C-19 Chat Post – April 10 2020

76 Comments

C-19 Chat Post – April 10 2020 …

Just a friendly reminder. You are not required to have the same opinion as your fellow blogger. But on this blog, you are required to treat everybody respectfully. We are entering the peak of the crisis at this time and while there are various ideas on how long that will last and how quickly we will decline from it, what we can control is our response to it and our interaction with one another. We are all in this together and we’d like to come out of it that way as well. Have a great day. Stay safe. Stay healthy.

76 thoughts on “C-19 Chat Post – April 10 2020”

  1. I went to the Covid website for Massachusetts and put together the following graph
    from the archives they had available. I hadn’t seen a graph like this for Mass. before.

    Massachusetts total tested confirmed cases

    https://imgur.com/a/HR2CrdW

    1. It appears we have not yet reached the peak. Will continue to monitor and update this graph daily.

      1. Thanks Jp. I think MA is a number of days away from its peak although the nation as a whole might peak earlier.

        1. I will try to add a chart for the daily cases to get a better
          handle on peaking. Can’t do till this PM sometime.

      1. Pretty graphically depicts our situation. Even though more testing is being done, clearly there are many more cases out there, perhaps by a factor of 10 or more, although it is pretty tough
        to quantify that.

  2. The Dutch don’t sensationalize anything. They report facts and that’s about it. So, when I saw that their CDC equivalent is reporting that the death totals due to the coronavirus are twice as high as the official figures, I knew something was up. Last week, 2000 more people died in Holland than the average number. More than half died from Covid-19 related symptoms, but were not tested at the time. They weren’t included in the official tally. They died at home, in assisted living facilities, or in nursing homes.

    The French were the first in Europe to acknowledge this problem and are now trying to rectify it. The Dutch may follow suit. It’s doubtful the U.S. will.

    If you read anything today about Covid-19, read this short article. It’s called “A Son’s Story – Lifeline” and it’s about a person whose father (61) who died of Covid-19 ten days ago. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/texts-from-my-father-in-elmhurst-hospital

  4. Good morning, and thanks, TK…

    The Middleborough school committee voted last night to keep Distance Learning through the April Vacation. 72% of the families (2279 responded to the survey) voted to cancel the break. 60% of the teachers did as well. We will have Patriot’s Day off and our last day of “school” is now June 18.

    According to thejournal.com, 18 states have called off formal classes for the year. Washington state is already making plans for what happens if they can’t have classes in the summer or the fall.

    1. With regards to “remote learning” can students do their work at their own leisure or are they required to “report” to class at a specific time on their respective device every day?

    2. Silver Lake is still taking April vacation and the last day is June 19th. Can’t come quick enough for me.

      1. Boston is going on April vacation as well. Where exactly do they expect students will be going? I would like the dedicated teachers here at WHW to explain the “remote learning” process. I certainly understand this is new to everyone involved. 🙂

        1. My Daughter has zoom sessions with the Students.

          She has lessons, but being a Spanish teacher she
          provides visuals and includes movie titles for the students to view, almost exclusively Spanish language movies etc.

          The students email her often and it is not mandatory to attend the sessions and she cannot grade the students.

          If only one student signs up for a session, she still has to have it.

          She tells us that the Zoom sessions go extremely well.

          Strange and difficult times.

      2. Spellman is having break starting after school Thursday . No matter what happens he is out June 4th . He has been in virtual classroom through zoom pretty much the entire time & he is graded . Report cards should be coming on the email soon . If they do go back no finals . He goes M- Th- 8:30 – 12:30 with Friday off . They were to have this Monday after Easter off but now they have school .

        1. I 100% do not think any school will be going back . I think the Governor will call that as we get closer to May 4th where I think the peak will be here and causing havoc at that time & will through May , just my opinion this is far , far from over .

    3. Sutton is having April vacation (4 days) also. I do not know if the parents were asked. The superintendent felt if school does return then they’d have that week at the end. As of now, my girls have said if it returns their kids will not attend. I have no idea what last day will be. If kids do return, I will be amazed. But then I am often amazed.

      1. I believe Boston will not be returning this academic year. I thought I heard Mayor Walsh officially make that announcement awhile back. I may be mistaken of course.

      2. A day in late June isn’t equal to a day earlier in the year. What I mean by that is, accounting for understandable human ways, neither students and even teachers are as focused on late June compared to mid April. 80 and sunny, I want to be outside. 45 and drizzly, let’s do some math, ok science 🙂 🙂

        1. I sure agree as do my kids. A questionnaire was not sent out in Sutton. The super made the decision.

  5. Here’s a feel-good story from Spain. Igualada is a small city (population 40,000) in the northeast region of Catalonia. I have been to Igualada several times and have dear friends who live there. Igualada has been Ground Zero for the Covid-19 outbreak in Catalonia.
    Someone had the great idea of inviting the soccer team FC Barcelona to come to their town to play a friendly soccer match. Barça agreed! So, mighty FC Barcelona will be coming to Igualada in better days to play a friendly match against CF Igualada in Igualada’s 4500-seat stadium as a way to comfort and thank the community for all they have endured.
    It would be like the Patriots coming to Woburn to play the Tanners.

    1. Our Whittier Farm where I shop each weekend, was one of the first to take call in orders only with credit cards by phone. It is a small store surrounded by their 500 working acres so having folks inside was not safe. It is the only place I go….kids do rest of shopping for me. The efficiency of the Whittier family is amazing. You’d think they have been doing this for years. I found out yesterday that they get their produce from Russo’s in Watertown. If you do not live too far and once this is over, Russo’s is a GREAT place to go.

  7. I saw on tv this morning that Yuhan Province is back to “normal” with no more stay-at-home orders. From what I can tell, people are still wearing masks.

    I just hope they are not back to “normal” too soon and that they continue to practice social distancing at least to some extent.

  8. Philip:

    I have been putting up review and practice work on the kids’ Google Classroom pages. We teach and practice the four skills of language acquisition: reading, writing, speaking and listening. We do one a day. Monday is speaking day. I give students questions to answer in Spanish and they record their answers in an audio file and upload them back to me and I listen to them. I give them feedback (mostly positive!!! 🙂 ) For listening, I uploaded audio files with comprehension questions, they listen to the Spanish, answer the questions and send me the answers.

    The four Spanish teachers are taking turns doing virtual office hours one hour a week. Some of the younger teachers are using Zoom. I am not comfortable using Zoom with students right now. I will answer their questions via email.

    I am forbidden to teach new material and I can only “grade” the work as complete/incomplete. Nobody is concerned about report cards or if the kids will be able to move up to the next level next semester. I have no idea how my students in Spanish I this semester will be able to take Spanish II. At our school, students completed the 90-day course last fall and ready to move on to Spanish II next year. My students this semester have had only about 25 formal classes with me. I have no clue how they are going to be successful with the next level.

    As always, Tom, I agree with you with the end of the school year. Kids and staff are less motivated in the last days of June, especially the older buildings (like yours and mine) without AC. I feel like we have momentum with this Distance Learning. Let’s keep going!

    Hang in there, Sue!!!! 🙂

    2. Thank you CF! Honestly this is more on me than anyone else. I definitely feel that the way the information is being delivered could improve immensely but it is the fact that I have limited time to sit with my son to help him. My work is extremely demanding right and I am putting in 12-14 hours a day. It took me two hours last night just to go through his assignments to put together a plan and find where they were posted. He is on an IEP and has trouble working independently. I am at the point where I feel like I am failing as a mom and an employee as the stress is getting to me. But I also know I am not alone and feel for any mom in this position.

      1. If I can be of any help, Sue, I can send you my contact information.
        Would be glad to help in any way that I can!!!!! 🙂

        1. Thank you both, that is so incredibly kind of you to offer. I actually managed to clear some time this afternoon and the boys are almost done with this week’s assignments and begged for one extension on a science project. We will have the weekend to finish that up. So we are in better shape than we were and we’ll see what Sunday’s emails bring.

  9. Philip, the good news is that Wuhan and other parts of China are trying out something we’ll all be doing at some point. We can learn from what happens in China. Two caveats: 1. Data from China is not trustworthy. The counter to this is that Americans living in China are reporting on what’s going on there. They’ve been saying life is returning to normal. It doesn’t appear so far that there’s been a resurgence of coronavirus. 2. You mentioned everyone is wearing masks. That is indeed the law there. An authoritarian state can enforce the law in ways that our government cannot. I’m glad our government allows us more freedom. But, this does mean China will be able to regulate a stepwise reopening better than we can.

  10. I am really, really hoping that there is no resurgence in Wuhan. Resurgence would be very bad news in more ways than one.

    1. This is also something included in the charts I posted above (that I think only I find interesting lol) – the weekend factor is interesting. Though weekends tend to be shorter staffed by nature in some regards and might lead to this anomaly? Not sure.

  16. Arod. My guess is you and your wife are working long, hard hours. Just want you to know we are thinking of you and hope you are both well.

  17. adrian …I’m also thinking of your brother and retrac your family with your lay-off. I do hope the company can rehire at the end of this.

    1. So the tests are down and the daily cases are down today.

      We can’t make judgments on one day, however, better to see it down than
      up. We can’t tell over the weekend either, but if Monday and Tuesday are down, then we “may” have peaked and started our very very slow decline. If they are back up, well then we still have a ways to go.

      Let us hope anyway.

      1. Cases went down a smidgen. But, over 2k cases in a state with 6 million, and one that tests proportionately fewer people than a number of other states, is worrisome. Massachusetts has overtaken California for the 4th spot on the rankings of states and will likely overtake Michigan for the 3rd spot by next week. 3rd is not a good place to be for a small state. Massachusetts is, I believe, the `hottest’ spot in the country at this point in time, with a doubling of cases every 4 to 5 days. We’re lucky to have an excellent hospital infrastructure along with universal access. This may explain why the case fatality rate has been reasonable.

      2. I still don’t think peak has hit yet . I expect low numbers over the weekend then pretty high on Monday . I sure wish we could get an update from the expert Arod

    1. It is a good idea to not to pay too close attention to our reports re Sweden or many other countries. We have a history of trying to downplay places outside of the US. My friend that I mentioned the other day who lost her dad who was at care facility in Sweden saw a report a while ago and talked with her family throughout Sweden. They said it is not as accurate as America wants to think it is. I know It is an absolute FACT that her dad could no longer have visitors which is one reason they felt he gave up. He was confused and didn’t understand why his family suddenly was not visiting

      I’ll pass this by her. But I do know the information she got from her family and friends a couple of weeks ago was different from what we are seeing in our media. That could be accurate to a degree but I always do my due diligence on these types of things.

      1. I am not calling my friend now as it is a time of grieving for her. But I read through our many emails. She had called her sisters…..one who is in medical community along with her husband….when she saw a Forbes article re Sweden. This was a while ago and even with working from home and restaurants doing takeout there, she said she was told folks are just doing what they should. They seem to understand what to do without orders. This was several weeks ago

    1. NY is improving. Drop in ICU is significant. Similar drop in France.

      Still the levels of new cases are high in both places.

      Sweden is an interesting anomaly. It’s doing very poorly compared to its Scandinavian neighbors. But, the overall numbers aren’t terrible, in spite of basically a herd immunity approach.

  26. Vicki, what you’re saying about Sweden is indeed true. So, they’ve essentially quarantined the vulnerable populations, but allowed younger people to more or less go about their lives. This said, there was less travel to and from Italy than other European countries. And also less to and from China.

    1. Thanks, Joshua. How are you tonight?

      And….That is what I’m hearing from a first hand view. But the young people are also social distancing and working from home. They just don’t seem to need to be forced. Interesting concept……isn’t it???

      My understanding is the psychological aspects are taken into consideration along with physical. My friends sister is on the former side of the scale.

      1. I’m doing well, considering. Thank you for asking. No fever today. My son’s been fever-free for several days. He got sicker than I. We do both have cabin fever.

        We both have not had breathing difficulty. So, perhaps it was not Covid-19. Nevertheless, as my doctor said earlier this week, “presume it is and self-isolate.” So yes, Daniel and I are acting responsibly, like Swedes.

        My cat, Mia, is acting strangely. She’s an older cat. But, she’s acting like a kitten. Jumping around, racing back and forth, hopping up on ledges I thought she could no longer do. Clearly not a case of novel coronavirus. More the opposite.

        1. Great news Joshua. For you and your son. And interesting that Mia is regressing. Maybe she is just happy to have her human family with her all day, every day.

  27. To me the most interesting example is the UK, which is really doing poorly. Their policy just never had a defined set of rules and regulations. Much less focused than our policies, even. The UK sort of adopted a herd immunity approach early on, then switched gears but hesitantly, waiting days if not weeks to truly shut things down. They’re paying for an inconsistent approach. I believe when all is said and done the UK could be the worst hit nation proportionately and perhaps even absolutely in terms of deaths.

      1. Tired. Burning the wick at both ends lol. Keeping up with all the data and scientific articles about covid-19, organizing supplies in my little office at home (small section here: https://imgur.com/a/yfRpj3W ), learning about marketing for youtube, finishing filing taxes… A lot of busywork around the house basically. How about yourself?

        1. I’m well thank you. I love your little section. Especially since Jack is a favorite of mine

          Please take care of you …please

          I smile a bit and suspect God does also when I say God Bless Dr R Stupid. But then I believe he not only knows but has a wonderful sense of humor.

          Be safe. Thank you for all you are doing

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