Sidenote: Yes, I'm advocating that it's ethical to eat stupid things. If they're delicious.

She's a vegetarian!

From "The Reluctant Cannibal" on the album "At the Drop of a Hat" by Flanders & Swann circa 1957:

"If the JuJu had meant us not to eat people, he wouldn't have made us of meat."

[link]

Still funny more than 60 years later.

I’m going to say right now that if JZ shoots a man in Reno she will undoubtedly have a good reason

I mean, yeah, I feel like even if she snapped and killed a man, she’d have a reason. Why risk jail and/or damnation just to watch someone die, when there are so many folks out there who actually deserve it? I mean, I don’t know if any of them are in Reno, but probably?

Very glad for JZ. I read a book about the Donner Party a few years ago and wow is it harrowing. I mean obviously, but just wow.

I completely agree, ND. I'm furious are asshole governor for threatening teachers if they refuse to go back way before it's possible they'll all be vaccinated.

Teachers in Chicago have been teaching OUTSIDE the past two weeks in protest of being forced to come back to in person. Sitting at tables on the sidewalk around their schools, teaching virtually with laptops and stuff, bundled up in blankets. I passed one while I was out walking and she told me parents had screamed and cursed at her.

I completely agree, ND. I'm furious are asshole governor for threatening teachers if they refuse to go back way before it's possible they'll all be vaccinated.

Teachers in Chicago have been teaching OUTSIDE the past two weeks in protest of being forced to come back to in person. Sitting at tables on the sidewalk around their schools, teaching virtually with laptops and stuff, bundled up in blankets. I passed one while I was out walking and she told me parents had screamed and cursed at her.

I've been one of the biggest and earliest advocates for masks, distancing, lockdown and vaccinations. But I don't feel like teacher unions or school districts have been looking at the science.

All Public Health approaches are based on probabilistic models. They're not binary. It's not safe/unsafe.

So this insistence on all teachers and students being vaccinated is not the standard we should hold.

You pick a point of calculated risk, like..."Is this about the level of risk I take when I drive on the freeway?"

People die on the freeway every day. It is dangerous. Mostly though you can mitigate those risks.

I am NOT saying COVID is like the Flu. I had a friend die of Covid this month. My FiL died last year. I understand on a very personal level how deadly this is.

But you can re-open schools safely. NYC schools operated for two months this fall without being superspreader events. They were no more or less dangerous than their surrounding communities.

So consider that point. My local cafe has never closed. It's been an essential service. It has not been linked as a significant point of infection. My local Whole Foods has never closed. It has put in limits to people inside, insisted on mask protections and it has been safe. Nobody linked to getting it there. Amoeba Records has re-opened safely. My bookstores have re-opened safely.

Schools are different from bars and churches. You have a LOT of control on where people are sitting, when people move around, how many people are allowed in and who can talk when.

You can mitigate most of the risks. The private high schools in SF have safely re-opened in cohorts. No outbreaks reported.

It's doable. You can re-open the schools. Yes, you need to be vigilant about what's happening in the immediate community. But it is a manageable risk.

Look, I live in a neighborhood within a City that errs on the side of caution. I see people every day riding their bikes with masks on and I don't flag them down and say, "You know, I've looked at the summaries of Contact Tracer logs in Europe and literally NOBODY EVER has been infected by a passing bicyclist. Or Jogger. Or Pedestrian. I now want to explain to you the concept of Minimum Infective Doses and COVID and why that's not a form of transmission."

I don't pitch a bitch fit about every stupid place that has hand sanitizer when there are LITERALLY NO INSTANCES OF FOMITE TRANSMISSION IN ALL OF EUROPE'S CONTACT TRACING.

But schools can and have safely re-opened. Yes, there should be clear public health standards to trigger opening. Yes, there should be community standards that are flexible and move with local infection rates. No, you shouldn't spent a ton of energy on having the custodial staff washing the entire building down every day. Yes, you should all invest in improved HVAC systems, which is the key. No, don't blow your budget on hand sanitizer.

There is clear and measurable damage caused by schools being closed. And I don't just mean educationally. In Nevada the suicide rate among teens has tripled during the lockdown.

Look at the science. Know how the disease works. I don't feel like the teacher unions are doing that. Nor the districts.

Skipping a whole lot.

It's way too early in the semester for me to be feeling this burned out. I've got one class that's going OK, and another where I just cannot get the students to answer any questions to talk to each other or anything. I'm pretty certain that a good number of them are just sitting there with their cameras off and mics muted and doing something else.

Also, my house is a mess, and I really need to clean stuff, and I just don't have the physical energy or anything to do that. There's a whole lot of stuff lying around that's really just garbage, but it's bulky garbage, like cardboard boxes or big styrofoam pieces and things like that, or just tons of little papers and stuff, and I really wish that I could just hire someone to come over and deal with that stuff, like I tell them which things are garbage and then they just do whatever needs to be done with it, but I don't know a Covid-safe way to do that, or who I could hire anyway. And all my usual "Can't let a stranger see the house when it's a mess" triggers are going off, too.

And dishes. So many dishes.

The issues of health safety in schools and the workplace will need to be addressed in a more permanent manner. This isn't going to be the last pandemic. We've known for a long time about the importance of hand washing, and some areas with dense populations figured out the helpfulness of masks a while ago. Some of these new normal practices need to become standard operating procedures. The hand sanitizer in the car/purse is a forever thing as far as I am concerned.

So, still no vaccines. The Publix website opened at 6 AM this morning to register for several thousand doses available in my county. The page refreshed every 60 seconds, and they are all gone now. Have to try again at 6 AM Friday. I am on other waiting lists too. Bother.

{{Hil}}

I hope the puppy is feeling better today, meara.

My sister and niece both got their first shots, which I understand are pretty effective alone, (plus the niece had a mild case of COVID), so I feel ok about them going back to in-person teaching. My niece teaches the really young ones, in a red part of the country where mask wearing has likely not been consistently modeled by parents, and where the class sizes are large. So I had concerns. My sister’s students are older, from a demographic that’s better about masks, but she’s older, with underlying health conditions, so again I had concerns.

School infrastructure in many parts of the country is such that proper ventilation is unlikely in a lot of buildings. There’s been an active undercutting of teachers’ authority and expertise—largely by conservatives—that affects student willingness to listen to them, coupled with some parents being willing to give a feverish kid some Tylenol and send ‘em on in. Which is probably how my niece with a blood clotting disorder got COVID in the first place. So I’m inclined to listen to teachers who say face to face teaching in their work spaces isn’t safe.

That said, the US economy is designed for parents to have their children being educated elsewhere from around 7-3, five days a week. And I expect parents counted on that when planning their careers and families. Lots of employers aren’t understanding, and lots of jobs can’t be done while supervising a child’s (or children’s) education. And most two-parent families can’t just pivot to one parent being a full time home classroom assistant. That’s not how the US is set up, and the powers that be have done nothing to make that easier. So we’ve definitely got contradicting problems.

I still have no idea when I’ll get vaccinated. I don’t have kids and can work from home until I retire, if needed, so it’s less of an issue for me than for many. Sure would like to see the family this year, though.

I think my kids' high school could go back in person safely, but it would take a complete rearrangement of the schedule/curriculum and some additional space to do it. It's an older building (but I think windows open) with smaller classrooms and classes are usually 30-35 students. There are 7 bells and they switch after each one and the hallways are like the Toyko subways at rush hour. Study halls are in the cafeteria and are 150+ kids. (Total enrollment is over 3000, grades 7-12.) The curriculum allows a lot of customization of class schedules, so it's very hard to keep a group of kids in the same "pod" past 8th grade. They could have decided over the summer to limit class options (to allow for pods or wings of the school or whatever) for the sake of having school in person but they are also very hampered by the district in terms of what they can do.

The big problem (large, urban) public school systems are having is many, many of them were barely functioning before the pandemic, and they are large and complex bureaucracies where it is difficult to get anything done in good circumstances, there is not funding, and they are serving a population that is disproportionately poor. For those who have NYT access, our (magnet) high school is like Edison NJ, but the majority of the district is more like Washington, DC. [link]

In 'not all the kids are all right' news, Casper's best friend was admitted to a psych ward yesterday. But she is allowed phone calls and called Casper last night, and that seemed like it was good for both of them. It sounds like she will be there for a week.

From "The Reluctant Cannibal" on the album "At the Drop of a Hat" by Flanders & Swann circa 1957

May I suggest roast leg of insurance salesman? a chorus of yums ran 'round the table (this is a quote, not an actual suggestion!!!).