You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Corona Chat
Janice wrote: "God help you though if you wear sandals into the clinic. I was told to remove my sandals. I told her I wasn't walking barefoot in a doctor's office. She said there were sox in the foyer. I told her I wouldn't put on a pair of sox that had previously been worn by god knows who else. But she wouldn't wear a mask..."What did the office have against sandals? Do you know? If they were new disposable sox, I would be okay with putting them on, but not just sox already worn by someone else.
Oh, I just saw your update - YAY!!!!
I guess they didn't want people tracking dirt into the office, so made a rule that no outside footwear was allowed. If they had those disposable booties that fit over your shoes, I would have happily complied.
@ Sarah - have you thought about instead of masks that go over your nose and mouth and restrict your breathing that maybe the plastic face shields might be another option? That way you could breath easier and people could still see your face. You can buy them on Amazon. I bought a pack of 6 for 30 dollars. I'm starting the Master Gardeners course this September and am going to use them for when the class is outside (indoor classwork is via zoom).@ Janice - that's good news. You want to go into your surgery as stress free as possible.
The face shields only protect from splatter from coughs and sneezes but doesn't protect you from airborne particles. That's my understanding of it anyway. So whilst it would be better for comfort,communication etc, I think I'd feel too unsafe still.
Cherie wrote: "Janice wrote: "God help you though if you wear sandals into the clinic. I was told to remove my sandals. I told her I wasn't walking barefoot in a doctor's office. She said there were sox in the fo..."I had a recommendation to a acupuncturist who wanted everyone to remove their shoes on entering. They had white carpet everywhere. I turned around and left. I will not patronize an establishment that values their carpets more then mu comfort. I wound up going to a clinic farther away. It is a great place. I have become close friends with several people there. We meet once a month at each others homes for dinner. Well we did before the virus. I hope we start again.
Sarah wrote: "The face shields only protect from splatter from coughs and sneezes but doesn't protect you from airborne particles. That's my understanding of it anyway. So whilst it would be better for comfort,c..."I think that you're correct on that one. Maybe masks are better than the shields, but I've heard that most masks doesn't protect against airborn particles. I don't know anymore, but I wear my mask. I hope you can find an answer to your decisions. It isn't easy.
That's great news, Janice!
I was searching face masks on Amazon this morning, and they had cloth masks with a clear plastic insert so you can see the mouth. That might be an option. Here's the webpage on Amazon.ca.
I have a friend who is a speech therapist and her school district is buying that kind of masks to all the therapist. It is a great idea.
My country, along with 2 other in the Irish midlands, is going into a two week lock down from midnight tonight. The national daily number of new cases is low, <100 today, but over half of these are coming from this small area. There have been a lot of out-breaks in meat processing plants and the government has been doing nothing about them. Not trying to understand why this is happening, not increasing inspections, nothing. Because we are a very rural area it is easier to introduce a lock-down that to offer basic supports to the affected industries. We are not allowed to leave our counties. Some of my friends had booked holidays and now can't go.
It's ironic that I was moaning about having to cocoon for 14 days before my back surgery - now we all have to stay put LOL
Oh dear Margo. Cases in the UK, especially England, have gone up a lot again. Between 800 and 1000 per day again. Quite a few local lockdowns now. Swindon had had a lot of new cases this last week and it would not surprise me if it goes in to lockdown. It's about 30 minutes drive from here. Again, food processing plants.
OMG, Margo and Sarah, stay safe!Number are up here as well, but my region have been pretty much spared so far.
Here vacations are probably the cause. The last week of July/first of August are what we call the construction holidays. The idea is have the these workers off during the warmest time of the year. Of course, as they are off, their spouse take these off and so on... so a good part of Quebec is on holiday and moving around. Mid July my area had a total of 0 known cases. we are up to 35... My area report a total of 575 confirmed cases since the beginning. This is a good thing but, because of it, people are not as careful as they should. I am afraid we might catch up at some point.
I really wonder what the real numbers are. I am sure that mild cases (myself included as I had a bad cold just before lockdown) went totally unreported. March is winter and there are lot of cold/flu around that time.
Queensland had been doing quite well until a few weeks ago 2 young women came home from Victoria (huge numbers of COVID there) via Sydney lying to police at the Qld border about where they’d been. After spending a few days going to work, eating out, socialising here there and everywhere they were tested + for the virus. They were put in hospital under police guard. Turns out they had already been fined in Melbourne for breaching COVID regulations by having a AirBNB party. They had also been on a stealing spree (high end fashion bags etc). Anyway now everyone is really p...ed off with them. Especially the government. This virus has not finished with us yet!
Shirley wrote: "Queensland had been doing quite well until a few weeks ago 2 young women came home from Victoria (huge numbers of COVID there) via Sydney lying to police at the Qld border about where they’d been. ..."And two others, unrelated, arrested today for lying to police on the border.
Results from staff of two food processing plants are still coming in and contact tracing is is progress. I'm wondering if food from those factories can be safe to eat. They make a range of stuff including cakes and microwave foods.Sarah, for the first time we've risen above the UK in numbers - we beat you at the one day cricket last week though so its not all bad 😁
Esther wrote: "OMG, Margo and Sarah, stay safe!Number are up here as well, but my region have been pretty much spared so far.
Here vacations are probably the cause. The last week of July/first of August are wha..."
Esther, Pete came down with a nasty cold in Jan/Feb and it took him a long time to shake off the cough, unusually for him. I picked up a mild cold from him that left me with a chest infection. He is convinced that that was Corona but I don't know. I'm a life long asthmatic which has left me with weak lungs so and just one course of antibiotic's sorted me out.
If Pete is right then that's very hopeful.
Shirley wrote: "Queensland had been doing quite well until a few weeks ago 2 young women came home from Victoria (huge numbers of COVID there) via Sydney lying to police at the Qld border about where they’d been. ..."It is scary to see what harm can be caused by just a couple of people who think that the rules don't apply to them. Hope not they didn't infect anyone else Shirley but it is worrying.
Rusalka wrote: "Shirley wrote: "Queensland had been doing quite well until a few weeks ago 2 young women came home from Victoria (huge numbers of COVID there) via Sydney lying to police at the Qld border about whe..." Yes, two teenagers (15 and 16 year olds) came by train from Sydney. There is no excuse!
Margo wrote: "Shirley wrote: "Queensland had been doing quite well until a few weeks ago 2 young women came home from Victoria (huge numbers of COVID there) via Sydney lying to police at the Qld border about whe..."Amazingly, even though they went to multiple places whilst infected, there were only a few known cases of transmission.
Eek, we've gone exponential again. Second wave here we come. I am not looking forward to a winter lockdown if it happens.
Having had a winter lockdown, I will say I would prefer that to a summer one. It's easy to stay inside when it's cold and sleeting outside. We found it really cozy, and I found it really hard to go back to a 50 year old building that was poorly heated and insulated when back at work.But that sucks, second wave is shitty.
Cases have spiked here since the university opened 2 weeks ago. We had had 120 cases since March and now we are seeing 40-50 cases a day, which might sound silly if you live in a big city, but it is worrisome for a small town like ours. So far the cases are mostly students (they probably came sick already) who are still breaking quarantine and partying, which is annoying and upsetting. Most of them are freshmen, so the older students signed a letter asking to send the freshmen home since the rest want to stay and are behaving better. They got near 10 thousands signatures from student only over a weekend. So things have been very entertaining these last days.My kids' high school has decided to go online until this spike is under control. Probably the elementary and middle school will do it soon. (The public school did it at all levels, but my kids attend a private catholic school that hasn't closed yet)
This sucks. The university should have had only classes online and not bringing students from all over the country to this small town with only one hospital. Then we could have go on with life in the new normality as we were doing. Everyone safer, including the students. Now we are all getting slowly locked in again, but the university hasn't even mention the possibility of going on line. That would mean they have to refund room and board money to the students.
A parent of a university student complained because a professor teaching one of his son's courses decided to move it online when cases spiked. Then the university sent a email to all the professors prohibiting them doing that...
It's all about money.
Sandra wrote: "Cases have spiked here since the university opened 2 weeks ago. We had had 120 cases since March and now we are seeing 40-50 cases a day, which might sound silly if you live in a big city, but it i..."No, it doesn't Sandra. They locked down our second largest city in the country for 8 weeks because of those numbers, and they rose beyond that. Like only one person per household could leave the house per day for food for an hour (everyone can for one hour exercise) and all wearing mandatory face masks.
I understand about the unis. Working for one here they have been all about protecting people as they don't want to be the source of an outbreak, but want students back in ressies as if they aren't there they are loosing money. My office is on the main walkway from ressies to the heart of campus (ie the bar) and I have 2 walls of windows showing me the lack of social distancing there is on the walk to the bar. I'm honestly just waiting for it to hit...
Universities are a breeding ground, as we say in Spanish...In a way we all knew this was going to happen. You can't bring people from everywhere, going from 48 thousand people in town to 90 thousand, and don't see cases going up. But the university had promised to control things and they are not doing it. They ask for masks in campus and social distancing, and they are testing 1% of the students each day, which is stupid. By the time they finish the semester will be over.
I drove my daughter to her college last weekend. She was tested when she checked it and has to quarantine in her dorm until she has 2 negative results, which might take between 5 and 7 days. They are bringing her lunch and dinner, and left lots of snacks in each dorm. Students are not allowed no leave campus during the whole month of September, and the university will decide how things will be in October according to the cases they have.
I was expecting the university here to do something similar, or at least that was what it looked like during the summer when they drove us crazy sending emails every minute about how ready they were getting...
I think what really made us all feel homicidal was the president of the university last Friday saying they needed "more commitment from the community"... WTF??? I seriously felt like setting his home on fire! Our community did wonderful all this time. We have lots of seniors living here (seniors accommodations of every kind you can imagine) so we really took it seriously, and did a great job. We had only 120 cases, 1 death. Now the university makes a mess and tries to make responsible who know who. It makes you wonder what kind of idiot is in charge of control this spike.
Ok. Rant over. I'm sorry. It is so frustrating. But I know this is not original. Everyone everywhere is going through this or worse.
Sarah wrote: "Eek, we've gone exponential again. Second wave here we come. I am not looking forward to a winter lockdown if it happens."Oh no!! Ugh.
Sandra wrote: "A parent of a university student complained because a professor teaching one of his son's courses decided to move it online when cases spiked. Then the university sent a email to all the professors prohibiting them doing that...It's all about money."
That's terrible. Yikes.
We've had some universities here have to go back to online as well due to college kids not following guidelines and cases spiking. Some schools are remote, some went back full time, some are trying different hybrid solutions. There is no consistency and each school district and university has been left to come up with its own plan. Honestly, I don't think the US ever got through the first wave. It's a huge mess here. We've had no good leadership or direction.
I agree, Kristie. We didn't got through the first wave and we wasted the opportunity summer gave us, making things easier to handle. Cold weather will only worse things.
We are getting just short of 3000 per day. Schools went back this week, unis in a couple weeks. No idea what will happen then. Deaths had gone really low but today we had oir first spike in a long time. I qgree that unis are problematic with the mass migration around the country. Especially as quite a few regions here are in locaal lockdown. Good to know Rusalka re. winter lockdown.
We are about the same Sandra. Kids are back at school here so number are going up as well. It was expected and as our numbers were really low, it made sense. Or I should say we were low because... stupid people. Now, when one actually goes get tested, One would think to stay home for while waiting for the result right? Because you do not get tested just for fun, right? But no... why stay home when you can go in a karaoke night in a bar. But oups. he tested positive. Result. 60 infected that night. Sorry... it really $%$%?"$% me.
My grandkids are still on lockdown from school (High School and Elementary). They start back online next Monday, the 14th. Normally, they would have started today, if it were not for Covid. My company is still keeping us all working from home. We still have no idea when we will be allowed to go back to work in our offices. They have all of the buildings secured, and if your badge number is not on the "allowed in list", we cannot enter the buildings on any of the sites - around the country. We have contractors still working at one of the sites here in Hillsboro, but their entrance is really controlled now. There was a small outbreak early in the summer, but no company employees were exposed. We have a few engineers working in some of the labs, but it is not an ongoing situation. As soon as their testing is done, they go back home and stay there. We are still having virtual meetings on Skype for business and virtual lunch once a month. I met with three other folks that I used to work with last week. It was the first time I had seen anyone, in person, from work since last March. We all met in a parking lot at the central shopping center and sat in our lawn chairs and ate lunch and talked for two hours. We were all separated the correct distance and all of us had masks on, except when we were eating.
Your parking lot meeting sounds great, Cherie. A friend of mine has 3 senior neighbors that seat in their lawn chairs and talk across the road. She says they are very funny. They have to speak so loud that everyone knows what are they talking about. I hope the nice weather lasts. Its gonna be a pity when they have to stay inside.
I love your parking lot lunch Cherie! Our local bookclub did Zoom meetings for March and April, then when the weather smartened up we started meeting in a park so we could actually be together. But, now the weather is changing so they are back to meeting in restaurants, but COVID is starting to pick up too, so no more bookclub meetings for me 😩 Going to have to wait and see how long they let me stay in the group if I don’t go to the meetings 🥺
We havee new restrictions coming in on Monday although I can't imagine they'll do a huge amount of good. I think they brought it in mainly because if the universities. We can only socialise in maximum group of 6 people.
There is a political sh**storm happening here in Australia at the moment over border restrictions between states, with our PM taking sides. This is what we hear: “they’ve closed the border because they don’t like us any more” “we do better contact tracing than anyone else”. “I won’t be intimidated by the southern states” I wonder what happened to “We’re all in this together.”
Cherie wrote: "My grandkids are still on lockdown from school (High School and Elementary). They start back online next Monday, the 14th. Normally, they would have started today, if it were not for Covid. My comp..."What a great idea Cherie. It would have been a breath of fresh air - in more ways than one.
Sandra wrote: "Your parking lot meeting sounds great, Cherie. A friend of mine has 3 senior neighbors that seat in their lawn chairs and talk across the road. She says they are very funny. They have to speak so l..."What a great story that will make in years to come, when we look back and remember these crazy days.
No kidding Shirley, we’re going to have a whole generation called the COVID Kids - conceived on lockdown lol
Shirley wrote: "There is a political sh**storm happening here in Australia at the moment over border restrictions between states, with our PM taking sides. This is what we hear: “they’ve closed the border because ..."Yeah it's a bit like that here in the UK with England, Scotland and Wales all doing different things, moaning about each other's restrictions and approach etc.
What I'm struggling with it that we are all supposed to be going back to normal. I'm due to restart my monthly work down in Bournemouth. I've not done much since March and it feels like a big thing for me. I need to get prepared for it. So I had planned to go out for dinner with a couple friends next week so that I can experience being inside a building other than my own home and with strangers too. I was also thinking of booking a night in a hotel nearby. And perhaps go get a coffee while I'm waiting for my laundry. All makes sense to get me prepared. But with the cases increasing, it feels like a dangerous time to start going out and doing these things which I have seen as 'risky' for these last few months, especially since I basically shielded the whole time because of my asthma. I'm so torn and I don't really know what the answer is.
Jenn wrote: "No kidding Shirley, we’re going to have a whole generation called the COVID Kids - conceived on lockdown lol"Quarenteenies.
That's what I'm calling this generation of chickens.
Shirley wrote: "There is a political sh**storm happening here in Australia at the moment over border restrictions between states, with our PM taking sides. This is what we hear: “they’ve closed the border because ..."It's appalling. I also think this is a major disconnect with State Premiers prioritising people, where as the Federal Gov is prioritising the economy. I appreciated your Premier Palaszczuk calling out the bullying behaviour today though.
Sarah wrote: "What I'm struggling with it that we are all supposed to be going back to normal. I'm due to restart my monthly work down in Bournemouth. I've not done much since March and it feels like a big thing..."Understand Sarah. While I've been back at work for two days a week (we have a roster of two of us admin staff in per day and the two technical staff in all the time), Lexx has probably less than 20 people since March due to his at risk factors. We haven't had a new case here in 60 days, but know that people coming from Sydney are a big possibility. So we've been being careful, particularly him.
We've had some small groups of family come into our house for drinks/coffee. And we've gone out twice for dinner with friends. I went out with my team last week for lunch, as it was three of their birthdays in one week (bit OTT really :P) and realised I hadn't seen my deputy in person since March. But slowly slowly is the thing. Means you can wind it back okay, but also means you don't go crazy.
See if we weren't getting new cases, i'd feel more comfortable.
Sarah wrote: "See if we weren't getting new cases, i'd feel more comfortable."Yeah... Fair point, I'd be still isolating if the numbers were the same as over there...
I am going back into hibernation as soon as we start community transmission again here. I've told my staff to keep screens and things at home, just in case.
I would never have gone to Edmonton this summer if I hadn't needed to go. They have far more cases than here. I'm always amazed when I hear of people travelling around. There seems to be a lot of it this summer.My dad and I are going to brave a weekend getaway to Jasper this weekend. We'll be staying in a 2 bedroom cabin with a full kitchen so will be doing all our own cooking. I plan on packing a lunch for my trip there so I don't need to stop at a restaurant. Jasper has mandatory mask requirements, so if we do go into a store or fill up with gas, everyone will be wearing a mask. I feel more comfortable.
The following weekend is a quilt retreat. I'm nervous about that because the main organizer thinks covid is nothing but a cold. The hotel is setting most of the precautions. We will each have an 8 foot table to ourselves. Meals will be served (as apposed to buffet) and spacing will be observed. I figure if we get tables against the wall at the back, we reduce the number of people walking back and forth. And we're bringing our own sanitation, etc, to have at our tables.
That sounds like so much fun Janice, I have yet to go to a retreat. Someday lolWe actually did a fair amount of getaways this summer, but we camp. So, even though we were in a campground, we like ones with lots of trees/brush between all of the sites, and we are pretty self sufficient as far as toilets and such. But, we still packed a big pump sanitizer, and kept our distance from the other campers.
Our office never closed for me (except for the month I worked from home because Sean was home with a cold - we were both negative), but there are only four of us in this building and all of the precautions and distancing in place.
When my son went on his bike tour this summer, he found that he couldn't camp in any of the federal campsites. Those were restricted to trailers (caravans for our British folk) who were self sufficient and not using communal toilets.He redesigned his route and stayed at provincial campsites that allowed tents.
It's all so inconsistent. You can't camp in a federal campground unless you have your own toilet, but you can go to a restaurant and use their public washrooms.
I can go to my doctor's office and the staff are not wearing masks and are seated less than 6 feet apart, and you aren't screened on entry. Yet, when I go for a massage, I have to SIGN a screening form that she has to keep for 7 years, both of us have to wear masks and she has to wear safety glasses.
You can go to the store (Costco or grocery store as an example), and you can touch everything on the shelves and put it back, but God forbid that they allow the dividers between people's groceries because too many people touching them.....
It drives me crazy!
Janice wrote: "I figure if we get tables against the wall at the back, we reduce the number of people walking back and forth. And we're bringing our own sanitation, etc, to have at our tables.."Here we have to wear a mask inside if you are standing up and moving around. Not a bad idea, IMO. You could do this.
My knitting group is meeting this Saturday, We are doing it in a park and we will sit 2 meters apart. We may have to talk loudly a bit if we all show up, I guess this is the new normal. I have not seen any of them since early March and, as this is probably the last days of nice weather for QC, it will not happen again for a while as cafes are not an option for now.
You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
Books mentioned in this topic
Catch-22 (other topics)The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (other topics)
Sarah, I share your concerns about the coming winter. It is daunting to have to face a commute to work and to have to meet with clients face to face after months of isolation. I hope find a suitable mask.