OT - NO POLITICS Only 2 1/2 more months of 2020

[bb74]

Advances in understanding it, helping the medical staff with treating it better? But even with better protocols around treating patients, it's still wildly unknown who or who isn't going to have a virulent reaction to the virus.

It is a catch 22 on the severity of the disease. What most don't seem to understand is this is a disease, not "just a flu virus". I have no rabbit in the hat politics wise but the deal in Europe right now is on the continent across Spain, Italy and France (170M people) the critical care wards have gone from 10% capacity usage to nearly 40% capacity since the end of the summer. The growth in critical cases is expanding by 10%+ a week meaning in 3 weeks literally 60% (compounded growth) of the ventilators will be occupied for COVID. We are most definitely on the same path as in April / May, only this time we are "in it" for 6 months as this thing is seasonal in it's spread... 20% of tested individuals are positive, up from low singe digits in August...

Current mortality is slightly below 3% with a 40M sample size so one could assume that this is a bit a a floor. 1 in 33 confirmed cases. Not odds I'd want to go all-in on personally... The world just added 1M new cases in 8 days, vs. the prior rate of 1M per month. Say it trends on the current track, it is out of control by New years with >1M new cases a day... India as an example has just decided to open back up as the alternatives were too damaging immediately to the population living day to day - doesn't hit the headlines but it's a fact. This thing is catching steam and that just sucks... You can't close down the economy or people die a slow death, you can't open up or people die a quick death, you can't find a middle because nobody knows where that lies.

This isn't a flu. It's more like tuberculosis or smallpox. Some patients are acute and go fast, most others carry the scars for the rest of their lives. Stay safe everyone.

 

[Bruinaura]

Can we change the title to "only two and a half months" now?

 

[DKH]

Fauci on 60 Minutes must watch

 

[Troublesome 85]

Tune in for fear!

 

[Troublesome 85]

Anyone ever been to Montana? Love LV but feeling an urge to move and I feel Montana is the place. Also thinking of Hawaii, Louisana and Texas.

 

[Fenway]

@Bruinaura

 

[Bruinaura]

@Bruinaura

View attachment 373377

I may need to use my lifeline for that one

 

[Seidenbergy]

Can we change the title to "only two and a half months" now?

Everyone is clamoring for the new year, but my money is on 2021 being even worse than 2020.

 

[DarrenBanks56]

Everyone is clamoring for the new year, but my money is on 2021 being even worse than 2020.

for sure it will be. plus all the local sports teams are gonna blow. maybe not the celtics

 

[Alicat]

Anyone use blue light filtering glasses? Do you notice a difference?

 

[TD Charlie]

Anyone use blue light filtering glasses? Do you notice a difference?

also interested to see the answers to this

 

[McGarnagle]

Anyone use blue light filtering glasses? Do you notice a difference?

No, but I've set my phone to filter blue light after 9 PM and it doesn't seem to make any difference for me. But my night time habits are't conducive to great sleep in the first place, so it's unfair to take that as testimony.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Anyone ever been to Montana? Love LV but feeling an urge to move and I feel Montana is the place. Also thinking of Hawaii, Louisana and Texas.

Southern Wyoming is another good choice. Cheyenne is a small town and you'd only be about 2 hours from Denver and 1 from Fort Collins.

From what I've seen and heard it's similar to Montana

 

[BlackCrowes]

Whelp, the local health district put my Son’s youth hockey season on pause for a week. While our organization had a total of 4 cases (3 of which were parents of kids and not the players themselves), the area we play in is spiking so they said better safe than sorry. I feel bad for the kids, but it gets me a week off from driving to and from the rink.....

 

[McGarnagle]

Trying to balance being patient with being pissed off.

I booked a flight to visit my family for a week in November a month or two ago, and JetBlue keeps changing the itinerary on me - I understand that in Covid times that any and all travel plans are subject to disruption. I originally scheduled it to leave here early in the morning and get to Boston mid-afternoon, then the return leg would leave late-afternoon and get back to LAX in the evening. Now, they push back my departing flight to leave in at noon and not get to Boston until 8 PM, then they put me on a 6 AM return flight, which is really what I am furious about. I went out of my way to pay more money to avoid having to take the god awful 6 AM return because I hate nothing more than having to wake up at quarter to 4 and drive down f***ing Route 1 to Logan in the dark of early morning on my vacation. Plus by making me arrive 6 hours later and depart 9 hours earlier, it effectively costs me a day of time with my family. The worst part is that the website won't allow me to make any changes so I have to call them and stay on hold for 45 minutes to an hour to get an operator. But even if I do that there's still 3 weeks for them to jerk it around again. At least their Covid policy allows for free changes within 7 days when a flight has been moved by more than two hours (which both have), but it remains to be seen if any flights are even going to be scheduled.

Yeah, it's Covid travel and everything is liable to change and I need to be patient with them, but am I also allowed to be frustrated at a personal level? The biggest thing is that I paid extra just to avoid the 6 AM flight and feel like they robbed me of the $40 difference by shoving me on that anyway. Ugh. Part of me feels like with the state of things, I'm really considering just bailing on the vacation and getting a refund.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Trying to balance being patient with being pissed off.

I booked a flight to visit my family for a week in November a month or two ago, and JetBlue keeps changing the itinerary on me - I understand that in Covid times that any and all travel plans are subject to disruption. I originally scheduled it to leave here early in the morning and get to Boston mid-afternoon, then the return leg would leave late-afternoon and get back to LAX in the evening. Now, they push back my departing flight to leave in at noon and not get to Boston until 8 PM, then they put me on a 6 AM return flight, which is really what I am furious about. I went out of my way to pay more money to avoid having to take the god awful 6 AM return because I hate nothing more than having to wake up at quarter to 4 and drive down f***ing Route 1 to Logan in the dark of early morning on my vacation. Plus by making me arrive 6 hours later and depart 9 hours earlier, it effectively costs me a day of time with my family. The worst part is that the website won't allow me to make any changes so I have to call them and stay on hold for 45 minutes to an hour to get an operator. But even if I do that there's still 3 weeks for them to jerk it around again. At least their Covid policy allows for free changes within 7 days when a flight has been moved by more than two hours (which both have), but it remains to be seen if any flights are even going to be scheduled.

Yeah, it's Covid travel and everything is liable to change and I need to be patient with them, but am I also allowed to be frustrated at a personal level? The biggest thing is that I paid extra just to avoid the 6 AM flight and feel like they robbed me of the $40 difference by shoving me on that anyway. Ugh. Part of me feels like with the state of things, I'm really considering just bailing on the vacation and getting a refund.

ran into this a lot this year flying back and forth to Vegas each month. If you can get your money back I would and go book on Southwest. They are doing similar things with flight shuffling but you at least can go change your flights as many times as you want at no cost.

 

[McGarnagle]

Times like these make me so glad we are working from home. I've had a few instances a few years ago that we had to remind employees that they can't post certain things on the outside of their cubes and also remind people that unless it is something so offensive like a photo of Hitler, we can only remind employees of what our policies are when it comes to workplace conduct.

I had my own issue with a colleague in our open office. She was super religious and had bible quotes all over her cubicle walls. I'm cool with religion, I just don't need it in my face on a daily basis. I was told that as long as it didn't go beyond her space, they couldn't make her take it down even though it was obnoxious and everyone in the office felt the same way.

It is a slippery slope but you have to trust that people will use their best judgement.

 

[Alicat]

LOL.

Well played

 

[Bruinaura]

Any fellow HR people working on benefit renewals? We are looking at probably at least a 20% increase this year.

 

[Alicat]

Any fellow HR people working on benefit renewals? We are looking at probably at least a 20% increase this year.

No but I won't be surprised to see ours go up that much.

Do you know if the FSA limits are going up for 2021?

 

[Dr Hook]

Anyone use blue light filtering glasses? Do you notice a difference?

For what it's worth, I was going to get some and a friend who is an opthalmologist told me they don't do anything, that blue light has no proven negative health effect on your eyes. He said not to waste my money.

 

[Alicat]

For what it's worth, I was going to get some and a friend who is an opthalmologist told me they don't do anything, that blue light has no proven negative health effect on your eyes. He said not to waste my money.

Interesting. Thanks!

I've heard people rave about them and the eye doctor said it couldn't hurt to try them.

I've got some vision issues due to my concussion so short of sitting in the dark all day, any help to relax my eyes is welcome.

 

[Kate08]

Any fellow HR people working on benefit renewals? We are looking at probably at least a 20% increase this year.

yeah our initial came in at 29%.

we are looking at some creative alternatives. The market isn’t sustainable at this rate.

 

[Dr Hook]

Interesting. Thanks!

I've heard people rave about them and the eye doctor said it couldn't hurt to try them.

I've got some vision issues due to my concussion so short of sitting in the dark all day, any help to relax my eyes is welcome.

You're welcome. I have migraine issues so am concerned too about eye strain and flickering and crap. I always wonder a bit about optometrists, though because often they are selling you glasses or coatings etc. Here is what the opthalmologists say, the "party line" if you will:

Blue Light and Digital Eye Strain

 

[Bruinaura]

No but I won't be surprised to see ours go up that much.

Do you know if the FSA limits are going up for 2021?

Don't know about FSA. HSA limits are going up a little but not much.

Our broker told us he's seen premium increases as high as 52% for some groups but the average so far has been around 27%.

We've been contributing $2 for every $1 put in to the HSA by employees, up to a certain amount per pay period, for the last couple years. If we renew, I expect that will be lowered. But I have no idea what our execs will decide on the renewal.

Ought to be an interesting few days....