Liveblogging Day 2 of of Pandemic School Closure

I am numbering the days of school closure by days of school where the kids would have gone in, but did not. So, weekends and holidays do not count. Last night, the governor made an announcement that effectively lengthened the Pandemic School Closure to April 6, but I cannot tell if that is inclusive (like, might they go to school on that Monday?). Right now, it does not matter and the announcement said there will be more details as we get closer on how schools will reopen.

Since Friday was sort of an enrichment day and we were still thinking maybe in terms of a weekish, and it was all pretty sketchy since it was school district by school district, this day feels like the first Real Day of School At Home. A.’s teacher has added to the class chat; now they are doing a Morning Meeting replacement via Padlet. A. had trouble figuring out how to do it because she was using the big monitor and one of her stuffies was blocking the bottom right corner ... where the plus sign is for adding her share.

Ooops! Fortunately, I have started looking around the perimeter, and checking to make sure the entire page is visible, since so much design puts things on the edges and they are often off to the side and you have to scroll to them if it is device centric and you are on a computer or vice versa. That was an easy one to figure out and she was able to manage from there.

R. went to work and has not come back so apparently his site is open. I imagine it is more or less empty. Given the restaurant rules, and the emptiness, I suspect all the food service is closed, but he usually brings lunch anyway.

I am going to try liveblogging, to give a sense of how the school at home evolves.

9:15

T. asked for paper to draw an outline of his hands, to take a picture of, to send to his art teacher. On Friday, the teacher asked students to fill out a survey indicating what art / craft supplies they had available at home. I did not know that when I saw the list, and I could not imagine what craft would need all of those things, but after checking with R. about the hot glue gun, I told T. that we had everything on the list. Guess I am glad I did not give away all the craft supplies yet?

9:20

A. has a math challenge to find all the prime numbers up to 50. She needs paper to figure that out.

11:00

M. showed up to walk at 10. I was in the middle of failing to start a load of laundry and also thinking about why A.'s Prodigy account seemed to no longer show her as a member and that I needed to get her to brush her teeth. I asked M. to wait for a moment so I could at least brush my teeth, then I went for a walk with her. When we got back, I found an email yesterday saying payment had failed on Prodigy, so I had to get logged into the parent account and fix that. It did not take long, altho I had some trouble remembering how I loo into that account (with google, basically; I went to note that in LastPass and saw .... I had noted that in LastPass. *sigh*).

We removed the pink covers from A.'s laptop. She is complaining about the fan being noisy when it runs, and I thought that might reduce the heat buildup. I had already removed the iPad stacked on top of it.

A. came down to brush her teeth. After M. left, I finally got the laundry started.

Somewhere in there, T. asked for the wifi password, which is weird, but then he said that was not the problem at all and never mind. The kids are definitely improving their problem solving skills with logging in to things, and doing basic problem solving with their computers, apps, accounts, etc. Even if they learn nothing else, this is huge.

4:45

I got some laundry done. R. came home early, with news of further changes in work policy (they do not want him there unless he has to be there, and they are going to start fever checks). I sent him out to try to acquire some things at the grocery store. A. is still doing school. T. knocked off and switched to TV a while back, and then just recently went out on the bike to Subway to enjoy a last evening meal out before restaurants are closed for on-premises consumption.

On the whole, the kids have been amazing, and the telelearning experiment unbelievably successful. Also, I am so glad I know how to cook, and that I spent the last couple of years getting better at making drinks.

Should We Halt Trading More Generally?

Yes.

Oh, were you expecting me to say more? Why? I mean, usually, when I have a lot to say, I label it "A Few Remarks".

I did not say, A Few Remarks About Possibly Halting Trading More Generally. I asked, Should We, and I answered it yes. I am done. A real leader would have done it already: sent a team of economic advisers with a string of degrees and decades of experience out to CNBC and Bloomberg and Is Fox Business Still Around then yes, them, too, with permission to name call people at least at the latter venue. On the TV Machine, the advisers would explain how just like all the grocery stores have had to limit purchases of a broad range of goods because of panic buying and to ensure an orderly market for all grocery customers, so, too, we are going to have to ensure an orderly market for securities of all sorts and the way we are going to do that is we are not just going to do circuit breakers we are going to take a day or a week or two weeks or whatever it takes off until we all collectively understand how things are going to go forward and only then will we resume normal securities trading.

This would all have been part of a plan hashed out over the previous week or weeks, in which those same advisers and others had quiet, in depth virtual interactions with all the Very Important People at all the Very Important Trading Desks and banks and at the exchanges. Just as the CDC said schools might close, we would have heard people say that exchanges might close.

Duh.

ETA: I recognize that having these conversations might well have triggered broader market panic. But part of the conversations would have been starting out with, if you panic about this, then the closing part of this whole plan will just start sooner AND we will prosecute you, if people in on the early conversations preparing for this used that information in an effort to gain an advantage.

That is how it SHOULD have gone. Obviously, it has not.

ETAYA: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-16/data-and-psychology-may-argue-for-us-stock-market-closure

A slightly different and much more reasonable argument. I dunno. I figure if you cancel all the sports, shouldn't the market be closed, too?