Coronavirus prep
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'Do vaccines against pneumonia protect you against the new coronavirus?'
No. Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, do not provide protection against the new coronavirus.
The virus is so new and different that it needs its own vaccine. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine against 2019-nCoV, and WHO is supporting their efforts.
Although these vaccines are not effective against 2019-nCoV, vaccination against respiratory illnesses is highly recommended to protect your health.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
Thanks for the previous replies. This particular answer does seem like more doubletalk in some ways. Sigh.
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@kimny72
Thanks for that Forbes article about masks. I went down an internet rabbit hole with that one! It was good!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2020/04/01/should-everyone-wear-a-mask-in-public-maybe-but-its-complicated/?fbclid=IwAR0ZwcAFs3WS_0e0cnLO-OczcxRX_W33CSgjcr0tfNH5tEFrp1815Pm4i9k#147ca23da02f2 -
Further to what @jo_nz posted, this is our specific advice in NZ:
Leaving your house
Please stay at home as much as you can. Any unnecessary travel could spread COVID-19. If you are over 70, or are immunosuppressed, you should not be leaving the house at all.
Some people will need to go outside occasionally. For example to take a short walk for exercise or mental wellbeing, or to visit local essential services like the doctor, pharmacy or supermarket.
If you do leave the house, here are some do’s and don’ts to remember:
Keep a 2 metre distance from other people at all times.
Stay local if you go out for exercise and stay close to home.
Keep it solitary when going out, just by yourself or with the people you live with.
If you're exercising in your neighbourhood and it's too busy, go home. Go out later.
Help our emergency services by only doing safe activities, such as going for a walk.
Don’t go swimming, surfing, hunting or tramping.
Don’t touch surfaces others may have touched and avoid park benches or playgrounds.
Don’t travel far from home, especially not to baches or second homes.
Only shop for essential supplies.
Wash your hands regularly.
See more tips about Shopping safelyhttps://covid19.govt.nz/help-and-advice/for-everyone/shopping-safely/
Stay local
Your local area means the area near your home that you regularly visit for essential services.
What is considered local will differ depending on where you live. City dwellers may have a supermarket or dairy close by. If you live rurally, you may need to take a drive to reach these.
If you live in an area where a walk in the neighbourhood isn’t practical, you can drive a short distance to reach an area, like a beach, where you can go for a quick walk. If the beach is busy, and you can’t stay 2 metres away from other people, go home. Do not stay at the beach and sunbathe and please do not swim.
Most of all during this time, we encourage you to continue to be kind to one another. Stay in touch with your older relatives and vulnerable people, talk to your friends, whānau and neighbours over the phone and see if they need your support.
Acts of kindness and maintaining these connections is essential while we work to stop the spread of COVID-19.9 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Good piece on cursive and differences: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170502-what-your-handwriting-says-about-you
This is pretty much what I was thinking of. Cursive writing isn't some kind of universal writing beyond the ages. I have a whole bunch of stuff from way back when from my dad and I can barely make it out...I read cursive just fine...my cursive...the cursive I was taught in 2nd grade, not cursive from somewhere in the 1700-1800 hundreds. It mostly looks like chicken scratch to me. This notion of not being able to descifer something it's in cursive if our kids don't learn this obsolete skill is kinda funny. Like I said, I can read cursive just fine...just not that of the 1700-1800 and even early 1900s.
I'd personally rather my kids do things like learning to type, learning software, learning how to do online research, etc...its far more important than an antiquated writing style. I'm 46 and haven't penned a damn thing since bootcamp in 1993. *kitten* moves on.
I will just presume this gets a general disagree from *kitten* morons...I'm apparently on the full on disagree button...take care *kitten* dip *kitten*...interesting that you have no actual opinion or anything like that and you just click your stupid *kitten* button. Don't be a *kitten* *kitten* and actually say something *kitten*...*kitten* cry babies...
I miss the days of being able to see what the *kitten*s were when you quote someone before you hit "post reply." Although, I think that was before the kitten filter.8 -
Diatonic12 wrote: »'Do vaccines against pneumonia protect you against the new coronavirus?'
No. Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, do not provide protection against the new coronavirus.
The virus is so new and different that it needs its own vaccine. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine against 2019-nCoV, and WHO is supporting their efforts.
Although these vaccines are not effective against 2019-nCoV, vaccination against respiratory illnesses is highly recommended to protect your health.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
Thanks for the previous replies. This particular answer does seem like more doubletalk in some ways. Sigh.
How is it double talk? The vaccines won't protect you against getting infected by SARS-CoV-2. Not having an immune system weakened by other illnesses may help you fight it off, or prevent your immune system by becoming overwhelmed with too much to try to fight off, should you become infected.11 -
Diatonic12 wrote: »'Do vaccines against pneumonia protect you against the new coronavirus?'
No. Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, do not provide protection against the new coronavirus.
The virus is so new and different that it needs its own vaccine. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine against 2019-nCoV, and WHO is supporting their efforts.
Although these vaccines are not effective against 2019-nCoV, vaccination against respiratory illnesses is highly recommended to protect your health.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
Thanks for the previous replies. This particular answer does seem like more doubletalk in some ways. Sigh.
Pneumonia is just a type of lung infection. It's a very broad term. There are many things that can cause lung infections (various types of bacteria, viruses and even fungi). According to one source I read, there are more than 80 bacterial causes of pneumonia, alone (not counting viruses, fungi).
The "pneumonia vaccine" protects against some of the common bacterial causes of pneumonia (not all, I gather it protects agains 20-some of the 80-some).
Coronavirus is a family of viruses, with different members of that virus family causing different diseases that have varied symptom sets. (Some versions of "the common cold" are caused by viruses in the coronavirus family, as I understand it.)
This novel coronavirus causes COVID-19, a new disease to humans. One of the the things that can happen as a result of this disease is lung infection, i.e., pneumonia.
So, it's good to get the pneumonia vaccine to protect against the 20-some bacterial forms of pneumonia. But it won't protect against pneumonia caused by coronavirus.
Does that help sort the double talk at all? :flowerforyou:8 -
So I ordered masks for my family of four today from epsy...not really convinced that these will do jack *kitten* as they are not medical at all, but I've been compelled by higher powers than mine...that's what happens when you're married. I don't deny that they can make things somewhat better...maybe...., but I really don't think they're the game changer that so many around here anyway think they are, especially when everyone is like, "yeah...masks...now we can all hang out and do whatever"....I think they're going to do more harm than good...false sense of security for an American public that thinks they're invincible anyway....now they think some cotton makes them Iron Man and Wonder Woman. I expect more morons out and about with masks than we had before masks...because morons...9
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I wouldn't call it horrifying, but I do think it's a shame kids aren't learning cursive anymore. It's a task that requires a rare combination of creativity and precision. And beautiful handwriting has always made me 🙂. But it's a different world now, and hopefully some parents will still teach their children penmanship as a craft or a hobby.
While Virginia deaths are still comparatively low, hospitalizations are starting to rise faster. Locally in Central VA our numbers are still relatively low out in the boondocks. Was pleased to hear that UVA is participating in a trial that's already started for an antiviral. Fingers and toes crossed that they can come up with a treatment that will give people with symptoms a better chance of coming out unscathed!
I agree, calling aspects of arithmetic or penmanship teaching horrifying seems to lack perspective, especially now. Can the kids add using the method being taught? Do they arrive at the right answer? Can they write a coherent sentence? If so, great! It's not the way I was taught? Oh well, but get off my lawn.
What I would call horrifying is the mendacity and incompetence of the US Federal government response to the pandemic caused by the White House wasting weeks of advantage that will lead to orders of magnitude increase in lives lost, as well the decimation of our economy in the process. That seems a bit more important right now.12 -
just_Tomek wrote: »Easter is next week. I already did get my parents upset telling them I will not be coming over for breakfast / dinner.
Anyone else? How many do you think are going to stay home and not visit family / friends???
I have no idea about the percentages at large. I know I'm staying home rather than visit family, and I know the family I would be visiting otherwise are staying home and not having anyone else over.1 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »
I can't give you cites because my source was listening to NPR and BBC on radio, but I believe there's a new study out in just the last few days showing potentially-infecting particles from coughs/sneezes traveling much farther than previously thought (like twice as far), plus some fairly new information about the nature of virus shedding by people who are still asymptomatic.
You are referring to this, I believe https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852?appId=scweb
and this https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/31/824155179/cdc-director-on-models-for-the-months-to-come-this-virus-is-going-to-be-with-us
Thank you. The JAMA paper sounds like it may be what I heard mentioned in passing, and while I don't think I heard the Redfield interview or a focused news item about it, that's consistent with what I did hear in the reports.
Normally, if I hear something on NPR/BBC/other audio source, I can find the story in a text or audio snip on their web sites, and would include it in a post. In this case, I hadn't zeroed in on the radio items for follow up when it occurred, had the radio on all day, had no idea what service/program mentioned it. Appreciate you being a better researcher! :flowerforyou:
Shifting gears:
Throughout all of this rapidly evolving public-policy response, I'm aware that we (including me) sometimes aren't able to acknowledge in our guts that scientists and public officials are human beings, who, like us, can be confused, communicate poorly, change their minds (and should, BTW), and generally make mistakes. Keeping that in mind is especially difficult in a context where some officials clearly are negligent, willfully ill-informed or self-dealing actors. (I won't go further than the generality, avoiding the politics prohibition here - and my intent is not partisan anyway, as IMO all large-scale groups include a segment of idiots and scoundrels.)
Of course, their mistakes are high-stakes and incredibly costly (in lives!) at a time like this. They've taken on the job (like doctors, or police, or others whose jobs routinely involve life and death matters), so we can hold them to high standards, but holding them to inhumanly high standards is just unrealistic. (Not saying we can't or shouldn't hold them accountable for even well-intended actions that turn out to have disastrous consequences. We can, and should. With some compassion, IMO. Any decent human who makes a deadly error, and realizes it, has a burden of conscience, as well, possibly life-long.)
Just my dumb opinions, as usual.
Thinking about what I've written on this subject, I hope I didn't come across as though I thought that those behind the messaging on masks were evil or even completely in the wrong. Sadly, I think that to the extent that they were trying to avoid hoarding of medical masks by the general public, they were probably right that there are too many people who would try to do so if given a message of "we need to save medical masks for health care professionals on the front lines, but the rest of you should cover your mouth and nose in public with whatever non-medical or makeshift mask you can find."
Edited to try to fix the quote nesting. I'm seeing so much more of this problem lately that I'm wondering if it's an MFP glitch.
To me, no, you didn't come across that way.
Part of the reason I wrote what you just quoted (and frankly stupidly did so in a part of the thread where it didn't logically tie up ideally), was that I thought I'd not been clear. My basic point (in my post that I think started this subthread) was that I'm seeing a few people (mostly in my FB feed) quickly leaping to conspiracy theories and/or outrage over the shifts in mask recommendations. "Why didn't they tell us that before? Were they trying to kill us?" (<== cartoon level representation).
I don't think that's reasonable. Personally, I think the situation should be interpreted mainly as human beings, who happen to be officials, trying to make sense of a mountain of information that keeps growing and changing. Some people I know bizarrely seem to think that pretty much all officials know everything all at once at the start (including a bunch of secret stuff), and manipulate it cynically (or at least officials from "those other parties" do). That's bizarre thinking, to me. (JMO) Officials are regular humans no different from us, mostly.
I don't want to try to imagine what you're thinking behind the limited interpretation I can make from what you do write, but do have the impression that you may feel that the impulse to avoid a public run on masks loomed larger, in officials' initial thinking, than I do.
I think that I'm giving relatively more weight to the officials being humans trying to sort out a lot of conflicting advice, in a context where most politicians/deciders are not subject-matter specialists; and I'm thinking that there was initial belief that (near-)universal mask wearing by the general public was not going to have a major helpful effect, and had some potential negatives (such as a run on supply more urgently needed elsewhere).
Recently, more information seems to be coming out (various ways: studies, clear expert consensus emerging from what was previously a less-clear diversity of expert statements, etc.), and shifting the apparent weight of masks' importance. That's just my inexpert impression, nothing more.
If this perception about your/my opinions is even true, I don't particularly want to chase it down between us to the Nth degree. I respect your intelligence and opinions over a long period of posts here. I don't consider the opinion I've perhaps mistakenly attributed to you to be an irrational one. I haven't seen you say anything that's (IMO) irrational about this topic. Some of your posts have seemed to me to be asking me to defend my opinon, focusing on a sub-part of my (intended, maybe unclear) thesis, so I've responded.
I'm not an expert on what the experts (such as researchers) are saying. I wasn't trying to pile up a mountain of evidence (specific studies and their timing) to support the the idea that calm, rational people could/couldn't have or should/shouldn't have made a "general public should wear masks" recommendation earlier, or not. The people acting haven't had the luxury of calm rationality: I think most are thinking on their feet as best they can, under tremendous stress, with such expert advice (from many quarters, needing to balance many competing factors of various weights) as they can find.
Thank you for fixing the quote nesting. I'm the one who broke it, and didn't notice until too late to edit. I don't know how it happened, but assume it was my typo, since I haven't had that problem with any frequency.
Thanks, Ann. Yes, what you think I'm thinking is pretty spot on. Seems like a good place to leave it.3 -
I was at the store yesterday and there was a full supply of everything, especially meat (of course, it was a meat market). I felt compelled to avoid a few parts of the store (I'd intended to get some more frozen berries and veg, but someone was always hanging out at that area so it was hard to avoid). From what I've heard, the mainstream groceries and TJs are pretty normal but that TP still tends to be low later in the day (I really don't get why that is continuing to be an issue).
When I briefly went to MBA school, it was a marketing platitude that typically 20% of your customers use 80% of your product, generally.
Now, huge numbers of people who normally go out to workplaces daily are staying home. Substantial numbers of the 20% of people who've used 80% of the supply are now using home TP instead of industrial-roll TP.
When I was last at Costco (3 weeks?) home TP was out of stock, but there were still cases of the bigger industrial rolls. Coincidence?
( <== please note LOLs, and refrain from arguing the point logically. I'm joking. Mostly.)
ETA, with some extra : Not two minutes after I typed the above, I heard an NPR story (on All Things Considered) in which they mentioned that the shift from workplace to home TP was probably one (small) factor in the TP demand, though far from the most important one. Weird coincidence!
I realized earlier this week when I was putting a new TP roll on the dispenser that I really didn't have a good idea how long a roll lasts me -- I would have guessed two or three days. It's not something I ever worried about before. So I made a note in my phone of the date I changed it, and discovered today that it had lasted me four days. So my supply is going to last me 1.33X to 2X longer than I was guessing, which is good news.
I've now gone three weeks without grocery shopping. Other than fresh produce (down to two or three mandarin oranges, a few carrots, and four or five yellow onions, a couple of which are starting to sprout -- they had a BOGO sale when I bought them), I'm really not running out of stuff yet. I guess I've been shopping for this for years.
I was thinking of holding out one more week, when I'll probably be getting low on dairy too, and then go to see what I can find. I'd been thinking about getting ham of some kind for my home-alone Easter, but from some of the posts on here, it sounds like I might be overly optimistic. Maybe I'll find some canned or frozen pineapple and I can open a can of Spam (spiced ham in a can) and see what I can make out of it.5 -
Diatonic12 wrote: »'Do vaccines against pneumonia protect you against the new coronavirus?'
No. Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, do not provide protection against the new coronavirus.
The virus is so new and different that it needs its own vaccine. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine against 2019-nCoV, and WHO is supporting their efforts.
Although these vaccines are not effective against 2019-nCoV, vaccination against respiratory illnesses is highly recommended to protect your health.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
Thanks for the previous replies. This particular answer does seem like more doubletalk in some ways. Sigh.
Pneumonia is just a type of lung infection. It's a very broad term. There are many things that can cause lung infections (various types of bacteria, viruses and even fungi). According to one source I read, there are more than 80 bacterial causes of pneumonia, alone (not counting viruses, fungi).
The "pneumonia vaccine" protects against some of the common bacterial causes of pneumonia (not all, I gather it protects agains 20-some of the 80-some).
Coronavirus is a family of viruses, with different members of that virus family causing different diseases that have varied symptom sets. (Some versions of "the common cold" are caused by viruses in the coronavirus family, as I understand it.)
This novel coronavirus causes COVID-19, a new disease to humans. One of the the things that can happen as a result of this disease is lung infection, i.e., pneumonia.
So, it's good to get the pneumonia vaccine to protect against the 20-some bacterial forms of pneumonia. But it won't protect against pneumonia caused by coronavirus.
Does that help sort the double talk at all? :flowerforyou:
However, given the likelihood of encountering plague in a healthcare setting right now, I would think if you’re not already vaccinated your safest bet is staying at home as you are.
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cwolfman13 wrote: »Good piece on cursive and differences: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170502-what-your-handwriting-says-about-you
This is pretty much what I was thinking of. Cursive writing isn't some kind of universal writing beyond the ages. I have a whole bunch of stuff from way back when from my dad and I can barely make it out...I read cursive just fine...my cursive...the cursive I was taught in 2nd grade, not cursive from somewhere in the 1700-1800 hundreds. It mostly looks like chicken scratch to me. This notion of not being able to descifer something it's in cursive if our kids don't learn this obsolete skill is kinda funny. Like I said, I can read cursive just fine...just not that of the 1700-1800 and even early 1900s.
I'd personally rather my kids do things like learning to type, learning software, learning how to do online research, etc...its far more important than an antiquated writing style. I'm 46 and haven't penned a damn thing since bootcamp in 1993. *kitten* moves on.
I will just presume this gets a general disagree from *kitten* morons...I'm apparently on the full on disagree button...take care *kitten* dip *kitten*...interesting that you have no actual opinion or anything like that and you just click your stupid *kitten* button. Don't be a *kitten* *kitten* and actually say something *kitten*...*kitten* cry babies...
You had me until your last paragraph, with its wide-scatter preemptive-strike insults, which I disagree with.17 -
T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »spiriteagle99 wrote: »Someone in the region was ticketed yesterday ($225) for breaking the Stay at Home order. She was just driving around, supposedly, and was stopped by a cop. If she had been smarter, she would have said she was going out for a hike, but she told him she was bored and just driving to get out of the house. I wonder if that will become common or if she just was used to set an example?
Our store shelves are still remarkably empty, at least in the afternoon. No frozen vegetables, no TP or hand sanitizer, etc. They did still have their sale items on sale as usual.
This is super silly. People driving around aren’t in contact with each other. I don’t know if this is true in Memphis, but in Southaven the mayor pointed out that he encourages people to drive around to keep from going nuts.
From what we are being recommended here, it's not silly at all.
Basically, the more you drive around the greater chance of needing maintenance on your car, more fuel stops (potential contact with virus at the pump), more chance of breakdown or road accidents. If something happens, someone then has to risk exposure by going out to help.
We are expected to only drive to supermarkets/pharmacies/medical centres, or of course essential workers going about their jobs.
Unlike spiriteagle99's suggestion, we couldn't even get away with saying we are heading out for a hike...we are expected to only walk locally near our homes.
Though from the traffic on the roads when I walk the dog, I am sceptical that everyone is following the expectations.
This makes sense to a degree. But I know many cars are more prone to issues if left sitting too long. This is particularly true for my Prius and its hybrid battery. I've been going once per week for groceries and am nervous about not taking it out often enough. However, I just went for groceries and was able to find beef. I went to 2 stores as the first was limiting (maybe why they had some). They had none of the beef on sale this week (T-Bones), no surprise. And they were limiting to 2 packs of ground beef. The second store had no ground, so I ended up buying more expensive steak. So if this keeps up, I will be going 2-4 times weekly anyway.
Driving is not allowed here. It really isn't necessary in our case because we have a "corner store" culture. Most areas have at least one corner store that sells necessities within a reasonable walking distance. My area has 4 within a 500 meter radius, and more further down. Most products are available.
Because movement was limited from the beginning, the spread is limited here. Cases are found in localized clusters, and all but one case have been tracked down to their imported origin.8 -
Off topic, but: IMO a greater worry than cursive is that current-day records are not on paper, but electronic.
With each change in storage technology, records are lost. (An analogy is what happened to the then-sparse then-mostly-unimportant data when we moved from literal floppy disks to CDs/DVDs to USB storage, while upgrading our processing boxes along the way: Do you still have all your old household data, carefully transferred to the newer storage medium?)
If you believe the cloud-storage companies are converting every single thing they ever stored, forever, during tech changes . . . I think that's naive. (Yes, you may see all your data transferred. Did they transfer data from inactive/deleted accounts? Deceased account holders? etc.)
With each change in app fashionability, more data goes "poof". How about those MySpace pages? The older MFP logging data they said they'd dump? The photo-storage sites that have gone out of business? The blogging platforms? Social networks sites like Ning that are bye-bye? How will our great-grandkids read those?
Household records from history tend to be in family ledgers and record books. The online bills, blogs, photos, etc., that paint a similar picture of my household are spread all over the internet, and many companies aren't committing to leave infinite years of data out there. Historians will not have this data. (Are you thinking they won't care? They seem to care about analogous data from a century or two back.)
Furthermore, the electronic world has its own jargon, that will age and be near-untranslatable. Younger folks, how's your ability to interpret ASCII art? Will the future folks understand abbrevs? Emojis? (If you're not sure about some, you probably look them up online. Will that reference exist?).
Cursive gets people excited, but I don't think it's nearly as big a problem.
I think this is a valid concern. However, paper records tend to be ephemeral as well.
Only time will tell whether the accidents of fire, moving, and intervening generations just not giving a kitten have more or less impact on the preservation of history than the vagaries of electronic media. A whole bunch of people had webpages on Geocities back in the day, filled with what they considered important writing and original research. Most of it’s gone. But if those same people had been passing around typed manuscripts to their close friends, as used to be the case, most of those are gone too.
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If concerned, contributions to the https://archive.org/about/ and the wayback machine may be useful!
https://archive.org/web/4 -
I don't know what historians will fine about this particular time period, when they look back. I do know that a small group of very intelligent online friends--who typically have thoughtful discussions about social issues, politics, etc.--recently had a very long string about their dishwashers. I thought, "This is what someone studying life during the Great Shutdown of 2020 will find; people debating the merits of one dishwasher product over another."
In defense of another poster here, I found the comment "horrifying" to be hilarious.2 -
I wouldn't call it horrifying, but I do think it's a shame kids aren't learning cursive anymore. It's a task that requires a rare combination of creativity and precision. And beautiful handwriting has always made me 🙂. But it's a different world now, and hopefully some parents will still teach their children penmanship as a craft or a hobby.
While Virginia deaths are still comparatively low, hospitalizations are starting to rise faster. Locally in Central VA our numbers are still relatively low out in the boondocks. Was pleased to hear that UVA is participating in a trial that's already started for an antiviral. Fingers and toes crossed that they can come up with a treatment that will give people with symptoms a better chance of coming out unscathed!
This discussion interests me because it was only last year that some experts, here in Italy, were commenting on the death of cursive writing with the use of computers and cell phone messaging. Their concern was that cursive writing triggers something in the brain and is important for learning other things. That's roughly the gist of it since I found it interesting at the time, but don't remember all the fine points. Here, all 3 of my sons (even the two dyslectic) studied Greek and Latin in high school. Being American, I considered Greek pretty useless, but the educational experts don't agree with me. All three studied or, are studying Law. The oldest is a Notaio, as is my husband, and the other two are still studying. We'll see the outcome of all these intense studies.13 -
snowflake954 wrote: »I wouldn't call it horrifying, but I do think it's a shame kids aren't learning cursive anymore. It's a task that requires a rare combination of creativity and precision. And beautiful handwriting has always made me 🙂. But it's a different world now, and hopefully some parents will still teach their children penmanship as a craft or a hobby.
While Virginia deaths are still comparatively low, hospitalizations are starting to rise faster. Locally in Central VA our numbers are still relatively low out in the boondocks. Was pleased to hear that UVA is participating in a trial that's already started for an antiviral. Fingers and toes crossed that they can come up with a treatment that will give people with symptoms a better chance of coming out unscathed!
This discussion interests me because it was only last year that some experts, here in Italy, were commenting on the death of cursive writing with the use of computers and cell phone messaging. Their concern was that cursive writing triggers something in the brain and is important for learning other things. That's roughly the gist of it since I found it interesting at the time, but don't remember all the fine points. Here, all 3 of my sons (even the two dyslectic) studied Greek and Latin in high school. Being American, I considered Greek pretty useless, but the educational experts don't agree with me. All three studied or, are studying Law. The oldest is a Notaio, as is my husband, and the other two are still studying. We'll see the outcome of all these intense studies.
I can believe that. Certain skills trigger certain brain functions. We become better or worse at certain things as our skillset changes throughout the ages.
Gaming, for example, can increase visual working memory and mental spacial rotation (like imagining a shape in your head and rotating the image to "see" different sides of it). We're better at this skill than we used to be, and some are better than others at it because of their skill set.
Plato was against writing because he thought it would affect memory. He was right. Humankind is collectively worse at exact recall and our long term memory is collectively worse. This is being made even worse by the internet. This doesn't mean "internet is bad", it just means that we are delegating some of our skills to new tools as we always have and acquiring the types of skills that benefit us right now rather than back then.12 -
I seem to have contracted something, possibly covid-19 (if so, very mild), and have isolated myself in a bedroom with it's own bathroom. I did groceries Mon morning at 9am, woke up at 2am with what I perceived to be symptoms. After failed attempts at falling back asleep, I set about isolating myself from the rest of the family.
We have a spare bedroom with its own bathroom that I moved into. I brought a spare kettle we had, a cooler with milk and frozen milk, a variety of shelf stable food including lots of fruit, coffee and tea, vitamins, toiletries, a laundry bin full of clothing, a humidifier, plates and cutlery, dish soap, and computer, phone, Fitbit, complete with chargers.
My daughter has made me a large meal every day, but other than that I've been fairly self sufficient. She brings me the meal on a paper plate that I wash and dispose of in a garbage bag up here. Dirty laundry goes in another garbage bag to be laundered when this is all over.
I'd read previously about caregivers needing to wear masks and gloves to empty garbage and do laundry, but who has that many masks? I'm happier storing it and looking after it all myself later.
I've gone outside in our backyard a fair bit. I hold a kleenex over my mouth with one hand and hold a Lysol wipe or just another kleenex in the other hand to open doors. I did a little gardening but I was somewhat headachy and didn't like having my head lowered, so I mostly just paced in a big circle around our yard, or sat in a chair reserved (in this situation) for me.
I actually HOPE that this was covid-19. In any case, I've allowed myself to think that perhaps I (and my family) would be part of the 80% who felt only mild symptoms instead of worrying that we could be one of the 20% that has to seek medical attention. I'm not so positive that I had it that I wouldn't still follow all the rules to protect myself and others, plus I'm a rule-follower anyway, but I'm facing everything with much less anxiety.
I wasn't certain how long I had to stay here, but I've been told by a friend whose brother is a doctor, in fact a doctor who is leading the charge locally against covid-19 and considered to be as close to an expert as we have, that two days after symptoms subside is adequate. I've read elsewhere that it should be a minimum of 7 days from when symptoms started. With mild symptoms it's not straightforward to tell what's what. Yesterday I felt great for most of the day then a bit headachy again in the evening. The last of my chest pressure (real or imagined) finished the day before already.
Today's my birthday and I guess we're going to use FaceTime or Messenger to celebrate a little. Next week we are planning to have a little more of a celebration (still just family), but just to be cautious, we'll do it outside. Maybe our new normal.23
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