Hi all, so as you may have noticed, there is a new section on the upper nav bar called "Projects". There is only one project right now, but anyone that knows me knows it will probably be littered with dozens of half finished or barely started ones by years end haha. This one is actually pretty useful and I hope useful to others. We have a daughter who was born very early (25 weeks) and as such is susceptible to a lot of common illnesses more so than other kids. Bad illnesses such as COVID or RSV land her in the hospital for weeks. We asked the school "Hey can you let us know when anything bad is going around so we can have her not catch it?" but it falls on deaf ears. I know some people who we work with on a daily basis really want to, but the ones who would be able to support us in that endeavor cant or wont do it. There may be rules or laws in place, especially considering that a gentleman responsible for dozens if not hundreds of childrens death both here and in Samoa is currently in charge of the nations health system. How we got to this state is a whole other discussion, mostly related to herd mentality, information bubbles, inherited fears, and lack of critical thinking. So, me being me and unwilling to just accept it, I did my part to do something about it.
These kinds of illnesses are serious. They arent a "rite of passage", and need to be taken seriously. Much as it pains me to say that parents who truly believe their children need to suffer for their parents "beliefs", it is not my place to try to change their behavior or said beliefs. I dont agree with that thought process, and I will never condone it, I will never even attempt to see the value or good side of people willing to hurt their own children because they hate science or authority or whatever their problem is. But the strong dividing line between people like me and them, is I dont force my beliefs on others. I provide knowledge and resources, they do their best to make sure others have to act like they do. My refusal to "just take it and deal with it" has led me to be successful in some ways, not so in others. And I've come to accept that and deal with that instead what others try to force on me.
So, that being said, it was my goal to do just what I asked my daughters teachers and school administrators to do. I did not have the advantage of seeing real students and hearing real parents talk about their children's illnesses like they do, but we do have a state, county, and national health authority (kind of, its been gutted from what it once had). They do measure and try to inform the public about VPDs and common but serious illnesses like COVID and RSV based on things like ED admissions, wastewater detection, and mandated reported positive tests. They do not put this data out in an easily "scrapeable" format, but a generated page using what AI calls a "Power BI dashboard".
Speaking of AI, what I did was I do have my own Claude account, it has helped me put web content up quickly and by and large it does a good job. I have to clean some stuff up behind it now and then, but it does a lot of the grunt work beautifully. So I have a nightly task to go out to these various sites and look at them and aggregate their data into a summary and overall report. This report hopefully will help make informed decisions about if it is an unsafe time to send my child to school. Or maybe other parents in Colorado Springs too.
Check it out at https://www.beneschtech.com/projects/colorado-springs-school-illness-watch
Coming next week and opt-in and most of all, easy opt-out email list. No I will never sell my subscriber list, but I will publish any offers I get for it for public amusement. The goal is you get a simple email at 5am with any relevant data I have found about circulating health issues so you can make a decision about school if it looks too risky. I want to thank Anthropic for not only their wonderful Claude AI product, but their refusal to bow to this administration. It cost them DOD contracts, but they gained the ability to look themselves in the mirror in the morning. Thats worth $20 a month in tokens from me for sure.
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