Octopus Overlords

Formix wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:10 pm As an interesting postscript, our team had a 30 person meeting today in the same room I was bitching about before. The irony was that the main thrust was to tell us we might all have to pitch in because so many staff members are out with COVID. I almost wanted to stand up and suggest that maybe they were out with COVID because they spent TOO MUCH TIME IN AN ENCLOSED SPACE WITH TOO MANY OTHER PEOPLE! I now know what it feels like to live for two years inside the "Crazy Pills" gif. I really hope my new job pans out.

A nurse at a Colorado health system shared an internal memo with me. "Staff and providers with symptoms of a runny nose, sore throat, body aches and/or loss of taste or smell may continue reporting to work unless symptoms worsen," it reads.

"A lot of people don't know the rules have changed in Ohio, and you don't need a teaching license. You have a temporary license right now to do that," Carson said. "In Mason, we'd love to encourage, if someone has just graduated from college, doesn't have a job yet, come sub for us, make $125 a day and get to be with students."

Both districts upped their pay for substitute teachers to that rate during this time of need. Applicants will still be vetted and have to go through a background check.

The only time the US crossed 125,000 hospitalized Covid patients was January 5, 2021, when there were ~0 vaccines.

We're at ~126,000 (+6,000 from yesterday)https://newsnodes.com/us Whatever "decoupling" hoped for vs prior peak is quickly getting minimized
graph by @jburnmurdoch

$125 a day

Former health advisers to President Joe Biden say the US strategy for the Covid-19 pandemic needs to be updated to face a "new normal" of living with the virus, rather than aiming to eliminate it.

In three pieces published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Thursday, six former Biden advisers proposed a new plan and detailed strategies for testing, mitigation, vaccines and treatments.

"Without a strategic plan for the 'new normal' with endemic COVID-19, more people in the US will unnecessarily experience morbidity and mortality, health inequities will widen, and trillions will be lost from the US economy," wrote Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama health adviser now with the University of Pennsylvania; Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; and Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at Bellevue Hospital Center and at Grossman School of Medicine at New York University.

All were appointed to Biden's Transition Covid-19 Advisory Board in 2020.

For this new strategy, "humility is essential," they wrote. There remain unknowns about the virus and its future, and "predictions are necessary but educated guesses, not mathematical certainty." Leaders will have to communicate specific goals and benchmarks, and national plans will need to be adapted for local use.

They push for modernized data infrastructure to provide real-time information, a bolstered public health work force, more and empowered school nurses, and moves to rebuild trust in public health institutions. Substantial resources will be needed to "build and sustain an effective public health infrastructure," they write.

They push for modernized data infrastructure to provide real-time information, a bolstered public health work force, more and empowered school nurses, and moves to rebuild trust in public health institutions. Substantial resources will be needed to "build and sustain an effective public health infrastructure," they write.

While the president is emphasizing vaccination as the only national response to the pandemic, we have an entire political party (aided and abetted by corporate actors) pursuing a strategy of “let ’er rip”: promoting community transmission through opposition to vaccine and mask mandates, colluding with anti-vaxxers suggesting that resistance to vaccination is an embrace of freedom and liberty, discouraging testing—and then demanding expensive drugs to treat Covid-19 when people get sick. I don’t even know what to call this strategy in technical terms—or even in polite language. What is clear is that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” as said W.B. Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming,” written in 1919 in the wake of the first world war’s devastation. Those oft-repeated—perhaps too often—lines perfectly describe our pandemic predicament as we enter 2022, the third year of this plague.

We have become a nation of death-eaters. We can consume the tragedy of losing 826,063 men, women and children to this disease and respond with cries to do less, to get us back to normal. And our politicians, pundits, and business leaders are all too willing to oblige. We are all exhausted, frustrated, and angry. We could actually have a better, more humane approach to Covid-19 in the United States—beating back the virus, while lifting up all of us—because other countries have done it. Only there are simply not enough people willing to fight for it; there is no political will to do more.

Smoove_B wrote:So when tests are forcing shut downs, we just get rid of using them. In Ohio, a teacher shortage means just lower the bar for what it means to be a substitute so we can keep the doors open:

"A lot of people don't know the rules have changed in Ohio, and you don't need a teaching license. You have a temporary license right now to do that," Carson said. "In Mason, we'd love to encourage, if someone has just graduated from college, doesn't have a job yet, come sub for us, make $125 a day and get to be with students."

Both districts upped their pay for substitute teachers to that rate during this time of need. Applicants will still be vetted and have to go through a background check.

If this doesn't demonstrate quite clearly what is going on, I don't know what else to say.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:01 pm I'm not so sure. He didn't speak to the people on my local FB page that are saying it's just people with a cold that are using the ER as their primary doctor and if people would just deal with it at home, we'd be fine. Then they also add in that when we force ER nurses to get the vaccine and they quit, what do we expect will happen?

While I have no doubts there are "worried well" jamming up some of the hospital capacity, there's a frighteningly low number of unvaccinated and partially vaccinated people in my area and state (and nationwide).

Off to read Yong!

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm My wife is assistant to the vice principle at a high school in a Chicago suburb.
She was notified that although the school is closed and all teachers and students are to stay home, support staff is required to be at work in person.
Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

The CDC projects #COVID19 will very mildly kill 3,500 people every day within a month.

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 2:24 pm Maybe this will cool down the housing market.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:42 pm

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm My wife is assistant to the vice principle at a high school in a Chicago suburb.
She was notified that although the school is closed and all teachers and students are to stay home, support staff is required to be at work in person.
Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

Support staff aren't union. It's the same in Chicago, principals and their support staff along with janitorial and food service are in.

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:16 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:42 pm

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm My wife is assistant to the vice principle at a high school in a Chicago suburb.
She was notified that although the school is closed and all teachers and students are to stay home, support staff is required to be at work in person.
Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

Support staff aren't union. It's the same in Chicago, principals and their support staff along with janitorial and food service are in.

She is most definitely union. Up until last year, she was heavily involved in union meetings and matters.
She became disenfranchised when more and more staff found out that they did not have to actually be in the union to receive full union benefits.
That's right, even those that dont join the union and pay dues still reap all the union benefits.
Gotta love Illinois.......

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:16 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:42 pm

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm My wife is assistant to the vice principle at a high school in a Chicago suburb.
She was notified that although the school is closed and all teachers and students are to stay home, support staff is required to be at work in person.
Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

Support staff aren't union. It's the same in Chicago, principals and their support staff along with janitorial and food service are in.

She is most definitely union.

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:16 pm That's right, even those that dont join the union and pay dues still reap all the union benefits.
Gotta love Illinois.......

In this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that an Illinois law requiring non-union members to pay agency fees for the union to engage in collective bargaining and related activities amounts to an unconstitutional compulsion of speech in violation of the First Amendment. The Court overruled its decision in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ. (1977), which had upheld a similar agency shop arrangement.

The Illinois Public Labor Relations Act allows state employees to unionize. When they unionize, individual employees don’t have to join the union but that union becomes their sole permitted representative and they have to pay a percentage of the union dues – called an agency fee.

Under the rationale of Abood, non-union member employees must pay chargeable expenditures – those that are germane to the union’s collective bargaining responsibilities but don’t have to fund political and ideological efforts of the union.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:32 pm

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:16 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:42 pm

stimpy wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:18 pm My wife is assistant to the vice principle at a high school in a Chicago suburb.
She was notified that although the school is closed and all teachers and students are to stay home, support staff is required to be at work in person.
Guess their health and safety doesnt matter,,,,,,,

Support staff aren't union. It's the same in Chicago, principals and their support staff along with janitorial and food service are in.

She is most definitely union.

Teachers' union?