That’s weird! They changed their protocols to detect covid where there wasn’t any?
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I’m guessing they made them more sensitive? So they’d be people that had Covid in the past but are no longer infectious?
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I suppose that makes sense.
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It’s just a guess. I thought it was odd and worth noting.
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I read this article and wish they’d given more information as to WHY the protocols mattered. Sensitivity does seem the most obvious. But stories like this do not help things with some of my family members who think covid is over inflated as a problem.
If the hospitals were all fine it would be one thing, but I just keep pointing back to the overwhelmed hospitals and all of the nurses I know who are quitting. I feel like if we could all just look at that maybe we could make better decisions.
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I was just thinking that this is incredibly helpful, then I saw us Brits over on the east and I laughed so much!! Love it!! 
It is useful though because when you guys say things like ‘I’m in MA’ or ‘NH’ etc, I really struggle to work out what they all mean. I think I could list all your States, but I definitely don’t know all their abbreviations.
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That’s okay, there are a lot of people that were born in the US that have even less of an idea. My best friend is from Delaware (tiny state just south of Pennsylvania & New Jersey), her midwestern cousins called her years ago saying they were planning to “stop by” when they were visiting Boston in a few weeks. Boston is in Massachusettes and just over 6 hours away by car. 
Far closer than where her mid-western relatives lived, but no where close enough to “stop by.”
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I was hoping there was actually someone else in Bermuda!
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I appreciate all the info you link to help us get a sense for the conditions on the ground in FL. I was skeptical that masks would make much of a difference, and I read some Canadian mannequin study showing they’re usually only 10-15% or so effective because of the loose seal. I thought “wait and see what actually happens” would be better.
But now that schools are starting up and having large numbers of cases where masks are optional (at least it seems to be markedly higher than where masks are mandated), I may have to rethink this a bit. I’m really not too concerned for serious health outcomes with school aged children or spreading to adults that have had the chance to be vaccinated, but just the disruption of all the isolating and quarantining is going to be exhausting and confusing for teachers, students, and parents. I didn’t think enough about that aspect. I experienced some of that last year with DD13 back and forth several times between in person and virtual due to potential exposure and how it really made things hard for her to succeed, but have not mentally prepared myself for this being a continued possibility as this year begins. 
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I’ve been waiting to get my son into soccer since he was born. Sign ups are now and I’m just torn. It’s for 3/4 year olds, so obviously not vaccinated, but it is all outdoors. I have been very cautious with him. I pulled him from daycare last fall. He does play with cousins and we go to our local theme park that is all outside except for some dining, but I don’t take him to any shops (or now restaurants again). I know only I can make this choice, just wondered what other cautious people thought. My county is not good, but outdoor transmission has been low- I’m not sure if it’s higher with delta?
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Here’s my county: 43.8% with one dose and 36.1% fully vaccinated 
You know I support masks in schools but it is possible the protocols insist on everyone within 6ft must be quarantined if there are no masks. In a secondary school that could be students in 5-7 classes and lunch.
The protocol might be that no one is quarantined if they are all wearing masks (so only lunch time is a risk).
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Are you in Bermuda? That’s my bucket list birthday location!
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Or be like us. Where quarantining is just recommended and we still haven’t seen any kind of actual policy about close contact tracing. We are advised of the number of cases in the school that day and the date the individual (not even whether it was staff or student consistently) was last on campus.
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Texas too and we’re getting communication of # and which classes the kids were in (elementary) but that’s it. And updated Tuesday/Friday so a kid could test positive on Wednesday and they won’t notify us until Friday.
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% positive is almost 20% in Gaston co right now. Do you look at the NC covid dashboard? It has really great stats on it. Kinda scary how bad parts of the state are right now. A few counties at or over 20% regularly.
I would probably be ok with the soccer with it all outdoors, but what about meetings or dinners after or other social aspects of it?
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all of this is heart breaking… if we could just mask to help keep us in school and at work…
I’m sorry your DD struggled last year. I know my DGS struggled last year too and is excited to be back at school (started Jr.Hi. yesterday). My DD sent him w/ a mask.
I only link it b/c ya’ll come here to visit 
. It gets depressing though.
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Hospitals often run at capacity, or over capacity. In a normal summer, my hospital might go on divert (turn away ambulances) a half-dozen times or more. Spare capacity, especially in the ICU, is enormously expensive- you can’t have a $50,000k bed (yes, just the bed) sitting there empty for very long. And nursing is chronically short-staffed for multiple reasons. The things they endure in regular times are heroic, IMHO- adding COVID to that is just heartbreaking.
So instead of capacity figures or comments, I tend to watch what hospitals are doing with elective surgeries- those procedures pay the bills, they keep the hospitals doors open. Almost every other service line only breaks even or (in the case of pediatrics) actually loses money. If the hospitals are cutting elective surgeries, that’s a sign they really ARE in desperate straits. Like @Jeff_AZ’s dad’s hospital.
COVID is the straw that breaks the camel’s already weak and fragile back. The greater issue to me is the fact that it takes so little to break it. That’s what has surprised me about this. If we had a virus with a slightly higher mortality rate the whole system would collapse. The mortality rate with this virus is about 1%-ish. If it were 2% that would be all she wrote, as my dear old dad would say.
And that’s the US, where we have the most ICU beds per capita of the entire world.
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Here’s to all those working in hospitals!!! 
(from my evening paper)
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The school districts immediately west and south of us have both implemented mask mandates in the last 24 hours. The one to the west announced last night that one of its elementary schools would be closed the rest of this week.
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