Hard pass on the gym for me. My membership is free through work, but I am guessing they would be okay with us not going and getting exercise elsewhere. My gym is huge, but also has a lot of people who are older.
What is this gym folks speak of? (Says Creekland coming in all sweaty from being out on the farm. 
)
I’m crossing my fingers for both the vaccine and promising treatments, incredibly thankful that so many intelligent folks are putting their minds to work to find something. I can wait a bit longer for them.
With school and raising funding, it’s common for us to raise money to help folks out within school when there are significant health issues. Insurance only covers so much with health bills (usually 80%), but there are usually also a ton of other bills that can range from a partner staying home to help (aka, less family income) to pet sitters or extra gas needed.
Even though my brain tumor was covered at 100% by the Health Share we belong to my school “cares” group brought me some gas credit cards and $$ for comfort foods of my choice knowing I was making daily trips to Johns Hopkins for 6 weeks (hour and a half, one way). They asked me about medical bills, but we Creeklanders use a different system than they do, so that wasn’t a problem.
Communities really do help communities in some places. I’ve yet to see a school fundraiser I don’t want to contribute to at my school - for kids or adults.
Yes, it’s quite possible - except that was not what the original post said. It said hospital bill would be astronomical even with insurance.
He might not have his school districts insurance but he has insurance. It’s quite possible the person opted to get one of those cheap plans that don’t cover much of anything, either. But that would be a choice the person made, but a bad choice. If one gets sick enough to require hospitalization, one is going to be faced with extremely large bills if the person chooses to go without or chooses to buy cheap insurance. That’s why people get insurance.
I’ve a friend who was in ICU for only one week during treatment for cancer. Bill was $150k. But they have good insurance, so it cost them virtually nothing.
I posted this on the school in the fall thread but I will post here as well for those who do not read that one:
So it appears our local HS is having an in person graduation in a few weeks (class is usually about 180 students). They are inviting the graduate and up to 6 guests to sign up for a 3 minute time slot–the event is scheduled to take 9 hours in total–to enter the auditorium with masks and after a temperature check (no one with fever over 100 can enter).
The graduate may remove mask when crossing stage in cap and gown to get diploma and appropriately socially distanced family may at that time take photos. Then everyone is ushered out a different doorway and the next family enters.
If any graduate can’t make it or feels it is not safe the diploma will be mailed to them.
SMH
“On the first weekend without any statewide stay-at-home orders, Wisconsin was open for business, and at least along the southern border, people from Illinois poured in.
Hundreds of day-trippers, including many in cars with license plates from the Land of Lincoln, flocked to the tourist haven of Lake Geneva on Saturday.
They shopped, ate lunch, strolled the banks of the lake, went on boat tours and set up picnics.
And outside, at least, there wasn’t a lot of social distancing.”
“Wisconsin set a single-day record of cases Saturday as 502 people tested positive for the coronavirus.
The cases reported by the Department of Health Services came from a round of 6,051 COVID-19 tests that were processed. The percentage of new tests that were positive for the virus was 8.3% — slightly higher than the average of around 6% from the previous six days.”
As states are testing more, aren’t we going to see an obvious uptake in cases? It isn’t necessarily linked to opening things up “early” .
Agree. And states that open up will bring in visitors from neighboring states that are less open, like GA and WI have seen.
People are going to travel this summer, Tulane is open to visitors touring starting this week, and hundreds of thousands of college students from all over will go back to their off campus apartments in August, whether school is in person, or not.
Also agree. Once 40k students descend upon Austin in late August, whether UT holds classes in person or online won’t be the decisive factor in transmission.
Our gym membership is $230 per month. It was the first thing I put on hold. They allow a 6 month “suspension” which we intend to take full advantage of.
Today my rescue squad son is assigned to the “assisted living” unit. He’ll be fully geared up in PPE and responding to calls in the local assisted living facilities. It will be his first time helping this crew. I’ll be very interested to hear about today’s experiences later tonight when he gets off work.
Interesting thoughts about the gym, my DH has a very regular gym routine, probably averages 5x a week and I think we will be quite comfortable with him returning as soon as they reopen. Why? Because it is at a local resort, the gym they offer is rarely used so locals can buy a membership. DH might, might, see two other people on a visit, usually he is the only one there at 5-7PM. He can wipe down the equipment and, if he is the only one using it, great. There are many tennis players and pickleball players, but since a severe tennis injury & him having to rehab, he can just stick with the machines and add the indoor tennis later when it is safer, but still maintain fitness, hopefully still, all by himself in the large machine room.
I will be interested to see what they choose to do financially,he paid an annual rate to get the best deal, hopefully once they can reopen and determine where things stand, they will extend the due dates next year so we don’t just lost 3-4-5 months that were paid for and were more than the above $10-20
This is particularly important because even though there’s a lot of chatter about “preexisting conditions,” the plan dollar limits exclusion above is just as important and valuable (particularly in the COVID crisis), and just as under attack.
Doesn’t a 9-hour graduation sound awful? Will anyone have to be there the whole time (maybe the principal or trustees)? I appreciate that they’re trying to make it a nice experience.
For some people, $8000 is astronomical.
Parking and gas for what? Are visitors allowed at the CO hospitals? They are not here in CT.
I can see an issue if the spouse is now required to quarantine and can’t work from home. That could result in loss of income for this family as well.
Did anyone here notice their SS tax in their paycheck stops? I just noticed the difference between last month and this month, as far as I know I wasn’t getting a promotion. I had to compare line by line and the SS tax disappeared!!!. It’s nice for the government to give the relief, i heard something about SS on the news but didn’t know what it was.
This is consistent with the moving average they have had the entire month of May. Nothing new.
Be glad that you are not part of a cruise ship crew.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article242565281.html
COVID-19 is still running through some cruise ships at sea (crew only, no passengers). Some crew are unhappy about various cruise ship company policies. Even when the cruise ships make repatriation voyages to take them home, some of their countries of citizenship refuse to let them land.
Trying to find sanity in today: An empty beach ( Selfishly I love it). Then a phase one opening of the state ( MA) : factories, construction and places of worship can open. Next week: stores can do curbside sales but while you can’t go in a small store, you can get your hair cut. What?? As usual, arbitrary rules that make no sense. With some people yelling at others to follow and some not even bothering to try. No one back to work but many angry people on both sides. Yikes.
I think the face of the tiny tot who waited for us to cross the sandbar this weekend said it best. Kid looked totally perplexed and waited until we were about ten feet away before moving. What is this doing to us? I can’t wait to open up. The state’s been hit hard. But I am fine wearing a mask. I’m don’t want every store and restaurant in my town to go under as these clowns figure out if they are in phase one or 4.
@suzyQ7 , I shared the Florida cases information as a reminder that the disease continues, regardless of individuals’ beliefs regarding whether they are at risk or that it is safe to open everything up.
Special for this year is that the “employer share” of Social Security tax may be deferred by employers (including self-employed people): https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/deferral-of-employment-tax-deposits-and-payments-through-december-31-2020
Social Security tax is only applied to labor income up to the wage base limit, currently $137,700, according to https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc751 (yes, this means that it is a regressive tax). So if your pay crosses $137,700 during the year at the same employer, subsequent pay checks from that employer will not have Social Security tax applied to it. If you work at more than one employer and have labor income greater than the wage base limit, that may be overwithheld and reclaimable on your tax return. This is normal, not special for this year.
This just bolsters the argument that Illinois should open up a little more. Those hundreds of people spent money in Wisconsin that could have gone to neighborhood businesses in Illinois, as well as shored up empty and deeply indebted IL coffers via taxes. Also, IL has a mask requirement that WI doesn’t So if those people were taking boat rides and visiting art galleries closer to home, at least everyone would be that much safer all around. As I have said before, IL will get a percentage of the covid cases and none of the economic benefits.
Many schools are wrapping up for the year. That means families don’t have to wait for the weekend to take the kiddies on an excursion. Heck, even the IL governor’s wife and kids spent some SIP time at their house in Florida and are now at their “farm” in Wisconsin, both states with looser restrictions than that which he is governing.
The horse has left the barn.