covid diary: day 153, again

painted lady, on a cosmo in the pasture

if you've been following along, you know holli and liam got their covid test results in amazingly rapid fashion for the non-rapid test, and they were both negative. i let out an enormous sigh of relief, right after they did. 2020 has been the longest, worstest year ever, but at least this turned out well. for now.

so tennis continues. school starts virtually on wednesday, with the district reevaluating whether to return to in-school instruction after a couple of weeks. i wonder how things around the country are going in areas where in-person school has already started?

how about in greenfield, IN? oh no.

Just hours into the first day of classes on Thursday, a call from the county health department notified Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana that a student who had walked the halls and sat in various classrooms had tested positive for the coronavirus.

ok, so that's just some bad luck. i'm sure everything else is going fine. wait, what?

Last week, schools in Corinth, Miss., welcomed back hundreds of students. By Friday, one high-schooler tested positive for the novel coronavirus. By early this week, the count rose to six students and one staff member infected. Now, 116 students have been sent home to quarantine, a spokeswoman for the school district confirmed.

dammit. well, i'm sure you saw the pictures from those students in north paulding high school in metro atlanta, where barely any of the kids in the packed hallways were wearing masks or practicing (or even able to practice) social distancing. you know, those pics the kids were suspended for posting on social media? (yeah, because it wasn't them exposing the school for its terrible adherence to proper coronavirus practices, it was because they posted on social media during school.)

very few of those kids had masks on. i'm sure it will all turn out ok. no problem...oh crap.

The Paulding County high school that became infamous for hallways crowded with unmasked students will retreat online for at least a couple days this week after revealing that a half-dozen students and three staffers were diagnosed with COVID-19.

The district said it needs time to disinfect the North Paulding High School building and look for other potentially infected individuals.

ugh. so schools are proving to be an ideal place for covid to spread. i guess we shouldn't be surprised, as every reputable expert and public health official (and the cdc, whatever that's worth anymore) strongly recommends NOT opening in-person school until infection rates are way down, which they are nowhere near being.

maybe other public gatherings are doing better than the schools. how about the churches?

A man with Covid-19 went to church in mid-June, then 91 other people got sick, including 53 who were at the service, according to Ohio's governor.

"It spread like wildfire, wildfire. Very, very scary," Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday. "We know that our faith-based leaders want nothing more than to protect those who come to worship."

rats. i suppose it's possible the christians offended their god by, i don't know, not persecuting the homos enough or something. but i'm sure other religious sects are doing fine, right?

The rabbi of a suburban New York synagogue grappling with the coronavirus outbreak has tested positive for the illness, as the number of cases related to an infected congregant climbed higher Friday.

Rabbi Reuven Fink, of the Young Israel of New Rochelle temple, is among the 44 confirmed cases in the state, according to a statement posted Friday on the website of Yeshiva University, where Fink teaches two courses. The state confirmed 22 new cases Friday, doubling the number from a day earlier.

well, what the hell. i guess the lesson to be learned is that public gatherings are excellent places to spread a highly contagious virus, so we probably shouldn't allow such events to take place. in fact, the worst idea would be to allow a huge rally to take place, where social distancing was nonexistent and the attendees were disdainful of wearing masks or doing anything to prevent the transmission of a killer global pandemic virus.

good thing nothing like that is happening...oh, are you fucking kidding me?

main street sturgis, yesterday

so the sturgis, SD motorcycle rally is on, starting friday and running for nine days. this annual biker congregation usually attracts 500,000 to 750,000 motorcycle enthusiasts a year, but they are only expecting 250,000 this year. obviously, only the dumbest and least aware of current events are planning to attend. but gawd, there's a lot of them.

what kind of idiots are attending this rally? this kind:

“On my way I ain’t scared of the media flue or as we call it round here election flue see ya soon sd,” J.F. Watson of Ohio said.

impressive spelling, jf. you might want to check your chimney flue, i think the fumes are backing up into your house.

the local citizens are against having the rally. really, it's only common sense, as why would you want 250,000 people from around the country to congregate in a small town, share their viruses among themselves and the various small business operators of the town. of course, the small business operators desperately rely on the rally to be able to continue to operate their businesses into the future, so they're kinda stuck in this situation. 

hey, as our fearless sociopathic leader says, it is what it is (with over 160,000 coronavirus deaths being what it is). until about three weeks from now, when the results of forcibly opening the schools and allowing sturgis spikes coronavirus cases through the roof.

so what's happening here? who cares. school starts virtually wednesday, max gets a new cast thursday, holli is buried with work, i have to work sunday, blah blah blah. i would put some biker rock video here at the end of the post, but i don't want to. so in honor of max's poor thumb, it's dylan. deal with it.