The New Normal

[MarzNC]

WOW!
I'm already dreading the reports from SUNY

The Percent Positives I'm seeing on the few colleges I'm following are fine. Well under 1% for students. No one has more than mild symptoms so far. Detected case numbers going up is to be expected, especially on campuses that require testing once or twice a week. That means people with no symptoms are being detected. Breakthrough infection will happen for a small percentage of the vaccinated students. I think students are more aware in 2021 and more likely to get tested if they have any symptoms or a sense that they might have been exposed to COVID-19. That's good because those individuals who test positive will go into isolation and that's how to slow down community spread.

For UNC-Chapel Hill, only people who test positive are required to isolate or quarantine. Slightly different rules depending on whether a students lives in a dorm or off-campus. What's different from the spring semester is that people identified as close contacts who test negative are not required to isolate. The vaccination rate among students is just over 80%. That means 20% are either unvaccinated or didn't want to attest one way or another. That's potentially about 5000 people being tested regularly, including the 20% of faculty and staff who aren't vaccinated yet.

The small NC county where UNC-Chapel Hill is located has pretty much the lowest Percent Positive out of all 100 NC counties. Fair to say a good chunk of the people who are in Orange County are involved with UNC-CH in some way. Chapel Hill is usually very empty the first two weeks of August when there are no classes between summer session and the start of the fall semester.

 

[tirolski]

Looks like a couple top dogs are getting out of the FDA.
Doubt they’ll be hired by the CDC any time soon.

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[MarzNC]

Looks like a couple top dogs are getting out of the FDA.
Doubt they’ll be hired by the CDC any time soon.

MSN

www.msn.com

Isn't that a bit of a cheap shot? One of them got his M.D. in 1984. Could be a well deserved retirement. Some headlines scream "resignation" with negative overtones in the articles. A career in public health is not an easy one.

I have grad school classmates to worked at FDA for all or part of their career.

 

[sibhusky]

I'm sure that like a lot of public health people in the last year they are just worn out. At least they stuck it out through the real tough period of their job. We had people quitting in county health offices right during the worst of it.

 

[tirolski]

Isn't that a bit of a cheap shot? One of them got his M.D. in 1984. Could be a well deserved retirement. Some headlines scream "resignation" with negative overtones in the articles. A career in public health is not an easy one.

I have grad school classmates to worked at FDA for all or part of their career.

Maybe they’ll write a book if allowable.
I’d read it.
Where’s the cheap shot?

I forgot they're “free" (as of now) and some folks get paid to get ‘em so it’s better than a cheap shot.

 

[MarzNC]

Looks like a couple top dogs are getting out of the FDA.
Doubt they’ll be hired by the CDC any time soon.

MSN

www.msn.com

Maybe they’ll write a book if allowable.
I’d read it.
Where’s the cheap shot?

I forgot they're “free" (as of now) and some folks get paid to get ‘em so it’s better than a cheap shot.

The way I read the second sentence about "hired by the CDC" came off as dissing the people leaving FDA and the CDC. Not sure I understand your last statement either. But I won't lose sleep over it.

 

[tirolski]

The way I read the second sentence about "hired by the CDC" came off as dissing the people leaving FDA and the CDC. Not sure I understand your last statement either. But I won't lose sleep over it.

They didn’t leave the CDC they left the FDA.

The other was just playin with the words "cheap shot”.
Have a nice night.

Here’s more spin on their FDA departures.

In a major blow to vaccine efforts, senior FDA leaders stepping down

Two of the FDA's most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it's sidelined the FDA. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research & Review and 32-year veteran of the agency, will leave...

endpts.com

 

[MarzNC]

They didn’t leave the CDC they left the FDA.

The other was just playin with the words "cheap shot”.
Have a nice night.

Here’s more spin on their FDA departures.

In a major blow to vaccine efforts, senior FDA leaders stepping down

Two of the FDA's most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it's sidelined the FDA. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research & Review and 32-year veteran of the agency, will leave...

endpts.com

Yeah, I understood they were leaving FDA.

After reading the second article your comments make more sense. The relationship between FDA decisions and CDC recommendations has been a bit unusual. But then everything about the vaccine development for COVID-19 is completely different than the usual process.

 

[CNY Skier]

Yes, the odds are in all of our favors. However, the 1% is completely taxing our healthcare workers. They're at their wits end. My wife is now coming home with bruises on her face (again) from 13 to 14 hours of wearing masks taking care of that 1%, most of whom aren't vaxed. That's disrespectful and frankly I'm sick of people disrespecting our doctors and nurses.

I'm sorry but I don't understand your previous post about confusing respect with fear. I fear little except tyranny and mob mentality. I respect the opinions of all on this forum - even the ones who launch personal attacks toward a person they have never met. It's a forum of ideas so it's all good and I can take the beating, deserved or not.

Anyway, it sounds like your wife is a nurse and that's great - I've known a few and could not do their job for a day. That said, I just checked in on Cortland County stats (presumably your home) and they are reporting a total of 8 Covid hospitalizations. That's hardly an overwhelming number of covid patients for a county of that size. Nurses often have to put on full PPE for a variety of diseased patients - it just sucks. We both know that nurses pretty much everywhere are overworked. The fact that they are forced to wear masks full time is a tragedy. If your wife is fully vaccinated then technically she should have no worries, correct?

 

[CNY Skier]

What about making obese pay more and folks with other somewhat controllable health risks?
Ya might want to be careful running down that road.

Agreed. There are many personal choices people make that can jeopardize their long term health. However, group life insurance only works if all risks are normalized throughout the pool. I'm willing to cut my fellow citizen some slack and pay a little more for their transgressions; hopefully they will return the favor every now and then.