... The Dallas-Forth Worth Hospital Council said last week that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in North Texas has exceeded last summer's high point, even before vaccines were available, according to the Morning News.
Florida school superintendents who require masks for students without giving them a way to opt out could have their salaries withheld, Gov. Ron DeSantis' office said Monday.
DeSantis last week barred local school districts from requiring students to wear masks amid a rise in cases, but at least one Florida school district said they will be mandatory when classes begin Wednesday.
... The superintendent of schools for Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, the state capital, said Monday that masks would be temporarily required for all students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Parents will be able to opt out for medical or psychological reasons, but not for political ones.
"If something happened and things went sideways for us this week and next week as we started school, and heaven forbid we lost a child to this virus — I can't just simply blame the governor of the state of Florida," Superintendent Rocky Hanna said....
The state's largest school district, Miami-Dade County, has not decided on masks, but its superintendent said Monday that threats about salary would not play any role in policymaking.
The district, which has its first day of school Aug. 23, has a process that involves consultation with medical and public health experts, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said.
"At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck, a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees," Carvalho said....
Well, this may be where the mRNA based vaccines may make their mark.
I'm guessing, but I think it would be a relatively simple process just to plug in the nucleic acid sequence for the Delta spike protein(s) sequence(s) and create a new vaccine and/or booster tailor made to defeat Delta. How much additional testing the FDA/CDC would require is another matter. And then there's the possibility that newer variants will pop up that are even worse than Delta.
In fact newer variants are probably a given, until global herd immunity is achieved.
Astra Zeneca is not an mRNA based vaccine, which may explain their dire prediction.
Perhaps a little unfair as other states aren't far behind.
Too much dire data in the article to excerpt, but this stands out to me: "the second-lowest vaccination rate in the country, with a little more than 35 percent of its population fully vaccinated as of early Thursday. "
Anybody else want to join me on the "hold 'em down and jab 'em" bandwagon?
Don't really want to hold them down as I don't want to get that close. But I'll be the first to volunteer to shoot them with a tranquilizer gun so someone can jab them.
That'd actually be fun.
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000000101010202020303010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.
Greggie and Ronnie. 
Great minds . . .