Five tiger cubs, whose combined names stand for 'beautiful landscape of our country,’ are the star attractions at this South Korean zoo pic.twitter.com/RCnqTpFOY1
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 2, 2022
As we walk into this new year, I’ve never been more optimistic for our shared future. Together, over the past year, we have overcome incredible challenges. In this new year, I know we can make incredible progress as a nation. I wish you and yours a happy and a healthy 2022. pic.twitter.com/fKkwnE2hzS
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) January 1, 2022
In a new children’s book by Stacey Abrams, a girl finds fun and courage in words https://t.co/yEldBWJlq2
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 31, 2021
This new sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion—it's un-American and it's undemocratic.
We must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 30, 2021
Looking ahead to 2022. Wishing you a happy, healthy, and fabulous New Year. pic.twitter.com/eAuCATnoVW
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 31, 2021
germy
For a minute I thought that photo of HRC was Kate McKinnon.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We watched the first half of “Don’t Look Up” last night. I think the people are more horrifying than the planet-destroying comet. I think I might be cheering for the comet
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: HRC looks good.
raven
My understanding is that there are Tigers inside the DMZ and it would be a great nature preserve if they ever reunite.
JPL
When we celebrated the new year a year ago, trump was still president. It’s nice to know that as we welcome 2022, that is no longer the case.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She’s living her best life. Haters gonna hate, and she don’t care.
germy
I’m not sure how much attention this is getting from the beltway press:
Baud
@germy:
?
germy
debbie
@germy:
Yeah, that should be interesting.
NotMax
Elevating tossing and turning to an art.
;)
LiminalOwl
@germy: I thought it was Susan Werner.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: She certainly does!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
NotMax
Inadvertently placed this in the garden thread.
Thanks to the Zoomers who showed up yesterday. Good fun!
Covered the gamut, from COVID to Keir Dullea.
Kay
@germy:
She really is a target of the anti-cancel culture pundits. It’s wacky and unhinged how much they hate her – a lot of sneering and jumping on everything she says and twisting it. It’s almost like the brave defenders of free speech and vigorous debate are hoping to shut her up. They could never, ever put up with what she puts up with everytime she opens her mouth- they’d be whining about a mob cancelling them.
Ken
Hypothetically, would the constitution’s Article IV Section 4 (“the federal government to guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government”) extend to the arrest of governors and state legislators who tried to subvert it? Asking for a friend.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Holy shit… You just made my day. Week. Month. Year. Decade. Century.
ThresherK
In line in my car for a Covid test. Picked up what I hope was a cold at Xmas dinner. Testing starts in 18m, I’ve been here for an hour, and many people are wanting this.
I haven’t spent much time on my local TV station website, but they are doing a good job on where tests are being held.
NotMax
Mashed a pinky toe against something unforgiving yesterday. 99.9% sure not broken but it is not a happy little piggy.
Flamenco practice is right out. ;)
germy
@OzarkHillbilly:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/surprise-medical-bills-illegal-new-law/
raven
How Korea’s Demilitarized Zone Became an Accidental Wildlife Paradise
Kay
@germy:
She’ll state a mainstream opinion, a position in the “debate” they’re supposedly having, not their position but a completely valid observation, and 3 high profile anti-cancel pundits will immediately start howling and questioning her credentials, intellect and right to have an opinion.
None of them notice this contradiction. Because they’re….not that smart.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I blame Democrats. Seriously, as a patient this is unadulterated good news, and long overdue.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: My first thought was of antipersonnel land mines.
Geminid
Go, Stacey Abrams, go!
And fight, Brian Kemp and David Perdue, fight!
germy
@Kay:
Did you see her with Chuck Todd a few days ago? She had him almost sputtering.
LiminalOwl
@NotMax: ooh, wow. Thank you.
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Ken
As noted mathematician Ian Malcolm assures us, “Life will find a way”.
Baud
@Kay:
Cancel them!
Baud
@Kay:
Can’t be a valid opinion if its not their opinion.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly:
This law is an excellent beginning, and I hope Democrats can add improvements, like ground ambulance coverage. But that depends on the voters. We need more Democrats in office.
But right now this law will save many of us from financial ruin. Thank you Democrats.
Baud
@germy:
She came overprepared!
germy
Scuffletuffle
@NotMax: Ouch, ouch, ouch! Poor toe…
mali muso
@ThresherK: Fingers crossed! Glad that you were able to access a testing site. It’s been pretty crazy over this way getting tests. Kiddo just recovered from Covid last week, and hubby and I didn’t pick it up from her despite being slathered in her germs, so if you’re boosted, consider that a data point of their effectiveness. Good luck!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Tell your friends. Turn Missouri blue!
Wapiti
@raven: That makes sense. In the US, military range areas are often refuge for various species.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I once had to take a ground ambulance from our hospital out here in the boonies up to a *real* hospital in STL. Fortunately I had carpenters insurance which covered everything including the meat wagon.
** not a fair characterization, just that there are situations rural hospitals aren’t really prepared for.
Kay
@germy:
Oh, God no. I can’t watch Chuck Todd. But I read the exchange. They immediately twisted it, because of course they did:
That’s true.
It was raised with covid too. AA and Latino parents of public school students were much more supportive of covid mitigations in schools- that’s why polling showed covid mitigations as the majority position over and over again, despite so much media attention to parents who were outraged at masks, etc. This consistent polling was ignored in favor of a theme that said “parents” opposed covid mitigations. The white was silent.
So they’d look at a majority/minority urban district that had strict covid mitigation rules and screech that “parents” didn’t support that, but the parents with kids in those districts probably did support it- they just weren’t white so they weren’t counted.
LiminalOwl
@OzarkHillbilly, @germy,: Unfortunately, for behavioral health providers, it is not unadulterated good news—and please hear me out before you say anything about greedy providers. (And yes, I am a provider. In community mental health, where my annual salary—and I am one of the lucky ones; after many years of working fee-for-service, I now have a salaried job—is well below the median in my area, just barely covering expenses.)
As I understand it, and as has been explained to me by more knowledgeable folks, this bill as it stands would require me not only to provide a diagnosis immediately (and possibly before meeting a potential client—which is both difficult and an ethical violation), but to tell them how long treatment will last, and the prognosis. This is often much more difficult with mental health than with physical health, for a number of reasons including clients’ limited knowledge when they are calling me initially and a totally rational hesitancy about vulnerability, as well as the less measurable factors in mental-health treatment.
Don’t get me wrong. From both sides of the fence, I applaud what this bill is trying to do. But the law of unintended consequences still applies. This situation, if not remedied, will for many people limit rather than increaseaccess to mental health care.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I don’t have any friends, just lesser enemies.
Baud
@LiminalOwl:
How much out-of-network stuff happens in the mental health field?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Haha. Good philosophy.
Baud
@Kay:
Same with “working class.” As you know.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: I don’t know where to find the numbers (will update if I find something), but anecdotally a fair amount.
germy
(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary)
debbie
@germy:
This shows what a racket healthcare has become. Waste disposal is jealous.
Kay
@germy:
I was and am pro opening schools but I had horrible allies who ignored or dismissed any evidence that went the other way in favor of a political/ideological narrative so I don’t want them on my side. They’re not helpful. Public schools are too important to turn over to pundits. No.
germy
@debbie:
(The Dog and the Physician, a fable by Ambrose Bierce)
OzarkHillbilly
That’s why I said, “as a patient this is unadulterated good news,” because I know well that there are always unintended consequences and forgotten/misunderstood sectors/actors in every system.
As to the rest, my ignorance makes no comment. My own (limited) personal experiences with behavioral health providers has not been good and my pov is unfairly colored by that fact.
debbie
@Kay:
At least here, the parents disputing school shut-downs always sounded like they just wanted to get the damn kids out of their houses.
ThresherK
@mali muso: Thanks. My wife is immunocompromised and getting another test tomorrow.
Two at the dinner tested positive. I’m reading the fine print, how many minutes, how far from me, and isolating already.
prostratedragon
@germy: [gospel dance gif]
JMG
My suburban Boston town, and others in the vicinity, will not reopen tomorrow because they are not ready to test all staff by Monday morning. One of the “professional education” days off in the calendar is being used. So far, no bitching by parents (people here bitch a lot about a lot of stuff, too) as the logic that better a day off now than shutting down for 10 days when 30 percent of the teachers test positive is pretty hard to refute. This is one of the top school districts in the country, as my quarterly tax bill indicates, so I’m sure no educational damage will be done.
LiminalOwl
@OzarkHillbilly: I am sorry (but not at all surprised) that you have had bad experiences.
prostratedragon
Below one of the linked tweets I ran into these two tough kids.
Suburban Mom
@ThresherK: This is day 6 after my positive PCR test. I’m asymptomatic, vaxxed, and boosted, and have isolated since I got the results. Suburban Dad is negative despite close proximity during what should have been the most contagious period. I hope things go well for you and your family.
OzarkHillbilly
@LiminalOwl: Guano happens. To quote the immortal Monty Python squire, “I’m not dead yet.”
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Grrr…
(via IamHappyToast)
Cheers,
Scott.
Van Buren
@Wapiti: My mom’s house borders on land that was used for bombardier training in WWII. She will never have neighbors on that side!
germy
YOU COME RIGHT OVER HERE
AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY
ARE HAVING ANOTHER YEAR
–Telegram from Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley December 31st. 1929
Kay
@debbie:
Kids really did get harmed. They were just at loose ends- their parents still had to go to work. There was the kind of fiction that everyone was working remotely- most people were not. For a lot of them school is the only predictable, orderly, safe place they have and they lost that, abruptly. My own kid who was older and (mostly) handled his own schoolwork and is in the upper income bracket for his district and didn’t require supervision was clearly negatively impacted. He’s social. He was diminished is the way I thought of it- like some energy source he relied upon had disappeared. Just operating at a minimum.
lowtechcyclist
@Ken:
I’d consider it a good start if the current House majority used that part of the Constitution to preemptively declare invalid the incoming House delegations from all states that significantly altered the respective parties’ Congressional representation via gerrymandering.
Because as you know, Article I, Section 5 states that “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own Members.”
So they can do that, and even the Bogus Scotus can’t tell them they can’t.
debbie
@Kay:
Yeah, I understand that. I also understood that some soccer moms had to give up their “daytime freedoms” for their kids. /gasp/
Kay
@debbie:
I think there wasn’t enough recognition of the unique nature of childhood and the limited span. Time is different for childen than it is for people in their thirties or forties or fifties than it is for people who are 7 or people who are 16. You can sort of “miss” two years in your thirties and you have the long span of adulthood to make that up- you’ll travel later or have a party later. You can’t be 16 again. You’re then 18 and you have to do different things. You can’t go back and do the 16 year old things because you have to start doing the 18 year old things. The passage of time is more profound for them, because they’re moving thru stages rapidly in a closing window. I didn’t move thru any stages. I was already grown.
Kalakal
@NotMax: Yes it was fun. And I learned how to pronounce Dullea!
Spanky
STOP ASKING TO BRING ON THE METEOR!
The ground track as provided by satellite data shows it was just about targeting Bethany.
Quinerly
@germy: I love this pic of Hillary.
Starfish
@Kay: I lacked confidence in school opening because at some point I did not want those risks taken with my kid’s life.
However, when we did go back this year, I noticed how much happier my child was.
Anyway, there were so many anti-school people online lately who have troubled me.
Their narrative feels like “Schools are only open, so your boss can make you go back to work,” but the social services run out of schools and the mental health of children are real things that matters.
The community just south of me burned down the other day. Numerous people lost homes. School can be a place where those children will be able to have one thing where there is a routine that is normal. It will be the one thing those kids have not lost. I want that for them.
One thing we learned about school in this last year or two was around how many social services just quietly run out of schools. Those free meals matter to people. The speech therapy, the occupational therapy, and the respite from taking care of children with high medical needs are important.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: Not the update I’d hoped for, but more info: According to another blog I read, the vast majority of psychotherapists in the US do not take insurance at all, and therefore this Act does not apply to them. Which has further interesting consequences. (I have emailed the blogger for permission to repost her grafs on the subject here—redacting the personal parts—and will do so if there’s still interest by tbe time she replies.
since the economics of health care is one of her major topics, she’s promised a long piece on the No Surprises. I can share that when she posts it, if you want.
Patricia Kayden
Baud
@LiminalOwl:
Don’t put yourself to any trouble. I was just interested in your comment about unintended consequences.
Starfish
@Kay: Even when parents were working remotely, we were WORKING, not just hanging with our kids. All the pediatric-recommended “no more than two hours of screen time per day” went so far out the window.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: My daughter thought she was doing better on remote education than going to school in person under heavy COVID protocols. But just based on her academic performance (and her descriptions of her social contacts), I suspect she was wrong about this.
Her social life was already heavily enough online that I think it was less of an impact than it might have been to teenagers of an earlier age. But there was a cost.
LiminalOwl
@Kay: Thank you. That is really important. I think protecting from Covid (kids, and teachers, and staff) is also important. Unfortunately I have no solution.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: School is one of the many, many institutions that get bashed on social media as “[X] does not actually exist to benefit us but merely to make us obedient drones for our corporate masters,” etc. I suppose there is no innocent anything under capitalism.
Nelle
@LiminalOwl: I would like to read this.
raven
Twitter permanently suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account
Greene’s personal account was suspended over “repeated violations” to the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, the company said.
eclare
@prostratedragon: Love it!
LiminalOwl
@Nelle: Thanks! I will update when I can. Or, if you want to read the blog, it’s at siderea.dreamwidth.org . I don’t agree with everything Sidera writes, but IMO she’s always worth reading.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin:
My child who is not great at social stuff has friends this year. This is huge.
I also learned that in the district that I live in in the last year of elementary school, to prepare kids for middle school, the teachers are specializing in subjects and having the kids move from place to place a little, so they will be ready for middle school.
The kids in their first year of middle school did not have that preparation because they were online for their last year of elementary school.
OzarkHillbilly
Retrieved after decades: the painting supposedly ‘bought’ by the Nazis
I’m looking forward to the book.
LiminalOwl
@LiminalOwl: too late to edit, alas. But here is what Siderea was writing on February 5, 2020:
Title: 2020? It’s 1918, #2 [curr ev, pestilence, med]
URL: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1577558.html
WaterGirl
Love the baby tigers. Who among us hasn’t chewed on the backs of our siblings? :-)
Kay
@LiminalOwl:
I agree.
It’s simplistic but I picture it like a slider, one for “schools” and another for “restaurants” and “amusement parks” and so forth. You lower risk on one area to prioritize another- so my choice would be shut down entertainment facilities in order to keep schools open, because you can’t be seven years old again- two years later you’re nine and on to the next stage but you can go to club when you’re 27 like you would have when you’re 25. Just decide schools are essential and do whatever it takes. It’s like a nursing home or a public utility. It has to stay open.
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
Fantastic!
Another Scott
@Kay: OTOH, throughout my early childhood, childhood diseases were a real thing and very disruptive. There were still cases of polio in the US in the early 1960s. I got chicken pox and German measles; my brother got the mumps. My dad lost a week or more of work from getting mononucleosis when he was in his 30s.
And before that, there were waves of smallpox and cholera and flu and all the rest. Humans have coped with disease, and we’re getting much better at it.
Kids really are resilient. They have no choice but to be. Yes, we need to do more to help them (and their parents and schools), and Biden is trying to do that. But public health must come first, because without public health the waves continue. There are ways to keep schools (and staff) safe in a pandemic, but it takes real effort and money and time and much more than just pronouncements that “we’re keeping schools open”. (And I know you’re not arguing otherwise, but too many GQPers are.)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Starfish
@LiminalOwl:
This is the siderea post for anyone who wants to follow along. She discusses a lot of things that are not relevant first, so search for the word insurance.
We already have a “no surprise medical billing” thing here in Colorado, so I am not sure why people are “we are doomed” on a national one.
The place where I have seen it work has been in hospitals. When I go to get my mammogram at a hospital, they will say, “mammogram will cost no more than this much, but since this is your first one of the year, it is preventative care that won’t cost you anything, sign here.”
Then, “oh, your boobs are strange, you need a follow-up mammogram.” Then you go in, and they say, “this will cost you this much, sign here.” That way you do not have to wonder “Am I totally screwed? How many new automobiles does a mammogram cost?”
I mean, the American medical system is really gross that you have to talk to the finance people before you see medical professionals, but this is better than “Hey, we are going to charge you some unknowable potentially bankrupting amount for whatever this is.”
Phylllis
@Kay: And a lot of kids are having trouble readjusting to the school routine. I think some of it is due to this ever-present possibility of schools closing again.
Kay
@LiminalOwl:
My middle son, who is in his early twenties and single and goes to concerts and clubs resumed doing that after he was vaccinated. I’d rather he didn’t -he’s had covid twice, once after vaxxed, and I just feel like he’s pushing it. But it’s easy for me to say- I did all that in my early twenties. Other than not traveling and fewer family events my life didn’t change that much. His experience is profoundly different because of his age and stage of life. He got the booster, he wears a mask when it’s required but he doesn’t intend to work, do crossword puzzles and watch Netflix from ages 23 to 26, and I don’t blame him.
WaterGirl
@germy: Wow, that is a big Joe Biden deal!
Starfish
@Another Scott: Hey, this is not at all the same. Chicken pox lasted like two weeks. Mono is more like six months or so?
A lot of the children in school now have missed at least a year of in-person school, possibly a year and a half. Imagine kindergarteners who never had any preschool. Imagine second-graders who never learned to read in the first grade.
The youngest kids who did not understand we were in a pandemic cried and cried. They thought their parents were punishing them and pulling them out of activities because they had been bad.
Early on, my son asked me how long school would be closed. We told him that we did not know because we had never lived through anything like this. I mean, as a young child, he accepted that there will be new experiences that had never happened before in his lifetime. As his parents, experiences that had never happened before in our lifetime, were much more unsettling.
Phylllis
@Starfish: Absolutely on the services that are daily provided in schools. Our therapists & special ed teachers were very quick to reach out to parents to figure out how to get those kids to the school building at least 2-3 times a week. Occupational or speech therapy via Google meets is not effective.
MagdaInBlack
@raven: I was wondering, I went to see her most recent bs, and it was suspended. Tsk tsk, MTG.
Now she can be a martyr over that.
NeenerNeener
@Kay: There’s a British blogger whining on Twitter that because of COVID she’s missing all the fun of her late 20s. She got married last year and took several vacations in Europe so I feel considerably less than sympathetic. Also, I don’t remember my late 20s being all that much fun, what with the job and the house, etc, even without COVID.
Uncle Jeffy
About friggin’ time!
Citizen_X
@raven: Ha ha ha ha good!
germy
It doesn’t seem to be gone.
EDIT: Oh, I see. Her other account is gone.
So she’s “half” cancelled.
Another Scott
@Starfish: Agreed it’s hard. And it argues for spending whatever it takes to keep schools safe and open.
Kids will adjust and get through this, like the rest of us. (I attended 6+ different schools before high school – I appreciate how hard disruptions are.) Most of their cohort are going through the same thing, so they’ll have that community for additional support.
They will adjust much better, of course, if governments and school districts and all the rest do the work that needs to be done.
But with all of that said, the number one goal continues to be crushing community spread of the virus. Nothing will really be back to normal until that happens. And if the school systems are such that closing in-person schools for a time has to be part of that solution, then we need to do that.
(To be clear, there were numerous examples early on of schools staying open without increases in community spread. It’s not clear at all that that can happen with Omicron, but time will tell.)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
That’s her “official” account, not her personal one. Probably a stupid distinction.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Let’s not forget that the same thing is true of ages at the other end of the spectrum.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy:
But she lies on this account too.
germy
p.a.
OT but I went to the past Front Pager page & one of the first comments I saw in a Tom in Texas post was by greennotGreen ?
germy
mrmoshpotato
We have snow! Huzzah!
MagdaInBlack
@germy: ” Quack quack quack cancel quack patriot quack quack” should about sum it up.
Mike in NC
The lunatic Marjorie T. Greene was booted off Twitter for being a raving lunatic. And water is wet. Maybe we can rid ourselves of scum like her and Ted Crud and Lauren Bozobert and Joe Manshit in this new year.
Matt
@Matt McIrvin:
I’d buy the innocent interpretation of the “schools are important, we should do whatever it takes to keep them open” line better if the people pushing it were in favor of other restrictions to limit spread.
But instead, most of them take the “indoor dining must be open AND schools must be open” tack, which IS straight-up Our Right To Profits Supersedes Your Right to Exist stuff.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Majorly Trump-trash Greene
Good grief, what a POS. Also, oh no! The COMMUNISTS!
Someone tell this idiot that the junior Senator from Wisconsin died long before she was able to grow up to be a pile of shit.
germy
@MagdaInBlack:
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I feel the same way about lefty Twitter accounts.
skerry
@germy: Are air ambulances covered? I had a hell of a time getting coverage for my daughter’s air lift a few years ago.
germy
germy
@skerry:
How it works: Patients still have to pay in-network copays, deductibles and other cost-sharing, which have been rising, but any additional out-of-network bills are now prohibited for the following services:
debbie
@Kay:
I remember enough of my nieces’ and nephews’ childhoods to know they had no sense of the future, only of the present. As such, remote learning and not seeing friends must have seemed like life imprisonment to children today. I get that totally. Still, had they gotten sick and died, would that have made reopening schools worthwhile?
brantl
@raven: Now, when will they take the wheels off Cawthorne’s bus?
WaterGirl
@p.a.: greennotGreen ?
debbie
@raven:
It’s inevitable she’ll abuse her official account. Then what will Twitter do? I’m rooting for injuries, but not to Twitter.
OzarkHillbilly
Teens and young adults driving record Covid cases in US, health officials say
For once I get to unironically say, “Kids these days…”
And “Back in my day….”
And oh yeah, “Get off my lawn!!!”
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Meanwhile, crossing guards still get killed on the job at *twice the rate* of cops.
** Hyperbole alert. I forget what it actually is and am way to lazy to look it up, but they do get killed on the job more than cops.
skerry
@germy: Thanks
p.a.
I quit twitter after being suspended for responding to a ted cruz covid lie by suggesting that him sucking on a tailpipe would not necessarily be fatal. No twitter action against ted, of course. Now twitter emails me to come back. As efg would say, “fuck’em.”
Lyrebird
@LiminalOwl: Hi, asking for a friend… actually asking for my students. I hope some of them will follow in your footsteps. What you state is one of several problems in the way insurance uses diagnoses, which fits physical injury treatment better than mental health treatment. Do you know of any organizations trying to change this?
germy
Roger Moore
@Starfish:
The fundamental problem is that the US doesn’t have a medical system. It has a whole bunch of different systems that were created at different times for different purposes, and people are stuck dealing with all the weird interfaces and gaps. Some of the more obvious examples I can think of off the top of my head:
It’s frankly crazy, and nobody who was redesigning the system from scratch would ever come up with something like that.
Cameron
@OzarkHillbilly: So? Arm all the crossing guards – problem solved! Easy-peasy!
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack (phone):
It apparently isn’t as stupid as all that. She’s used her personal account to spread health misinformation but hasn’t used her official account that way. If she starts using her official account to spread misinformation, it will be banned soon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cameron: Heh.
There must be a wildfire burning nearby. I see little white flakes drifting on the wind.
debbie
@germy:
Good god, two and one-half meters long!!! ?
MagdaInBlack
@germy: ?
Miss Bianca
@p.a.: Awww…lots of nyms I miss in those posts.
On a happier note, I went back to “First posts of current FPers” and found Betty Cracker’s! And my first thought was, “yeah, Betty C, I remember being so psyched when she moved over here from RumpRoast!” And my second thought was, “shit, that was TEN YEARS AGO already?!” And my third thought (bear with me, here) was, “wow, there used to be *a lot* more trolls on this site than there are now. Half the posts are warning/betting Betty C that she’s going to get her own personal stalker(s) any second now…”
Ah, them were the days. I was still a lowly lurker then. And frequenting a lot more blogs than I do nowadays…
WaterGirl
@debbie: There’s no law that says elected officials are entitled to twitter accounts. I hope this was a warning shot and if she keeps it up on her official account, they will permanently ban that one, too.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Yep, hers and the others. Looking at you, Ted Cruz.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: A bazillion legger.
Starfish
@Another Scott: I am aligned with Kay here.
The economy is multi-faceted. We prioritized opening restaurants over schools, so if we are serious about schools, we need to prioritize them above live entertainment and restaurants.
Within schools, there are cautions that can be taken that some districts have taken like improving the HVAC and filtration, having kids wear masks, podding kids, and regular testing.
I would not prioritize schools if businesses were just being more sane than schools in preventative measures.
LiminalOwl
@germy: And that part is great. Lemme tell you about the copays from July, when I went the ER per my health plan’s insistence and ended up i patient for one night and one day… no, you don’t have to ask.
Baud
So we’ve just totally abandoned the idea of using surplus children as food?
Figures.
Suzanne
@Starfish:
Very much this. Mr. Suzanne is a bilingual SLP who works in the school setting, and schools being closed has been terrible for these kids. Early and consistent intervention is critical, and closing schools has been very harmful. This is time a lot of kids will very much struggle to overcome.
p.a.
@Baud: They’re not lean meat like they used to be.
Suzanne
@LiminalOwl: In my experience, it is surprisingly difficult to find mental health providers who take my insurance, and I have never had weird insurance. Therapists and counselors are the hardest to find. But the psychiatry shortage is real, too. When we were in Phoenix, which is now the fifth-largest city in the country, I was looking for an adolescent psych for Spawn the Elder. It took a lot of effort to find one, as there were probably fewer than ten practices and many weren’t accepting new patients. I paid out-of-pocket for a lot.
Joe Falco
@WaterGirl:
Considering people like her who believe not doubling down on the crazy is a form of surrender and cuckoldery I’d give it a month before Twitter will need to ban her other account. Note I typed “need” and not that Twitter will do it.
Kay
@debbie:
I don’t think the rationale was ever that they would get sick and die. The rationale was they would infect other, more vulnerable people- which is absolutely valid, but there has to be adjustments to risk/harm to the various groups as the pandemic goes on- something that was a rational mitigation if we’re talking about 6 months becomes unreasonably harmful to certain groups as the period is extended. It has to be weighed, and reweighed. TIME is one of the factors and it’s a particularly relevant factor for children and young adults because their window closes. It’s 20 years from birth to adult. They gotta get a certain amount of shit accomplished – both academically and socially- in that 20 year span. If you pull out three years that’s a big chunk.
For little kids “socialization” is the main point of school. It’s the “work” they’re doing- they’re learning how to function in groups other than their family group. They can’t do it without other people.
I can plow thru the times tables with my 3rd grader. Just pound that right into her head. But I can’t give her what 25 other third graders give her, all that interaction and lessons learned and relationships.
LiminalOwl
@Lyrebird: Great question! Not specifically, but it’s something I hear about in discussions with colleagues. A big part of the problem is the insurance companies are powerful in a way that generally leaves MH/BH providers hamstrung. Most colleagues at my professional level just don’t take insurance, because if concerns including the diagnosis issue and privacy more generally, as well as financial considerations.
dnfree
@LiminalOwl: thank you for your work. My husband spent his entire career in the mental health field, starting in the 1960s, and what you do is very important, although not reflected in either the salary or the funding.
Starfish
@Suzanne:
My son has private speech therapy and school speech therapy. Though he probably did not need either anymore, we let him continue online with his private speech therapist because that gave him someone outside our house to talk to.
I also know some people whose kids had HUGE needs. For example, one person is a single mom whose son has a chromosomal disorder. There was no way that she could work to support her family and spend the whole day taking care of her child’s needs. I am not sure how they dealt.
Another person I know has a child with Down syndrome along with some problems associated with that. That child had a stay at home parent to help but needed occupational therapy to support milestones such as learning to walk.
Those are very big things that schools helped with.
Feathers
@LiminalOwl: If you are on salary, then presumably you are “in network” for all insurances your employer accepts. There should be no issue for you.
The problem is providers seeing patients in a hospital or other facility while refusing to accept the pay levels the facility has negotiated with insurers. Patients are then expected to pay these extra costs, which are essentially corrupt and fraudulent.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
There is a fair amount of misinformation in her official account, although it’s more subtle.
Hey, just asking questions, you know!
And she’s heavily involved in the persecution of a warden at the D.C. jail where some of the J6 defendants are being held.
Geminid
@Starfish: From Richmond, Virginia TV station WRIC, November 2021:
The state money is to come out of funding from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last February, as will the local money. I expect other states are doing similarly.
MagdaInBlack
@Steeplejack: She’s also a regular on Steve Bannon’s “Warroom.” He just pulls her string and of she goes on some wild rant-o-the-day.
Feathers
@germy: Part of the problem is a history of grifters running fraudulent ambulance schemes. Enormous bills for elderly and disabled people being taken by ambulance to fictitious doctor’s appointments.
Part of the issue is that we need to revamp our police force away from the war on some people who use certain kinds of drugs and towards these sorts of “white collar” crimes. If this sort of shit had been prosecuted all along we wouldn’t be in the political mess that we are now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: I admit it’s not an issue I’ve followed closely, as a childless and not knowing much about the science of it, but I do feel like ventilation is the under-discussed aspect of school re-opening (and everything else).
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I liked the health aspect when I read about this initiative. I also liked the political aspect: it’s something parents and other people can see and appreciate, and it’s money that will boost the economy this year.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No one’s talking about it because it’s not really feasible to improve ventilation on a large scale in a timely fashion. It’s not just opening windows or plugging in fans or “turning up the air conditioner”. HVAC improvements are very disruptive, and expensive, and they require engineering and construction and tearing out ceilings and ordering big air handlers and creating more chilled water, and more electricity to run more air handlers, etc etc etc. Current standards for operating rooms, for example, are 20 air changes per hour. But the typical high-rise office building gets under 1 ACH.
Suzanne
I will note that many classrooms across the country don’t have windows at all.
Honestly, if they could even go to Costco and buy a bunch of Dyson air filter things and put one in each classroom, that would more than consume the $250M and probably be the best that could be done.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
It’s not simplistic; this is exactly the reality.
We needed/need to reduce community spread to where risk that one is interacting with an infected person is low. We collectively as a society clearly demonstrated the selfishness of American (also true for other countries) “adults” by prioritizing adult social venues over schools, and in many places rejecting simple common-sense measures like universal masking of the population in shared indoor spaces, for partisan tribal-marker reasons.
In a do-over, I would push for normalization of N95 level [1] respirators and medical masks for everyone, by early spring 2020, before the anti-masker propaganda operations could organize. I would require masks in indoors public shared-air spaces about the same time (by late march 2020 airborne spread from asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected people was scientifically established). When community spread is high (above some threshold), close restaurants except for takeout, close bars(/gyms if unmasked), but keep schools open, with strict mask (and spacing?) policies and decent medical-grade masks and ventilation improvements when possible. When community spread drops (for whatever reason, including vaccines, like July 2021), consider relaxing requirements a bit, with tight monitoring.
And treat the major variants like Delta/Omicron as different viruses (the effective were/are), that need customized responses. Public health measures were being discarded just as the much much more infectious Delta was taking off in the US. This was clearly unwise at the time.
[1] If use of N95 level respirators had been normalized early in the pandemic, the “masks don’t work” crowd would have gotten much less traction, because N95-level respirators work, especially when fitted and leak-tested. (If they didn’t, there would be a lot more dead doctors/nurses/medical workers, construction workers, and others who work with hazardous dusts.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: I knew as soon as I read my comment I had put it badly, and I may still be off base but… I was thinking of air filtration rather than just “ventilation”, HEPA and other air filters, though I am still ignorant of the cost, effectiveness, number of machines needed, how the noise would interrupt teaching…. Is that what you mean by “air handlers”?
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: To make it very, very simple, the air handler is the part of the HVAC system that delivers a specific amount of nice hot or cold (and humidified and filtered) air to a space. Usually, air filters (HEPA) go within the air handler. The problem with “increasing filtration” is that it reduces the amount of air the handler can deliver given a certain amount of energy. So buildings that have old air handlers can’t just change out the filters for HEPAs because the air handler then won’t be able to deliver enough air. This is a super-simplistic explanation.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I’m curious. What is the working life of a typical school HVAC system? Are new ones more energy efficient? Residential systems seem to be.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
I think you have some good ideas, but I’m not sure that all of them were practical. For example, there was a genuine shortage of medical-grade masks for quite a while. Cloth masks became popular because medical-grade just weren’t available, even for medical personnel. We should have done more to prioritize production of high-grade masks, but that still would have taken some time.
One thing I think we did really badly was dealing with the human element. Too many of our public health measures were built around an assumption of near-perfect compliance with no consideration of how likely people were to obey and how much stress we were putting on their lives. The result was rules that were so strict they were never going to be obeyed, and that really pushed people toward a negative attitude toward all kinds of public health measures. We needed to do a better job of balancing those things. Instead of telling people “you can’t do X” we needed to do more of “here’s how to do X as safely as possible”.
The big example of this is that it became clear fairly early on that moving stuff outdoors made it much safer. It still wasn’t perfectly safe to have big outdoor gatherings, but it was a massive improvement. We should have taken advantage of that and encouraged more stuff to get restarted outdoors much sooner than we did. I think we should have used outdoor public spaces like parks much more than we did, especially as a space for church services. Churches wound up being a focal point for resistance for all kinds of public health measures, and doing something to help them continue to hold services might have made a big difference.
Another example is restaurants. People have pooh-poohed the desire to keep restaurants open, but they serve an important social purpose as a social gathering place. In the absence of restaurants, a lot of people just went back to visiting their friends in person, often without masks, which was probably worse for public health than allowing outdoor restaurant service would have been.
Suzanne
Suzanne
@Geminid: Fuck, I had a nice explanation for you and it got eated. Alas.
Short answer: most buildings are designed in thirty-year cycles. Many schools in the US are far older than that, of course. But if you get 30 years out of a HVAC system, that’s pretty good. Air handler components like motors and fans are frequent service and replacement items. Newer systems are more energy-efficient and also more effective. This is due in part to energy efficiency codes and air quality codes both getting stricter over many years. Many campuses and large buildings run off of central utility plants, which create chilled water to run to the heat exchanger component of the HVAC system, and this makes it more efficient at scale.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
As far as schools, I don’t think it could have been federal policy because there are 10,000 school districts and they’re all different. Biden is pitch-perfect on schools, IMO. He doesn’t have a huge role in schools and he’s experienced enough to know it.
I was hoping there would be a mayor- of say a medium sized city – with a “strong mayor” role in the school district (which is a real thing) who was NOT a covid denialist and not invested politically in owning the libs but instead had just said “schools are our priority- top five- and we’re going to move heaven and earth to keep them open as safely as possible”. We needed that viewpoint and approach, if for nothing else just to try things for the next pandemic. A school district leader probably couldn’t have done it – it needed to be a political leader. Not some imaginary “middle ground”- one from the Right and then one from the Left- see, the porridge is just right!
A real position that was a rejiggering of risk/benefit as the pandemic continued. Layer the mitigations but with a starting point that says “this entity has to stay open, how do we do that?”
Put it in the food distribution and production group of “essential”.
J R in WV
@raven:
But it can’t be a park you can visit, because it’s paved with un-exploded ordinance. And mines. And booby-traps. Would take decades to clean it up. Or am I way off?
Suzanne
I want to note that part of why systems have gotten more efficient over time is because of return. If you think about it, air that has been supplied to a space once is already at the right temperature and humidity, so it needs less “processing”. But it might be dirty or smelly. So increased filtration allows more air to be reused. But returning air (rather than exhausting it) requires the air handler to be designed to cycle more air. Returning air also requires (usually) a second set of ducts to carry that air back to the AHU. Older buildings often don’t have return air ducts because they just returned air through the plenum (space between underside of roof or floor above and the ceiling), but this is dirty AF and is no longer allowed in certain types of buildings.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
Even in buildings that require 100% fresh air- I know our main hospital building falls in this category- you should be able to improve thermal efficiency by running the intake and exhaust through a heat exchanger. I know it’s not a free lunch, since you’ll increase the backpressure of the system, but I would assume it’s worth it.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wife was on her 4th psychiatrist who no longer wishes to treat her.
3 out of 4 were not good, the good one died of ovarian cancer, provided life advice that was ignorant of real life.Told wife to explain her disability to her boss, who then used that knowledge to torture wife, which anyone with real world work experience could and would have expected.
One guy abandoned his practice under strange circumstances, snuck away.I took wife by the office for an appointment, the guy was GONE. No forwarding address…
The first one learned to levitate via meditation…
Suzanne
@Roger Moore: Only specific spaces in a hospital get 100% outside air (surgical areas yes, inpatient rooms no, for example)…. but yes, in general, you’re correct.
The overarching point of the conversation is that “increasing ventilation” is actually a pretty big hurdle. I have been a part of AHU replacement projects that cost well over $5M, which is not even that big, and they require engineering and permitting and months of construction. It’s not buying off-the-shelf stuff and there are not mechanical engineers growing on trees.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Thanks. It’s always good to hear from someone with a good base of knowledge.
Xantar
So apparently February 22 is associated in Japanese with cats because the Japanese word for 2, “ni,” sounds like “nyan” (the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound a cat makes) when repeated over and over. February 22 is this “nyan nyan nyan.”
This February is of course 22/2/22 or “nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan” and it’s the Year of the Tiger. I think this means we have to prostrate ourselves before the Balloon Juice calendar on that day.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Our house (half of a duplex) initially had a return vent only in the ground floor, which was terrible for summer A/C. We had a high return installed in the ceiling of the top floor, but to do that, they had to punch holes through the shelves of two bathroom closets to run the vertical return duct through, because there was nowhere else to put it. A lot of the time, my work feels like the software version of that.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold:
So much was gated by supply. Using N95 masks was actually taboo because it was hoarding of scarce and precious medical gear (and the Trump administration was actively making it worse, possibly out of malice).