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Brattleboro and VT COVID-19 Regional Dashboard Summary – August 2024

by cgrotke | Health

Here’s the August 2024 dashboard summary. We continue semi-regular COVID-19 dashboard numbers from the Vermont Department of Health, and MA and NH counties that surround Brattleboro, as long as they continue providing them. Scroll down the new comments for the latest.

VT, NH and MA do weekly updates, near the end of the week, so we update on Fridays usually. All three have changed their dashboards since the start, so it is now tough to easily compare how things have changed. Variant updates are every two weeks.

July Rainfall

by local | Nature

For my location a dry month with 2.27″ measured compared to the NOAA normal of 4.28″.  The moisture we did receive was evenly spread across the month with 4 being the most completely dry days in a row.  You can see the effects of less rain with lawns starting to turn brown in sunny areas.  Within the CoCoRaHs network my location is the driest in the state for July. 

In Windham County there are a couple of stations reporting over 4″ for the month so many locations are not as dry.  Up north it is a different story with near record rainfall.  A station in St. Johnsbury has measured 17.73″ for the month. 

Tinkering Around The Edges

by RDavis | Health

The alarm is being sounded. Vermont’s health care system is in crisis and if we don’t take serious measures to change things the non-system we have will become financially unsustainable by 2030. According to a recent article in The Commons, “Dr. Bruce Hamory and his team were hired by the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB) in response to the Vermont Legislature passing Act 167 for health care reform. The legislation is intended to create a sustainable, affordable, and equitable future for Vermont’s 14 hospitals and health care providers in general.”

Act 167 has a few good elements and I am sure that Hamory and his team have come up with a some good ideas to make the delivery and accessibility of health care in Vermont better. At one of a number of state-wide meetings held in Brattleboro on July 17 Hamory said that we have to stop tinkering around the edges and make changes to help health care in Vermont financially viable.

But everything I heard makes me believe that all of the ideas that have been presented recently continue to tinker around the edges, as have all of the efforts of health care reform since the failure to enact a single payer system in Vermont played out during the Shumlin administration.

America’s Biggest Sound

by AnneODyne | Nature

I’ve got a skiff on a slip in a tight marina, and when the ebb fully hits it’s all rocks and rip-rap underneath the boat. This is especially true in the extreme negative tides of the new and full moon. Unlike the east coast which has fairly equal tides, here it’s one high high and one low low, with one lower high, and one higher low each day. Mixed diurnal. A range about fifteen feet, with maximal ebb three feet below nominal sea level. So getting in and out, timing is everything, conditions and weather notwithstanding.

But I’m not just watching the water in port. My ongoing study, more practical than academic, how water and currents move. Specifically, about twenty billion gallons. Today was breathless calm, perfect for feeling the tide. I snuck out at daybreak in the peak of ebbing, a few hours before slack, all that liquid mass rushing out to sea. Drifting with this, I was pulled seaward around 2.5 miles an hour. Do nothing- row, sail, or motor- and I’d be gone in no time. 

Peer Support Groups for People with Serious Illnesses

by EileenBAH | Health

Are you going through treatment? Feeling overwhelmed or scared? Talking with others may help.

The Serious Illness Program support groups provide a safe space for people to share personal experiences, feelings, coping strategies, and allow for shared learning.

Free, facilitated, peer support group for people who live in Windham County and neighboring NH towns who are experiencing a life-altering illness, with a focus on cancer, heart and organ diseases.

Safe Bicycling

by RDavis | Recreation & Sports

We live in a world where safety is often elusive. The police have their areas of responsibility and all other departments of cities, states and the entire country protect us in many ways. But there is one area where Americans seem to be more vulnerable than they need to be: bicycle safety.

As a member of the Brattleboro selectboard, a small Vermont town with limited resources, I am trying to work on making our town safer for bicyclists. There are lots of reasons why we should promote bicycle travel and in order to do so it means citizens have to become activated because they can’t rely on government alone to get the job done.

That is why I, and a number of local people, are working to figure out how to make our town safer for bicycling. As with any other issue, safe bicycling is something that is not simple to assure. This is especially true when it comes to trying to plan bicycle paths along public roadways.

Free Care If…

by RDavis | Health

When I first heard about a Vermont bill that became law on July 1, 2024 I thought the state had entered into a new era of health care affordability. The news report outlined some of the circumstances under which people could receive free hospital care. When I read the bill it turned out there is mostly nothing new, but it’s worth talking about it because some people need to know about hospital policies regarding free care.

Because all of Vermont’s hospitals are non-profit they have some degree of requirement to provide free care to needy individuals. That used to apply to hospitals that took money under the Hill-Burton Act but I think those days have passed and free care is still part of a hospital’s budget.

Brattleboro and VT COVID-19 Regional Dashboard Summary – July 2024

by cgrotke | Health

Here’s the July 2024 dashboard summary. We continue semi-regular COVID-19 dashboard numbers from the Vermont Department of Health, and MA and NH counties that surround Brattleboro, as long as they continue providing them. Scroll down the new comments for the latest.

VT, NH and MA do weekly updates, near the end of the week, so we update on Fridays usually. All three have changed their dashboards since the start, so it is now tough to easily compare how things have changed. Variant updates are every two weeks.

June Precipitation

by local | Nature

June rainfall of 4.23″ compared to a NOAA average of 4.52″.  Just a little below normal.  The first 20 days of the month were quite dry then several days of heavier rainfall brought us to near normal.  For the calendar year still well above at 28.55″ compared to the NOAA average of 22.13″.  Any rainfall we were to receive today would be recorded/reported tomorrow at 7am, the start of a new month.  All numbers are from my location in the SE corner of Brattleboro.

Windham County Heat Fund Update

by RDavis | Activism

The Windham County Heat Fund is strong and thriving as we move into the 20th year of the non-profit’s life at the beginning of the next heating season. That might seem like good news, but when Daryl Pilsbury and I started the organization we thought it would only be needed for a few years. We had no clue how much people were suffering at the lower end of the economic scale and we were under the delusion that the cost of heating fuel was the most important factor putting pressure on needy people and families.

We have been given a glimpse into the complexity of people’s lives and the pictures are not pretty. The heat fund has been a godsend to many people who might have suffered through a winter living in one room with the thermostat at 50 degrees. Then there are the families who really can’t make ends meet at the end of the month but somehow find a way to pay rent and buy food but they have to put heating fuel at the bottom of the list.

Then there are those people who thought they were doing well until they got a diagnosis of cancer. They often lose their jobs and their health insurance. When the got their diagnosis they thought their lives couldn’t get any worse.. Then they found out they couldn’t pay for treatment and they couldn’t pay their rent. Imagine what it’s like for a person who has an aggressive cancer eating away at them, or a severe chronic illness to have to live on the streets. It happens; and more often than you might think.

Brattleboro Area Hospice: New Online Support Group for People Living with Serious Illness Starting in July 2024

by BrattleboroHospice | Health

Are you going through treatment? Feeling overwhelmed or scared? Talking with others may help.

The Serious Illness Program support groups provide a safe space for people to share personal experiences, feelings, coping strategies, and allow for shared learning. 

Free, facilitated, peer support group for people who live in Windham County and neighboring NH towns who are experiencing a life-altering illness with a focus on cancer, heart and organ diseases. 

Healthcare Community Meetings

by RobertOeser | Health

Healthcare access and affordability affects every single Vermonter—regardless of your insurance. Join local community leaders, hospital leaders, legislators, state officials, and your neighbors at your local Healthcare Community Meeting to discuss the options your community has for supporting the future of healthcare in Vermont.