Let's turn this around, Elmer since you feel that you are the expert in all things medical, what is your degree in and how many years of medical experience do you have?????

Raye, it is not that one needs credentials to talk about medical issues. You did not read Elmer's entire comment, below is the part you passed over:

You've had so many off the wall comments that contradict any suggestion that you know what you're talking about.

You say you passed boards in microbiology and yet you seem perfectly OK with the concept of a sick, infectious child in the workplace. There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there.

Not attacking, but asking -- Raye, what's the rest of the story? How did your employer respond to your complaint about the sick child in the workplace? (eta: was the cot in a separate room?) Did the other employees welcome any new policy or procedure? Did anyone make you feel ashamed for raising the issue at the time? And today, you think you would/should have not spoken up at all? (You don't have to answer if you don't want to.)

General comment: man, I'd love to pass a law that anytime anyone uses the term "rights" they also MUST USE the term "responsibilities." As in, it's my right to (blank) therefore it's my responsibility to (etc). And compassion. Why can't we make compassion and cooperation mandatory. *sigh*

"I studied in college and passed boards in microbiology, that covers
human pathogens including bacteriology, mycology, parasitology and
virology."

So you were a lab tech?

Raye, I just can’t help but think that your posts are simply sarcasm. No employer in their right mind would knowingly let an employee bring in a sick child repeatedly. If so, they should have been reported to the Board of Health. As you are a former medical professional, you should know that.

And your response was that it only impacted your ability to see your parents is incredible to me. So how long did you go without seeing your parents? Days? Weeks? Months? Boy oh boy, how I’d love to have the chance to get together with my parents again. They are gone now and the thought of giving up time with them because some insensitive person brought their sick kid into work, therefore indirectly risking my parents lives it’s just beyond me. If it meant I couldn’t see my parents wouldn’t have stayed in that job after the first time the employee brought the kid in. And yes, I do sympathize that the child was sick and that she had to work. But that is unthinkable. Are you sure it’s a true story?

My mother was a lab tech. Before the womens' lib movement, a woman's choice of profession was effectively limited by our culture. She once told me she'd have liked to be a pharmacist but it never occurred to her that was open to her, despite her four year degree in Biology from University of Wisconsin. She loved lab work. Smart woman, good under pressure, loved it when the doctors needed something "stat" and she could deliver with the speed and accuracy they relied on. Lab techs can be rightfully proud of the part they play in keeping us all safe and healthy. They are one piece of a system.

Yeah, I know you didn't mean it like that. But that's how I took it.

My microbiology classes had medical personnel from various disciplines in it including some that were lab techs.

Nickel - I went about two years with rarely seeing my parents during the time the employee worked there and one died during that time and the other a few years after. And I absolutely should have stopped and thought about the impact of my selfishness and lack of compassion for the employee and child would have before I said anything. There were others in the office that supported the employee and I could have chosen to be one of them. If I ever saw that person again I owe them a big apology. Last I heard they had to move in with a sibling in another state.

The reason I brought up that situation was to show that we can chose to protect those few that are at high risk as I did with my parents.

No nickel, the question I asked (which is still being evaded) was because this user represented herself to be a "medical professional" many times over. But, as i said, her repeated misunderstanding and seemingly misinformed attitudes of simple things clear to others without medical training, over these past many months, made such characterization very unlikely. Now we know why, her prior characterizations of her background were misleading and mostly not accurate. Refer to my comment above that is followed immediately next by olychick's comment followed by sephia's comment. The song lyrics are great!

Elmer - you need a lot of help in phrasing an apology and admitting that you are wrong.

I don't really care what someone online claims to "be" in real life. But giving an example that seems to be downright outrageous in an attempt to come up with something analogous to the discussion about covid19, then claiming to be educated in infectious diseases, just falls flat on the believability scale.

I cannot imaging anyone being allowed to bring a sick child into a workplace (repeatedly), risking infecting everyone. Nor would I imagine anyone knowing anything about contagion of our more common illnesses alter their lifestyle and contact with family members for an extended period to accommodate that.Nor can I imagine a workplace where everyone just smiles and hopes THEY don't have to stay home sick and lose their ability to earn a living!

If sick leave didn't cover her for the amount of time she needed to care for her child, why didn't other employees donate their sick leave to help her out?

There are programs to help people in these exact situations, public assistance being one of them. It's not the best, but it can allow someone to stay home to care for a sick child.

Sorry but this is just not a believable story.

Raye you are a compassionate person, and that's good. You, like all of us, make the best decision you can in the circumstances. For you, the trade-off was keeping that particular job with its associated risk versus regular visits with your aging parents. Maybe some/more/many of us would have made the same call, if we'd been in your same exact shoes.

Bottom line for me, with regard to Covid19, is that I don't equate my desire to physically distance myself from infectious people with selfishness or lack of compassion. On the contrary, it's because of my compassion for my whole community that I follow the social distancing guidelines. It's because of my empathy for the social and economic upheaval this pandemic is causing to so many younger people in my community, that I want it to end as soon as possible -- which means following social distancing guidelines. So when I hear people advocate to "just isolate the elderly, the sick, etc" and let everyone else live as if the virus didn't matter ... well, no, I object. It's a pipe dream to think "the rest of us" can push so many of our community aside, ignore the virus and return to normal, and life will be good. I don't think life works like that.

I am not sure why some keep harping at parents or seniors being at "high risk", seemingly to ignore anyone else. Yes, they may be at a higher risk of contracting a more debilitating and potentially fatal case of covid, but they are by no means the only demographic that is suffering. When are we going to realize that this virus does not acknowledge youth or vigor or an otherwise health life style and does not discriminate against who it can and does infect. Kids, young adults and middle aged, healthy individuals are being infected and dying in alarming numbers. Why should they be considered a lesser risk and not be afforded the same sort of safeguards that some seem to think should only be reserved for seniors so the rest of us can go on "living life"??

What an incredibly selfish and unrealistic assessment of this situation!!

Personally, I find some of the comments here from those alleging to have some sort of medical background to be so without merit and validation as to be safely - and wisely - ignored!

Gardengal - it had nothing to do with age - one of my parents had an impaired immune system due to cancer treatment.

The company employees had normal immune systems so we weren't at risk of getting anything from the child.

Nickel - thanks I appreciate that.

As to sick time for the parent - the child was sick more that 50% of the time, probably closer to 80% of the work week, he was born with an organ failure that caused him to be more susceptible to illness that normal.

People with normal immune systems catch infectious diseases all the time! Saying everyone was ok being exposed to things like strep throat or other things doesn't ring true. Weren't there other people in the office with children who might worry about taking home something to their own children? Kids have normal immune systems generally, yet viruses spread like wildfire in schools every year.

People with normal immune systems, young, healthy people are dying from covid19, too.

Raye, this is your statement: "Since we don't know who has the virus, it's much like that sickly child, protect those that need protection and let those of us that are healthy live our lives. "

Who determines who "needs protection"? Since there is no mystical demarcation line of who is at risk and who is not, everyone should be protected!! Why is this so hard to grasp?

Also wondering how long ago this studying was?

Many things have changed in how infectious disease, et al. is understood now.

And since COVID-19 is novel, researchers are learning more every day.

While Raye did say that there was little experience of other employees having become ill from the child's (occasional? frequent?) presence with varying illnesses ...

... I wonder how the boss might have reacted if about three of the half dozen or so had become ill from the child at the same time?

After the crucial time dealt with, however effectively ... some change in the rules of operation, possibly?

I agree with the earlier advice saying that it isn't only for me that I should act wisely, but I owe it to the welfare of my community to avoid acting in risky ways which could well cause serious disruption in that community.

ole joyful

"Elmer - you need a lot of help in phrasing an apology and admitting that you are wrong."

Huh?

It seemed pretty clear to me and many others that you've misrepresented yourself in the past, a number of times. That was pretty obvious along the way from your comments and you've partially confirmed that now with the added but still incomplete facts of your limited background.

We're maybe not having the same conversation? I honestly don't care, your comments on repeated threads frequently don't seem rational or demonstrate an understanding of the topics. As with this sick child detour. I expect it will continue like that and that's fine.

Joyful - I never became sick from the child (he was there everyday he was sick) and don't remember anyone else every doing so. I was the only one that raised any concerns about the child's presence. It was a small company with six to eight employees. Only the boss had a separate office, the rest of us where in one large room. None of us had children at that time either.

Gardengal - we make decisions everyday on how much risk we are willing to accept. The CDC has specified what it considers high risk and I don't fall into any of those categories, so I consider myself as low risk, if you do fall into any of those categories than yes, protect yourself.

Low risk is NOT no risk!! And at the risk of beating a dead horse, low risk individuals - such as yourself - are no less immune from contracting...or spreading....the virus than anyone else.

gardengal, don't waste your time.

I for one am sick (haha?) of hearing that those at risk are somehow expendable. Let me give a great big whooping cheer to you who are "living your lives" and want to get on with it while the rest of us hold you back with our requirements. I fall into the age category. Several of my family have "conditions" that put them at risk. They live in the US. I don't. If they don't catch the virus they have many productive years ahead of them. My young relatives aren't immune. Nobody is a statistic -- these are people I love. Lucky you if you have nobody to worry about but yourself.

and the child is brought to work when ill (for example the child even came in with strep throat exposing all of us).

The company employees had normal immune systems so we weren't at risk of getting anything from the child.

Raye are you saying you think normal people are immune from strep?

Successful topic deflection!

To get back to it, here's an article about my state:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/polk-county-florida-school-bartow-senior-high-is-what-a-covid-19-fiasco-in-the-making-looks-like

"MIAMI—At the end of the first day of classes last week, dozens of teens lined up to board school buses parked outside the entrance of Bartow Senior High, the main secondary school in the central Florida city bearing the same name. Despite being outdoors, and thus perhaps less likely to serve as a launching pad for mass contagion, the large number of students crammed together, some sans face masks, prompted a 12th grader to snap three photos and two short videos of the crowd.

The same day, Ashlee Caraway, the senior’s older sister who graduated from Bartow High last year, posted the photos and tagged an unofficial Facebook page for the school. At the top of the post, the 19-year-old wrote: #COVID19 !! ...

...Bartow High’s first week offers a window into the perilous restart for Polk County Public Schools, which is responsible for overseeing 150 schools and more than 100,000 students. Polk has the ninth most COVID-19 cases out of the state’s 68 counties and boasts a pediatric positivity rate of 16.4 percent, according to the most recent Florida Department of Health update. That’s nearly 10 points higher than Polk’s rolling overall average positivity rate of 6.5 percent between Aug. 19 to Aug. 28, and a higher pediatric rate than five neighboring counties, including Orange and Hillsborough, which have larger populations.

In a press call last month, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield said schools should stay closed if the “the percent positivity rate within the community is greater than 5 percent.” Instead, Polk public schools and other Florida school districts in counties with higher positivity rates are implementing measures to quarantine pupils and staffers who come into contact with the infected. If they want to take more extreme measures, district officials have to consult with Florida Education Commissioner Richard Cocoran, whose department is currently appealing a court ruling that deemed his executive order forcing schools to offer in-person learning unconstitutional. ..."

More numbskulls making people suffer for their ignorance and stupidity. Sorry.

Simply being aware that someone is ill in a shared area increases your chances of not becoming ill.

My daughter actually works for one of the most severely locked down counties in the state. A few weeks ago she had strep and was told to come in anyway at risk of losing her job even though she had not been tested to eliminate Covid 19. She is essential you see. Once on antibiotics strep is not considered a highly contagious illness after 24 hours anyway. Like most viruses it is passed while asymptomatic or in the early stages. So an ill child kept a social distance from other co workers would not be much of a threat. Children pass viruses more readily because they do not social distance when ill and don't practice good hygiene avoiding cross contamination. If sick people made others sick as easily as some of you believe then how do you think doctors manage to practice medicine without catching all the bugs they are exposed to?

To: Annie Deighnaugh

The chart you posted about comparing Covid-19 deaths of various countries is a very correct method of reporting deaths, and has become the preferred one. However, one should realize this is not the number of deaths; Its the death rate. The fine print accompanying this chart says it is deaths per 100,000 people. Its a ratio of how much of the population have died (reported cases). To calculate the reported Covid-19 deaths, divide the country's population by 100,000 and multiply by deaths per 100,000. Re-plot the data and it will appear very differently. The data points for countries with large populations will show an increase compared to small population countries.

Comparing death rates is a much better comparison than total number of deaths since population size is has a big influence on number of deaths.

About statistics:

An associate of mine claimed that the death rate has not changed for a very long time. Its still 1 per person.

The Sturgis idiots have caused a giant leap of Covid cases in the Dakotas.

>>Certainly those with Covid or flu symptoms should stay home but we don't know how contagious those that have asymptomatic Covid are.>>

Well, there's always this example, pre-mask:

" 61 people attended a choir
practice in Skagit County, Washington in March 2020. None of them were
symptomatic. They avoided contact and had lots of hand sanitizer. They were
there for two and a half hours. 32 of them were confirmed infected and another
20 had symptoms. Two died. "

- quora.com discussion thread

My note: I have NYT and WashPost articles that discuss the Skagit County "hot spot", but in all-text form. You can Google for it and other links if you're interested. A quora.com member got this graphic from the CDC website and posted it. I thought it was a good visual way to sum up a 2000 word tl;dr article that many people wouldn't read.

=======

Masks are mandatory where I live. Are they a nuisance? Yes. Do I like them? No. Would I love to go back to wining and dining around Northern CA on extended car trips as we used to. You betcha!

But I have older relatives. I have teen relatives - who, it turns out, are just as susceptible to COVID as adults. (It's only younger children under 10 or 11 who are so often infectious but asymptomatic).

I also have three close friends who are seriously immunocompromised. We are out running errands once or twice a week. We can't risk them with close contact. Outdoor visits and lots of emails, only.

So......I wear a mask. I've tried different ones and am still searching for the "ideal" one. But I wear one when we're out, even if it's not comfortable. It won't kill me.

I've seen a lot of changes in my life in 69 years. This is just another one. If I'm not only surviving, but financially secure, physically healthy, mentally acute, and still see my family/friends (albeit less often and from a 6' distance), I don't see that I have anything to complain about.

And one plus about not spending money traveling - we've been able to be much more generous to charitable causes over the last few months.

Interesting the mention of strep above since I have been wondering today if the Covid virus will be like what strep used to be pre-antibiotics. Some doctors realized that sometimes people with strep would later develop heart problems along with other body conditions.

So an ill child kept a social distance from other co workers would not be much of a threat.

You know that is baloney, because you yourself in the very same paragraph say

Children pass viruses more readily because they do not social distance when ill and don't practice good hygiene avoiding cross contamination.

You cannot rely on children to keep distance, it is dangerous to coworkers to have ill children close enough to infect and your workplace isfar from an ideal place to rest and recover for the child as well. Presumably your attention will be taken by the job you are being paid to do, and not on your child who is ill.

I'm amazed at the disinformation being passed by those who are determined to rationalize their poor Covid behaviors.

Apples and oranges Lucille. We are referring to a single ill child in an office with adults no other children. Once again you're taking my words and applying them to different situations than the one we are discussing, a single child brought to work buy an adult that will be around other adults. Not that hard to social distance in that situation.

Wildchild....

You asked.... If sick people made others sick as easily as some of you believe... understand this is a new virus and one we don't have experience with. We are learning as we go, some more slowly than others...

"While COVID-19 and flu viruses are thought to spread in similar ways,
COVID-19 is more contagious
than flu. Also, COVID-19 has been observed to have more superspreading
events than flu. This means the virus that causes COVID-19 can quickly
and easily spread to a lot of people and result in continuous spreading
among people as time progresses."

CDC August 31 2020

We are referring to a single ill child in an office with adults no other children. Once again you're taking my words and applying them to different situations than the one we are discussing, a single child brought to work buy an adult that will be around other adults. Not that hard to social distance in that situation.

Wildchild, if you took the trouble to read the actual post of the situation you described, you will see that the poster (Raye) DID think it might have been a problem to social distance a single child, which is why she changed her own behavior and stopped visiting her parents so that she would not have the possibility of infecting them.

I wasn't happy that I could no longer visit my parents due to weekly exposure to the child and let my boss know this.

If anything our numbers are going lower. After two weeks of in class teaching the nearest college (population >20,000) is reporting a positive rate of 0.0015 on campus. The state daily death rate has been in the single digits for over two months now.

Where do you live Raye Smith?

llucy - I have a stalker so I don't reveal personal information online

The state daily death rate has been in the single digits for over two months now - is not personal information. What state has those stats?

The single digit death rate isn't personal but what state I live in is when I had to move to a different state to get away from that person.

Raye -- this is terrible and I understand that any information you give out might lead back to you -- but surely "Raye Smith" is not your name?

I'm glad your colleges are doing better Raye, that's not the case here. Big surge in cases at WSU in E Wash. A couple of days ago the figure was 22.% and most in the age group of 18-25....students. They've begun issuing tickets for non compliance of Covid guidelines.

Read the local obits in the paper yesterday. A man died after contracting covid 19 according to his obit. He was a hospice patient too so they didn't count him in the numbers, at least not from the current total of 1 death from way back in March or April. Our state reviews the deaths on a case by case basis to determine if they should be counted in the numbers, I don't know what the time frame is on adding them but the governor says they have a bunch of deaths yesterday waiting for review . Yesterday was one of the highest total of new cases in the state and I'm pretty sure the highest deaths in one day, 18.

It's been almost two weeks since the festival downtown that I mentioned when I started this post. Our cases locally haven't gone up that much yet. They're having another festival this weekend.

Colleges are closing down right and left around here.

Lily, which state are you in? Hopefully most of the colleges stay open.

Was just listening to NPR earlier and On Point was discussing the fact that the larger universities with more money can afford lots of testing to allow them to stay open, while smaller ones with less money just cannot.

UK in Lexington has hundreds of new cases. They aren't closing down, though. I also doubt all those "kids" are quarantining themselves.

Via NBC: Indiana University is calling for the closure of all fraternity and sorority houses on its flagship campus in Bloomington due to a growing spread of the coronavirus that has already put 30 of the 40 houses under quarantine, university officials say.

No closures yet in Ohio despite the rising cases in colleges, and the K-12's that have only been open 2 weeks or less. 50 new deaths in 24 hours from covid.

Governor's presser today urges people to social distance and wear masks as he does every week. And he warns to expect higher numbers from people gathering for the holiday as well as back to school.

So many people determined to "live life as normal". So many falling ill, hospitalized, and dying for that "normal".

What I meant by colleges closing down is that most are going online , students must stay in their rooms and not congregate and of course, masks are worn everywhere. I don't think any sent students home. They just shut down all co-mingling with students confined to their rooms. A sad situation for the kids, for sure.

SUNY is just one of dozens of colleges that are closing their on campus housing and sending students home. Do a brief check and you can find several listing of different colleges that are doing the same. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/SUNY-Oneonta-first-state-school-to-send-students-15540827.php