Coronavirus Outbreak: Is it safe to travel?

Here is a perfect example up in Canada.

They are responsible for a HIGH percentage of the known infections!

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I am so sorry! That must have been heartbreaking to hear.

If he is indeed sure of this though, he may want to look into having legal documents drawn up that would take the decision out of your hands. If that’s something you would want too, of course.

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That’s really rough. I hope you don’t find yourself in that position. Hugs to you!

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43 is a pup!!!

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I’m so sorry, that must have been so hard.

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A friend of mine shared this slide presentation with me - it’s from someone in the Effective Altruism movement.

One slide that stood out to me is this strategy of opening the economy to low-risk individuals.


It sounds like Sweden is doing something like the Cocoon - I’m interested to see how it works out. So far it seems to be ok. The key is to figure out how to isolate the at-risk populations.

It reminds me of my hair-brained (completely hypothetical) idea in the other thread about sending all the young people to boarding schools. But since that isn’t feasible, how do you allow young people to go about their business without interacting with older people? I haven’t seen much specifically about how Sweden is accomplishing this. Anyone know?

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Can you post names or links? I’m interested in taking a look.

My friend is second in command to the director of nursing at her hospital, and just a few days ago she was saying they were hoping to be able to resume elective surgery on May first. To have Cuomo begin to repeal that in many counties has given me tremendous hope. Maybe we will not be locked down until May 15 in other areas either.

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Here also, but not in a good way. DH (not DH yet then) was insistent that it was the right thing to keep her alive as she had been. I was horrified and would never want to “live” that way. Shame on me, but I’ve still never done anything in writing about this.

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I am very thankful that my parents felt so strongly about estate planning that they paid for myself and my brothers (and our families) to all have our documents done.

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I think the point is that conversation and paperwork needs to happen.

ETA because like you point out even people who know you well may not have the same thoughts on this kind of thing.

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Our governor (Inslee - Washington) has talked about this. As a matter of policy, they passed a law here in Washington that workers 65 and above have the right to not work if they feel unsafe without their jobs being at risk. They have to be allowed to work at home (if possible), use accrued leave or go on furlough but have their medical benefits paid by the employer. This yet another burden on employers, but how many people over 65 are actually in the work force. We have approx. 10 out of 330 benefited employees, so 3%. (I know because I’m in HR and have the amazing job of deciphering all of these new laws that affect employment on both federal and state levels.) I don’t know of any of our employees taking advantage of this at this point. That could change as things open up and we are no longer mostly working from home.

Edited to add: I’m not sure how long the employee can be in this status. I think there is a time limit.

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Wait, what? It’s supposed to apply where I live. All the grocery stores have signs up saying stay 6 ft apart and there are taped things on the floor to try to separate people. A lot of stores are also limiting the # of people in the store, which means queues outside standing 6 ft apart. However, in practice, I’ve had a lot of people get really close to me (especially in line) b/c they just don’t get it—or, decided to ignore it.

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I can’t find the answer to this anywhere: if you donate $ to a business that isn’t a nonprofit, as part of coronavirus relief, is it tax deductible for you? I’ve donated to nonprofits like museums before but never just to a for profit business so I have no idea.

From everything I’ve read, Sweden isn’t really doing this particularly well. Their hospitals haven’t been overwhelmed, but it still has gotten into a bunch of nursing homes and killed the elderly, just like the rest of the world.

Honestly, I’m not sure how you cocoon. With all the asymptomatics around, multigenerational family homes, etc. Plus it’s not just the elderly at risk, but also the immuno-compromised, which may be younger. I’m sure there are strategies you can take (no overlap in care workers between hospitals/care facilities, allowing old/immuno-compromised to work from home, etc). But even in total lockdown right now, it’s still getting into nursing homes. If we open back up, even a little, it’s only going to get worse.

Not advocating either way, just the reality. And why so many leaders are talking about test/track/isolate. Especially if you can get regular tests for people who are high-risk and/or work with high-risk people, hopefully we can contain outbreaks and keep infection rates lower for higher risk groups. But from what I understand, testing isn’t there in a lot of places yet. Definitely isn’t in my state, though they are working on it of course.

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A donation to a business is not tax deductible as a charitable donation under current tax law as I understand it (unless Congress passed or will pass something to change this specific to coronavirus - but I wouldn’t think they will).

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A vaccine isn’t the only way forward. The equivalent of a Tamiflu or antibiotic for Covid would also be great. There are plenty of diseases out there that we live with, but we are able to manage and minimize the bodily effects. With better understanding of what this virus does to the body, symptom management and minimization will make it less deadly, as well.

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This is so sad. Hugs.

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Agreed on that. But, I suppose the point is without knowing for sure such a treatment and/or vaccine is even possible, we can’t make our public policy decisions going forward based on the assumption we can. Because if we can’t, it was all for naught.

I do think it might be possible to do something even with an “ineffective” vaccine (that is…one that works for a short period of time) if we can get enough produced so that we can mass inoculate the population all within the time period that it is working. Then, by the time the effectiveness wears off, the virus has died off. That seems like a very very very unlikely scenario, though, even in the best of circumstances.

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I’m sorry. It’s what I’m expecting here too, although they haven’t called it yet. And yes, 2 months of it sounds awful here too. I know what you mean about the math! It isn’t the same math that we were taught b/c of the common core tendency to have the kids explain all sorts of things. Just do the best you can. If you don’t finish it all it’s fine. Really. I think all of us with kids will have to start taking a harder look at what we’re being told to do and figure out what actually works for our families. I’m not going to abandon it altogether by any means, but at this point we’re not doing any of the optional stuff. If they officially go to pass / fail I may give the kids some leeway on the required stuff too, depending on what’s going on with them. My 7th grader was way overloaded at first and my 2nd grader, working with me, has had a lot of learning curve. The only one who’s sailing through is the 5th grader, so far, but his workload is maybe half of the other two. I want everyone to have a balanced day and not get too stressed out by school when we’re already in this stressful situation.

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