Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic
6 years ago
Featured Answer
Sort by:Oldest
Comments (81)
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
Related Discussions
Wondering if Covid-19 will stop any military conflicts?
Comments (10)aktillery, I'm so sorry you're going through a really rough time right now. Many of us, while not suffering any physical problems from this virus, are still feeling the pain of loneliness, isolation, and emotional stress, due to worry and fear about its spread. Thankfully, many people are spontaneously doing thoughtful acts for others, such as delivering groceries or doing a chore for someone at higher risk, so they won't have to leave their house and chance any exposure. But on a much larger scale, I got to wondering how far beyond the necessity to help worse hit nations during the Covid19 crisis, will we extend our benevolence. That brought me to remembering the story of the Christmas Truce, during World War One. Unfortunately, it lasted so briefly, before they resumed their orders. But the point is, if soldiers from two of the world's greatest enemy nations were so inspired to call a truce from killing each other, simply by hearing the sound of Christmas Carols being sung in the trenches, couldn't a world wide deadly pandemic be enough, to inspire nations currently warring, to so the same? Did we not learn from the Spanish Flu pandemic, that military conflicts should be taken off the schedule, when a deadly virus is threatening every nation? Could we have evolved enough so that leaders will recognize that wasting their money, time and manpower in continued conflicts at this time, is ludicrous? Will we able to pass down a story of the 'Covid19 Truce' which historical records would say marked the first time in history, that a world wide pandemic ended all warring between nations? Then afterward, seeing they'd managed to exist without fighting for X amount of months, imagine if each conflict was just not resumed. If a tragedy isn't used to do anything more humane, more charitable, and more moral, then we've only accumulated losses, but wasted the opportunity to better ourselves. I'd love to hear of the 'Covid19 Truce' of 2020. Nice dream, isn't it?...See MoreAnybody want to talk about the elephant in the room?
Comments (44)A few small points: -it's wrong to say it's not exponential growth. The fact that it won't be exponential forever is well known (obviously it cannot increase past one-hundred percent, and will slow before that). If one wishes to be pedantic, you can say it is currently in or starts out as an exponential growth function and eventually slows. (But if one wanted to be pedantic, you could also say the Gompertz function is also an exponential function, just with a specific form that provides for exponential growth and then slows). -That point is irrelevant in a population that is nowhere near the so-called 'herd immunity' constraints. -The more important point is that even at relatively low levels of infection, it begins to overload the health system - any health system. And when the health system is overloaded (particularly in ability to provide intensive care spaces and ventilation support), things go bad quickly with increased mortality. You may not care about your own risk of getting a severe case, but you will care if you cannot get other necessary care because all available medical personnel and key equipment are tied up with covid patients and you're unable to get cancer care, any kind of non-urgent surgery, etc., etc. -This relates to the exponential function directly - search for the now famous "bend the curve" graph. If the rate of infection is slowed (the size of the exponent is lowered), it may be possible to keep the number of critical cases within the capacity of the medical system to manage. The final total may be the same number of cases, but if they occur over 24 months instead of 6 months, the mortality impacts may be enormous. (Side note: Wuhan figures fell, but not without massive government intervention; you can't just say 'if Wuhan kept doubling for sixty days it would be the population of the earth - the shape of the function was changed with outside intervention. Or in math terms, the exponent is not fixed). -Capacity: without getting into differences between countries, it doesn't make sense to say that e.g. US hospitals are at 65% capacity so we're okay. I know a bit about hotel business - and 65% is considered a pretty good approximation of long-term 'full capacity' (with normal margin for repairs and whatnot). The basic issue is 'surges' - use of hotels is not constant every day. A hotel with high weekend use will be full two or three days a week, with no (or minimal) extra rooms. With no spare capacity (on market) for large events like a super bowl or a world cup. Unlike the hotel market, though, there is minimal ability for 'other supply' (private homes, airbnb, etc) to fill the gap. There are not that many substitutes for ICU units with ventilators; people without hotel rooms can stay with relatives, people without ventilators when needed die. -The situation is worse with hospitals: we like to focus on beds, ICU units and ventilators. But trained medical staff is a key limiting factor - and they get sick, have to be isolated, and even die during epidemics. There is some capacity to increase (surge) but not unlimited; the system can get overwhelmed. It's one thing to have the spare capacity on hand to deal with a 'normal' surge or even a one-off catastrphic event limited to one major metropolitan area (where a spike in cases and then things settle down). A fast-spreading epidemic is another, because continued increases (for a while) and medical staff getting sick at the same time (and having to drop their usual specialty). It gets into triage of who lives and who dies very quickly....See MoreHow do you weigh the risk? A suggestion
Comments (42)I find all this worrying that underprivileged children will fall further behind almost laughable. Underprivileged children have always been behind, their education has always been substandard and no one seemed to care much until the pandemic kept the rest of the kids out of school. I absolutely believe —based on conversations and interactions with people I know well— that many, if not most, parents WANT the instructional aspect of schooling but NEED need the daycare aspect and that is what is driving the push to go back. I’m not saying it isn’t a real problem, but please, let’s not pretend this is “for the children.” It’s for the adults who need to work, who want to work, who don’t feel capable of assisting with home schooling, or who flat out just don’t want to. We should be addressing the child-minding issue instead. Children will not be stunted psychologically or socially by staying home for a year, or two years. Large scale warehousing of kids / mandatory schooling is a relatively recent phenomenon. Elementary school in the US wasn’t compulsory until 1918. High school school mandates still vary quite a bit from state to state, but it was common in the 1940s for kids to exit school at 8th grade. Compulsory education was not universally welcomed—there was huge opposition to it until the FDR administration managed to enact meaningful child labor legislation in the late 1930s. Schools became more popular once kids couldnt work for a wage. Compulsory education was a radical shift in society. Segregation was a radical shift in education. THIS is another radical shift. Schools have long needed to retool to meet the needs of kids, not the convenience of adults. Having children in a group setting for six to eight hours a day is not ideal, just from a public health issue (lice, colds, unimmunized kids with an exemption). From a social point of view, bullying is just one common problem even at the elementary school level. And if you want your fifteen year old to mature, what sense does it make to engineer an environment in which other fifteen year olds are their most important social influence? Change is messy, change is difficult. Change is—and always has been— politically divisive. But change is also the way we move forward. I hope that after the pandemic we will have a serious national discussion about the nature of schooling and retool the system for children’s needs and for equal educational opportunity, and not simply return to the status quo....See MoreCovid vaccine question
Comments (23)This just came across my newsfeed earlier today... https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/12/covid-jn1-pandemic-world-health-organization-warns-dangers-repeat-covid-infection-cardiac-pulmonary-neurologic/amp/ COVID levels are up to 19 times higher than reported, WHO says as it warns of the potential dangers of repeat reinfection: ‘We don’t know everything about this virus’ Because most people have some immunity to COVID, “we don’t necessarily know how often we’re getting infected,” a WHO spokesperson said. BY ERIN PRATERJanuary 12, 2024 3:45 PM EST COVID levels are two to 19 times higher than numbers being reported around the world, a WHO official said Friday, citing wastewater data. The news comes as the organization warns of the yet unknown dangers of repeat COVID infection, which can occur without symptoms. Because most people have some immunity to COVID due to vaccination and/or prior infection, “we don’t necessarily know how often we’re getting infected,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said at a news briefing in Geneva. “Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.” The concerns regarding COVID infection are multipronged, she said, and include potential acute implications like hospitalization and death, the development of long COVID, and “even longer-term effects” like those she referenced. It’s estimated that 6% to 10% of those infected with COVID will go on to develop long COVID, she added. “It’s real,” she said of the condition. “It’s not in someone’s head. This is actually a real condition that needs to be studied properly.” The pandemic continues Whether we acknowledge it or not, the world is still in a pandemic, Van Kerkhove said, citing the virus’s lack of a seasonal pattern, which many respiratory pathogens have, and its continued, rapid-pace evolution. What’s more, hundreds of thousands around the world are currently hospitalized with the virus, and around 10,000 died from it last month, she said—likely untold more. COVID hospitalizations and ICU admissions rose by 42% and 62%, respectively, in December. This world is currently experiencing a surge of JN.1, a highly mutated Omicron spawn some say deserves a new Greek letter from the WHO, like Pi or Rho. In the U.S., it’s currently fueling the country’s second-largest wave of the pandemic. COVID’s ongoing impact remains underappreciated, Van Kerkhove said. Death figures are based on data from only 50 countries and territories still reporting to the WHO, out of 234, she said. Hospitalization figures come from only 29. And only 21—less than 9%—still report ICU data. Of the 10,000 COVID deaths reported to the WHO in December, “more than half were from the U.S., and 1,000 were from Italy,” she added. “We are missing deaths in countries from around the world. Just because countries aren’t reporting deaths doesn’t mean they’re not happening.”......See More- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
- 6 years ago
Related Stories

DECLUTTERING10 Tips for Clearing Out the Family Home
A professional organizer offers advice on emptying a family home in preparation for a sale
Full Story
UNIVERSAL DESIGNWhat to Look for in a House if You Plan to Age in Place
Look for details like these when designing or shopping for your forever home
Full Story
ARCHITECTURERoots of Style: Do You Live in a Minimalist Traditional House?
Cottages, bungalows, farmhouses ... whatever you call them, houses in this style share several characteristics. See how many your house has
Full Story
TRENDING NOWThe 10 Most Popular Home Offices So Far in 2020
See how soothing colors, hardworking built-ins and lots of style create inviting, modern work-from-home spaces
Full Story
ORGANIZING10 Things to Remember When Decluttering in the New Year
Fast-track the process and ease the stress by making a plan before you begin
Full Story
KITCHEN DESIGNYour Guide to 6 Kitchen Island Styles
L-shaped, galley, curved or furniture-style? Find out which type of kitchen island is right for you
Full Story
KITCHEN DESIGNKitchen Counters: Durable, Easy-Clean Soapstone
Give bacteria the boot and say sayonara to stains with this long-lasting material that's a great choice for kitchen and bath countertops
Full Story
KITCHEN CABINETSPainted vs. Stained Kitchen Cabinets
Wondering whether to go for natural wood or a painted finish for your cabinets? These pros and cons can help
Full Story
LIFEHow to Prepare for and Live With a Power Outage
When electricity loss puts food, water and heat in jeopardy, don't be in the dark about how to stay as safe and comfortable as possible
Full Story
MOST POPULARWhat to Know About Adding a Deck
Want to increase your living space outside? Learn the requirements, costs and other considerations for building a deck
Full StorySponsored
laceyvail 6A, WV