Notes From All Over -- July 27, 2020

The next big thing: for entrepreneurs and retired teachers. Almost every public school across the country will open "virtually" this autumn; some will transition to in-school / mask-to-mask education; some will continue with distance learning for the time being, perhaps for the entire school year.

Some colleges and universities have already said they will go to distance learning full-time.

Be that as it may, for the parents of elementary, middle school, and to some extent, high school, it will be a challenge for some parents for "home-schooling," for a number of reasons, not all of them "educational."

Sophia's local daycare center has stepped into fill the void. The daycare center will now offer full-time / daily "school" for elementary students affected by virtual learning mandates. The daycare center has the resources (multiple classrooms, a kitchen to provide meals, and teachers already on staff) to provide assistance, monitoring, and more for those virtual-learning children who cannot be left home unattended. 

Here in Texas we have huge mega-churches -- Christian, Muslim, perhaps others. I would think this is a natural for them. The buildings are pretty much empty five days of the week and the congregations are filled with those who would love to teach in such an environment. Even if a "teacher" can't be there five days a week, hours a day, congregants could share responsibilities.

There are very, very strict rules for daycare providers; I don't think there are yet similar rules for "in-your-home" tutors. If not, this provides an opportunity for retired teachers to gain additional income requiring very little in terms of resources, except, perhaps time.

Speaking of entrepreneurs: our middle school granddaughter made $450 over the weekend using Angie's list, Craig's list, or whatever other social media she had available. It was pure profit. I won't get into the details right now, but the technology teenagers have these days is incredible Some are finding ways to monetize their skills.

What's not to like? I ordered a couple of things on Saturday, two days ago. Today I received this in my e-mail. I have Amazon deliver packages to my daughter's house down the road since it is a safer location for delivery. Definitely better than driving to Target, carrying things home in plastic bags, etc., etc., etc. Plastic bags are so "yesterday" as we've discussed before.

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What Were They Thinking?

All these folks have been kept in lock down and now all of a sudden they are all brought together. What did they expect?

Headline:

Marlins cancel Monday's game as fourteen players, staff infected with Covid-19 just days after season kickoff. -- ZeroHedge.

Actually the headline is not quite correct. The fourteen are not necessarily "infected with Covid-19"; they have simply tested positive. Not only are all medical diagnostic tests subject to false positives, tests for Covid-19 apparently have a much higher incidence of false positives. In addition, is there a difference between "infected with" and "asymptomatic carriers"? I don't know.

We have asymptomatic carriers, incubatory carriers, convalescent carriers, and "healthy carriers," which apparently is a subset of "asymptomatic carriers." And not all of these folks actually transmit disease, apparently.

Back to the Marlins. Baseball can quickly make up canceled / postponed games. Double-headers and even triple-headers, I suppose. NASCAR has been doing that: back-to-back races; multiple races at same race course. The PGA can't do this: a tournament lasts four days. Nor can the NFL do this. The physical stress is way too hard on the players -- they can only get in one game per week. Sixteen regular season games; if the franchise player -- generally the quarterback --  and significant number of players around him are quarantined for fourteen days (two weeks), two games might not be played, possibly three. Those games cannot be made up without extending the season.

The bigger issue: I think folks forgot what the original intent of the lock down was for. So, we'll see.

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Meanwhile, A Photo Worth A Thousand Words

This is how most people in our area wear their mask, also:

I'm not saying it's good, bad, or indifferent, it's just a fact.