I’m going to be going on many cruises to Sweden.
Jokes aside, we’re still in phase 1 in the Seattle area and the difference between phase 1 and lockdown really doesn’t make a difference for my family. When we get to phase 2, I may see about going kayaking with a friend or two since we’ll be allowed to be in groups of up to 5.
We’re trying to see about doing a summer baseball league cause spring was cancelled, but I doubt it will happen.
I’m in Tennessee. I know several of the public high schools with big football programs have started in person summer workouts. Seems early to me. Local news articles I’ve seen showing groups of students working out in small weight rooms without masks were unexpected.
I don’t want my robotics kids to end up as a COVID anecdote shared by local media. I can’t really see us doing robot assembly projects in person right now, or in the next several weeks. Eventually, we’ll need to work in person again (as school will likely be in August) but reworking the space we build in and safety protocols are high on the priority list for making that feasible. I expect we’ll keep up virtual meetings as a part of our program.
Where’s that spotlight feature when you need it?
We are having our first in-person meeting this week since everything shut down mid-March. Here in Israel businesses have been slowly re-opening according to government guidelines for almost a month, and we haven’t seen any resurgence yet (knock on wood). This is just an administrative meeting so we don’t have to worry about students clustered together working on a single robot, and we plan on following the Ministry of Health’s guidelines on workplace safety to keep everyone safe.
Israel is doing significantly better than the US is right now, with 2320 active cases (26/million population) and falling compared to the US with 1.12 million active cases (3420/million population) and rising. Some of that may be due to the warm weather recently, but it’s also thanks to an efficacious healthcare system and rigorous contact tracing. I don’t think meeting in person will be a regular thing for a while, but it is nice to have some semblance of normalcy again. And for the students who worked long hours together every day and were suddenly forced to separate for months, I’m sure they appreciate getting to interact face-to-face with their friends.
Well, FIRSTly I can see WI guidelines being moderately helpful for us. Long winded and the usual phases and such. But the stages in which you can only have ten people working together indoors, and with masks, should help us with team cohesiveness. We can absolutely make the different subteams meet and work together rather than drifting here and there randomly. Also, mask stylin’, looking forward to that. It might be best to have rookies as a separate group at least in the early phases. I’m optimistic.
I can relate to the concerns that we all share, but to the extent that we have actual numbers they have some reassuring trends. New York with a horrific number of deaths - over 40K - has had as of last week exactly 9 in the 0-17 demographic. And six of those had pre-existing conditions. So for kids on the team with asthma and such, sure there is some risk in excess of their drive home at night. But realistically we need to look more at the issues related to community transmission. As I’m in the grandparent demographic, and happily there, I’m quite aware and can gauge my own risk tolerance but it may not be the same as everyone else’s.
Finally, and hopefully less controversially, this is science…but not the sort FIRST is used to dealing with. Seasonal variance of viruses and mutation rates change often unpredictably. Imagine trying to calculate a launch trajectory when Newton’s Laws change without previous notice! Ah, brings back my earlier medical career. Being a mentor and grandpa is way more fun.
T. Wolter
I don’t think that’s a cause of COVID-19 cases dropping since Singapore had cases and it’s hot and humid there all year long.
I agree with the posts that we will never return to “old normal.” Society has improved in lots of ways since 1918, but evidently there are some mistakes we didn’t learn from. Let’s try to learn from this, and not return to normal.
When will we meet again? Once there’s a vaccine and cases are low and stable (not just stable), I’d consider having meetings with new processes in place.
I can’t speak to any specific country, but there is research saying that hotter temperatures help prevent the spread of the virus. There was a heat wave here this past week (above 101° in most of the country for 6 days straight), and some restrictions were lifted specifically during the heat wave because of the hotter temperatures.
This year we’re still see a mix of precautions.
We will be more accepting of facemasks.
The extreme optimist would say there is a vaccine right now and that many people reading this have already had it.
So of course that means…
Actually, our schools reopen in two weeks, so at least we’ll get to see each other again. We already discussed about postponing the first team meeting to July though, since some of our mentors are over 65 or have other health problems that prevent them from going outside while the virus is still around.
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