Premier Doug Ford going to talk about tough measures for Ontario hot spots tomorrow. 
wow, Rachel Maddow is in quarantine because her girlfriend was diagnosed with COVID and almost died. Somehow Rachel avoided getting it.
I think we’ve got far lower rates than the US, but still, what we do have is concerning to me. I’m ready for full lockdown again.
Where I live, it’s out there but not common. I don’t know anyone who’s had it around here (all the people I know that have had it are American). But there’s a case or two in a neighbouring small village, and my SO said that there’s a case in another neighbouring small village, so it’s coming for us.
How likely is it one of those 10 people is infected? That depends on where you are. Some states are estimated to have as much as an 80 percent chance of having someone with COVID-19 attend a 10-person gathering. But even if there’s a far lower chance at your individual dinner, the risk to the community of a bunch of dinners quickly becomes clear.
A lot of this also depends on the behaviors of those you have over for Thanksgiving. A bunch of hermits? No problem. A meat processing worker? Underground Rave security person? People who live with those people? Those might be more of a problem.
I was symptomatic with COVID for 20 days. Both my wife and I are “high risk”, so I spent those 20 days worried that my breathing was going to turn worse, or that Mrs. Sidekick would start to show symptoms.
I stayed mostly locked away in another part of the house for 11 of the 20 days, until the wife and I started trying to murder each other via text message. She has her own chronic health problems, and was pushing herself too far to keep the house running without my assistance. Add in my discomfort, and the limitations of text/phone/yelling from one floor to another, and we started to miscommunicate. At that point, we decided the risk of murder (since we don’t believe in divorce) trumped the risk of contagion. (At 11 days since onset of symptoms, I probably wasn’t too contagious, but the literature is somewhat unclear about such things.)
so your wife never caught it from you? if so, that’s amazing.
We were amazed, despite my having done everything I could to keep my germs to myself. We had both been operating under the assumption that if one of us got it, we’d both get it…and given the potential consequences given our both having health issues, that’s part of the why we have been borderline paranoid in our pandemic isolation.
I would have thought you would have given it to your wife prior to knowing you had it yourself, during the incubation period. I assume you didn’t isolate from each other prior to knowing you even had it, did you?
My kid’s school is closing down again at Thanksgiving and not letting kids back in before late January.
We’re doing a big grocery shop this weekend because my city is going to stricter lockdown starting Monday. 
ETA: I can still get a haircut next week!!! 
We had similar assumptions. Admittedly, we tend to maintain separate space even in normal conditions (we have separate bedrooms due to different schedules; “my spot” and “her spot” are on different sides of the family room; etc.), so we might be lower risk than many couples.
It’s also possible that she was infected but never became symptomatic. Granted, she normally catches pneumonia if someone even says the word around her…but she could have been lucky. She doesn’t drive, so she wasn’t inclined to go for COVID testing.
I’ve been trying to talk her into getting tested for antibodies but getting her to do normal lab work is a challenge. Voluntarily visiting a phlebotomist isn’t on the table in her book.
ah, i’d be curious if she has the antibodies. i thought this virus was super contagious, and it would still be surprising if she wasn’t exposed.
but then again, rachel maddow DOES get tested and she has remained negative. unsure of if she lives with her girlfriend, but i assumed so. now with covid, they are not in the same living quarters though.
I had a friend test positive and her none of her immediate family caught it, at least to the point of showing symptoms, in spite of doing little to nothing to prevent it from going around the house (her husband still slept next to her). They were all tested once she was positive and they all came back negative, although she was the only one who had the more sensitive test, so it’s possible they were all asymptomatic either before or after she had it.
interesting. maybe some people have immunity for some other reason that allowed their immune system to fight it off entirely.
i seem to hear more stories of entire families catching it than someone getting it and others in the household not.
On the Thanksgiving thing, there are 3 in my house, and we’ve all had Covid in Sep & Oct, so I’m not too worried about spreading it, but I’ve seen conflicting info on that. I did invite a single neighbor to my home, reasoning that with such a small # we could easily distance. It turns out she has a small “bubble” of people who are super careful that she will have Thanksgiving dinner with.
My city has the highest # of active cases of any city in our state. Total cases are growing by 14-16% a week for the past 4 weeks (I wasn’t tracking before that) and city leaders have been silent since declining to pass a mask mandate a month ago. We are way too small to be leading the way in active cases.
Hospitals are filling up. My child who is little more than a semester way from graduating nursing school with BSRN is being asked to work (technically as a PCT) in university hospital, possibly on COVID ward. Evidently hospital is worried about staffing.
My physical therapist decided he doesn’t want to risk his life for my knee and hip anymore, so he’s going to virtual visits. Apparently he’s the only physical therapist at the place who decided to do this. Don’t blame him at all since he’s on the older side. I’d be terrified too and kind of am at even my age, but I don’t see how virtual visit PT would work at all, so I booked with a different PT at the same place who I used the other time he decided to take a day off before Thanksgiving cause I assume he was quarantining before thanksgiving.
The last time I was there, he seemed really paranoid about the virus, more so than usual. He knew I went to Staten Island for Thanksgiving, so had his staff call me to make sure I was super duper sure I didn’t have COVID. Then he made me wash my hands when I got there. I’m like, I just used hand sanitizer, isn’t that enough? apparently not. I asked the receptionist at the PT office if they had any cases cause that made ME concerned. She said no. They were, however closed from March until May, then re-opened when cases went down. I wonder if they will close again. They all wear KN95 masks. Hopefully that’s enough.
I was way more paranoid about a dude assembling a desk in my apartment that day for like the entire day than I was about Thanksgiving on Staten Island, but Staten Island has a rep as a COVID petri dish right now. It’s been a week since desk guy left, and thus far, I don’t think I caught COVID from him. 
PT is my only risk. I hope I don’t catch COVID from it.
OK, crosspost with innumeracy.
NPR website. Hospital utilization at county level:
Percent of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, as of week of Nov. 27 (average by hospital)
“Averages calculated by summing the seven-day average for each individual hospital, then dividing by the number of hospitals reporting data in a county.”
Holy crap people, that is bad!
Surely they don’t mean they averaged the percentages. Please tell me they didn’t.
Just remember folks, that the first T-Day infections coming to light via data are not the surge. The surge is all those people that the unknowingly infected have infected, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on. So, next week will be worse than this one. With X-Mas 'round the corner, and then New Year’s, then MLK Jr, not sure we’ll even need the vaccine, as everyone will have been infected by, say, St Pat’s Day revelries.
Talk about sprinting towards the finish line