Portland is just fine, other than the misery of the homeless population. Supposedly we’re taking care of it - we passed several funding measures - but the federal money is hung up in understaffing and slow government hiring processes and lousy new software and the usual red tape. I’m not sure we’re very different from anywhere else in that.
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We have homeless camps everywhere too…even outstate. There’s not much time until Winter comes. They are building apartments like crazy - I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s the same here. In losangeles. I live where we never had people sleeping on the sidewalks a few years back.
Now they have elaborate structures with giant piles of trash.
I know people are suffering, we need to get them off the street for everyone’s sake.
I am under the impression that most of Portland’s hospitals are full of unvaccinated covid patients. I live about 2 hrs away from Portland part of the year, but we are staying away, because our coastal hospitals are full, and Portland hospitals are having to turn our sickest patients away.
My husband and I are afraid to spend time at our beach house, fearing that if we needed emergency care, we would be turned away.
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According to this Oregon Health Authority website, the region that includes Portland’s Multnomah County shows that out of 352 staffed adult ICU beds, there are 22 unoccupied beds.
I think your fear is healthy and staying close to your home is probably a good move.
I read one source that talked about hospitals in northern Idaho being forced to triage incoming patients according to the “most likely to survive” or crisis standards. In that scenario, being older is a factor that will be held against you.
This nightmare setting means that unvaccinated Covid-19 ICU patients will prevent the hospital from accepting heart attack, stroke victims, and car accident cases. This is where the “freedom” to eschew vaccination and masks harms innocent people. Freedom does not exist in a vacuum.
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It makes me so very angry that people won’t get vaccinated. Our local hospital on the WA/ID border is going to put in the plan you talked about, Terry. If we need emergency care we might get helped, or we might be “stored” in a hospital classroom.
Two days ago, there were only 22 intensive care beds in the whole state of Idaho.
Why the area is going to have two county fairs and HS and college football games is beyond me.
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I suspect it is the same mystery force that motivates our society to send primary school children back to in-person classes when there is no vaccine available for the under 12 year old cohort. Are these schools administering a mask policy? What have they done, if anything" to enhance ventilation?
Future generations who study our societal response to Covid-19 will look at these “public health” (read political) policies and likely ask themselves, “what were these people thinking?”
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I find it all really surreal. I have family members that live in another part of the country that heavily resent having to wear a mask into the Post office, let alone anywhere else.
My reality is just so different; it can be difficult to find common ground.
We have a camping trip planned in a couple weeks with a group of friends. We’ve had to disinvite a couple people (friends of friends) because they chose not to get vaccinated. These people just live down the street from me - how can their perspective differ so dramatically?
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That’s happening in Portland, too?!?!? OMG, thanks for letting me know.
I don’t think its safe to move for a job now. That helps calibrate my perspective. It seems necessary to be well acquainted with local resources if such problems develop.
My friend who moved to the East Coast was seeing problems develop. I thought moving West might be more acceptable. Seems nowhere is quite solid.
That’s a tough circumstance that you find yourself in. You need to work, especially if you’ve borrowed money to acquire the education needed to qualify for work. Everyone needs to make this risk/benefit analysis based on their own particular situation and their individual comfort with this risk.
In a general sense, I think most of us prefer the familiarity of a support network we’ve built up over the years. Starting out in a new geographical setting can be daunting even without a raging pandemic. It can be done but requires fortitude and persistence. That’s a difficult commitment to make.
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BradP! I’m a fellow St Louis person just wanting to say hi. Nice to know you! Looping w Omni and Dex G6.
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Nice to meet you too! Glad to meet a fellow looper in the Lou!
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The Northeast (esp New England) isn’t as bad as much of the rest of the country, so far, but it’s not great anywhere. I had posted a link to a NYTimes ICU tracker, but not sure if it’s updating its data to current numbers or not.
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I think we have among the highest vacc rates of the country in MN, so everywhere else might look kinda ‘unsatisfactory,’ at this point. 
We are seeing a little stress on ICUs, but it’s not bad. Our State Fair just concluded and that is making people nervous. Its an experiment because it draws huge crowds. This is my painting of the fair from some years ago. We are the largest state fair in the country, second only to TX. It’s a sea of people. Its a sea of covid. We will see if Delta likes bathing in these waters. We didn’t see much increase from the protests, but this might be different.
Nice painting! Was the Minnesota State Fair a no-mask event? If so, that’s an ideal way to spread the Delta variant throughout Minnesota and neighboring states. I never went to the fair when I lived there but I’m well aware of its popularity.
The coverage of the protests last summer (2020) showed almost universal mask wearing and it didn’t face the much more contagious delta variant.
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It was a no mask event, although masks were encouraged. Start the drum roll for Delta…
Do they also object to the laws that require them to wear clothes everywhere? Do they think the world would be better off with smallpox and the other diseases we have eradicated with vaccines? We (Canadians) also have to wear seatbelts in a car - do they refuse to do that too? I am asking these questions because I don’t understand the objection to masks and how people justify putting others at risk.
This is all about selfishness. More so than the vaccines issues.
Some people don’t want to wear a mask to protect others.
Why should I?
It seems that kind of selfishness has really taken off in the past few years
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153 cases total tied to the fair. 4 hospitalizations. That’s the total on traced cases, tied to the fair.