Oh, in fun news, DH brought me in a nice big stalk of bananas from the yard and I have peeled and frozen enough for at least a couple months of flavoring for our breakfast oatmeal or blender drinks. The Florida bananas are little, but so sweet. Totes yummy. Hmmm. daquiris?

but what is a worry is that the doctors and nurses are getting sick, too, and they won't have enough staff to care for patients at this rate.

Not only sick, but completely exhausted and weary. It is very worrying.

My niece is an ER physician at a large University hospital in Ohio (not Teppy's city) and when I spoke with her last Sunday, she thought they would be out of beds next week. They were already refusing all transfers. She also said they have plenty of PPE, so that's not a worry, but what is a worry is that the doctors and nurses are getting sick, too, and they won't have enough staff to care for patients at this rate.

One of my friends works as an OR nurse for Cincinnati Children's Hospital -- she said that today, the main campus location had 27 OR nurses call in sick today, and their ER is so full they have squads on diversion.

When healthcare workers are sick enough to call off, things are FUCKED.

Tim talked to PCP in person, told him the circumstances around his co-worker testing positive (ie, their work shifts only overlap for 2 hours, Tim's interaction with co-worker was minimal, Tim always wears a mask, co-worker did not wear a mask). PCP said that he doesn't think Tim needs to get tested.

That surprises me even more knowing I was required by the state health dept to get tested, respond to daily health check-ins and quarantine for 14 days after a MUCH lower-risk potential exposure.

My town is now a Yellow Zone after being in Phase 5 for most of the summer. Doesn't change my daily routine at all but I am worried about families whose kids were in the hybrid program, and local businesses making it through the winter.

Also, you guys, this thread name.

{{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}

Epic thread title, Epic.

My university offers free walk-in testing and apparently the students have been so good about pre-Thanksgiving testing that the PTB are now asking everyone to make appointments - it seems they've been too busy. I'm really quite surprised that the kids have been paying attention and getting tested, but I suppose that might be because they've ignored the mask rules all semester and are now feeling guilty or something.

If Ken (and most of the rest of the Horde) weren't here in Washington I would be off my head right now. County sheriffs all over Utah are saying they won't enforce the mask mandates, and Governor Herbert wouldn't close the churches. Meanwhile University Hospital's ICU is at 103% of capacity, with all the Intermountain Health facilities close behind; they're about to start opening respiratory triage centers in tents in hospital parking lots.

Because I'm me, I'm still upset about hospitals reducing the number of beds year after year for the last 40 years to post quarterly profits.

Two things happened at work: I revisited a blog I wrote back in March forecasting exponential increase in covid cases without intervention, so that we could discuss the forecasting method and compare my predictions with what happened (I had not accounted for all the disinfo)...and some jackhole slid into my comments with "ANOTHER post about this fake pandemic?!?! This used to be a good blog, but I'm unsubscribing! What about Sweden and how they've had hardly any cases?" (please note this is the federal gov't)

And while I was looking at that, my best friend at work told me her sister died of covid this morning.

We have very easy access to testing here in Los Angeles. So now there is a problem with younger folks getting tested on Thursday so they have their negative result on Friday so that they can then go out and attend large illegal parties on Saturday completely unmasked.

Yeah, that's not how that works. That's now how any of that works.