I have already upgraded my desktop, bought Jacob a new laptop, and bought new office furniture. Seems like I’m already set up. Why am I futzing with an old laptop now?
So I have a strange history with laptops. Back in about 2000 or so, I was convinced what I wanted was a small laptop with no CD/DVD drive, basic memory, decent battery life, small footprint. NOBODY sold them. The closest I could find was a Sony Vaio model, not sure which one, but the price was close to $2K. Because it was super slick and portable, the price was high. Which is frustrating, right? I’m looking at laptops that are close in size, but they have a DVD crammed in it which adds weight. I wanted “less” but would have to pay more? I thought about “removing” it manually, just using the rest, but I wasn’t that brave. I even reached out to David Pogue who was then the NYTimes tech reviewer, and said, “Is there ANYTHING out there like what I want?”.
And the simple answer was no. The curve was toward desktop replacements so companies were putting in larger hard drives, full DVD burners, larger screens, more memory, and bigger keyboards. Eventually, I bought a basic unit, used it for a few years, still have it but will be purging it, likely soon. I can’t remember if I ever put LINUX on it to try to reduce the overhead, I forget, but it is way too slow to use currently.
NetBooks exploded onto the scene about 7-8 years later. Exactly what I had been looking for originally. I bought an Acer One at one point, used it for a while, and put Linux on it at some point to lower the overhead and improve the speed. Back when you could go to coffee shops, this was the small portable computer that I would take. I thought I would write my first novel on it. But I find it slow and clunky. By the time it boots, I’m already through a hot chocolate and a muffin. It never sang to me, to be honest.
Eventually I bought the new HP model I have now, 15″ screen, and it has served me VERY well over the years. I’ve had it about 6 years I think, and it runs full Windows. It has a larger screen and I have used it instead of my desktop on quite a few occasions. For the last 5 years, it has been my basement computer when I was watching movies or TV shows, streaming tons of stuff.
But back in late June or early July, I found it was acting up a bit.
Dun, dun, dun
I had tried to connect it to something, and it hadn’t worked. I didn’t think much of it, assumed it was some wireless glitch while trying to connect from the basement, and I just emailed myself the files through the wired network. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
But then we went to the cottage in July and I tried to connect my phone to the Rogers hotspot. It wouldn’t connect. Well, no problem, I hadn’t planned on using it anyway, I have a hotspot option on my phone and 20GB of data, I was covered. Except it wouldn’t connect to the phone either. I fought with the settings, tried everything I could think of, it would not activate the wireless connection. I even had the latest drivers, I *knew* I did, and when I came back, I played with it some more while maintaining a full ethernet connection. No joy in Mudville.
But the problem felt a bit familiar.
A few months ago, I had a huge problem with the video driver not letting me use the built-in webcam. Since I don’t use it normally, I had disabled it long ago, and had NO idea how to reenable it. I tried about 20 different places in the laptop to tweak the setting to turn it back on, and I was about to go nuclear when I finally found a setting buried in a totally different part of the setup. Ah, gotta love/hate the old Windows menus. Although, in equal honesty, part of the problem was the naming convention the laptop was using, it gave it some ridiculous name that didn’t look ANYTHING like a webcam or even a camera at all. Kind of like trying to fix a doohickey when the thing is labelled thingamabob. 🙂
But this problem with the wifi feels/felt really similar. Is it possible that I had accidentally done something to the setting and I just can’t figure out what? It certainly wasn’t something I would disable. And the laptop works fine on ethernet, just no wireless. It’s possible over the years it has been bumped enough times that something has come loose, or it just went kaput. But there is the nuclear option first.
The laptop has one really sweet feature that I find is not as common as it should be in laptops, or even big PCs. Like a tablet or phone, it has an option built-in that you can use to reset it back to factory settings. Three keyswipes, that’s it, and it will literally WIPE everything and load a fresh but old version of Windows on to the machine. Plus a lot of bloatware for HP, but well, you can’t have rainbows. And it will be set up exactly as it was on the day I first activated it, having done a full reset for both hardware and software.
Given that I just removed a ton of stuff from my main system by doing the upgrade and blowing off a lot of old stuff I don’t need anymore, the nuclear option was attractive. I just had to move all the data off of it onto a portable USB hard drive at speeds that tortoises would mock. My lord it was slow. It probably took about 4 hours for it to transfer everything. And while I was at it, I decided to uninstall a bunch of software just in case the reset didn’t go cleanly. I basically rolled it back to almost new anyway.
Then 3 keystrokes, confirmed I wanted to do this, and sat back and waited. It took about 30 minutes for it to complete the wipe and then I had to give it the “test”.
The post-nuclear test
It was connected by ethernet and it found everything it wanted during setup. It even went off to the internet, found a few updates, downloaded those too, and was away to the races. Eventually whatever websites it was using will be dead, like a MySpace installer, but for this attempt, they all still worked just fine.
I booted up Internet Explorer, loaded Google, ran a test search, all good. Then I pulled up wifi, connected to my hotspotted iPhone (it couldn’t find ANY other networks even though my phone can find dozens in the neighbourhood, so it’s range is limited), and loaded Google again with the ethernet cable unplugged.
Bazinga!
Yep, all fixed. I’m assuming the webcam is working again too but haven’t actually tried that yet. In the meantime, my laptop is shiny and new. Not fast, it was NEVER fast, but a lot of accumulated crud is gone. I will have to spend some time removing some other bloat stuff (One month of McAfee? Trials of Evernote? HP suppliers for ink? Game links? Bye bye!) but it’s working.
Today I choose to nuke my laptop and revert it back to its default settings so I can configure it for its new life as a more portable machine for me around the house. My laptop is untethered from the TV and wifi is working again, so I can use other PC units as my downstairs streamer. I might even take a Zoom call on the deck next week.
My wife, son and I used to share an office on the second floor of our house. It’s a big room, one of the huge selling features when we bought it, as we have our master bedroom, decent sized-room for Jacob, a smallish guest room, and then this big 15’x15′ room over the garage. We had three desks in it, one for each of us, lots of office supplies, printers, charging stations, etc. But Jacob’s computer was pretty basic.
And when we started our COVID time at home, it became increasingly clear really fast that Jacob was either going to be spending a lot of time in our shared office while we were trying to work, or he would need something more portable to work on around the house. So we bought him a decent laptop, capable of gaming even. Which he took to like a duck to water and never looked back. With the exception of the colour printer, he has no real need to use his office computer, or even his desk, as we have a new desk setup for the first floor for him. Yet a lot of his files were still on that office PC.
Today, I decided it was time to “cut the cord” and move all his files to his laptop. We had been initially thinking he would use both computers from time to time but the office is really just Andrea’s office now, while he takes the first floor and I’m in the basement.
He still had a couple of games that hadn’t moved yet, a bunch of school files, some writing that he’s done, some pictures here and there, a bit of data, enough to keep me busy for a little while. One of the games runs out of a single directory (not really installed, just boots from the drive), and I have NO idea where it saves one of the data elements. But the rest of it transferred fine.
I even set him up with a bit of a file structure in MY DOCUMENTS, and he’s good to go. I haven’t decided if I will move his old computer out of the office, but I know how annoying it can be to try and maintain two sets of files and work on two different machines…he has even emailed himself files a couple of times when they were in the wrong place. Not a serious problem, just annoying, and if it was me, I would want them moved. I asked, he agreed, so consolidated they were!
Unfortunately, for some reason, the colour printer does NOT want to print from his laptop which is connected wirelessly to the LAN. The printer is wired to the LAN, and I even tried reconnecting it higher in the router structure, but his laptop just cannot see it. I thought it was the same problem Andrea’s computer was having earlier with photos, but doesn’t seem to be. I’ll try one more time tomorrow, see if I get any farther.
Otherwise, it is all good. He even synched his iPhone with it to back up all his photos and videos onto the machine. Slow as molasses over wireless, but it worked. Soon I’ll have to do a full backup onto a portable drive plus tothe cloud. Onward!
Today I choose to consolidate Jacob’s files for him on to his laptop so they’re all in one place.
I will read just about anything and in just about any format. Except in this context, format covers two aspects.
First, we have format in terms of content.
Cereal boxes have held my interest when nothing else was around, for instance, all the way down to copyright info or patent numbers, just noticing the different types of info included. If I’m given a choice, I’ll opt for mysteries most of the time, but I also read sci-fi, fantasy, young adult, middle grade, historical. I’ve read a few modern chick-lit and even, in a desperate weekend in my youth, a Harlequin romance that was the only thing in the trailer I hadn’t already read. It’s an hour of my life I will never get back.
I am not a voracious reader of non-fiction, although I try from time to time. I’m great at starting, lousy at finishing them.
But when it comes to short stories, I prefer older ones or mystery stories. In both, I am almost guaranteed a complete story. That sounds a bit cryptic, but a lot of modern short stories I find are almost “slice of life” stories. They start in the middle of a story, give you a snippet, and then end without any real resolution. The literary mags LOVE them; I would rather read the cereal box.
Second, we have format in terms of the physical format. I grew up on paper books, read stories in newspapers and magazines too. Abridged versions with multiple books in one volume, like Readers Digest Condensed Books, were among the forms. But all types of paper.
Electronically, I have read lots of stuff online, but usually non-fiction articles.
My first e-book was actually on a Palm Pilot, and I don’t remember what it was. I think, but am not sure, that it might have been a Sherlock Holmes collection. My second e-book was actually read on a computer screen. I downloaded a copy of the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown [Edit: James Patterson…thanks Kathrine!] as I wanted to know what all the hype was about. I thought, from the way some people had talked about it, that it was some sort of non-fiction thesis. I didn’t realize it was a novel. And with it downloaded on to my monitor, I sat and read it all in one sittting. My first full-length e-book. Which made me realize, as I had long suspected but couldn’t confirm, that I didn’t care about the physical format. If I can get lost in a story, the physical aspect disappears into the background. I have read on computer screens, Palm Pilots, Kindles, phones, and tablets.
Challenges for formats
The only real formats that I haven’t embraced are audio books and podcasts. Some of it is technical, in that I haven’t found a good workflow that just gets me listening quickly, although it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out of course. Some of it is space and time…I rarely have long periods of time where I’m driving alone, which would be the likely time to listen, and when I do have time to relax and ingest stories, I tend to be more looking for quiet and separation from noise than someone droning on in my ear. If I want sound, I’m more likely to opt for serialized storytelling through TV shows.
But some time ago, I read about new stories coming forward for the TV series Orphan Black. If you never watched the show when it was on, the basic premise is a mystery with a sci-fi backdrop. In the opening episode, you see a girl named Sarah whose life is a giant crapfest (she’s stolen drugs from a drug dealer in order to sell them and run away with her daughter to start a new life). She witnesses another woman who looks JUST LIKE HER commit suicide by stepping in front of a train. She steals the woman’s identity while looking for a place to crash AND trying to figure out why they were twins, and fast-forward a couple of jumps, and voila, she finds out they were clones. And it wasn’t just the two of them, there are MORE. None of them knew they were clones until Beth, the suicide victim, figured some of it out. The series ran five seasons, and some of it was crap while other parts were AMAZING. The biggest part of the show that DID work was Tatiana Maslany who played all the clones. Each was REALLY different from the others, and she embodied all of them uniquely. It was astounding.
Anyway, I digress. The announcement was that there were NEW stories, further adventures after the series ended, and Tatiana would be doing the voices. Wait…voices? Is it animated?
Nope. They’re a relatively new format, or an old format reimagined, but they are podcast-style episodes (audio only) on a site called Serial Box (yeah, my mention of reading the cereal box wasn’t accidental hehehe). I mention “old formats” because in a sense, they are like old-time radio shows like the Shadow or Arsenic and Old Lace. Fibber McGee and Molly maybe. Or Dragnet. But not all of them are like that. Some are just narrations, like audio books, except done as episodes.
You can buy an episode at a time, like you can on places like Apple Music for TV shows, or buy a “season’s pass” for about $10.
Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that I don’t do audio books and I don’t do podcasts. So why would I be interested in this? Because of three things. First, I loved Orphan Black and it intrigued me. Second, I really enjoy old radio shows. I know there are lots of places on the net that have the old recordings, and some day, when I have time, I’ll curate myself a decent list to get going. Third, they aren’t just selling narrated versions. You also get the prose to read. Every word is on the screen, so you can just READ the stories. And since I read faster than the narrator, I can finish them way quicker.
The only thing that has held me back in the past is the format. I know, I know, which format? The physical format in this case. You CANNOT download the prose. It is only readable within the reader app that Serial Box uses. And I REALLY don’t like locked formats for reading content. Every e-book that I read, I backup into a different program so that if application X suddenly stops working, I can still access it. I paid for access, I’m keeping my access unless and until someone wants to refund it to me. Usually, at least.
But Serial Box doesn’t have any download options, their way of preventing retransmission i.e. piracy. I hate the business model, and I would have balked at paying for Orphan Black for a season only to have it potentially disappear at some point on me. But I was so excited that I bought it on sale before I knew.
The neat thing, though, is that every Thursday night at 9:00 p.m., they give away some “intro” special for a particular series. Most of the time, I forget to log in to see it. Or I remember at 10:30 p.m. by which time all the free passes are gone. I bought OB, but I never did get around to listening to it. Or reading it online. I really wanted to read it offline, or maybe on my phone or tablet, and have just never made the time to set it up.
But tonight, I got a prompt on my computer reminding me of the weekly freebie, and I managed to snag one of the passes. A four-day free overview of The Triangle, a 10 episode show created by Dan Koboldt and written by him, Mindy McGinnis, and Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. It is described as a Michael Crichton-style adventure thriller, and that is probably close enough. Not as good as Crichton, maybe more by way of James Patterson clones, but it was REALLY good. I binge-read all 10 episodes tonight while sitting at my computer. It was a cool story about the Bermuda Triangle and an explanation of what caused everything to go haywire. Not all the pieces work, but it was pretty well done.
And since I enjoyed it so much, I started reading the Orphan Black series before remembering I have to get up early tomorrow AND I still had this blog to write. The format is not universally good for content, however. There was another show that I got a free pass for a number of months ago and could barely stomach the first two pages before tossing it. The writing was terrible. On the other hand, they have some Marvel shows too, building on Black Widow.
I haven’t quite decided if I will review the Triangle or not, but since I have only four days of access, if I want to make any notes for a review, now is the time to decide. I review just about everything else I consume — movies, books, TV shows, etc. It seems only natural to review it, but I’m not even sure what to call it. A book? A podcast? A TV series? A radio drama?
Whatever it is, today I choose to read a serialized story in a new format.
Most of my posts in this series are about “my” choices, things that are mostly within my span of control. Things I do with my computer, for instance. I don’t have to consult anyone, it’s not a “joint” decision, it is just me.
But with schools in Ottawa re-opening, the question comes from the school board as to whether we intend to send our son back in September or not and that is not a decision that “I” can make on my own, it’s a joint decision of mainly Andrea and I, but Jacob is involved too. We wanted to know what he is comfortable with, what his concerns are, etc. And it helps that all three of us independently came to the same decision in this case. Jacob will do remote learning in September rather than return to school.
During a broader discussion with family during our vacation, when we were still mildly “on the fence” while hanging very firmly to the “stay home” side, I was asked, “What would I need to see to feel comfortable sending Jacob back?”.
A great question, and perhaps not a fair one to answer, as I’m not sure even with all of the best scenarios in place that I would choose to send him back. But I want to work through it, even just as a mental exercise.
I had thought about looking at the variables more holistically in terms of what makes sense for safety for teachers too, but I haven’t. I don’t need to, that’s not my responsibility to decide. I don’t mean that harshly, I just mean that I don’t have to imagine a full solution, just my part of it. And my part is just my kid. School boards and teachers are in far better places to gauge what they need to do for their own safety. I don’t need to figure out their risks for their families, budgeting for the school board, rules around opening and closing with individuals, or even if they need to check for a kid’s temperature every morning. I could, but that really doesn’t affect much of my own decision, and since the local schools aren’t doing it anyway, it’s kind of all been decided.
I didn’t need to frame the decision for EVERYONE, just for us. And here’s how I saw it for my part of the joint decision.
Understanding risk
I confess that I have a bit different understanding of risk than most people, partly as I have managed corporate planning in government for a number of years, including risk. This means that my view of risk is a bit more nuanced.
Most people fall into one of two categories for understanding risk:
Those that think risk is primarily about probability i.e. what are the chances of something happening?
Those that think risk is primarily about outcome i.e. if something does happen, what impact will it have?
So for COVID-19, the first group wants to talk about low infection rates, incident rates, flattening the curve. The second group wants to talk about the potential for death if they do get it and the differentiated impact on various groups such as by age.
But, to me, the risk around COVID-19 is a lot more complicated when applied to an individual situation like my household, and more specifically, my son returning to school, than a general population risk.
For us, there are a number of specific variables:
P/E: This is the probability of being exposed to the virus. If you’re in quarantine, the risk is low, since you’re not coming into contact with anyone. If you’re hanging out at a bar with all your friends, the chance of coming into contact with someone with the virus goes to high. In a school environment, I think we can safely say that the appropriate rating is probably medium (possibly high for SOMEONE in the school to be exposed, not necessarily high for an INDIVIDUAL in the school to be exposed directly). Not guaranteed, but not zero either. There is no way to keep it to zero, you’re dealing with other people. Of course, if you take into account the number of families involved, and that many of them have younger kids who will not social distance (variable 4), the likelihood of spread is almost guaranteed, but that doesn’t mean a higher grade like Jacob’s (Gr. 6) will see definite exposure. On the other hand, if the schools were checking temperatures every morning, that would be a pretty big way to reduce the P/E from the population rate to a specific school rate.
SoG:The next variable is the size of the group. Obviously, the scale is linear. If you are exposed to 0 people, you’d be low, just like P/E. But whereas P/E is more about macro indicators, this one is more about cohort size. If you have 0 kids in your classroom, you are low; if you have 15 (a common recommended size by medical people), you would be medium; and if you have 30 kids, it goes to high.
T: T is for time. The duration of possible exposure increases the risk. Coming in contact with someone briefly is unlikely to result in infection, it isn’t airborne in the normal sense. So, let’s say minimal contact is low, sustained exposure is high, and anything over probably 20 minutes up to an hour is probably a medium.
SD: This is the social distancing variable, but because it is a mitigating technique, the scale seems almost reversed. If you are fully socially distanced, the rating would be high (fully mitigated); if you’re not socially distancing, it would be low (no mitigation); and in the middle is medium mitigation. For a school environment, I think this completely varies by grade. Up to grade 3, I think most teachers, parents, social media, everyone except the die-hard “school must open!” fanatics would agree that kids up to grade 3 are unlikely to fully respect social distancing. They’ll do their best, both the kids and the teachers, and inside of a week or two, it will be a complete failure. They just don’t have the mental discipline or judgement to overcome basic social instincts. But how kindergarten kids handle social distancing is not particularly relevant to my decision, as Jacob is going into Grade 6. There’s still the contagion effect from members of his cohort having family members in other grades, but that in and of itself is not directly relevant. Within Gr. 6, I think there will be enough peer pressure to relatively enforce social distancing. I have less confidence when the kids are in the bathroom or at recess, but Jacob is not a highly social animal.
M: M is for the masks. Any barrier to the transmission is part of mitigation, same as SD, and I think we’re talking the same scale…no masks / no mitigation = low; full PPEs / full mitigation = high; anything else is in the middle at medium, even using non-medical masks. For Grade 6, I think we’re in the middle.
S: In addition to social distance, and masks, your other mitigation is regular sanitization of not only the space but also simply washing your hands. If you can wash regularly, HIGH mitigation; if not, LOW mitigation.
RII: This is the risk of individual infection. There are lots of macro details about how likely a kid is to get sick, blah blah blah, but that is a population estimate. I don’t need to know that, I need to know what the risk is of my son getting sick. Is he more prone to illness? Are there behaviours or conditions that increase his individual risk of infection? Since we’re back to the main variables, not mitigations, this scale is normal (low for low, medium for medium, high for high risk, completely straightforward).
ROI: This is the risk of specific outcomes for the individual. Separate from the risk of infection, if the person is in frail health or has a compromised immune system that might let the disease run rampant quickly through their system, then they have a much higher risk. Another way to think about it is directly related to long-term care facilities with the elderly. They might not individually be at higher risk of infection, even with some of their health concerns, BUT they are at much higher risk of experiencing the worst outcomes of the disease i.e. death, if they do get sick. They won’t simply get bad flu, they’ll die. And so it makes no difference if there is a macro indicator that says the survival rate is blah; the only thing that matters is whether that specific individual will be at risk. Obviously, low/medium/high is the simple scale again.
RIG: This is one of two variables that gets closest to “high-risk” households, separate from any risk to Jacob himself. In short, what is the risk of infection within the group i.e. our family unit? If Jacob is perfectly healthy, but I’m really prone to infection, then the contagion effect for him to me is really high. If we’re all super healthy, it’s low.
ROG: The second part of that “high-risk” household is what is the risk of specific outcomes for the group Jacob is part of…even if we can generally fight off infections, BUT once infected, if we’re prone to things going through our body fast, then we’re high risk.
A formula for comprehension
While I’m not talking about doing any real math here, there is a way to quantify those risks:
Risk of school = [Probability of Infection {P/E, SoG, T} – Mitigation {SD, M, S}] X Impact {RII,ROI,RIG,ROG}
So what does that mean for the option to send Jacob back, taking into account what they have in place?
On the probability of infection, we start with the probability of exposure, and I think we’re talking MEDIUM risk of direct exposure. It won’t be 100%, won’t be zero, and there’s not much you’re going to do on it outside of macro indicators for the neighbourhood or city. It is, in short, what it will be. Unless, again, they were to test temperatures at the door every morning. In effect, screening out high risk cases on a daily basis before they even enter the classrooms. Without it, it’s just the population estimates.
For the size of the group, the province has done nothing to cap class sizes. Which means up to 30 kids. That is a HIGH risk by my evaluation. It isn’t entirely clear to me if they will be truly cohorted either, and by that, I mean with a single teacher. Or if instead, the teachers will still rotate. If it does, it’s kind of like the warnings about sexually transmitted diseases…you are having sex with every person that your partner has ever had sex with before. So, your kid might be in a class of 15 (great!) but if their teacher is rotating to other classes, the exposure vector isn’t really for a 15-person class anymore. They are exposed to every kid that your teacher has taught in the last two weeks. Lots of comments were received in the consultations where parents were concerned about options for “family cohorting” i.e., if they had a kid in grade 2, 4, and 6, could they all be in one class (like a one-room schoolhouse of old) so that they would only be exposed to the same kids, not three classes. Nope, no such mitigation. But since it is already HIGH, and family cohorting only exacerbates the problem overall, I don’t have to worry about “extra” risk.
Time is a crapshoot. Literally, anything over an hour is problematic, and probably 20 minutes. There is virtually (no pun intended) no way to avoid that risk, and so it has to be HIGH in my view.
So our PoI = MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH. Of course, that is assuming no mitigation in place. If you send the kids back with no mitigation, large numbers of people in close contact for long periods of time, yep, you’re going to get infections. You don’t need math to understand that situation, you just have to watch the news.
But the main thing that allows people to send their kids back to school is mitigation.
For social distancing, this is going to be related to a bunch of things. If there was a cap at 15 kids, you’d be able to space out in a classroom. At Grade 6, I think J would be able to show enough discipline to be able to maintain that space. Would it be pleasant? Nope. But he could do it. Except that is NOT what they gave for mitigation in the schools. No cap on sizes, so social distancing can’t be done in the classroom. There just isn’t the space for it. If it was 15 kids, great. But without that ability, the mitigation is LOW.
On a related note, the options for buses are a giant mess. Great that they are on the bus for, on average, less than 20 minutes. So exposure is limited. But the buses have multiple age groups so not all will be wearing masks, social distancing will be impossible without extra busing being available, and enforcement may be non-existent since the driver has to actually drive the bus. There was NEVER a chance I would let Jacob take the bus, I don’t think. I just couldn’t see ANY mitigation that would compensate for the intense risk of exposure during the commute. It’s the same thing for my wife…she doesn’t drive, but she will NOT be taking public transit, I will drive her wherever she needs to go. If she isn’t taking public transit, Jacob is not taking a school bus full of kids.
Of course, the second option in the mitigation is about masks. And their intent is for the students to wear masks. Generally speaking. Great. Except Jacob is struggling with his mask. As most informed people know, “Just Do It” is great for a Nike slogan, not so good when you’re dealing with anxiety-based disorders or asthma-like symptoms. It isn’t just a question of mind over matter if you can’t control your mind. He feels like he can’t breathe in the double-layer cloth masks; he’s relatively okay in the disposable surgical-style masks. But Andrea and I can go about an hour before we’re dying. And Jacob is going to wear it for most of 6 hours? Yeah, that ain’t likely. So while masks are great, when it comes to Jacob individually, I would say that the mitigation will be LOW for him.
Sanitizing everything sounds awesome. Even with the likelihood of it being done the way most schools are done now which is as cheaply as possible. And I read a stupid math attempt by a teacher who thought all her kids would line up to go to the bathroom at the same time six times per day and wait while each one washed their hands so it would take literally hours per day. Except that is the stupid math that prevented people from doing assembly lines. You don’t have everyone go at once, you have one person go and do it while everyone else keeps working. They don’t spend 15 minutes in line each time while other people are washing their hands and they don’t wait until everyone is done to go back to their studies. Maybe in younger grades you have no choice. But I can trust my son to go wash his hands and come back. But more importantly? Why would that be the model anyway?
When I go to my local computer store, and I walk in the door, they have a portable sink right there. It has water in it, I can wash my hands, good to go. Portable toilets have options for sinks with water in them. I don’t need my kid going down the hall to a common washroom for 300 kids and touching everything in there. If he has to go to the washroom, sure, there’s not much choice. I don’t see them coming up with mitigation where every classroom has its own portable toilet somewhere (although, if you were in a portable classroom only used by that cohort). But washing your hands regularly? You don’t need to leave the classroom to make that possible.
Would Jacob’s classroom have that? Nope. So I have to again give it a LOW mitigation rating.
So at this point, we have MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH probability less LOW, LOW, LOW mitigation. If I was exceedingly generous, I could say that comes out to a MEDIUM risk overall. But when dealing with probability, you go to the highest rating and the lowest mitigation which is almost non-existent in some cases. I think, in all honesty, Jacob’s risk goes to MEDIUM-HIGH.
The impact on the household
This section is a bit more challenging to write as some of the details are not mine to share. So let’s sum it up as the risk of infection for the individual is probably LOW, risk of outcomes for the individual is MEDIUM, risk of infection for the group is MEDIUM, and the risk of outcomes for the group is HIGH. As an example, I have aspects of diabetes (I bop around the near-to diabetic group and pre-diabetic group, but not formally in the diabetic group), family history of heart disease, and blood pressure issues. There’s other stuff going on, but those are the main factors. That likely puts me in the MEDIUM-HIGH category just for me, before I even take into account some respiratory issues.
That means the overall impact on the household, if Jacob gets infected and likely infects us, comes out HIGH.
An almost no-brainer for our family
So HIGH risk and HIGH impact? Yeah, that was almost a no-brainer for us. But here’s the thing. It is also devastating for social interactions. And Jacob already has some isolation factors to deal with, with COVID exacerbating them. We WANT him to be back in school, but we simply can’t take the risk. And we are fortunate enough that we’re working from home, but that doesn’t mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely added work to keep him on task, even as he enters grade 6.
Other parents will have different interpretations of risk, different factors, and truly “your mileage my vary”.
But today I choose not to send my son back to school in September and instead do virtual learning. It helps that both he and my wife were of the same view, I can’t imagine households where they differ and how you resolve something so fundamental. As one popular mean put it, there are no good options.
Will that be my decision until a vaccine? Possibly. Or maybe something will change. To go back to the earliest question, for me to even have considered it more actively now, I think I would have needed to see:
No busing. The risk of transmission is just way too high, and not just for those using it.
Temperature checks on every student entering the building. A parent saying “Oh, I’m sure they’re fine” as they drop them off is NOT sufficient. And to be honest, I think the parent should have to wait until the kid is “approved” to enter. The school can’t be responsible for tracking down a parent who has left for work and can’t come get the kid. And if the kid has a temperature, they should be gone for 3 days minimum before they return, assuming no other symptoms. If that’s not feasible for a family to manage that level of uncertainty, they need to find another solution rather than transfer their risk to everyone else.
True cohorting limited to 15 students with a single teacher for the day. The cap on the student size allows good social distancing and a single teacher protects everyone.
Sanitation solutions in the classroom. Ideally, this would be a portable sink, but barring that, some sort of formal hand sanitizer option could be sufficient, I suppose.
Mandatory masks. This would likely be a deal-breaker for Jacob, but I don’t see much way around it. Certainly, if they are out of their desks, the masks should be on…for going to a washroom, or a sanitation stand, travelling anywhere in the school, they need masks. If, while at their socially-distanced desk, they want to remove, I think that would have to be allowed.
Desk-based resources. If you are using equipment or reference materials, everyone needs their own copy somehow. You can’t be sharing resources.
Time-based outdoor breaks or vastly improved ventilation. I don’t know if it will help, but I think fresh air every 45 minutes would be helpful. No idea how that works when raining or when the snow comes. Maybe it’s a large covered area outside that stays dry and snow-free. Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe improved ventilation would be sufficient so they aren’t trapped in a bubble of exhalations, like getting off an airplane.
And yet, with all of that, it wouldn’t change our high-risk household. And that might be the only factor that matters in the end. Even if it is “low-risk” in the forefront, like going grocery shopping, it would still be an “optional” risk. I still need groceries, but Jacob has a perfectly safe virtual option to learn from home. It’s not a good choice, it’s just a safe choice.
When most people say they’re going to treat themself for dinner, the immediate thought is likely eating out somewhere. But, to be honest, we eat out a lot anyway. There are even times where it feels less a treat than simply just time and energy management.
But that isn’t what I’m talking about for today. When I was growing up, we had several treats throughout the year. January, February and March were pretty much a wash. In April, the local DQ would open up for the season (it was a simple building with walk-up windows, no in-store seating). I remember going to B.C. and being surprised they had actual “walk-in” stores that were open year-round and had full Brazier offerings. My local B.C. friend mocked me for the fact that I asked, “Is it open yet?”. 🙂
May was the month for setting up at the lake, and that would usually mean the start of BBQ season too. Maybe a bit earlier at home once we had full propane systems, but not before that. Hamburgers were common, but a decent steak was “special”.
June was the start of strawberry season, and we would often stop at the farmer’s field en route to camp as soon as they were open. We did u-pick sometimes, but not that often when I was young (the siblings did it more frequently when they were younger, I think). That season would stretch into July too.
I’ll jump ahead a bit, with September being generally nothing special. October was Thanksgiving, which meant pumpkin pie, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and my mom’s version of Yorkshire pudding. November was a yawner, and December was a bit of a repeat of October.
But August? That was the stuff of legends. My dad liked hosting parties, although not parties at home or anything. No, he wanted people to come out to the lake, sit around, have a beer, stay for supper, and the options were pre-set. Hamburgers and hot dogs were staples, although I skipped those tonight.
Instead, I went with a really nice steak. Andrea bought me a big “box of meat” for my birthday in June, and it came with some chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks, bacon, and shrimp. Plus some sausages, I think. I forget. It was a LOT of meat. 🙂 So since Jacob doesn’t like beef as much (harder to chew for him), Andrea and I each enjoyed a nice steak tonight.
But the main draw?
Corn on the cob for a corn roast. We had some corn about two weeks ago, early corn as my mother would say, and I never expect much with the early corn. But honestly, it was the best “early” corn I’ve ever had. Really good. Again, we had some at the cottage a week later, and it was still in the top 5 for early corn. A really good year, it seemed.
But now we are into “real corn” time, as my mother would have said. And I have to say, tonight’s corn was damn near perfect. Yellow from end to end, perfect uniformity, moist, absolutely awesome. No word of a lie, I think it may be the best corn I’ve ever had in my life. Definitely in the top 5. And we only bought two ears this week. I want to rush out and buy a bunch more.
And just for fun? We had strawberries in chocolate pudding for dessert with a cranberry beverage to wash it all down, while eating on the deck under our gazebo with the screen around it to keep the bugs out.
