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Post by youneverknow on Mar 5, 2021 22:27:13 GMT -5
As the controversy of Texas lifting it's statewide mask mandate and opening for business 100% seems to be a topic of conversation, I decided to do the math for our suburban Houston county.
Officially 62k people have had C19 in our county. The official estimate is that 4 times that many have actually had it and either had a mild case or were not able to get a test. So 4x is 248k. Another 59k have received vaccines, including over 50% of all seniors. So 307k total.
Population in our county is around 800k. 32% are under the age of 18. So 256k are low risk.
800k minus 307k minus 256k is 237k. Roughly 30% of the total adult population is still at risk for the coronavirus.
Herd immunity has varied over time with different medical professionals. No one really knows because it's all new. At first they said 60%. Some now say 95%. Like I said, no one really knows.
Our county is currently at 70% for the adult population (over age 18).
Masks haven't gone away. Most businesses still require them and as well as our school district. They just aren't mandated at the state level now. Which makes sense. There's a lot of rural Texas and different places will reach herd immunity at different times. As Governor Abbott said in his press conference this week, the people of Texas have learned how to deal with the virus over the past year.
I thought I'd add in the numbers because I think they need to be part of the conversation. We aren't where we were a year ago.
Edited to add: Texas is vaccinating over 200k people a day.
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Post by youneverknow on May 1, 2021 13:52:33 GMT -5
I have two separate thoughts today. The first is they are finally closing down the mass COVID testing sites in our county.
The second is I was listening to a Grady Smith youtube video and he said he thought music award ceremonies were dated and he felt that was why viewership has continued to decline. In the old days, it was a big deal to see your favorite artist(s) perform live but with the internet most of us can do that at any time and don't need to tune into several hours of an award show to see it. He didn't mention it but most award shows have clips almost immediately online anyway. I think he may have a point. No disrespect to the country music award show or the winners (I don't even know who was nominated this year) but I think he has a point. There are faster and easier ways to hear exactly who and what you want to see and listen to.
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Post by youneverknow on Dec 13, 2021 0:42:50 GMT -5
My prayers are with the folks who were in the path of the two hundred mile tornado Friday night and early Saturday morning.
There are no words for how terrible it is for so many people in Kentucky and the other states that had terrible losses.
Jolene
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Post by Nashviller on Dec 26, 2022 14:56:00 GMT -5
The thought of today is that I am happy to have survived the holidays❤️
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Post by youneverknow on Jan 15, 2023 3:23:57 GMT -5
Michael,
I'm glad you survived the holidays. : )
My thought for today is I'm enjoying listening to the music you posted.
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Post by youneverknow on Jan 16, 2023 13:59:40 GMT -5
My thought of the day springs from an episode of 1883 that hubby and I were watching last night. In it a gang of men rode into the camp while the men were out rounding up cattle. They were told to leave and went down to the creek to water their horses. One woman decided to pick up rocks and throw them at their heads and yell again for them to leave. That didn't go well and and a bunch of people got shot and died.
There was, in western fashion, retribution by the men when they returned and more people ended up shot and dead.
It reminded me of something my dad said to me as a young adult. Something that really irritated me at the time. Turns out my dad was right and I realized I absorbed the lesson he was teaching me over time.
I had gone to the drive-in movie with my live in boyfriend and our next door neighbors. We we sitting there watching the movie and some guys in the back row were shooting off bottle rockets at the cars in front of them. They kept getting closer and closer and our neighbor hollered at them to cut it out since they had a baby sleeping in the back seat of the car. They didn't take kindly to that and came up and jumped on our neighbor. My boyfriend, who had been a bartender and bar bouncer in the neighborhood bar since he was in high school, pulled off a couple of them and then our neighbor got the other one off. I took the baby away from the mess. Our neighbors wife was helping her husband.
Later on it all went to court and the one who had bit our neighbor in the middle of his back and left a complete set of teeth prints was prosecuted for assault because of that.
I was telling my dad how it all happened and he chewed my .... because I'd been so stupid. I tried to explain that I just went to the movie and didn't start the fight or take part in it. He told me that didn't really matter if I put myself in that place and time. It wouldn't have protected me from any of it going sideways.
As I watched that woman throwing rocks at men watering their horses I thought, why would you do that?
For so many years I and later we lived in gang territory. Obviously you stand tall and confident or you will get knocked down. Easy marks are easy marks and you don't want to be one. But throwing rocks when there are a whole gang of people with guns ready to use them. Choose wisely.
My dad was right. He was trying to teach me how to live in a world where we were working poor and crime was a real thing.
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