Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Hold on... that there may have been five cases in Ohio does not mean that there was widespread infection. If there was, you'd have more widespread hospitalizations. The spread is a lot slower in the early weeks of an outbreak.

The optimism is pretty strange with the "hotspots" popping up now. I think we can figure out how to reopen things, but whatever thoughtfulness was exercised has been completely disregarded. Even the relatively weak criteria the White House prescribed hasn't yet occurred.

I think the optimism is less about data and numbers and more about the fact that more and more places are figuring out how to modify their operations enough to open their doors. Things like dining out, going to work, haircuts, a trip to TJ Maxx, and in the next month or two, hopefully some rides on roller coasters are vital to mental health and a sense of normalcy. We are finding ways to modify our behaviors in a way that is allowing us to resume some of our normal activities. It's far from perfect and I think we've all accepted the fact that it's going to produce higher case numbers than keeping ourselves locked in our homes for the foreseeable future.

But the case numbers we were all presented in late March and early April never came to light. At work, most departments started coming back in today to get ready for a June 1 opening. I got a haircut today after work. I ate in a restaurant twice last week. These are things most of us haven't had a chance to do now in eight weeks. In our little hobby, new for 2020 roller coasters that should have been open in April are starting to cycle. Shanghai Disneyland reopened. Disney Springs is reopening in a week. The data may be far from perfect. This is likely far from over. But there is a lot of good in humanity right now and the world is starting to reopen and most places wants to figure out how to do it without royally f**ing it up. That we are able to do this with such horrible leadership at the top is pretty inspiring and is a call for optimism.

Jeff said:

Hold on... that there may have been five cases in Ohio does not mean that there was widespread infection. If there was, you'd have more widespread hospitalizations. The spread is a lot slower in the early weeks of an outbreak.

But 5 cases leads to 10 which leads to 20 which leads to 40, or whatever math we all were arguing about just two months ago. The whole point was that this thing spread very rapidly, especially back then because no one at that time was doing any preventative measures. In essence it would have run unchecked for the month of February and likely into early March. So why didn't Ohio see the hospitalizations that everyone would have expected? Did we just get lucky? Maybe the people who got it did not require hospitalization? There has to be more of an explanation than the spread is slower at the beginning. Look at the damage that Patient 31 did, and that was in the early weeks.

Jeff said:

Hold on...

Don't ruin this for me. As much as I respect Tom Brady as a quarterback, I enjoyed watching a Superbowl without the Patriots in it. It's been a while since we've seen that happen!

Jeff said:

There's an upside to that, for sure. I don't think college even solves the right problems, and we have to decide if the point is to train for a job (I hope not) or train for critical thinking and a lifetime of learning.

I can't speak for other institutions, but at our place, promoting critical thinking and promoting lifetime learning (among a few other things) are literally written into the core of what we do. Then again, we have the advantage of being one of those small liberal arts places where that can happen effectively on a mass scale.

I can't wait to use that idiotic "Plandemic" as an exercise in how to easily sniff out bull**** in the fall. I cringed everytime one of my relatives posted that on Facebook as "evidence" of the "truth". Carl Sagan has rolled over so many times in his grave he forgot which way is up.

To be honest, the whole plan has a lot to do with making parents and students feeling safer. While we will be doing this is classrooms, they will still be living in dorms and...you know...living on a college campus. Unless everyone gets a giant hamster ball to live in, I don't see a reality where actual social distancing is going to be maintained outside the classroom.

To hit that dead horse one more time, testing. That's what we need.

We didn't see hospitalizations because there wasn't widespread infection. Why there wasn't widespread infection, yeah maybe that was luck.

I don't know what case counts didn't come to light, but they weren't higher because the mitigation efforts worked. Nice job, America! In the absence of a vaccine though, why do you think now is a good time? Because hope? Hope is not a strategy (just ask Obama). Remember, the feds were predicting 60k deaths by late summer, and we're already at 80k in May.

Fauci is visiting the Senate tomorrow to say, hey, y'all should be ready for round two if you move too fast. These community spread events popping up sure support his advice.

DisneyWorld now accepting reservations starting July 1.

Online classes for college kids (at least for lectures) seem workable to me. Tougher for labs and classes that require more student and instructor interactions. Tougher sell for colleges that sell small and interactive classes I suppose in terms of justifying tuition costs. As the students get younger, online classes are more problematic (and kids in say K-5 will really struggle with social distancing).

I have a tough time seeing dorms at colleges though. Not sure how that will work. Seem to much like NYC and prisons in terms of Covid spread. If dorms are not possible, seems like its very difficult for freshmen to go. Tough to meet new friends with social distancing. Easier for upper classmen to interact with friends with social distancing. Though much of college life is the opposite of social distancing.

OhioStater said:
... Carl Sagan has rolled over so many times in his grave he forgot which way is up.

'Billions' of rotations, I'm sure...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

How Coronavirus Will Disrupt Future Colleges & Universities

This was an interesting read.

A lot was covered in that, but completely agree online is going to be an even larger part of the experience even if we experiment with filling dorm rooms this fall.

Given our summer plans got nuked both my HS boys are taking online classes this summer, through the districts and CC. We need to figure out how to make it work and the learn time management skills. They hate planners. Lol. Fortunately both had some experience with online classes prior but for now it is full steam ahead.

I am still hoping to find some fun outdoor experiences, possibly getting back in to bike rides, but it may just be reading books in a hammock.

The biggest challenge I face with my boys is the temptation to click over to the fun side and goof off, much harder to do at the library or with a textbook.

(More anecdotal evidence ahead...take with appropriate grain of salt)

If online classes continue or even become more of the norm, a plan certainly needs to be put in place to make them more the equivalent of in-person learning.

I get that the pandemic caught everyone off guard and everyone was sort of flying by the seat of their pants the last couple months of the school year, but both of my kids (one a senior in High School, one a senior in College) descibed those last few months as "a joke" for the most part.

I have kids that generally excel rather easily as far as school goes. Neither of them found any of it particularly difficult to be academically successful in general.

I think the scramble to move online made the learning process "less" than it could have or should have been. I only hope that things are back up to par by fall. The impression I got was that things got easier with teachers/professors trying to figure out how to transfer the in-class experience to an online one. You'd think it's just a different delivery of the same processes, but that didn't really seem to be the case. It felt more pronounced with my son in high school than my daughter at college, but both expressed a significant decline in difficulty, expectations and effort required to succeed once things went online.

Perhaps some of that has to do with them both being seniors and practically finished with their schooling in the first place? I have seen all the parents posting online (some joking, some serious - often truth in humor) lamenting home schooling and that wasn't my experience (Is it ever? I might be the excpetion to the rules more than anyone.). Then again, I wasn't the type to send my kids to school and expect the experts to do their thing and forget about it. I spent time with both of my kids in regards to the learning process treating teachers like a guide pointing us in the right direction, but taking the time to show and help my kids get to where they were being guided. But I digress.

The point is, my experience is that if this whole thing facilitates a shift to online learning experiences, there's a gap that needs closed . My kids found the in-person class to be vastly superior in pretty much all aspects....except for things like getting out of bed and washing yourself...and doing pretty much anything besides crawling out of bed and opening their laptop with bed hair, half open eyelids and a bowl of Cap'n Crunch.

Broadway theaters and shows in New York City now closed through September

That is rough. Several tours have been entirely cancelled as well, and maybe worse, several are planning to rebuild as non-Equity shows, which is bad for most everyone but the producers.

One method I am making more use of is going over each subject for 5-10 minutes and asking them to explain or at least talk about what they did or learned even if I don’t understand it. (French, calc etc.) If they can’t tell me much about the French Revolution then they know they need to revisit that section.

Yes many classes were seriously degraded. Lab based science, orchestra, group work in general. However 1.5 hours was gained in transportation time.

My kids are not extremely social or sports based but those are activities that keep many kids motivated to go to school and at least do well enough to keep participating. Sitting in a classroom all day is bad enough for kids, sitting in front of a screen all day is worse for most of them. The kids in Career Technical Education will be hit the hardest if fall falls through, automotive, welding, EMT, firefighting cosmetology all that is hands on. My oldest is in a 1/2 day app development program and that went mostly well but collaboration suffered.

Of course then there are the primary and most middle school kids. There are no good answers that I have read. I found the best teachers are over 50, not sure what is going to happen to them.

Jeff said:

Fauci is visiting the Senate tomorrow to say, hey, y'all should be ready for round two if you move too fast. These community spread events popping up sure support his advice.

And Rand Paul jumped his **** for not displaying enough humility. /smh

One only need look at South Korea, where one dude went clubbing and was able to cause +500 people to be quarantined.

now you've got Wuhan with a cluster again.

Friday ought to be a fun day, 5-7 days after Mother's Day weekend when all the yahoos went to Olive Garden for lunch.

I 2nd everything that Gonch said, with the exception that my kids are a freshman in high school and a junior in college. Both said it has been stupid easy for them. The freshman knocks out the entire week worth of work on Monday morning and then he is done for the rest of the week. That is not good. There is no way he is learning as much as he would have in school. And now we are hearing that next week is his last week of class assignments; that means they are ending the year a week early.

I too have heard the horror stories and I simply cannot comprehend how it can possibly be that difficult for the other kids. What are they doing wrong?

And my kid's go to cereal is Frosted Flakes.

City Walk at Universal Orlando to begin opening Thursday

I'm pretty shocked that colleges were not more prepared to go full-bore online. I finished my degree from a major public university 13 years ago this month and, in my last four semesters, almost every course on my degree program had online sections available. My wife's mother is an adjunct professor at a mid-sized private university and they extended spring break by 2 weeks in order to get their act together with online presentations and instruction. And the final product was still extremely watered down.