Please name these countless countries. And let’s be clear up front that I do not agree with the approaches taken by Australia or New Zealand.

I also think the U.K. has had far too many restrictions, not too few. The problem was people seeing the grandkids at Christmas not restaurants or gyms. Personal choices should have been better, but it should have been left as a personal choice. But the UK’s problem is it’s underfunded, underinvested and generally inadequate healthcare system which supposedly created a degree of systemic risk - though even that was BS because by summer there was lots of capacity in the Nightingale hospitals that was never even used.

For the past 2 months I’ve been living in Florida, which has taken a much better approach.

^ Yeah, really. For every 1 country that "got it right" according to the authoritarian porn types that hang out in this forum, there are about 100 countries that are getting bitch-smacked by COVID just like America is :haha:

The problem with that is.... We simply could never actually do that here in the US. In order to *force* everything to shut down, you have to give the authority to the government to enforce that.... Thanks, but no thanks.

We had a narrow window to shut down travel from the rest of the world in order to prevent the virus from entering the country, and that window occurred while China was lying about the nature of the virus, so it was almost impossible to prevent spread here. In the future, the second we even hear a rumor of a new virus in China, shut international travel down immediately and have folks quarantine (Yes, I know this mildly contradicts my initial point in this post, but it would be very limited in time to a few people traveling).

The “shut everything down and try to halt coronavirus spread” vs “keep it all open for the sake of the economy and other aspects of human wellbeing and endure COVID” debate is perfectly valid. But the “lockdown/restrict certain citizens—the old, the fat, the diabetic—while the rest go about life as normal is not. Life as normal for those given that freedom would maximize viral replication and spread thus necessitating the restrictions on the others. It’s an “us vs them” policy which the selfish and narcissistic here just love, it is obvious. But never forget it’s clearly an “I’ve got mine, Jack and f___ you” approach.

I mostly agree with this. But in addition we really do need to beef up our public health capabilities, possibly with something like a national reserve health corps of trained contact tracers capable of being mobilized in an infectious disease crisis. And we need to investigate and expose the story of why the CDC failed to produce working test “kits” for coronavirus last spring and hold people accountable. Their disappointing performance throughout this pandemic suggests to me something is rotten at the CDC and things like the J&J vaccine kurfufle and the “vaccinated people can fly but shouldn’t” confusion don’t suggest the change of director with the new Adminstration has solved much.

Lots of low information news coverage and doom porn out there.

Ontario has a population of just under 15 million so 4,500 or so cases a day is not really that high in the scheme of things. Hospitalizations and ICU utilization on the one hand seem worrisome as a percentage of pre-covid resources but they are not very high in the scheme of pandemic era requirements.

Google something like "Ontario total collapse" and you will get a stream of articles announcing that Ontario's health care system is on the brink of total collapse (whatever that means) from the past 12 months. Current ICU utilization is 75% of what they had originally predicted for February 2021, and likely still below the original 2020 predictions.

Health authorities there predicted a peak of 8,000 cases a day with restrictions and 18,000-30,000 a day without restrictions but the growth in cases has already slowed at around 4,300 in the 7-day moving average. About 30% of eligible individuals have been vaccinated, roughly the 30% highest risk who are at disproportionately high risk of death and hospitalization.

Covid deaths in Canada are approximately 1 per 1,000,000 per day. The media don't focus on deaths so much anymore.

The U.S. never really cut off travel, though. We only cut off direct flights from China, and closed the land border with Canada and Mexico. We never forced people arriving from abroad to do mandatory quarantines. We didn't even require proof of negative COVID tests to board a plane to the U.S. until January of 2021.

The most surprising thing in that article to me was the bit about closing borders with neighboring provinces. Internal travel has been the trip wire or red line in the US since the beginning of the pandemic. Certain states have attempted to require 14 day quarantines of people coming from other states they perceive as more heavily infected but without any enforcement mechanism except to a minor degree in Hawaii which, due to its small size and remote location, can do things that just aren't practical in other states and, to some extent, with justification (it wanted to be a little New Zealand or at least was acting like it). And there has never been--except briefly in Cuomo's New York until he fell from grace--anything like roadblocks of access points into one state from another.

I'm not sure what Ontario is doing but limiting travel from its neighbors in any form seems to me an excessive measure.

Except cruise ship passengers.

Jim Cramer (CNBC host) says the CDC is acting like it's trying to put the cruise industry out of business. They have offered to resume cruising with only vaccinated passengers and crew, and they have eliminated other risky business like the buffets of old, but so far the CDC won't let them sail even under those conditions.

This should've been mandatory from the start.

Maybe but it is nothing new in Canada. The first interprovincial border controls were brought in a year ago.

In general Canadians seem willing to accept harsher measures than Americans.

It's spring now and the streets are full. We don't wear masks here, and the patios are out.

There are, however, restrictions on opening hours and party size etc. I work from home and do not take public transit, so I am basically either at home, at the gym or walking outside these days; I am employing private restrictions that I see as working well within my own life. But I like that the streets show no visual trace of all this.

Our current caseload is about 30% worse than that of Ontario per capita and they are experimenting with what I had always considered to be... things that other countries did.

That said, they have fewer COVID-19 deaths than we do, and our Canadian SSP members seem to favour strict measures, so it's not as if the government has no mandate.

I am happy to have moved from Canada to Sweden before all this.

Most other Anglosphere people I know here are far more critical of the Swedish approach.

We all know a lot of people who have had COVID.

What can I say? In a pandemic situation, you treat the ill, quarantine the infected and otherwise go on -- that's how I view it. In some cases, zero-tolerance approaches can achieve better results, if we narrow our definition to the exact issue at hand, but I see them as dangerous and imbalanced in an overall sense.

Looks like the doom and gloom predictions about Texas were and are still false.

When Bill Maher is telling you Florida is doing better than NY, you know you are wrong.

Canadians have the same subservient nature as the Brits it seems. Too much "oh, mustn't grumble" leads to being enslaved.

It always was a bit partisan, wasn’t it

But you can’t deny facts. Lockdowns just aren’t that effective. They just give people an excuse to wear pajamas all day and still collect a paycheck

Get your vaccine, then get out there and help rebuild our economy. And stop being a whiny brat

Who wants to cruise when you're forced to wear a mask the whole time? My wife's family are big time cruisers and they've expressed zero interest because it would be a shitty experience.

I'd probally wait for a cruise. I've been on several and if there are any restrictions, won't be fun. A cruise is about many things. One traveling but the others include eating until your stomach suffers a rip, like the sound that a pair of jeans makes ripping at a funeral, drinking Whiskey at the Solarium at 7am and having one's bathroom towels made into little animals. Don't forget Doctor Love... the Jamaican Bartender who makes the best Mai Tais out there. Just won't be the same with a mask and social distancing requirements.

I don’t know. Not much happens indoors in Florida unlike New York. It’s the only place even a lot of the bars are outside, pool and beachside. Whereas New York is an indoors kind of place, when it’s allowed to be. Lately, the authorities may have been forcing them outside but dining outdoors in NY in winter, even with heaters, strikes me as not very pleasant.

Anyway, Florida could be “distancing” more than NY in spite of itself.

A lot of people apparently. First of all, I’ll never get the intense hostility to wearing a mask. It doesn’t bother me at all.

But in fact, the cruise companies have had boomtime bookings for next year, assuming they’ll be allowed to leave the dock by then. If your relatives want to do any cruising in the next few years, better book the cruise now.

I think there is truth to this and the Canadians who really don't like it and would be more influential here tend to relocate to the US or elsewhere. There are strong selection effects in Canada.

Ontario is the worst place in Canada right now with a bunch of weird restrictions they had to walk back and lots of cases. Many other provinces have had a mix of not so heavy restrictions and lower than average covid risk.

The restrictions don't bother me so much now that we have vaccines. I don't get the people who were skeptical that vaccines would be developed and yet also bullish on lockdowns. There is also a kind of "immunity denialism" that is not talked about much. The media barely acknowledge that people have resistance to covid after their immune system successfully fights it off.

I also think the notion of "lockdowns" is somewhat misleading not, as most say, because the lockdowns would work if only they were harsher, but because there never was a plan to lock everything down and have people come and deliver us food in space suits. People still needed to go to work, live with roommates and older relatives, etc. Around here it feels like governments have tried to draw attention away from this by blaming covid cases on elective "bad behaviour" like partying. As if the poorest people around here are all partying it up in ski chalets in the weekend and that's why they are getting covid. It has nothing to do with them working as line cooks or in chicken plants or living with 5 other roommates. Poorer countries had no hope whatsoever of doing society-wide lockdowns.

I just see it as, there are people who can adapt, and there are people who can't.

No surprise there.

Offices opening up is not a surprise as more get vaccinated. In my group of friends here in NOLA, all of them have had to report back to the office over the past couple of weeks. My office has moved into the next phase with near full staffing allowed, but still no outside visitors or travel permitted.

New Orleans is now 37.4% vaccinated among the total population as of Monday, and the adult vaccination rate has crossed the 50% mark. The positivity rate has been averaging between 0.5 and 0.8% for the last several weeks and there are only 52 people (out of 1,270,500) hospitalized in the metro area with COVID. It's safe to say that herd immunity has been achieved here based on those numbers. Hopefully, the current 1am bar closure time will come to an end soon.

That's you. I could not imagine spending several thousand on a cruise where you have to wear a shitty uncomfortable mask and social distance the entire time. Plus, they've scaled back the buffets and pools which are a huge draw for a lot of cruisers. Sure, some people will be enthusiastic but others are going to take a hard pass until things let up more.

Again: There are apparently enough people willing to accept the conditions that will exist to fill the ships if the CDC will let them sail.

https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5904/

I don't know. I got a lot of blow-back here every time I predicted it would happen sooner than people think. And guess what: A lot of those employees WANT TO come back. The office has a social as well as work function for many.

Yes. And because of this there was no point to even trying. For example it is pointless to make “non-exempt” travellers quarantine for 10 days when entering the U.K. when almost 40% of people entering the country are exempt from this requirement (and everyone has to test negative). It’s just PR nonsense for the paranoid types to show that your government is protecting you.

Adapt to what? I would never want to adapt to this social distancing bullshit. Maybe there are just people who can adapt to the virus (by mounting an immune response) and people who can’t.

Adapt to the fact that reality as we know it is extremely fragile and unpredictable and throwing tantrums when faced with relatively small hardships to protect the greater good simply because it temporarily interferes with the extremely comfortable way of life to which one has become accustomed is how a petulant child acts and not an adult with full agency of their emotions.

Wearing a mask and social distancing pales in comparison to the things humans have dealt with in the past--we are just extremely coddled now. Many think the way things are is the way they always have been and always will be, completely ignorant of the fact that the comfort we all enjoy is a couple of generations old. The ironic thing is that if we had all just been careful, wore the little masks and social distanced we'd probably have been enjoying some level of normal for the second half of 2020. But some people's terror at the idea that the bubble they'd created for themselves in the 21st century wasn't impenetrable ruined it for everyone; their little acts of defiance against the universe throwing a curveball (based entirely on fear of the unknown or how to adapt to rapid change) cost a lot in real and cultural capital.


I always think about my ex-girlfriend, who's parents had sent her to the United States ALONE at 19 years old from Nepal to escape the communist uprising there in the early 2000s. She arrived in Chicago not knowing a soul and with no experience of the culture. Her family had been well off in Nepal, but even the well off in Nepal were still living in a third world country. She enrolled in community college for her student visa then transferred to a larger university, got a job and an apartment and did everything in such a way that by the time we met nearly 10 years later she was "westernized" enough that I had no idea of her background for the first few weeks that I knew her.

Anyway, her resilience always amazed me--all the things big and small that she had figured out so totally on her own (student loans, getting an apartment, navigating the workforce (she was a financial analyst for a major trade organization), etc.) and never complaining about anything. What I'll always remember was a time she developed a serious and mysterious allergic-type reaction that was causing her face to swell up terribly and turn red and patchy. It had been lasting for months, and none of the specialists were having luck figuring it out. I was so concerned for her, because in my experience that would cause most women (and men) in their late 20s navigating the professional world a lot of grief and frustration, but she shouldered it unflinchingly. She laughed off my concern and thought it was so curious, I mean it's just skin right?

But that was the mindset of someone who had experienced actual hardship and knew how to deal with it. A small inconvenience that temporarily interrupted her equilibrium was not worth getting upset about, just do what you need to do until it's solved.

^ :haha:

The irony of you lecturing us about the hardship of immigrants. Im betting you just like to pick and choose which complaints are “whiny” and which are “legit”

What irony? And what lecture... do you mean anecdote? Because those aren't synonyms. Truly don't understand what points you are trying to make...

At the end of the day it's about having more options and flexibility right? Take one thing away (work from office) and people complain about not seeing coworkers, being cooped up at home, distracted by kids, feeling restless, etc. Take remote work away completely and people complain about having to commute into the office, annoying coworkers, waking up early and getting home late, etc. I think a hybrid model, where you go into the office a few days a week and work remotely the other days, which tech was pretty much already doing as you know, would be ideal for industries that can manage that.

Nor will you ever

Immigrant hardship as a counter-point to the complaining of Americans across the spectrum is only acceptable within certain cherry picked boundaries....with people like yourself being the arbiter of such

I've been at SSP long enough to know how that thinking goes....

Yea, because it's convoluted and bad and you can't explain it, I'm guessing.

It was a personal anecdote that happened to be about an immigrant that highlighted the larger point that most of the people who are so angry they need to wear a mask are very fragile. I'm sure someone could tell a similar story about a born-and-raised American who has overcome obstacles and developed a clear-eyed view of the tumultuousness and unpredictability of life.

Lol, like what?

And who are people like me, faceless internet stranger?

And we're all very impressed. However, this forum plays a non-existent role in my identity so I don't know why you would think being a poster here would give you some grand insight into my personality.

I agree with you. I keep trying to imagine how the people here whining about masks and distancing would have coped with real hardship like so many had to endure in major wars or the Great Depression. Even my generation had a military draft that sent my friends to Vietnam from which some didn’t come back. Compared to all this sort of thing, what we’ve had to endure over the last year, as unpleasant as it has been, is not real hardship.

That said, it’s fair to debate what’s in the real interests of us all and which among the various rules governments have tried to impose have been truly beneficial, both in terms of beating back the spread of the virus and the general welfare of people, and which have not or even been counterproductive. And things change of course. Now that we have effective treatments and vaccines, a lot less restriction is justifiable but on the other hand the vaccines raise the argument of to what degree society and government should distinguish between those who been vaccinated and those who’ve refused to be (once anyone who wants a vaccine can get it). If we want to fully reopen indoor entertsinment venues, for example, it would be so much safer if vaccination were a requirement for admission so should we impose such a requirement or is that too much government power. How about if the private venues themselves do it on their own—should it be allowable?

It's bullshit to stand a few steps away from somebody? It's not adapting it's... following the rules till "mission accomplished" and there must be more than that, because that's literally the easiest thing of all time. The impacts of social distancing like less seats in restaurants or theaters? Ok, valid complaints for the owners.
They can't handle it and take it out on their fellow citizens by not following the rules set forth by public health. The worst part is, it's a thin piece of fabric or whatever and people can't handle it.

Or a lot of people too stupid to realize how disappointed they are going to be.

Everybody who disagrees with you on any subject is “stupid” according to you. We knew that.

Mission is accomplished. We have a vaccine and it has been given to the vulnerable. That’s as good as it’s going to get or needs to be. We aren’t going to eliminate Covid.

You talk and think about Covid like it was from outer space. There are lots of viruses that have been around forever and used to ravage mankind. Even when I was a child almost every kid got measles, mumps and chicken pox. The unfortunate got polio. And before the invention of vaccination (actual vaccination—using vaccinia virus) smallpox was common.

SARS-CoV-2 can become like all these: Still around but limited to rare outbreaks that can be limited in scope with public health measures.

That’s the goal in the developed world. In the developing world, it’s likely it will be a disease that most people get in childhood when the symptoms are mild and by the time they are adults are immune. Developed world travellers to those endemic regions will need shots first.

The problem right now is that when the virus first came on the scene there was a world full of susceptible adults. That will not be the case in a few years in most of the world.

Here's the thing, everybody is at risk of PASC and 1/3 of people are at risk of developing neurological disorders. Nobody on the forum has been able to downplay it in this thread or in the CE, so I challenge you to go after the neurological disorders and say that it's not a big deal.
Every day more Americans get their shot, so it's going to get even better....especially in CA.

The people who post selfie's in masks and wear them in the car or outside...will be the ones lining up to take a cruise right now.

I think the CDC wanted old people to wear their mask from door to door, and might recommend it a little deeper in the wording for everybody. I already don't wear them into places that took down their signage :shrug:, but I should keep it in my pocket in case somebody inside wants me to wear it!

source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/educati...virus-covid-19




as a parent of two CPS students, all i can say is "ALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

a 5 day school week of full-time in-person learning sounds like some kind of magical unicorn dream.

dare i get my hopes up?





too late, they're already up!

i can't remember ever wanting anything more badly.

MAY "REMOTE LEARNING" ROT IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY.

From the Los Angeles Times:

For some of us, returning to pre-COVID life is turning out to be harder than we expected

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...oblems-483.jpg
Shelby Bernstein is eager for life to return to normal, but she feels anxiety seeing people gather at parks without masks or dining at outdoor restaurants.(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)


By DEBORAH NETBURN | STAFF WRITER
APRIL 21, 2021 5 AM PT

Shelby Bernstein can’t wait for life to get back to normal.

In theory.

But as COVID-19 restrictions lift across the county, Bernstein has found herself feeling increasingly anxious.

“Maybe it’s like Stockholm syndrome, except our captor is the coronavirus,” she said. “We’re all so used to the mental and physical havoc it wreaked upon us that any sense of normalcy feels wrong.”

Over the course of the pandemic, the 29-year-old product photographer limited her trips to the market, went a month without seeing her boyfriend, and only met up with friends at parks — mostly masked and six feet apart.

She returned to in-person work at a Santa Monica jewelry company in July, but spent most of the day in a bungalow by herself. She even tried to limit her bathroom trips to avoid being in enclosed spaces with other people.

Intellectually, Bernstein knows that her risk of getting COVID-19 in Los Angeles is significantly lower than it’s been in a year. Cases in the county have plummeted since reaching a peak in January, and more than 50% of the adult population in the state has received at least one shot. In addition, Bernstein received her first dose of vaccine a few weeks ago, giving her significant protection against the disease.

She’s not a hypochondriac or a hermit. She misses parties and getting on a plane to see friends. But she’s still not ready to ease up on the behaviors that have kept her safe — and given her peace of mind — this past year.

Medical experts say her concerns are valid. About 26% of Americans are fully vaccinated, and 40% have received their first shot. That still leaves most Americans unprotected.

At the same time, they note that for fully vaccinated people, activities like hugging or eating in a restaurant are safe, especially if vulnerable friends and family members are vaccinated as well.

But while the experts may say vaccines offer excellent protection from the virus, some people can’t help but feel it all sounds too good to be true. And though cases and deaths are on a downward trend in California, they’re rising in other parts of the country.

As with just about everything in this pandemic — family gatherings, business closures, schools — Angelenos’ feelings about the county’s reopening run the gamut from elation to alarm.

Some of us have jumped at the chance to see movies in actual theaters, grab a drink at a bar with friends, cheer the Dodgers or attend a small dinner party with fully immunized friends. Yet for others — even the fully vaccinated — the fear that any relaxation of safety protocols will lead to another surge is hard to shake.

“Every time I see people eating out or hanging out with their friends unmasked, I cringe and feel hopeless,” Bernstein said. “I hate feeling like this, but unfortunately for me and many others, I think this looming sense of dread will be with us for a long time.”

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...ning002-ls.jpg
Customers dine inside a sushi restaurant in Long Beach.(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

A recent survey by the American Psychological Assn. found that 49% of Americans feel uneasy about adjusting to in-person interactions once the pandemic ends. Similarly, 46% said they don’t feel comfortable going back to their pre-pandemic life.

In both cases, those who felt trepidation were just as likely to be vaccinated as not, said Vaile Wright, the association’s senior director for healthcare innovation.

“This suggests that the vaccine in and of itself is not an anxiety reducer, or at least not an anxiety eliminator,” said Wright, who worked on the study. “We have been in this routine for a year, and to change out of it is going to take some time.”

Dr. Ella Shadmon, who is a family practice physician in Pasadena, recently traveled with her husband and two teenage daughters to Arizona for spring break. It was the first time the family had been on a plane since the pandemic began.

As a medical professional, Shadmon received her first vaccine shot in January. Her husband and one of her daughters are fully vaccinated as well.

The family donned N-95 masks for the short flight from Burbank to Phoenix and stayed at an Airbnb once they got to Sedona. They dined at restaurants — outdoors — and checked to make sure the staff was fully masked first.

Because she’s vaccinated, Shadmon doesn’t feel at risk for getting COVID-19. Still, she found herself grappling with a range of feelings throughout the trip.

“It was strange. It was exciting. It was too crowded. It was filled with mixed emotions,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Reentry is not as easy as it looks.”

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...4217395-n.jpeg
Dr. Ella Shadmon and her husband, Ittai, during a recent vacation in Sedona, Ariz.(Courtesy of Ella Shadmon)

For Shadmon, this murky space where we are no longer in the middle of the pandemic, but not quite out of it either, has been the hardest phase to navigate.

When cases were high and vaccines scarce, it was easy to know what needed to be done to stay safe: Stay home as much as possible. Wear masks. Maintain physical distance.

“Now we’re in this middle ground,” she said. “And as every state, county and community does something totally different, it makes it 100 times worse.”

She’s no longer worried that she or her vaccinated family members will become vectors for the disease, but what about others? Have all those people dining indoors at restaurants received the vaccine? In both Arizona and California, the answer is likely no.

“When will the feeling that crowds are wrong go away? I’m not sure when I’ll personally get there,” she said. “I think we need full herd immunity. But when we get to at least the 50% [vaccination] mark, I think I will feel very different.”

Reports about new coronavirus variants and their potential to overcome the protection of vaccines have also added to some people’s anxiety.

“There is such an enduring feeling of lack of safety and trust because information is constantly changing about the variants, the efficacy of the vaccines and how long immunity lasts,” said Laurie Stone, a psychologist in West Los Angeles. “I don’t trust much of it.”

Stone received her second vaccine dose in February, but that’s small comfort.

“I still have this chronic apprehension,” she said. “It’s hard to soften the fear.”

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...lems-6-ajs.jpg
Laurie Stone, a therapist in West Los Angeles, has been fully vaccinated since February but said the vaccine has only given her 25% more peace of mind. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Dr. Marybeth Sexton, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University School of Medicine, said it makes sense that even vaccinated people still feel anxious about reopening, especially when the majority of Americans are still unprotected.

For unvaccinated people, “it is critical that they continue to do the things we know work — wear a mask in public, keep your distance from people and avoid the things that can lead to super-spreader events like indoor dining, drinking at bars and large indoor gatherings,” Sexton said.

But she said those rules do not need to apply to people who are vaccinated.

“If you are vaccinated, doing those things is very low risk,” she said. “Two weeks after your second dose Pfizer or Moderna, or your first dose of Johnson & Johnson, your risk of getting the virus is dramatically reduced and the risk of being hospitalized or dying is almost zero.”

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...ters-3-ajs.jpg
Movie-goers spread out with COVID-19 safety precautions to watch Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” at The El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, agreed that fully vaccinated people could safely go out to dinner and a movie, but added that nobody should expect everything to go back to its pre-pandemic ways all at once.

“The return to normalcy is not a quick jump, it’s incremental,” he said.

Even in Taiwan, where there have been no new coronavirus cases for more than six weeks, the government still requires people to wear masks on public transportation, Chi said.

For those who are experiencing extreme anxiety, Charmaine Jackman, a psychologist and wellness expert, recommends mindful focus on the present moment.

“If you are spiraling, notice it, pull back and don’t judge yourself,” she said. “Worries about the future can be intense. Be in the present moment. Don’t get too far ahead.”

Another thing to consider: Judging others for taking fewer precautions hurts your own mental health.

“We don’t know why people are making the choices they are making. There could be a good reason,” she said. “It is helpful to think about it that way for your own self-care and peace of mind.”

Attaining that peace of mind might come by reentering society gradually.

You might start with something relatively easy, like going to the grocery store with a mask on, said Wright of the psychological association. Then experiment with a small backyard gathering and later a meal at an outdoor restaurant.

“When we practice avoidance, we implicitly tell our brains ‘It’s too scary,’ or ‘I can’t handle it,’” Wright said. What can reverse those messages is confronting safe situations.

We all have different tolerances for uncertainty, she said. Some of us may only feel comfortable if we can be assured that we are 100% safe.

But that will always be elusive — whether we’re in a pandemic or not.

Link: https://www.latimes.com/science/stor...-hard-for-many

They're still doing remote learning now? My kids have been full time in school since this fall, I think mine went back full time in late September. They still have the option of remote learning (they wont have the option next year) and in my daughters class a grand total of 0 parents opted for remote learning. There are a couple in my sons class but in their cases those parents are currently undergoing Chemo/cancer treatments so its understandable.

for K-8, CPS has been doing "podded hybrid" since march.

- pod A does in person Mon/Tues (pod B is remote)

- everyone is remote on wednesdays

- pod B does in person Thurs/Fri (pod A is remote)


prior to March, CPS was 100% remote-learning since the pandemic began last year.