Some of that is true. I know when I was 16, a license meant freedom and hanging with my friends. Now, most (if not all) states, you cannot drive at night at 16 and you can't have your friends as passengers. There are other ways (TikTok, IG, etc) to connect with friends.
The sooner he starts driving and needs my car more, he can have it. Then I can finally get a damned pick up truck. To put this topic back on the rail, is anyone else seeing people doing stuff "while they can" before the second wave? Things here in NY, especially our part, have been pretty calm, but a lot of people I've talked to feel an urgency to get stuff done before shit gets shut down again. Because a lot of us are convinced it will be.
Probably more true in the cities and suburbs than the rural areas, but with a couple bucks in your pocket you can call an uber to go anywhere, and best of all you can drink while you're there without worrying about your car. 90% of a teen's driving is going to/from school and running errands for their parents; if they can get the 10% that's going out with friends without having to eat the other 90%, that's a trade a lot of teens will make.
Ooof, I didn’t know about the no driving at night or can’t drive with friends thing. If anything though not being able to ride with friends would be an incentive to me to drive, if my friends can’t drive me around that means my parents have to bring me everywhere. Solid point on the social media stuff. Almost half my motivation for getting my license as early as possible was not having to take the bus to school, it sucked being the only junior (I was one of the youngest kids in my grade) on the bus. Running errands for my parents never bothered me, possibly because they barely ever asked. I did grow up in a somewhat rural/suburban area though. Definitely see why people growing up in more urban areas wouldn’t bother. We only had one car when we lived in the city and that was just for me to get to work. On topic: people are getting real lazy about masks here, a few stores aren’t requiring employees to wear them, people have been going back to restaurants and bars mask free. It’s not the free for all that Florida was but I definitely see another spike coming.
I think both social media and the rise of Uber/Lyft/modern taxi companies (that have apps) have made it a lot easier for kids to not care as much about driving. They can connect with their friends for free, any time, anywhere there's an internet connection. And if they do need to go somewhere, they can Uber without having to think about the stress of driving, the costs of owning a car, etc. Sure, Uber is way more expensive, but if you already have a reduced need to go places by car, and you can often split rides with friends, and you don't have the expense of a car... I've seen some of my friends' kids doing this. Back on the COVID topic, I've started to see some family and friends making dumb decisions and I think it's a result of fatigue from the lockdown. My in-laws (who I like very much) just got to hold their new granddaughter for the first time two weeks ago, because they've been really careful. The other side of the family isn't allowed near the grandchild. My father-in-law is just so crazy about finally having a grandkid, he's practically giddy - he loves babies, loves family. And he finally got to hold her. What does he do last weekend? Goes to a graduation party for a friend's family that he barely knows and doesn't like, for a kid he's rarely spoken to, and he went around shaking hands with everyone - no masks, no distancing, nothing. So he traded in getting to hold his granddaughter for glad-handing and drinking shitty beer with a bunch of near-strangers. And now my mother-in-law can't hold the grandkid either because they live together. AND he's high-risk (almost 70, heart condition, high blood pressure, A-blood). Hope you had fun. Another family friend just decided that, for the very first time in his life, it's absolutely imperative that he start getting regular massages. Another high risk guy. Like, guys, how about instead of jumping straight into large group parties or non-essential activities, you start just organizing a regular, socially-distanced gathering to have a beer with people you like?
Watching these people going without masks reminds me of being in school and not being released for recess because some shithead wouldn't shut the fuck up and settle down. I really wish it was being communicated better that the sooner we all wore masks, the sooner we could all have a relatively functional society again.
I think it is being communicated like that, I just think that there are enough fucking assholes out there that are making it a big deal. Even in Canada... we had some chick go to the Toronto ER and bitch on social media about how she had to wear a mask or she wasn't getting any service. Didn't go like she thought it would.. https://www.cp24.com/news/toronto-w...e-in-er-after-refusing-to-wear-mask-1.5012010 It's just stupid people being stupid, and going through life for too long being stupid without being called out for it. Do your part... call stupid people stupid!
The greatest thing is they attack themselves just by thinking. They post things like this: ....yes, you house filter can get like that. But your ductwork, air, and lungs don’t.....because there’s a fucking filter there.
Brazil's President Bolsonaro has it. Also, in a turn of events that shocked no one, the PPP loans went to people that didn't need a loan to stay afloat, like Kanye West, or people that shouldn't be getting government money, like Jared Kushner, Mitch McConnell's wife's business, and a host of other fuckery. Pick an asshole or a company that shouldn't get PPP loans, from churches to billionaires...they got em, leaving your Thai food place fucked and shucked. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/dealbook/ppp-loan-names.html
Well this doesn't sound great for herd immunity. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1280123151687520258?s=20 "In light of these findings, any proposed approach to achieve herd immunity through natural infection is not only highly unethical, but also unachievable." by @EckerleIsabella and @BenjaminMeyer85 Here's the link to the study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31482-3/fulltext
Not surprisingly, but yeah, that really sucks. We received PPP funds for our shops. We would have survived without it, but it sure made it a lot less stressful knowing you had those funds in the bank and also allowed us to pay the crew to do menial stuff around the shop instead of sending them home for the day. I'm sure they appreciated not losing those hours on their checks.
They are making a bit of a leap in logic in the lancet article when they state that because they don’t necessarily know what to look for with regards to immunity that we can’t achieve herd immunity. The true answer is of course TBD, but it can go beyond neutralizing antibodies. The data I have from Mass General (slightly out of date now, so it’s possible that I’m off here) shows that IgG peaks somewhere between 3-4 weeks after symptoms appear. This varies depending on age, immunocompromisation, etc. However, if there are memory T-cells circulating that account for immunity but aren’t being tested then we don’t really have great data to validate the lancelet article. The reality of the situation is there are still many unknowns about the virus, but that it can be absolutely insidious and is generally bad, so it would be preferential to not have governments throw in the towel.
Speaking of stupid. . . I’m currently at a Six Flags theme park with the family. We started in the pandemic-friendly safari ride, in our private vehicles with one family per car. Zero risk of exposure. Then we saw that the theme park lot was nearly empty and decided to go in. This place is practically a ghost town, with no one near us for the most part, no lines for rides. Food is order ahead, pick up at a window and eat outside. Nearly everyone is wearing masks, and it’s easy to avoid those wearing it wrong. It pisses me off though - it’s about 85f and humid, but if I can wear a mask (mid 50s, out of shape, asthma) with no problem, so can the rest of these losers. This is it - my one day vacation after busting ass all year. I’m hoping that I don’t regret it.
From the article: Here is the study that they cited. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2170159/ Obviously, I'm not an epidemiologist, but even if the strain is different it's still a coronavirus, right? And if that's the case, wouldn't that study have a bearing on how long a person's immunity would last? It seems logical to me that if someone gets a different version of the flu each year, it would still take roughly the same amount of time to get over it. If everybody's immunity goes away after a few months, herd immunity wouldn't be possible. It certainly explains why we don't have herd immunity to flu and the common cold.
I wouldn't be quick to compare a strain that causes the common cold to this one, particularly because 1990 was before illnesses such as SARS and MERS had presented themselves globally. For reference, here is another study that would backup my claim that memory T-cells play a role: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26038429/ Basically, in patients with severe SARS-CoV-1 infections the more severe the initial illness the longer the immunity lasted. I've read literature that with SARS the immunity lasted through a period of at least 3-10 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/ At a high level we basically don't know if certain people don't have neutralizing antibodies because of changes to their cells / susceptibility rendering them unnecessary, because of other adaptive changes to T-cells, or because the body failed to develop a lasting immunity and will be susceptible shortly thereafter. I'm inclined to believe that the body would at least have some capability to fight back- though that isn't necessarily a great thing, depending on mutation rate (see- Dengue). The question that needs to be answered is beyond IgG and IgM, which are easier to test, what will be the best ways to determine immunity? Given the length of time this virus has been around, any definitive claims in any direction are suspect. My .02, also not an immunologist.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311347/arizona-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-outbreak "Above all, experts say that the rise in cases was preventable and predictable." I wonder why no one listened to the experts, then...
My wife just got the email that schools are expected to re-open here in NC, masks are not required for elementary kids, which is what she teaches. None of the teachers she knows are happy about it, ever try and get young kids to social distance? No water fountains, lunches served in classrooms, double bus schedules due to limited kids on the bus, quarantine rooms for kids with fevers - what a shit show this is going to be.