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Post by hcpride on Jan 28, 2022 4:34:08 GMT -5
/\ Quite a few of us are triple-vaxxed and naturally immunized. Much more than are aware, of course. (I was symptom-free)
Big Pharma is working on vaccines that might be effective in preventing invention via the Omicron variant. Of course, the latest vaccines tend to wane quickly, no vaccine is 100% effective to start with, natural immunity will already be widespread, and there is no certainty Omicron will be the dominant variant when the vaccines are finally approved. Something tells me the vaxxers won’t force this shot (#4 BTW) on the not-at-risk on campus. But Covid-response (damaging and otherwise) directed at the not-at-risk is not necessarily rational and is hard to predict.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jan 28, 2022 8:49:47 GMT -5
My fully vaccinated grandnephew who plays prep school hoops in New England is tested before every game. Tested positive about 10 days ago. Was asymptomatic at the time of the test, and remains so. His fully vaccinated father, on the other hand, has been sick as a dog with COVID for a week. The fully vaccinated son of a 'boostered' niece who lives in eastern Massachusetts had a son who complained of a sore throat for several days. Tested negative for three straight days, and tested positive yesterday. Today, the boostered father, my niece, and two fully vaccinated other sons are sick with COVID, and have tested positive. The youngest, a daughter in pre-school, is unvaccinated because she is not yet eligible has so far escaped. They thought she had caught it in pre-school about ten days ago, but has tested negative, so far. (None of these tests are PCR tests apparently.) I have another grandnephew who is having a bar mitzvah this weekend in a warm state, unaffected by snow and wind. I was told today, the quest list has dropped significantly as 30 of his friends have COVID, an d can't pass the required negative COVID test before being allowed in. There is not a small chance that he may test positive before his bar mitzvah. These are three anecdotal tales, but they should debunk notions that kids catching COVID at school are somehow not contagious. Reducing the spread of COVID in schools reduces the further spread of the virus in households, including extended households. The son of a niece has a son. Is your real name Methuselah?🙂 That puts you in the same generation as a great grandparent and still sharp as a tack. Congratulations! Sometimes I feel that old. I corrected my error. Not an excuse, but it is the curse of researching rural Irish genealogy of the 19th Century, where records are often lost, and daughters can be older than their mothers, and fathers capable of paternity before their teens, etc. People back then were very casual about birthdays and birth years. And the Irish propensity to name every other boy John or Patrick, and every other girl Mary or Margaret. <Grinds teeth>
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Post by sader1970 on Jan 28, 2022 9:47:35 GMT -5
. To sort of corroborate Phreek. My Irish grandfather supposedly had 3 birth certificates, Two had the same day but a year apart, the third was a different day but the same year as one of the others. The story continues that the reason was the local Catholic Church was the keeper of birth records and they had a fire in the church and the original burned up. On our tour of Ireland, I saw the church that supposedly had the fire and it either was a minor fire or they re-built the church. Being on a tour, we didn't have time to explore the details there. As to names, my Irish grandparents named my mother's twin "Mary Margaret" (just to cover all of Phreek's bases). That aunt had two daughters and named them both "Mary" and separated their births by 14 years. Older was another "Mary Margaret" and younger was "Mary DePaul." One of my two sisters is "Mary Elizabeth" presumably to differentiate her from her cousins and the other is "Anne" named after the Blessed Mother's mother. The next generation was much more Americanized and one sister named her kids, good ole American names: Liam, Sean and Caitrin.
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jan 28, 2022 10:04:58 GMT -5
To further corroborate PP (not that it's needed). My mother was Margaret, my sister is Mary. One grandmother was Margaret, the other was Mary. Not a single Francis X. among the boys though.
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Post by hcpride on Jan 28, 2022 10:28:28 GMT -5
alum, the only issue here is that you are quoting the CDC which is an organization that certain posters feel is not a reliable source for various reasons. Some folks might find this current school mask guidance from the CDC to be a bit much (note the age): Indoors: CDC recommends indoor masking for all individuals ages 2 years and older, including students, teachers, staff, and visitors, regardless of vaccination status. www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html Stuff like this might damage their credibility.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jan 28, 2022 18:21:01 GMT -5
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Jan 28, 2022 21:01:37 GMT -5
alum, the only issue here is that you are quoting the CDC which is an organization that certain posters feel is not a reliable source for various reasons. Some folks might find this current school mask guidance from the CDC to be a bit much (note the age): Indoors: CDC recommends indoor masking for all individuals ages 2 years and older, including students, teachers, staff, and visitors, regardless of vaccination status. www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html Stuff like this might damage their credibility. Anyone who can get a 2 year old to keep a mask on for an extended time period deserves an award.
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Post by hcpride on Jan 29, 2022 4:04:22 GMT -5
Anyone who can get a 2 year old to keep a mask on for an extended time period deserves an award. I’m thinking someone who successfully wraps healthy and not-at-risk 2 year olds in face masks for extended periods of time deserves something else.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 5, 2022 9:54:26 GMT -5
For the five-day period January 31-Feb 4, there were 40 student positives and eight employee positives. This is a modest decrease from the case rate of the previous week. Between Jan 25 and 29, there were 56 student positives and 12 staff positives.
HC appears to be requiring only five days of isolation for fully vaccinated individuals who test positive, as the published number of "active" cases on Feb 4th mirrors the number of positives recorded over the five day period. HC also appears to closely monitor its on-campus isolation capacity, which may be about 100 beds.
HC also monitors case rates in Worcester city, Worcester County, and Massachusetts state-wide. Worcester city case rates are about 40 percent higher than Massachusetts state-wide rates, and new Worcester County cases are nearly 6x higher than the state-wide rate.
As of February 3rd, Central Massachusetts (basically Worcester) had the highest percentage of ICU beds occupied in the entire state, over 95% occupancy. The state-wide average is 84 percent and dropping rapidly. The incidence rate and the hospital capacity rates for Worcester County are likely influencing how and when HC eases COVID-related restrictions currently in-place..
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Post by hcpride on Feb 6, 2022 5:24:04 GMT -5
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Post by HC92 on Feb 6, 2022 7:20:20 GMT -5
Anyone who can get a 2 year old to keep a mask on for an extended time period deserves an award. And, if they can’t, they deserve to be thrown off their flight immediately!
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Post by Tom on Feb 8, 2022 8:41:58 GMT -5
Not quite vaccination, but. . .
Last night the Worcester Board of Health voted to lift mask mandates in the city in most cases. This is effective Feb 18. Holy Cross as a private entity in the city of Worcester can choose to have stricter rules than the board of health requires, but cannot be less strict.
Right now all the mask mandates on campus are imposed on the school. As of the end of next week, HC will have the option of keeping its mask policy or relaxing it. The ball is in the HC's court. For what it's worth, basketball and men's hockey have two more home games after this date. Women's hockey has one home date. Based on the current limit to students and season ticket holders, I do not anticipate HC choosing to eliminate the mask mandate for Hart. Especially if they open homecoming weekend to the general public
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Post by timholycross on Feb 8, 2022 12:19:13 GMT -5
Like I said in the women's thread a day or two ago- the general public's best bet to see a Holy Cross basketball game in the PL tournament is most likely a road game at Boston University.
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Post by rgs318 on Feb 9, 2022 7:20:43 GMT -5
NJ rules are headed out. However, at some places (Church for one) we are seeing more masks. It is less the masks themselves than the mandatory policy that they must be worn. I hope all of you remain safe...as does the "crowd" at the Hart for tonight's game!
One parishioner always has a mask on and, as a eucharistic minister, will not stand next to a priest who does not wear one. She is battling cancer and does. to need to risk any additional issues. We respect and understand her choice, as do all of our priests - except one. He just does not like masks.
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Post by alum on Feb 9, 2022 8:18:30 GMT -5
NJ rules are headed out. However, at some places (Church for one) we are seeing more masks. It is less the masks themselves than the mandatory policy that they must be worn. I hope all of you remain safe...as does the "crowd" at the Hart for tonight's game! One parishioner always has a mask on and, as a eucharistic minister, will not stand next to a priest who does not wear one. She is battling cancer and does. to need to risk any additional issues. We respect and understand her choice, as do all of our priests - except one. He just does not like masks. You go to Mass at someplace with more than one priest?
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Post by rgs318 on Feb 9, 2022 8:32:32 GMT -5
Yup...Fr Steve (cannot say mass now due to cancer recovery) Fr. Ray Fr Toth Fr Nortonv(retired by gets to say Mass every week (at $40 per Mass)
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 9, 2022 9:04:27 GMT -5
The letter below illustrates how a local Board of Health can set and adjust mask-wearing, social distancing, and other limits based on COVID infections in the community, and in nearby communities, and take into account the number of COVID patients in the local hospital. (The hospital that sent the letter is about a 400 bed hospital.) Holy Cross does not make COVID-related decisions independent of Worcester's Board of Health. Last month, when the ICU was at capacity, nearly every COVID patient in the ICU was unvaccinated. I asked whether most of these were Black or Hispanic, as they often have significantly lower vaccination rates. And the reply was, 'No, there are plenty of unvaccinated Whites in the ICU.' The last holdouts, who are not getting vaccinated come 'hell or high water'. Checking ICU occupancy rates for Central Massachusetts (read Worcester) for February 7, these were still above 95 percent I'll check again at the end of today.
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Post by newfieguy74 on Feb 9, 2022 10:10:22 GMT -5
Yup...Fr Steve (cannot say mass now due to cancer recovery) Fr. Ray Fr Toth Fr Nortonv(retired by gets to say Mass every week(atc$40 per Mass) Do you attend Mass at the Vatican?
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Post by sader1970 on Feb 9, 2022 11:17:04 GMT -5
Considering that Rhode Island is (was?) the most Catholic state in the country, proportionately, we've seen a lot of parish consolidations. Cranston has 5 churches with a population of about 80,000. Coming from NY, CT and OH, I found that to be astounding.
But, when we moved here, it was the newest parish in the Providence Diocese and had but one priest (a Msgr. as pastor). About 10 years ago, we got an associate to help but looking from the outside, our pastor didn't want the help, and the associate was gone in less than 2 years (almost a Sean Kearney!). The original Msgr. retired and we got another pastor/Msgr. who was close to retirement himself. After about a year, he got an "in residence" Msgr. whose primary responsibilities are with the diocese but he helps on weekend Masses. So, does that count as 1.5 priests? So, Pastor/Msgr. #2 retires about a year ago and now we have to "settle" with just a "low-level" priest/pastor but we still have the Diocesan" Msgr. in residence.
With Covid, we went from a Saturday afternoon vigil Mass & 3 Sunday Masses to just 2 Sunday Masses. I strongly suspect that when Covid goes away, or at least "controlled," we'll stick with 2 Sunday Masses. Unfortunately, more and more people have gotten into the habit of not attending Mass.
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Post by Tom on Feb 9, 2022 11:50:27 GMT -5
Holy Cross does not make COVID-related decisions independent of Worcester's Board of Health. Are you suggesting that HC will likely follow city board of health and remove the mask requirement on campus next week?
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 9, 2022 12:25:47 GMT -5
Holy Cross does not make COVID-related decisions independent of Worcester's Board of Health. Are you suggesting that HC will likely follow city board of health and remove the mask requirement on campus next week? HC removed most of the mask requirements in October-November, before re-instating them post Thanksgiving break. The college allowed mask-less visitors into the residence halls, provided the visitor(s) was fully vaccinated. There have been 21 student positives so far this week, an infection rate much higher than last October, but that may not be as material as that value would have been back then. Almost all/ all HC cases seem to be asymptomatic, and students are being classified as non-infectious 4-5 days after a positive test.
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Post by HC92 on Feb 10, 2022 8:57:38 GMT -5
Cloth masks don’t work. Healthy young people aren’t at risk. Vaccinated people of any age have very little risk. Covid is going to be here forever. Now is the time to go back to living normal lives like so many other states did long ago and treat this like anything else that’s going to make some people sick every year and kill a small number of them. The insanity really has to stop. I watched an Auburn-Alabama basketball game recently. Packed house. No masks. No more Covid there than in Worcester after last night’s HC game.
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Post by hcpride on Feb 10, 2022 11:22:23 GMT -5
Cloth masks don’t work. Healthy young people aren’t at risk. Vaccinated people of any age have very little risk. Covid is going to be here forever. Now is the time to go back to living normal lives like so many other states did long ago and treat this like anything else that’s going to make some people sick every year and kill a small number of them. The insanity really has to stop. I watched an Auburn-Alabama basketball game recently. Packed house. No masks. No more Covid there than in Worcester after last night’s HC game. I think the liberal states are starting to give up the ghost. NY just ditched their indoor mask mandate although the schools (wherein the not-at-risk kids congregate) are still masked for some reason. I think our Gov will be giving that up in a couple of weeks. For those who follow the British royals, triple-vaccinated Prince Charles has Covid (again): www.bbc.com/news/uk-60334842Prince Charles's positive result was announced moments before he was due to arrive at an engagement in Winchester. This is the second time Charles has contracted Covid. The 73-year-old heir to the throne last caught the virus in March 2020 when he reported only mild symptoms. Clarence House confirmed that Prince Charles was triple vaccinated, but would not give any detail on whether he was experiencing coronavirus symptoms this time.
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Post by bfoley82 on Feb 10, 2022 12:50:35 GMT -5
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Post by HC92 on Feb 10, 2022 22:40:49 GMT -5
The only crazy thing is schools having any mask requirement two years into this thing when many others gave up the masks long ago and are no worse off in terms of Covid spread than the ones still holding onto their mask requirements.
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