Thursday, April 8th, 2021
After 393 days EM returned to a physical classroom today.
She has 35 school days left in her life and then the secondary education years are completed. Of these 35 days she will only spend 15 actual days in the school building as only half the students (1.200) return to in presences classes and those that return alternate weeks. A building that normally holds some 2.300 students now only accommodates 600 in any given week plus of course all the teaches and administrative staff.
I am certain the school buses and buildings have felt rather neglected and sad these past 393 days and are glad to have voices and footsteps again, nonetheless with a quarter of the regular crowd in attendance it must still be weirdly quiet in the hallways and the classrooms.
EM told me there were only 6-7 students in all of her classes (down from 20-30). For the lunch break the 600 are divided into two groups. One group stays in their last class while the other group has lunch in the cafeteria. After half an hour the students switch. The first group returns to their last classroom and the second group makes its way to the cafeteria.
Staircases and hallways are all one way now. As a result of the longer commute students have fifteen minutes to get from one class to the next. Toilet stops are not permitted during the commute from one class to another. Teachers will give hall passes for bathroom breaks during class time to limit the number of students to three per bathroom at any given time.
Given all doors and windows are open and the school can be accessed from every possible door, security has been increased. There is an entire drop-off protocol to ensure no congestions upon arrival and departure occur. The security guards must be bored out of their mind as EM was reprimanded over her dress code five times during the four or so hours she was at school.
She was wearing a tank top and lo and behold exposed her shoulders when taking her flannel of. How outrageous is that? Apparently exposing shoulders is a distraction for the boys and puts my daughter in danger of being molested/ harassed. I am flabbergasted at this. Surely parents should teach their boys to deal with seeing naked shoulders and collar bones? It is not as if she has been running around topless and even then, she should be safe. Not that any of the boys did or said anything, no, the guards did.
I have never fear for her, beyond involuntarily being exposed to gun violence (which is why they have all the guards now that all doors are open, when normally there is only one entrance to the school building with all doors kept locked at all times and even the main entrance can only be accessed after school starts by ringing a door bell). For the first time in my life am I confronted with girls having to adhere to modesty dress codes to protect boys. This is just not right!
My day was far less exciting. I had a 04:00 start as my first meeting of the day commenced at 05:00 and lasted for three hours. It was a great success, if only the client were not untouchable due to its shareholding structure. I am hoping for some sort of miracle to happen so that we can engage with the client after all, but short of 30% of the shares coming onto the market I doubt we can work with them. The remainder of the day was spent on powerpoint decks and a flurry of e-mails to get things done. I tried to set up a new project in the system and failed dismally. We must have the crappiest systems ever, which paired with numerous control mechanisms make even the simplest task into a major production.
Numbers in the USA are on the rise again with people in their 30s and 40s being the most infected and hospitalized group. Today 77k new infections have been reported to bring the total to 31.7 million. At the same time CDC has revised its guidelines stating that infections through touching surfaces are negligible. So, we can all stop quarantining groceries and cleaning surfaces like crazy.
After a factory messed up 15 million JNJ shots this week, the federal government is expected to deliver 85% less JNJ vaccine doses next week than what States expected. Also, there are reports of a mass vaccination site in Denver closing down early leaving 560 people who had been in line uninoculated. The reason: 11 out of 1.700 vaccinated people felt nauseous and dizzy after their shot.
If nausea and dizziness is it, I would not be overly concerned. In fact I am secretly hoping Hagerstown will administer JNJ in which case EM would have one and done.