Coronavirus ~ COVID-19

[easygoingfemme]

Today was crazy here. Literally hour by hour schools shutting down and having really intense meetings about what policies to put into place reflecting that. As of now we have cancelled all community meetings that we hold in our building and no one is allowed visitors- residents or staff. Daily check ins and health screenings for all 95 residents. Come Tuesday it will likely be down to only essential staff in the building which would be myself, one person on maintenance, one on front desk, a director and our CEO. My daughter moves back home tomorrow, unsure when or if she'll get to go finish her senior year of college. It took three days to get someone from Public Health who had time to talk to me about what protocol we follow if someone in house tests positive. Turns out they don't have a plan. I know National Guard is helping in some places in lockdown so I'm trying to see if they will come to us to drop off food if the building is quarantined.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by easygoingfemme

. . . My daughter moves back home tomorrow, unsure when or if she'll get to go finish her senior year of college.

I work for a consortium of 16 colleges. (Basically we help them do some things as a group that saves them money, and we apply for and administer grants for them.) They are all going nuts trying to figure out what to do. There are so many questions to consider, like: what if students come back from spring break, one of them tests positive, do they have to quarantine that whole dormitory? The whole campus? All the students in that person's classes? Basically they just don't have the resources to do that. So pretty much across the board, they are telling students to go home, and to not come back from spring break. They are working desperately to find a way to let all the students finish up their courses online. There are a lot of questions with that, too: for instance, accrediting agencies (SACS in the Southeast) have not approved all of these courses for online instruction.

I do know, however, that all of our schools are trying very hard to find solutions for their students. Some will do a better job than others, I'm sure. But they are all taking it seriously, and seem to have the students' situations at the forefront of their concerns. I hope your daughter's school will, too - I feel sure that they are very likely to.

[easygoingfemme]

Originally Posted by GeorgiaMa'am

I work for a consortium of 16 colleges. (Basically we help them do some things as a group that saves them money, and we apply for and administer grants for them.) They are all going nuts trying to figure out what to do. There are so many questions to consider, like: what if students come back from spring break, one of them tests positive, do they have to quarantine that whole dormitory? The whole campus? All the students in that person's classes? Basically they just don't have the resources to do that. So pretty much across the board, they are telling students to go home, and to not come back from spring break. They are working desperately to find a way to let all the students finish up their courses online. There are a lot of questions with that, too: for instance, accrediting agencies (SACS in the Southeast) have not approved all of these courses for online instruction.

I do know, however, that all of our schools are trying very hard to find solutions for their students. Some will do a better job than others, I'm sure. But they are all taking it seriously, and seem to have the students' situations at the forefront of their concerns. I hope your daughter's school will, too - I feel sure that they are very likely to.

Yes, they are moving everything to online. It will be interesting. It's her last semester and she is way over on required credits so she has been taking classes like hip hop dance, ballet, glass blowing... I am not sure how that translates to an online class. We shall see.

I hope that if graduation is cancelled that they invite the students back later to have a proper graduation. My daughter homeschooled for middle and high school so she never had a real school graduation experience and as much as she never wanted to be in a real school school she wants that graduation experience at one point in her life.

[Kätzchen]

I am off work early tonight, due to attendance at our work campus being 70% down. People are opting to work from home (for those who can). On the drive home tonight, NPR featured local updates for our metro area and our Governor (Kate Brown) has signed off on closing schools for the next two weeks, which leaves thousands of kids without meals that they would ordinarily get at school. We have a stark divide between the people who are high income earners vs the people who barely get by (living pay check to pay check, in some cases it's more dire).

I also read, moments ago, that the first case of Co-vid 19 is bench marked to have appeared on November 17th of last fall (Patient Zero). So here it is, nearly six months later and it's almost like it's a "little too late" (…).

It's good that Nancy Pelosi has a bill ready to pass that will provide two weeks of paid time off, for those who have been affected by being exposed or who actually have been diagnosed (It's not clear to me, the parameters of help), but it's a start and I hope it helps spur a more vigilant effort on correcting the Medical Industry and other important aspects of what happens to people when you have a massive health crisis that FMLA just doesn't seem to help (etc).

I am being super vigilant with sanitation practices and being aware of risks that might not be so obvious to the careful eye.

All I can think of is that this epidemic is an epidemic that will topple not only anybody's life but across the entire spectrum of daily life activities (earning a living, one's health, etc).

Oh, and I got a call from my therapist's office and the CEO of the clinic personally called each participant receiving therapy at the clinic I go to and they've cancelled appointments for the next two weeks... so they can self quarantine, clean the entire building, etc. Social distancing - is what I think they are advocating. Putting as much distance between oneself and any risk or exposure.

I went by Trader Joes this morning to pick up a salad for my lunch and waited more than 30 minutes to check out my single item. People ahead of me and in lanes nearby? They were buying groceries to the tune of over $500 or more (I heard one cashier voice an amount of over $1K). It was a chaotic crisis scene at that store this morning. And everyone was quiet. Patiently waiting their turn to be checked out. I can't even imagine what it was like at a nearby Walmart or The Dollar Store. One store patron was retelling how there was an actual fight at the Dollar Store over antiseptic hand gel bottles, only four were left.