 — said Bruce Barton, director of the county’s Emergency Management Department.

“The issue with COVID is the workload that comes with COVID patients,” Barton said, noting that severe cases result in longer hospital stays than severe flu cases. “Even though the surge is lower, it’s not actually an apples-to-apples comparison. People are tired. Hospital administrators are concerned about their staff. And they’ve been doing it since the pandemic began.”

After peaking this summer, hospitalizations are rising across California.

San Bernardino County had 606 people hospitalized Tuesday, Nov. 24, just 32 people below the peak of 638 people hospitalized July 25, according to state figures. With an average of 27 more people being hospitalized with COVID-19 each day for the past week, the state database is likely to soon show new records.

Riverside County reported 455 coronavirus patients hospitalized, which is 95 people below the peak of 550 on July 14. It’s been adding an average of 15 hospitalizations per day over the past week, so it could top 550 within a week if the pace stays the same.

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Los Angeles County had 1,809 people hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 423 people less than the July 18 peak. Over the past week, the number has increased by an average of 82 per day — but that’s increasing each day, and shortages in hospital beds and intensive-care beds are projected over the next two to four weeks, the county’s predictive modeling team said Wednesday.

Hospitalization numbers always reflect the situation from at least one day earlier and are set to be updated Friday, Nov. 27, because of the holiday.

In the Inland Empire, officials say the number of beds isn’t the problem. And unlike earlier in the pandemic, neither is ventilators or personal protective equipment. The issue is the number of medical professionals.

Field hospitals prepared early in the pandemic — in response to overflowing hospitals in other countries that saw coronavirus hit earlier — are ready to go in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“We have demobilized the equipment but we have not moved it off-site, so in a severe surge we could operate those,” Barton said. “The challenge there is going to be staffing. If we did operate those, we would need state and federal help with staffing.”

And that could be challenging, as the rest of the state also faces surges, and in many other parts of the country, it’s worse.

“In July, you could bring in (assistance) from the northwest or the Midwest to supplement your staff,” Chapman said. “But right now, with every state having this, the cavalry isn’t out there.”

The number of beds available can also paint an incomplete statistic, said Justine Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, which tracks capacity issues for San Bernardino County.

“For example, a neonatal unit bassinet and the staff needed to care for that neonate are not appropriate for an adult with COVID-19,” Rodriguez wrote in an email. “COVID-19 patients in need of hospital care tend to be adults and about 25% of them need intensive care beds that are in finite supply. Additionally, infection prevention protocols can reduce bed availability below normal bed capacity.”

While Riverside County doctors and nurses are prepared for more hospitalizations, that’s also exactly what they expect, said Bob Blair, CEO of Southern California Permanente Medical Group for the Riverside area.

“We’re very concerned things are going to go up after Thanksgiving,” Blair said.

In the past, Kaiser Permanente officials have predicted how many hospitalizations they will soon have by tracking how many people are being tested for coronavirus and what percentage of them are testing positive. Those figures predict — close to one out of every 10 people being tested in Riverside County is positive — suggest an increase in several weeks even if Thanksgiving doesn’t cause a further spike, he said.

If and when that spike comes, Kaiser Permanente plans to move staff and resources from from its non-hospital operations to cover hospitalized patients.

New procedures put in place during the pandemic will also help, he said, such as increased use of telemedicine. Last year, about 15% of Kaiser Permanente’s care was virtual, compared to about 55% now, Blair said.