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It keeps getting worse.
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No, no itās not. Even reading this had me shaking my head to realize how little some people must understand about how this thing is spread.
First thing they shouldāve done after that teacher tested positive is open all the windows in rooms he or she had spent time in and use fans to evacuate all the air as quickly as possible. And for the time, close off any return vents that pull from those rooms. Then, like you said, get the kids outside or into one of the newly ventilated rooms and have them all put on masks (including the tester) while they all wait their turns for a test. Have them wear masks until they find out the results.
Itās weird how @Otherbrother turned this into a conversation about schools mandating 10 day stay at home after an exposure, bc from what I read in your post that was your choice, not something the school forced on you. If you can, especially given your childās risk factors, of course you would.
Sorry youāre having to deal with this. It really wouldnāt be hard for the school to get it much better, instead they are exposing the children to increased risk. Kind of reminds me of when TFG said he was shutting down international flights, which led to thousands of people crammed into airports, very likely increasing the rate of spread.
Hope you all stay safe.
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Lothar Wieler will be missed.
I bet that political influence is thrown around who is going to follow in his footsteps.
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Kind of along the same lines, I feel like crying:
I knew the Feds would snatch him up sooner or later. Heās just too good to go unnoticed. Iām glad he stayed here through the worst of it. I hope we see him go on to achieve more great things.
His radio call in shows during the height of confusion about the pandemic were such a balm. Heāll be missed.
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Here we 
goā¦
There are reports of 24 cases in British Columbia and 4 cases out east. Our overall case rate in Ontario is up to 50/100k from the second lowest rate of the year, 31/100k in the last full week of November 2022.
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It appears to be a cold circulating in the household, but itās hard to know, right? So far the rapid tests have come back non-positive, but COVID in our city is at a medium boil; fortunately school students are eligible for PCR testing. For a while, rapid tests were hard to find, but the free give-away program has been extended in Ontario .
I liked this article, and the link to the pre-print study below about RSV after COVID in kids.
Among RSV-infected children in 2022, 19.2% had prior documented COVID-19 infection, significantly higher than the 9.7% among uninfected children, suggesting that prior COVID-19 could be a risk factor for RSV infection or that there are common risk factors for both viral infections.
Is it just me, or has there been a shift in tone? I see a small number of well-established news sites doubling down on COVID warnings (above), some with an inconsistent editorial tone (below), and a number of less-well-credentialed journalists really ringing alarm bells? Some places seem to take any snippit of good news with a āpandemic is overā overtone, such as this piece in the Toronto Star. The āviral crisis fadesā in the headline kinda rubs me the wrong way, even though influenza and RSV seem to have run their course here.
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Well, for me, and as the examples you then give seem to indicate, they seem to be all over the map. The ātoneā just seemsā¦very inconsistent.
Like, contrary to a lot of fear pieces about say, Chinaās skyrocketing infections, thereās āWeāre finally movingā on pieces like this:
(Yeah, Paul Offit again, but the thing Iām pointing to is Time treating him so credulously.)
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Well, well, wellā¦
So Iāve talked about our job in a huge convention center the last week or so. I needed some help Monday and Tuesday so I called my usual freinds that are happy to help out.
I said they were welcome to ride with us the hour each way but they would need to wear N95s that I would provide. They opted to drive together in their vehicle, costs me more but I was okay with that.
One young man, a very good kid and worker, worked Monday but texted me early Tuesday morning saying he had a fever he couldnāt shake so he wasnāt going to make it.
He called me today, see where this is going? He had covid.
He worked and rode with other people from his regular job a few days before, I havenāt heard if anyone else got sick.
Weāre still healthy, 5 more days but now itās early in the morning when no one is around.
We are so very fortunate that we can do this stuff on our terms to stay as safe as we can, I really feel for everyone who canāt do that.
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There were notes on the World Politics thread on 
's population decrease this year. Eyeballing it, it looks like 13m people are missing, 2m to 3m of which can be traced to lower birth rates. Iām raising the upper bound of my Back of the Envelope Estimateā¢ of COVID-19 deaths to 10m.
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Eh, thatās assuming that populations statistics prior to the Covid pandemic were reliable, which is a bit iffy to say the least. China has had a problem with political pressures to publish bad data for a long time, and several grains of salt are needed with all the data that comes out.
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I suppose my lower bound 2m to upper bound 10m death estimate would probably best be sharpened by looking at stats where I can get a relationship to COVID deaths, but published by separate departments with incentives to fabricate in opposite directions.
Thatās starting to feel like workā¦
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āKraken,ā will be responsible for 22.2 per cent of all new COVID cases in this province before the end of the week.
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āKraken.ā Thanks, I hate it. What idiot came up with this one? āRelease the Kraken!!ā It makes it sound like this is the ultimate, highest form of the virus. It is not. It is just the next form. There will be another, potentially more immune-evasive one after, and after that. Whoever does this shit needs to stop. We donāt need to make this more dramatic. It is killing us by the hundreds of thousands. It is killing us enough to affect the overall life expectancy. It is sufficiently dramatic in and of itself. It does not need a PR firm.
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To be followed by the Cthulu variant.
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Seems it was a prof from my sisterās alma mater, U of Guelph (John Kenneth Galbraith went there, itās a.k.a. āU of Mooā). Sorry, ehā¦
https://fortune.com/well/2023/01/05/kraken-variant-omicron-covid-name-ryan-gregory-biology-professor/
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Me, too. To further complicate matters, I recently overheard a couple in the liquor aisle of the grocery store shopping for rum who apparently saw the kraken rum for the first time and thought it was a political statement. They scoffed and said, āfucking lib-tards!ā
The word has its own shades of meaning now, and it wonāt make public health efforts any easier. 
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