[HN Gopher] I am a New York City public high school student. The...
___________________________________________________________________
I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is
beyond control
Author : prawn
Score : 181 points
Date : 2022-01-08 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reddit.com)
| funstuff007 wrote:
| The NY Governor for a variety of reasons has call remote learning
| a "failed experiment." NYS probably more observations to work
| with on this matter than anywhere else. CA is not urban enough.
| fbmlk wrote:
| When we'll look back on the panic in 5-10 years, everyone will be
| mystified. Previous pandemics like the Russian Flu
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic) have
| stopped naturally without vaccines or major government
| intervention.
|
| How has humanity survived without $BigGov? In Austria (highly
| locked down, fascist vaccine policy) the cumulative death rate
| now surpasses Sweden's. This means that you cannot avoid deaths,
| and if you allow them sooner, the pandemic will be over sooner.
| watwut wrote:
| The past goverments did actually responded to pandemics and
| sicknesses. Quarantine is not something novel. People with
| disease considered contagious could be banished away.
|
| They were no vaccines tho. Those started to be used only after
| they were invented.
| lamlq wrote:
| Hence "major government intervention" instead of "government
| intervention". Do you have a source that the Russian flu
| (conjectured to be Sars-Cov-0 by some) had any measures like
| we see now? Certainly not KN-95 masks.
|
| They did not treat it like tuberculosis.
| watwut wrote:
| They did not use airplanes to get from place to place
| either. And it has zero implication about travel today too.
| kaba0 wrote:
| There weren't this many antivaxx idiots around, and they
| couldn't spread their bullshit on the internet with no stop.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I speculate that students who spend time learning from internet
| resources like Khan Academy will get a significant leg up over
| their colleagues in this case; even more so than usual.
|
| This applies both in the sense that "They will learn more
| effectively", and "They'll have a better shot at getting into
| universities".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Any kid who is disciplined and focused enough to do and benefit
| from self learning already has a big leg up, whether they are
| in school or at home.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| This has always been true in a way. A lot of schools have
| nothing to offer the top 10% of students, so the
| students/parents of the students who broke away from the pack
| were finding ways to learn on their own/have their kids learn
| on their own.
| analog31 wrote:
| Top 10% of what? I was technically in the top 10% of my high
| school class, GPA wise. I also got a national merit
| scholarship, and had learned computer programming.
|
| I would simply not have had the self discipline or motivation
| to learn everything on my own, no matter how good the
| learning materials were. Oddly enough, even through college,
| there were subjects that I easily taught myself, such as
| electronics and programming, others that I needed to learn in
| a classroom, such as math and physics.
|
| I would have had no parental supervision at home -- both of
| my parents worked.
|
| The kids who succeed will succeed. That's not to say that
| everybody succeeds in school either.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > A lot of schools have nothing to offer the top 10% of
| students
|
| IMO, the ability to self-study ahead of peers is a defining
| criteria for being in that top 10%. So, the system is working
| as designed.
| brohoolio wrote:
| I don't understand why remote learning during this surge isn't
| acceptable. I've seen opinion piece after opinion piece go on and
| on about how we need to have kids in school. The pieces attack
| school officials or teachers but complete ignore the logistics of
| having so many sick teachers. There aren't enough subs to cover
| for the teachers. We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks.
| It's a perfect time to pivot to remote to lower the strain our on
| failing healthcare system.
|
| Heck even if you have enough teachers the people who make things
| happen like bus drivers, aides, helpers, food prep are going to
| be knocked out too.
|
| My district had two hundred cases of covid in staff alone this
| week. That's 10% of the staff. And we were remote.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "I don't understand why remote learning during this surge isn't
| acceptable."
|
| What about kindergarten? Teaching 20+ students 5-6 years olds
| through zoom??? - seems like a fools errand. This could be
| their most important years for learning.
|
| "The pieces attack school officials or teachers but complete
| ignore the logistics of having so many sick teachers."
|
| Everyone will get covid. Period. Just get it. You might get it
| once per year - but that is true for the entire human race.
| Give up on logistics the war is lost.
|
| "We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks."
|
| Maybe for this variant? What about the next? Just keep children
| on zoom?
| caddemon wrote:
| Have you had COVID? Good luck teaching a room full of 6 year
| olds with active symptoms. This is what people are
| essentially asking for right now, at least in certain
| districts where 10%+ of the teaching staff are out with
| symptomatic COVID.
| bertil wrote:
| Remote can be difficult if you have more members of the family
| than computers and rooms. That can seem absurd to you and me (I
| have five computers plus three smartphones and probably a
| tablet somewhere, for two people) but in many families,
| ressources are more scarce than that. Having my partner
| (medical doctor, so working out of the home most of the time)
| take a call during one of my meeting is frustrating, but it
| happens once a month. Eight hours a day can't go smoothly.
|
| There are more issues with younger kids who need supervision on
| this side of the screen, might fight with their siblings, etc.
| My sister has three boys (8, 10 and 12 y.o.) and she just can't
| cope with the cabin fever. The lack of structured exercise
| seems a problem too.
|
| Finally, in some cases, school offers free meals to families
| who need it. I feel like that could be substituted with a more
| universal service, but no one knows who can do that (has the
| time, budget, PPE, etc.).
| [deleted]
| in_cahoots wrote:
| People are afraid that if districts go remote it'll be a repeat
| of 2020, where there was no consensus of when it was safe to go
| back to in-person schooling. There is distrust on both sides
| (the teachers and the school district/parents) and I can't see
| them agreeing on a rubric at this point in time. Yet another
| way Covid is exposing the divisions in our society.
| mbg721 wrote:
| It not so much a lack of consensus; school officials burnt
| every scrap of goodwill they had by forcing parents to
| scramble and do multiple things at once, and they don't yet
| realize they're overplaying their hand. You're right that it
| reveals divisions, but one of those is that anybody who can
| opt out by homeschooling or using private/religious schools
| that aren't closing their doors is doing that.
| ldoughty wrote:
| In short, everyone needs kids in schools... (Not saying this is
| a good thing, just thinking it through as the situation is
| right now, assuming no changes)
|
| Parents who are rejoining the workforce can't take 4-6 weeks of
| with no notice to babysit their kids again... But they also
| can't afford to stop working.
|
| Businesses can't afford to lose workers, it continues the
| strain on the system which raises wages and threatens the small
| (and medium) businesses going under...
|
| It's a crappy situation that society isn't willing to actually
| address because the political theater is in the middle of a
| power struggle... A business-minded politician would see that
| vaccination (or mandatory masks and testing) is the key to
| business returning to normal... but the politics of this is a
| huge driver of power shifts that hit a larger cross section of
| society than most topics...
|
| If you can't afford your kid to be home, because you need your
| job to pay bills... Then you don't want schools closed, and
| there's one political party that promises that right now.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Parents who are rejoining the workforce can 't take 4-6
| weeks of with no notice to babysit their kids again..._
|
| Why do you need a babysitter for a school-aged child? OK,
| maybe if the kid is below 7, but 7 and up should be more than
| capable of being alone at home. Entire nations do exactly
| that. In Estonia 7 year olds are expected to go to school on
| their own and come back home. At home they will likely be
| alone (or with their siblings) until their parents get home
| from work.
| fnord123 wrote:
| To underline this point, the debate pretends to be about
| education but it's about babysitting children. Day care for
| older kids.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I guess this is my followup question is, would your opinion
| change if we replaced "remote learning" with "no school"?
| Remote learning largely doesn't work, and I think the fact that
| it's seen as an option is warping the conversation.
|
| Now, maybe schools really should close even if remote learning
| was off the table, because the situation described in the link
| is quite dire. But see, then I look around, and I see that
| indoor dining is still open, movie theaters are still open, and
| a significant portion of Broadway is still open. Schools seem
| more important than all of that stuff. Maybe we should figure
| out whatever it is the restaurants are doing?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I don't understand why remote learning during this surge
| isn't acceptable._
|
| As I understand it, students can minimise their online class
| and play computer games or browse the web instead.
|
| And young children aren't exactly known for their self-control,
| even if some of us had good self-control at that age.
|
| A teacher who finds 5% of students don't respond when called
| upon might be able to focus on them; but if 95% of students
| don't respond, their powers are very limited.
|
| IMHO, reopening schools is more important for the nation than
| reopening restaurants, office buildings, universities,
| hairdressers or gyms.
| ajross wrote:
| > IMHO, reopening schools is more important for the nation
| than
|
| Uh... schools _are_ open. No one has closed schools in this
| nation. The debate here is whether or not having open schools
| this month, during the omicron wave, is helping or hurting.
|
| The evidence in the linked article is that schools in NYC
| have organizationally broken down and that no meaningful
| education is happening anyway. Because it's very difficult to
| run a school when 5-10% of the population is actively sick.
|
| (Though the silver lining here is that we're clearly getting
| to a true "pan" pandemic with omicron, and still not seeing
| evidence of significant health care overload or increased
| death rates. It remains possible that we've dodged a giant
| bullet with this variant.)
| Kye wrote:
| Hospitalization and death lags infection by quite a while.
| ajross wrote:
| Death rate peaks happen about three weeks after case load
| peaks. This has been very consistent through the pandemic
| (at least everywhere that has good test reporting), you
| can play with graphs at https://91-divoc.com/ or
| elsewhere to see the effect.
|
| Certainly if omicron had the same behavior as previous
| variants, we'd know by now. Continued worries aren't
| about severity lag, but about whether or not there's
| something else different about omicron. It's worth being
| safe and cautious. But nonetheless the best evidence we
| have says that this is _probably_ a very safe variant and
| a near-best-case outcome (i.e. everyone gets sick rapidly
| and we reach herd immunity rapidly with minimal severe
| cases, vs. everyone "eventually" getting delta with much
| worse outcomes).
| tzs wrote:
| > Though the silver lining here is that we're clearly
| getting to a true "pan" pandemic with omicron, and still
| not seeing evidence of significant health care overload or
| increased death rates.
|
| With omicron the chances that a given case ends up in the
| hospital is significantly lower than it was with previous
| variants, but because the case count is so much higher
| (7-day average of new cases per day over the last week in
| the US went from 387k to 648k) the number of people
| hospitalized for COVID is now higher than it has been
| during even the peaks of the worst prior waves.
|
| Heck, I'm in a state that has always been in the bottom 10
| for cases and deaths (and often in the bottom 5) and I'm in
| a county in that state that has been mostly been in the
| bottom 10% within the state, and our hospitals are hitting
| their limits for the first time since COVID started.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| Yeah, nobody is suggesting going permanent remote, but when
| there isn't enough staff to operate as normal, maybe it's
| time to sit back for a few weeks, eh?
| aqme28 wrote:
| It perfectly illustrates how there are two types of quarantine
| lockdowns-- the kind enforced by the government or policy, and
| the defacto kind that happens organically when too many people
| are sick or afraid of getting sick.
|
| There's a false belief out there in this debate that if we
| don't have an enforced lockdown, we won't get a defacto one.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| That's true, but we also shouldn't characterize this as a
| defacto one. Insane quarantine regulations basically prevent
| teachers from coming to school at all if they have even been
| in contact with anyone who later tested positive, whether or
| not they are sick, test negative, or have 3 shots. If we saw
| this same situation sans government regulations then we could
| conclude it was organically spawned, but that isn't the case
| here.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| It's not "acceptable" because average families can't deal with
| their kids being home. This pandemic has revealed that for a
| large swath of kids home is a toxic environment actively
| destroying their potential. Add to this the terrible online
| learning implementations that are basically "beg to show up for
| attendance and then hope they participate" ...
| [deleted]
| kmos17 wrote:
| remote is fine for parents who can work from home, but what
| about others with young children?
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| > I don't understand why remote learning during this surge
| isn't acceptable.
|
| Because "remote learning" is a joke.
|
| I volunteered a bit in a virtual high school classroom. The
| teacher running it is making a frankly heroic effort to keep
| her students in the school system at all.
|
| But no one was engaged, cameras were off, students regularly
| don't show up at all or drop off in the middle of class.
|
| These are comparatively adults compared to younger grades.
| caddemon wrote:
| Did you read the OP? What they are doing in school right now
| is also a joke!
| pibechorro wrote:
| Public schools main function is subsidized day care since the
| vast majority of parents both work.
|
| Kids hate remote learning. Its awful looking at a screen,
| bored, for hours day after day. They dont perform well.
|
| Kids need other kids interactions.
|
| Many substitute teachers are not being allowed to work because
| they dont want the never ending vaccine regime. I know 3 who
| did it full time and no longer because of it.
|
| Omnicron being so weak is the perfect time to end the lockdowns
| and security theater. Get everyone exposed so we can develop
| nation wide natural immunity, which actually works, and move on
| with life. Its been close to two years of this madness. Teen
| suicide is at an all time high, enough is enough.
|
| If teachers don't want to teach, quit, there are many people
| who would love their position waiting in the sidelines.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > I don't understand why remote learning during this surge
| isn't acceptable. I've seen opinion piece after opinion piece
| go on and on about how we need to have kids in school.
|
| I agree that this would be a great time for temporary remote
| schooling. I think the problem is that months and months of
| unnecessary school closures have broken parents (and kids), as
| well as burned a lot of trust that this will be handled with a
| modicum of competence or compassion. I don't personally have
| kids, but the parents I know are very reasonably at their
| breaking points over how poorly-managed and dogmatic school
| closures have been. That excludes those whose kids attend or
| started to attend private schools, whose immunity to the
| cacophony of Discourse means that they've handled the risk of
| Covid sanely and compassionately.
|
| I'm as annoyed as anyone at Covid denialists, but in my urban
| coastal context, the neurotic hysterics of restrictionist
| fanatics has been a lot more salient. There's been a faction of
| the conversation that insists that making any space to discuss
| the costs of restrictions is denialism, and the excess
| restrictions driven by those people are exactly why there's
| zero capacity left for NPIs like lockdown or school closures
| during a period where they would actually be helpful.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, Amerika had super strong opposition to any lockdowns
| or measure from the start. There was no period in which it
| had super strong lockdowns or super excessive restrictions.
|
| It is not backslash to any real policy, it is people who are
| against those having exact same opinions as they had the
| whole time.
| bnralt wrote:
| Schools here were completely remote for 10 months (mid-
| March 2020 until the end of January 2021), then part time
| for the next few months, only going back to full time this
| past fall. Now they seem intent on being full time, even
| though cases now are much higher than when they had kept
| the schools closed or part time (hospitalizations are also
| close to the highest they've been).
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > There was no period in which it had super strong
| lockdowns or super excessive restrictions.
|
| "America" is 300 million people and 50 separate states in a
| federal system. The reflexive urge to treat it as a single
| entity is central to the problem I'm discussing. On the
| more functional side, the lack of border controls between
| states in a federal system made tamping cases down to
| minimal levels a big challenge.
|
| The entire world settled into an equilibrium of calibrating
| restrictions (both via policy and individual behavior)
| based on case numbers. In the US, national numbers drove
| much of this conversation, treating a continent-spanning
| nation as if it was epidemiologically equivalent to
| Belgium.
|
| > There was no period in which it had super strong
| lockdowns or super excessive restrictions.
|
| just a couple of examples that I'm personally familiar
| with:
|
| - California was under a statewide stay-at-home order from
| March 2020 to January 2021 (by contrast, France lifted
| their lockdown from May to October)
|
| - San Francisco public schools were closed for over a year,
| and much of the US has been extreme about school closures.
| UK schools have never entirely shut down, and across Europe
| schools have been dramatically more open than across the
| US.
|
| You're not wrong that American restrictions have generally
| been lighter, but this elides the many individual pockets
| with unnecessary NPIs based on case rates in irrelevant
| parts of the country. Schools are the most dramatic example
| of this, but things like spring 2020 lockdowns based on a
| pandemic that was limited to the Northeast at the time set
| us up for the heavy resistance to restrictions we saw in
| many states when they were actually hit in the summer
| (helped along by El Presidente's abuse of the bully
| pulpit).
| lozenge wrote:
| "UK schools have never entirely shut down"
|
| Not really. Attendance in person was about 15%, being
| limited to key workers' children who couldn't arrange
| other childcare, and children with special educational
| needs. Teachers focused on remote teaching, while in
| person learning was neglected. In person teaching resumed
| fully Sep 2020-Dec 2020, and was interrupted again Jan-
| Mar 2021.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| diveanon wrote:
| parkingrift wrote:
| These hysterics highlight how badly facts are losing the
| information war.
|
| The CDC estimates that 573 kids between the ages of 5-18 have
| died of Covid. Not this week, not this month, total. 573 total
| deaths.[0]
|
| For reference, in most years 100-200 kids in that same age
| bracket die of the flu.[1] We've been in this pandemic for almost
| two years. Do the math.
|
| And in any given year, about 20,000 kids in this bracket will die
| if various causes. [3] You would have to start zooming in
| seriously far to even notice Covid. Almost 20x as likely to die
| in an automobile crash.
|
| For children Covid has never been anything more than a relatively
| strong flu. Absolutely nothing to worry about.
|
| Meanwhile, kids in this age bracket are 20% obese.[2]
|
| Edit: Please with the "but kids bring Covid home" hysteria. We
| have vaccines now.
|
| Edit 2: People, it's not April 2020 any longer. We have two
| vaccines and a booster now.
|
| [0]: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-
| Focus-...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2019-2020/2019-20-pediatr...
|
| [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2019/021-508.pdf
|
| [3]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsr1804754
| fourseventy wrote:
| Thank you. I don't understand the hysteria.
| isoskeles wrote:
| The hysteria is a function of how much people hated Trump.
| Orange man bad => orange man responsible for covid => I must
| act like covid is the worst, most dangerous pandemic of all
| time as a signal about how much I hated when Cheetoh
| Mussolini was president.
|
| It's quite absurd. I can understand hating Trump, but it's
| actually time to move on. We're going to be captive to this
| crap until people fully realize their reaction to the
| pandemic is mostly a product of their political opinion in
| 2020 rather than scientific fact.
| nojito wrote:
| You do realize that school children don't live alone correct?
| [deleted]
| parkingrift wrote:
| Yes they'll go home to their vaccinated parents.
|
| What edge case are you trying to solve by remaining in a
| state of hysteria?
| tzs wrote:
| What about the ~25% of US adults that are not vaccinated?
| As far as I know they are at least as likely as
| vaccinated adults to have school age children. Even
| taking into account that they probably have a higher
| chance of homeschooling, that still leaves a lot of kids
| in public schools whose parents are not vaccinated.
|
| Are you in the "they've had enough time to get
| vaccinated, so if they haven't done so yet let them get
| COVID" camp?
| zaroth wrote:
| We've made the vaccine free, and widely available. If
| there were still people waiting weeks to get a vaccine
| they want to take then I can see an argument why we
| should all suffer serious injury (like what's happening
| at this school) to try to give people more time.
|
| There is no endpoint where SARS-CoV-2 is over. The
| strains will keep coming and Covid is endemic.
|
| My personal experience is that each time you get COVID is
| more mild than the last, particularly if you are
| vaccinated, and this is borne out in the numbers.
|
| Surprisingly the mutations are enough that getting it
| repeatedly is totally possible. Even an actual
| sterilizing vaccine that worked in the nasal passages
| might not have stopping this.
|
| If not now, when? What's your endpoint for when the
| extremely damaging and poverty inducing hysteria will
| stop?
| tzs wrote:
| The endpoint is when enough of the people who refuse to
| get vaccinated have gotten it enough times that their
| hospitalization rates are as low as those of vaccinated
| people, so that those of us who are vaccinated can get
| decent treatment if we get a serious injury or non-COVID
| illness.
|
| Omicron looks like it has a good change to get us to that
| point.
| native_samples wrote:
| I hate to break it to you but most people hospitalized
| with COVID are already vaccinated in many health systems.
| That's true in the UK for instance. US data is often
| garbage so it's harder to say there but it's unlikely to
| be different.
|
| Most people are vaccinated + vaccines don't work very
| well = most COVID hospitalizations are vaccinated.
| tylerhou wrote:
| > most COVID hospitalizations are vaccinated.
|
| Do you have a source for this? The math doesn't add up
| (vaccinated are 10-15x less likely to be hospitalized,
| and around 60% of US is vaccinated) and all the sources I
| could find show that unvaccinated people take up most
| hospitalizations and even more ICU beds, which is the
| limiting resource.
|
| https://www.wndu.com/2022/01/06/covid-19-hospitalizations
| -ri...
| tzs wrote:
| Vaccines work very well. Vaccinated people have COVID
| hospitalization rates an order of magnitude lower than do
| unvaccinated people.
|
| In the US we have about 25% of adults unvaccinated, but
| it varies greatly from region to region. We've got plenty
| of counties where over 50% of adults are unvaccinated.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Every bit of data in the US, from hospital reports to
| anecdotal stories told by nurses and doctors, tells the
| exact opposite. Hospitalized and ICU'd COVID patients are
| unvaccinated.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > What about the ~25% of US adults that are not
| vaccinated? Are you in the "they've had enough time to
| get vaccinated, so if they haven't done so yet let them
| get COVID" camp?
|
| How is this even a question? Of course they've had enough
| time, and they've made their choice to face COVID with
| their natural immune system. I'm talking here about
| people who still purposely refuse the vaccine, and I'm
| not talking about people who are unable to get it for
| medical reason.
|
| As a society, we are not obligated to take measures to
| prevent COVID from reaching people who refuse the main
| act that will truly protect themselves.
| parkingrift wrote:
| >Are you in the "they've had enough time to get
| vaccinated, so if they haven't done so yet let them get
| COVID" camp?
|
| That's a harsh way of putting it, but yes. Fundamentally,
| the argument seems to be that kids will bring it home to
| vulnerable populations. Those vulnerable populations have
| had a year to get vaccinated and boosted. It is difficult
| to live in NYC without being vaccinated. I don't think it
| is wise or prudent to make policy decisions to protect
| some extreme minority of people who outright refuse
| preventative medical treatment.
| pb7 wrote:
| In the nicest way possible, fuck those people. They've
| had plenty of time to get vaccinated. It's not our
| responsibility to tip toe around irresponsibility.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| They're basically saying the same words in response. I
| think those who wish to be vaccinated have already done
| so.
|
| Given how the reality of it has unfolded, it's
| fascinating (horrifying) to see the continued hysteria:
| one _must_ take the vaccine invented less than 2 years
| ago, that has been available for only a year, whose
| makers are immune from litigation re: unforeseen effects,
| is far less effective than it was first promised to be,
| and where even triple-dosed people catch Covid,
| regardless. It's super bizarre to see the desire/demand
| to vaccinate children with the brand-new drug...as young
| as 5!?!
|
| As the virus evolves, our experience with it increases,
| the reality of the vaccines becoming clearer (they help,
| but not at all in the way hoped for), and therapeutics
| become more available -- mandates that require vaccines
| seem less valid. It's appropriate to reconsider them,
| like _all emergency powers_. I'm actually hoping the
| SCOTUS knocks down the OSHA mandates. It's bad precedent
| to grant an agency such powers via fiat (executive
| order); and, what's being mandated is not at all what we
| thought it was.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Some people cannot get vaccinated.
|
| A friend of mine can't because she's immunocompromised.
| Their family has done their part by staying home and
| finding new activities for their kids to accomplish in
| the house (which, fortunately for them, is pretty easy
| because they're huge nerds and aren't hurting for money).
| They're lucky because her husband is a self-employed
| remote contractor and she is a remote special education
| teacher.
| pb7 wrote:
| Immunocompromised people (as a group, many of whom can
| get vaccinated anyway) generously make up ~3% of the
| total population. What is the other 22% of the
| aforementioned 25% doing? There's no need to point to
| exceptions when there is a much bigger unexplained group,
| it just gives them undue plausible deniability.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The remainder is split into two groups: those who are
| politically aligned in a way that they will thump their
| chests and proclaim their superiority over COVID like
| it's some sort of candidate they can defeat, and those
| who have an anxiety issue over doctors and needles or are
| afraid that perhaps the ones who are anti-vaxx might be
| right due to some personal educational deficiency.
| cdrini wrote:
| There are a few important facts missing from your analysis.
|
| 1) Omicron, although less deadly than Delta, is significantly
| more spreadable.
|
| 2) Omicron can infect and be transmitted through vaccinated
| people--although they do suffer even milder symptoms.
|
| 3) The logic behind restrictions is to flatten the
| hospitalisations curve. Because of how infectious Omicron is,
| even if there is a lower likelihood that a COVID patient will
| need ICU, if the number of COVID patients is huge, then ICUs
| will still be overwhelmed.
|
| This is why it matters if students spread Omicron unchecked to
| their families. To clarify, this doesn't disprove your
| conclusion, but if your argument doesn't take into account
| these facts then it's "facts losing the information war" just
| as much as everything else.
| axby wrote:
| TL;DR: How did a vaccine with a reduction of hospitalizations
| by a factor of 20 (94%) take us from "shut everything down" to
| "cases no longer matter"? (Caveat: maybe for omicron it's even
| less severe?) Edit: specifically, from what I understand the
| healthcare system can't handle everyone being unvaccinated and
| getting the virus, it would be overwhelmed by hospitalizations.
| But with a 20 times reduction in hospitalizations, it can? Or
| was it expected that the vaccine would reduce transmission to
| the point where it wouldn't spread so much?
|
| This sounds reasonable, but aren't fully vaccinated people
| ending up in the hospital pretty regularly too [2]? Using the
| 94% effective figure from the early trials, say fully
| vaccinated people are 20 times less likely to be hospitalized.
|
| I don't know much about virology but I understand exponential
| growth. It looks like the cases are doubling every 2 weeks
| (edit: I guess this might even be a few days? See [0]). In a
| few months, almost everyone will get it. In the last two week
| period, won't half the population catch it? In that case, even
| with 100% vaccination, hospitalizations would still be 1/20 of
| half the maximum due to COVID. Right?
|
| That's something I've never understood about the pandemic. Is
| reducing hospitalizations by a factor of 20 enough that having
| everyone get the virus is no longer a concern? Or was it
| expected that the vaccines reduce transmission enough that
| everyone wouldn't get it anymore? Canada has like 75% [1]
| (edit: oops, originally I said 85% here, but I guess that's in
| people 12 years and older) or higher vaccination and is still
| seeing record case numbers everywhere.
|
| This isn't really an argument for or against kids in schools. I
| am just surprised that people are so quick to say "we have a
| vaccine so there's no need to worry about COVID in anyone
| vaccinated now". Certainly it seems like many health officials
| say something similar, so I must have missed something. (Or are
| they just trying to encourage everyone to get vaccinated? I
| know that many people don't really understand the details and
| would (erroneously) just say "it's not 100% effective so why
| bother")
|
| Sources:
|
| * "The spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus appears to
| be doubling every two to three days" [0]
|
| * "The cumulative percent of people fully vaccinated with a
| COVID-19 vaccine in Canada was 76.83% as of January 1, 2022."
| [1]
|
| * "Fifty per cent of hospitalizations now, in Quebec, are due
| to people not having been vaccinated," [2]
|
| [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/08/omicron-
| covid-...
|
| [1]: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-
| cover...
|
| [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/duclos-mandatory-
| vaccinatio...
| axby wrote:
| Other ideas as I struggle to understand the current state of
| affairs: maybe the vaccine is really effective at preventing
| transmission, but only for some period, say 1 month to 6
| months after vaccination? Maybe people in Canada received
| their vaccines between January and June of 2021, so maybe
| with boosters every 6 months, transmission would be under
| control?
| eigenrick wrote:
| I think the issue is that public policy is based around two
| flawed notions that omicron has brought to light:
|
| 1. The vaccines will become decreasingly relevant, unless we
| can provide technology to update vaccines as quickly as they
| mutate. Even then, it'll be like flu vaccines. They'll help,
| but won't stop the spread.
|
| 2. Barring some technological breakthrough, Covid will never
| go away. We'll all contract it. Then it will mutate and well
| contact it again in the next year, and the next, forever
|
| As such, our current policies are ineffective, and lockdown
| is by no means sustainable forever.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| I would add a 3rd flawed notion: that COVID is COVID, all
| variants are to be avoided at all costs.
|
| At this point we've got well established indications of
| omicron being an unserious infection (sparing the lungs
| entirely, being no more than a bad cold for the vast
| majority of those who contract it). Not 1000% confirmed, of
| course ongoing study is warranted, but it would be shocking
| if omicron turns out to be a serious driver of illness and
| death.
|
| But policy makers and media commentators are allergic to
| optimism on what this implies long term, so we are stuck in
| a state of alarm.
| axby wrote:
| > The vaccines will become decreasingly relevant, unless we
| can provide technology to update vaccines as quickly as
| they mutate. Even then, it'll be like flu vaccines. They'll
| help, but won't stop the spread.
|
| Interesting, I haven't been following the pandemic as
| closely as I used to, but I was under the impression that
| the existing mRNA vaccines still work fairly well against
| new variants (including omicron), but that effectiveness
| goes down after 6 months (hence boosters). I'm not really
| sure if "effectiveness" is in preventing severe illness or
| transmission.
| kcplate wrote:
| The real problem is the word "vaccine". The mRNA vaccines
| do not really work in a way that other vaccines do, and
| more importantly how we understand other vaccines to
| work.
|
| Prior to this pandemic the layman understanding of a
| vaccine was that they generally prevented you from
| "contracting" the disease. You get the shot, you don't
| get the disease. We were basically sold this notion for
| the mRNA vaccines early in 2021. However, the reality was
| different. Whether by way of mutation, or simply by the
| way the mRNA vaccines only work against a specific
| portion of the virus, mRNA tech seems to not be as
| effective at the prevention of infection but better at
| the prevention of severe infection. In essence, it's not
| a "vaccine" as the public understood the word. However,
| it is a tool, and still a relevant one in diminishing the
| severity of the pandemic, it's just a shame that the
| expectations that were set were way off.
| axby wrote:
| TL;DR: I agree that the public thought vaccine = no more
| virus. But I'm not sure if traditional vaccines actually
| mean that you're incapable of spreading it, or even
| getting sick in some cases.
|
| I agree that the public was misled as to how effective
| vaccines would be at preventing transmission. Especially
| when the CDC said that fully vaccinated people didn't
| need to wear masks.
|
| But how much more effective are traditional vaccines at
| preventing spread of illnesses? Wikipedia pointed me to
| this CDC page:
|
| > The MMR vaccine is very safe and effective. Two doses
| of MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing
| measles; one dose is about 93% effective. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html
|
| I was always under the impression that traditional
| vaccines were really effective, enough that the virus
| stops spreading eventually, but not enough that you are
| almost totally incapable of spreading the virus or even
| getting sick. Like the outbreaks in disneyland, obviously
| they only happened because of people being unvaccinated,
| but my understanding is that vaccinated people can still
| get sick from it. I found this Washington Post article:
|
| > A 2015 measles outbreak linked to Disneyland led to 147
| cases in multiple states as well as in Mexico and Canada.
| Many of those who were sickened were unvaccinated or did
| not know their vaccine record, according to the Centers
| for Disease Control and Prevention.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/08/24/tourist-
| inf...
| kcplate wrote:
| I think if the covid vaccines managed to have a MMR level
| (90%+) preventive effect against symptomatic infection
| rather than 20% (I can't find where I read that stat, it
| might be wrong, but I don't think by much) against
| symptomatic infection, you would find less skepticism in
| the existing covid vaccines.
|
| At this stage, despite being fully vaccinated and
| boosted, I absolutely expect to be exposed to and
| symptomatic from Omicron in the next 45 days.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > Prior to this pandemic the layman understanding of a
| vaccine was that they generally prevented you from
| "contracting" the disease. You get the shot, you don't
| get the disease.
|
| afaik the flu vaccine has for decades been advertised as:
|
| "might not always prevent, but will usually lessen
| symptoms"
|
| So I'm not sure why people think this is a new thing.
| kcplate wrote:
| The flu is understood to be different, seasonal, yearly
| variants. It's also why at least in the US it's
| characterized as the "flu shot" as opposed to the flu
| "vaccine".
|
| Vaccines like MMR and others are understood to be
| generally preventative and rarely need booster if after
| initial doses.
|
| Think about things that generally require boosters...they
| are almost always referred to by the laymen as "shots".
| Nobody calls the tetnus shot a tetnus "vaccine".
| brandonmenc wrote:
| I get what you're saying, and it makes sense, but people
| also often say "shots" when referring to childhood
| vaccines (ex: "did they get their shots yet?") They also
| say things like "rabies shots" and "diptet shot."
|
| And coronavirus is also understood to be seasonal.
|
| However, in spite of all that, I agree that the official
| messaging throughout this pandemic has been so
| inconsistent - from masking to "two weeks to flatten the
| curve" to "boosters" - that the public does have a right
| to be skeptical and exhausted.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| The issue isn't with mRNA vaccines. There are
| conventional vaccines for COVID used in other countries
| like China and they're even less effective. It seems to
| have more to do with respiratory viruses or coronaviruses
| specifically.
|
| I also don't know of a time in history where a vaccine
| was developed for an emerging disease as opposed to one
| that was already endemic with a lot of natural immunity
| around.
| eigenrick wrote:
| I'm not a virologist, but I interpret "omicron has a
| likelihood of 88% to escape current vaccines" as being
| rather ineffective. I've not found similar stats for
| Delta or other, but the authors of this paper seem to
| indicate that current vaccines aren't great against
| omicron.
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01451#
| axby wrote:
| Thanks for the source, I've been so curious about this
| information but it's hard to find.
|
| I should have said "relatively effective", since I'm also
| under the impression that the vaccines weren't super
| effective at reducing transmission of the original
| variant (compared to vaccines against other infections).
| But I also haven't seen much data, I vaguely remember
| hearing something from the WHO like "60% effective at
| reducing transmission of original variant, 40% effective
| against Delta", but I don't remember.
| [deleted]
| lozenge wrote:
| The link doesn't mention deaths at all, it talks about
| disruption to education and an inability to teach despite the
| move away from remote learning.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Yes, because of the absurd hyperbole and hysterics associated
| with Covid. It's pandemonium precisely because of the
| hysterics, overreacting, and absurd rules and procedures.
|
| We're seriously treating this like it's the measles.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| This is objectively wrong. It's not 'hyperbole and
| hysterics', it's the fact that people simply cannot work
| when sick. Every discussion around covid, about returning
| to work, about trying to return to normalcy ignores that
| even among people that are vaccinated covid can and does
| still hit you hard and can prevent you from working
| anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Especially if it
| spreads to other family members that you then also have to
| take care of.
|
| The way that it spreads like wildfire is precisely the
| issue because there are multiple school systems where half
| or more of teachers are out or unable to teach due to being
| sick. If your solution is to force them to work then you're
| going to get poorly ran classrooms at best and at worst
| you're going to see the next 'Great Resignation' but this
| time among teachers.
|
| I have multiple friends in the schooling system and this is
| exactly what's happening.
| kcplate wrote:
| > at worst you're going to see the next 'Great
| Resignation' but this time among teachers
|
| This will be a controversial comment, but after decades
| of teachers telling to public on how "essential" they are
| to society (a point in which I agree), I have watched
| teachers and their unions spend the last 2 years pushing
| how "non-essential" they are due to pandemic fears. If a
| bunch want to resign, so be it. I would rather have the
| ones who want to be there, realize how essential they
| are, and willing to risk a virus to provide that
| essential service.
| lozenge wrote:
| If you are saying "just have positive people attend school
| and don't bother testing contacts", then you're not just
| advocating to give all the kids COVID at the same time, but
| also all their parents and their parents' contacts - in a
| very short space of time. So basically the entire
| population? Why then are you only looking at the number of
| _children_ that have died of COVID?
| parkingrift wrote:
| Please, enough with the hyperbole. No one suggested
| anything of the sort.
| khazhoux wrote:
| TBH the thought has crossed _my_ mind many times lately.
| At this point, I strongly believe we 're _all_ going to
| get Omicron (and the next variant) eventually, and it 's
| just a matter of time. So, more and more I just want to
| get it over with.
|
| Except for the fact that ICUs would overflow, it would be
| fantastic to just have a "once and done" event. Let (and
| encourage) COVID to sweep undeterred, and all the
| vaccinated adults get sick for a couple of days, some of
| the children get sick (and many will be asymptomatic),
| and all the stubbornly-unvaccinated meet whatever fate
| awaits them, all at the same time rather than spread out
| over the next five years.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I'm sure the antivax people would prefer this approach,
| but killing off 5 or 6 million people (based on a 1.4%
| CFR) in the US is fucking insane.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Not only does the antivaxxers prefer this approach, it's
| the approach they are _already actively taking_. In
| Florida, for example (but pick whatever southern-US state
| you prefer): people actively refuse the vaccine and
| violently refuse all other accommodations (no masks, no
| distancing, no reduced capacity at bars).
| gabxla wrote:
| That is what Sweden has done. It now has a slightly lower
| cumulative death rate than locked-down Austria. It has a
| _far_ lower cumulative death rate than the U.S.:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-
| deat...
|
| It also has a _far_ lower cumulative death rate than
| locked-down individual states like NY or Massachusetts.
| sofixa wrote:
| You should compare apples to apples. Not all societies
| are alike, and there are huge variances in population
| density, temperatures, style of living, etc. between
| different countries ( e.g. places where people share food
| and ear with their hands vs places where most people live
| alone in houses vs places where whole extended families
| share the same house, etc. etc.). Sweden fared
| drastically worse than its neighbours which are IMHO the
| most apt comparisons. It has 7 times the death rate of
| Norway.
| native_samples wrote:
| The "neighbour" argument is DOA and has been from the
| start. There are no meaningful differences between Sweden
| and other countries except in its government response -
| Scandinavians aren't aliens and thus nobody was claiming
| they were incomparable back at the start. Instead it was
| headlines like "Sweden is a cautionary tale to the
| world". The idea that you aren't allowed to compare them
| only appeared once Sweden proved that COVID mitigations
| were a terrible failure.
|
| The real question is actually what's special about Norway
| and such. Sweden isn't an outlier here.
| borski wrote:
| There are definitely meaningful differences between
| countries. As an example, Sweden has a much higher
| percentage of people who care about protecting the rest
| of the populous; that is, if they're sick, they tend to
| stay home on average much more than someone working in
| the US. (Even pre-COVID). Italy has a higher percentage
| of older people. Countries have differences. Comparing
| Sweden to its neighbors is, in fact, the right approach
| imho.
| tomohawk wrote:
| That 573 number is died "with", not "of" covid.
| khazhoux wrote:
| It's unfortunately that the "with" vs "of" question has been
| politicized and corrupted.
|
| The standard line on the far-right is that the millions of
| COVID deaths were actually attributed to the co-morbidities.
| They pretend that people died of obesity and not COVID,
| because COVID hits the obese worse.
| exogeny wrote:
| It's a good thing I guess that all kids are orphans and don't
| know and never interact with someone who might be old or
| immunocompromised.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Thankfully we have vaccines.
| lokar wrote:
| Transplant patients don't
| zaroth wrote:
| Those people can vaccinate and do any number of measures to
| protect themselves as they see fit.
|
| As you can see it's not a zero sum game. The precautions you
| are implying must be taken to protect a hypothetical outlier
| is essentially shutting down all learning at this school, and
| likely many others like it.
|
| I would suggest on balance, and particularly in light of how
| virulent and mild Omicron is, it's time for the "protect
| grandpa" pleaders to update their mental model - what you're
| saying is sacrifice everyone's quality of life and freedom
| and ability to live, learn, and play, for a hypothetical
| outlier who has plenty of tools already to protect
| themselves.
| lokar wrote:
| The vaccine does not work for people with suppressed immune
| systems
| tlogan wrote:
| Does anyone have stat on how many fully vaccinated people
| died?
| bagacrap wrote:
| across all groups, the mRNA vaccines reduce the chance of
| death by about 15x (data from Switzerland)
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/switzerland-
| covid-19-week...
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Ah, yes because spreading to parents and family who might well
| die is irrelevant if the students are likely to not die...
| parkingrift wrote:
| Here we go. Move the goalpost.
|
| The parents and family should go get vaccinated, no?
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| A parent could be immunocompromised. Unvaccinated isn't the
| only risk factor for COVID.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Not moving the goal post. I agree that criminalization of
| leaving home for the unvaccinated gets more appealing by
| the day. But I also don't know that vaccines actually end
| it at this point.
| native_samples wrote:
| Why - they aren't a threat to anyone. There's no real
| difference in transmissibility. Unless you think the
| vaccines don't work, in which case, why do you even care.
| kcplate wrote:
| > I agree that criminalization of leaving home for the
| unvaccinated gets more appealing by the day.
|
| Don't recall anyone in the thread suggesting
| criminalization (except you), so it's pretty strange that
| you brought it up. Perhaps that is appealing to you, but
| it sure isn't appealing to me. In fact it is so abhorrent
| an idea to me that I am pretty much open to anything that
| would prevent such totalitarianism from happening in my
| community.
|
| And just for context, I'm vaccinated and boosted, so this
| is not some anti-vax position. I am just dead set against
| anything specifically designed to create class prejudices
| and creating a new group of "untouchables". This is 2022,
| we should be way beyond such foolishness.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I don't have enough karma to downvote you, so this is my
| expression of disagreement with your comment.
|
| I simply disagree.
|
| I don't even want to present an argument, because
| considering that you think it'd be okay to criminalize
| unvaccinated people leaving their homes, you are beyond
| saving and I sincerely hope that you'll never be put in a
| position of any authority whatsoever.
| disambiguation wrote:
| The evidence that child activity affects the spread of covid
| among adults is thin.
|
| > Data now suggest that many changes to school routines are
| of questionable value in controlling the virus's spread. Some
| researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid
| cases in most instances.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-
| childre...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The evidence is always nice and comfortable as long as YOU
| aren't the one being affected by it. I contracted COVID
| from my kid, who got it from another kid in her class who
| went to school for 3 days after a positive test because
| that kid wasn't showing symptoms and their parents had
| nobody to watch them.
| tlogan wrote:
| If your family is not vaccinated then stay home.
| voisin wrote:
| Death is only one outcome. Other consequences (e.g. scarred
| lung tissue) also exist, and don't fall neatly in the stats
| that are regularly discussed.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Good thing omicron appears to not be effecting the lungs as
| much. Death is only one outcome but improvements in death
| rates require an underlying mechanism which can impact those
| other consequences too. To your point, you shouldn't look at
| one piece of data in isolation but you also don't have to
| assume the worst case either; it is possible that things are
| getting better.
|
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1211792/v1
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Another long term (and equally hidden) consequence is the
| loss of critical educational development in children. We
| adults can toss off 2 years because it's just a drop in the
| bucket to us, but 2 years for a child represents a
| potentially staggering setback in their mental development.
| voisin wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think it overstated the value of
| schooling as the only source of this development. There are
| so many free online education sources it is truly amazing,
| and yet for some reason our society's answer to the
| pandemic was to have Zoom school at home which no one is
| happy with, rather than embrace different delivery methods
| that are actually engaging. Khan Academy, Duolingo, etc
| etc. I don't think my kids are behind at all as a result of
| utilizing these technologies.
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| You (and by virtue, your children) are an outlier.
|
| The most vast swathe of people in this country are not
| like this.
|
| Schooling is not about learning. It's a mix of daycare,
| social development/grooming for the workforce, and the
| removal of the parent's influence on the child's
| development, in order to serve the state's goals.
|
| Children that are motivated to learn something, will find
| a way to learn it.
| deegles wrote:
| Yes, thankfully 100% of kids have access to their own
| computer, sufficient internet access, an environment free
| of stress or distractions, and the focus and internal
| motivation to be an successful auto-didact in the absence
| of adult supervision... /s
| voisin wrote:
| Almost all of your concerns are the same in the scenario
| of Zoom home school.
|
| Internal motivation is needed for success in learning no
| matter what delivery mechanism is utilized. Having a
| teacher in a box on a screen is not going to change
| whether a student has internal motivation.
|
| Auto-didact is not the same as having an app teach and
| guide through levels of learning any different than
| having a teacher lead it.
|
| I feel like your comment is a knee jerk, disingenuous
| reaction rather than honest consideration of alternatives
| to the false dichotomy of "in class school" and "zoom
| school", but whatever floats your boat.
| parkingrift wrote:
| If we want to have this discussion, we should have it
| holistically.
|
| Negative mental health outcomes for children don't fall
| neatly into regularly discussed statistics. Poor educational
| outcomes don't fall neatly into regularly discussed
| statistics.
|
| Suicide attempts among young persons aged 12-25 have risen
| 30-50% during the pandemic. An order of magnitude more
| children aged 5-18 will attempt suicide or die from suicide
| than will have died from Covid-19.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm?s_cid=mm.
| ..
| gus_massa wrote:
| The flu has a lot of possible not deadly complications
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Prognosis
| lokar wrote:
| 99+% of people with polio had mild symptoms
| cthalupa wrote:
| >Edit: Please with the "but kids bring Covid home" hysteria. We
| have vaccines now.
|
| >Edit 2: People, it's not April 2020 any longer. We have two
| vaccines and a booster now.
|
| Is it hysteria to point out that the newest variant is
| extremely effective in escaping antibody response? T-cells are
| great, but the reduced severity is balanced out by just how
| much better it is at infecting people - hospitals being
| overwhelmed is a real issue and one we're seeing.
| soneil wrote:
| The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is 40%
| of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled into
| study hall is the fallout from this 40% figure.
|
| With this, it really does't matter if zero children 5-18 have
| died of covid - the school still can't operate correctly with
| half of its staff missing.
|
| Solving "sending children to school" without solving "having
| teachers available" results in zero education, only free
| childcare. If that's the goal, sure, shove them all in study
| hall. If we actually plan to educate them, we need to figure
| out how to insulate the educators from the children.
|
| Between vaccinations and the nature of the current variant, the
| mortality rate is essentially a non-issue. That's fantastic
| news. But it doesn't change that during a surge of cases, on-
| site schooling isn't really fit for purpose. "Probably won't
| die" isn't the only relevant metric.
| parkingrift wrote:
| >The single biggest issue I'm seeing in the original post is
| 40% of teachers being out. All the talk of being corralled
| into study hall is the fallout from this 40% figure.
|
| The reason teachers are out is because of the absurd
| quarantine rules.
|
| If you are fully vaccinated, but not boosted, you are
| required to quarantine for 5-10 days if you were exposed to
| someone with "confirmed or suspected COVID-19." At present
| the rate of boosters across the adult population is around
| 20%.
|
| Can you imagine how often a teacher is exposed to someone
| with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19? I'm not
| trashing on teachers specifically here. It's human nature.
|
| TLDR... 40% of the teachers aren't out sick with COVID-19.
| The quarantine rules are taking a problem and turning it into
| a catastrophe.
|
| It honestly seems as if our quarantine rules in NYC are based
| on best available data from April 2020.
| soneil wrote:
| That's a tough nut to solve, because by time you find out
| if quarantine was necessary or not, it's too late. So do we
| err towards spreading less, or err towards teaching more.
| It seems difficult to have both.
|
| (Well, we could - replace whiteboards with screens, have
| the students onsite but the teachers remote. Not sure this
| is entirely practical?)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Well, we could - replace whiteboards with screens, have
| the students onsite but the teachers remote. Not sure
| this is entirely practical?
|
| You need _some_ adult to supervise the classroom
| native_samples wrote:
| It's endemic dude. It doesn't matter if teachers
| quarantine or not. Social distancing, lockdowns and
| quarantines have achieved nothing at any point in any of
| this and Omicron isn't severe enough to justify it
| anyway. Consider: Sweden is beating the European average
| for COVID deaths big time and they were always the least
| into intense countermeasures:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
| soneil wrote:
| Sweden really does just turn into a "choose your own
| data" adventure. They have double their neighbours'
| excess deaths - you really can use them to demonstrate
| any point you like by picking which data tells the story
| you want to tell.
| native_samples wrote:
| No, you cannot, even though people constantly try.
|
| You really need to use all the data for countries that
| are reasonably western/developed (to avoid Africa with a
| much younger population and less testing biasing
| everything). It's all available and there are no valid
| excuses not to. As I never tire of pointing out, Swedish
| people aren't aliens and nobody claimed they were before
| they inconveniently proved the countermeasures weren't
| warranted. If you use all the data (from developed
| countries), Sweden ends up way ahead, which is conclusive
| proof of many things.
| yorwba wrote:
| Does it also conclusively prove that their
| countermeasures are warranted?
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-tightens-
| covid-r...
| trembonator wrote:
| newsbinator wrote:
| Those children bring covid home.
|
| If you're going to design a virus incubation factory, what you
| do is put 30 people in a room for 8 hours, turn on the heat,
| close the windows, try to keep them talking, singing and
| yelling, then at the end of the day put them on a bus to
| distribute to every household in town. Repeat for 22 days a
| month.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| I wonder how many parents/family members would still support
| the lockdowns if you told them that they were for their
| safety, not their children's. "We're shutting down the entire
| school system for your safety, even after you've had many
| chances to get vaccinated"
| analyte123 wrote:
| If it's true that kids being together in a room is such a
| biohazard then all schools, music venues, churches, mosques,
| and gyms should be shut down immediately and never opened
| again. The buildings would be either demolished or converted
| into single-bedroom housing. After all, there will be more
| infectious diseases in the future.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Omicron is the second most contagious virus in the world.
| It has the ability to poof out of the labor pool 10% ~ 20%
| of teachers, aux staff, nurses and doctors for somewhere
| between a week and a year (long covid), in any given week.
|
| This is the case here in Canada in my sibling's hospital
| right now, and in my sibling's kid's school.
|
| Omicron also has the ability to overflow hospitals even
| when they've pre-planned with a solid buffer of excess
| capacity. Most hospitals here in Canada didn't have any
| such buffer to begin with. For 2 years they've been run
| ragged, so today the backlog is worse than ever.
|
| Omicron is a new problem we didn't have to deal with
| before.
|
| With Flu, you can get away with letting some % of the
| population get it in any given flu season, because it won't
| deprive your hospital system (or your school) of 20% of its
| staff for weeks or months on end.
|
| This is all independent of who does or doesn't end up dying
| from the virus.
| parkingrift wrote:
| In NYC you must be vaccinated to...
|
| * Work at any private company
|
| * Work at any public company
|
| * Work at a public school
|
| * Visit a public school
|
| * Attend a public school
|
| * Go to a restaurant, bar, gym, etc
|
| This is the law. The "30 people in a room for 8 hours" have a
| vaccination rate near 100%.
|
| So... what are we worried about, again? Why do teachers need
| to quarantine just because they may have been exposed to
| someone who may (confirmed or not) have had COVID-19?
|
| For all intents and purposes you must be vaccinated to live
| in NYC. Which is probably why 95% of all NY residents 12+
| have at least one dose and 84% of NYC residents 12+ are fully
| vaccinated.
| viraptor wrote:
| With omicron 2 doses still don't give you much protection.
| (25% effective) One booster is good, but still ~55%
| effective. (UK stats) Then you get immunocompromised people
| and older population where breakthrough infections are
| still very dangerous.
|
| I don't know if reducing the contract would change anything
| anymore. But in terms of spread via kids, don't think of
| just the working / school / bar-going population.
| xapata wrote:
| Much protection against infection or against
| hospitalization?
| granzymes wrote:
| I only care about protection from symptoms that are worse
| than your garden variety cold.
|
| And the vaccines are excellent for that.
| nojito wrote:
| Great for kids...terrible for orphans.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-orpha...
|
| Human beings aren't numbers on a table or statistics in a
| study.
| exogeny wrote:
| parkingrift wrote:
| "Kids are safe from Covid, statistics overwhelming show."
|
| "Wow, you're a sociopath."
|
| Okay
| parkingrift wrote:
| We have vaccines and boosters now. Historical statistics are
| unimportant and meaningless for making policy decisions
| today.
|
| And when it comes to making policy decisions on a scale of
| millions of people, humans are statistics.
|
| Those Covid deaths are tragic, but children losing a parent
| or caregiver is common. 20% of children will experience the
| death of a parent or caregiver before the age of 29.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| As others already pointed out, covid is not just a danger to
| the kid, it's a danger to anybody in contact with the kid, like
| the parents the kid lives with, the teachers and aux staff the
| kid interacts with, the people the kid passes on the way to
| school.
|
| >Edit: Please with the "but kids bring Covid home" hysteria. We
| have vaccines now.
|
| Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of severe covid and death,
| but it doesn't eliminate it. I know people who despite full
| vaccination contracted covid and are now fighting with long
| covid symptoms, to the point where they are unable to work for
| months (but chances are they would be a lot worse off if they
| hadn't been vaccinated). In a society such as the US with very
| limited social safety there is a serious risk of loss of job
| due to the inability to work thanks to long covid or bankruptcy
| thanks to the inability to pay medical bills. Kids contracting
| covid in school (or anywhere else) and passing it to their
| parents may well result in the family becoming a lot poorer or
| even homeless in the extreme.
|
| Immediate covid risks aren't just limited to death either.
| Covid is known to cause issues with blood clotting, which can
| result in all kinds of things like permanent brain damage,
| permanent heart damage or amputations of limbs. Severe covid is
| also treated with severe medications and procedures, like
| steroids which can cause permanent (partial) blindness, ECMO
| which causes loss of (some) mobility in the legs far more often
| than not. Just regular ventilation isn't free of side effects
| either, in particular because of the drugs to sedate such
| patients. Survivors of severe covid experience PTSD and/or
| suicidal thoughts at very high rates.
|
| Immediate death and other immediate primary or secondary
| effects aren't the only risk to covid. Long covid is a thing.
| Other long term effects due to covid infections are not only
| possible, but according to preliminary results seem likely,
| even after covid infections with only mild symptoms or in
| asymptomatic cases. This includes damage to organs, in
| particular the lungs, the brain, the heart and the kidneys,
| which may well significantly lower the life expectancy and
| (later life) quality of life of people affected by it, be it
| the kids or their parents, family or teachers.
|
| Looking only at the immediate fatality rate in kids is
| dangerously shortsighted and missing most of the picture.
| Pointing to vaccines like they are magic isn't exactly helpful
| either, as they are risk reduction at best, not risk avoidance.
| tlogan wrote:
| At the beginning of all these craziness the reason for
| shutdowns is to flatten the curve. We did not have vaccines
| and hospitals were under stress. I think we did a right
| thing.
|
| I'm not sure what is the goal now? We have vaccines and ICUs
| are not getting filled. Yeah, Covid can be though for some
| but oh well... we also have alcholism, drug addiction, flu,
| mono, etc. We cannot solve all.
|
| I guess we all need to come to realization that COVID is here
| to stay and everyone will be eventually exposed to it.
| Vaccinated or not.
| raydev wrote:
| Where are you that ICUs are not filling up right now? Here
| in Ontario we've more than doubled ICU occupancy since
| December 18 and the rate is currently accelerating
| rndgermandude wrote:
| I agree, covid is here to stay, and it's rather unlikely
| that anybody of us can avoid contracting it at some point.
| Right now, we're buying time with measures, time we need to
| understand more about covid and it's secondary effects and
| how to treat or avoid these.
|
| Flatten the curve is still a thing, and hospitals are still
| under stress. While the fatality rate is lower, hospital
| care and especially ICU care is still running on fumes,
| largely thanks to a lack of health care workers, especially
| ICU trained nursing staff, at least here in Germany, and of
| course thanks to a higher infection rates which counteract
| the reduction of severe cases thanks to vaccines; we used
| to have more severe cases in fewer total infections but now
| we have fewer severe cases in more infections, which almost
| balances out at the moment here.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > The CDC estimates that 573 kids between the ages of 5-18 have
| died of Covid
|
| It's even worse, these are kids that died _with_ COVID, not
| _of_ COVID. So if a child tests positive and then gets killed
| in a car crash, it's in this statistic.
| phaedrus441 wrote:
| I decided to look into this, because I hear this bandied
| about frequently (i.e. "these death numbers aren't real
| because they count even if they incidentally had COVID-19").
| Turns out, this isn't correct.
|
| Here's the CDC site with that data:
| https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-
| Focus-...
|
| Here's the site with information about how a death is
| counted: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
|
| In short, for a death to be counted as COVID, it needs to be
| listed on the death certificate (which only lists diagnoses
| directly related to the death).
|
| For example, when I write a death certificate (which is a
| standardized form), it sounds something like this: Cause of
| Death: Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome as a Consequence
| of COVID-19 pneumonia
|
| Guidance from my state (SC) specifically says: "The
| Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 should be reported on
| the death certificate for all decedents where the disease
| caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.
| The preferred term to use in the cause of death is COVID-19."
| So I can see possibilities where we don't know if it was the
| MRSA pneumonia superimposed on the COVID-19 or the COVID-19
| itself, and we are supposed to report COVID on there, but the
| idea that a car crash victim would be counted in the
| statistics seems unlikely.
| kcplate wrote:
| But it has happened, and several times I recall early in
| the pandemic when some of the reporting rules were perhaps
| not as clear. Whether it's frequent now...not sure, there
| was certainly enough media scrutiny generated then to force
| a greater degree of care for accuracy now.
|
| https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/fox-35-investigates-
| questi...
| phaedrus441 wrote:
| Of course it has happened and probably will continue to
| happen. The key is that this isn't a systemic error, but
| rather providers going against the government's reporting
| rules (either mistakenly or intentionally). One could
| imagine mistakes erring in the opposite direction, though
| nobody is looking for that (nor would it be an easy thing
| to discover).
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, because Gov. Hochul is
| complaining about exactly this:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/hochul-asks-
| hospita...
|
| Even Fauci acknowledges it:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-children-hospital-covid-
| omicr...
|
| (yes, this is about hospital admissions and not death
| certificates, but imo it's not unreasonable to assume this
| type of reporting has spilled over into everything.)
| [deleted]
| edw519 wrote:
| Wow, it looks like this is the closest our schools have ever been
| at preparing students for life in the real working world. I could
| have written this myself about work (with a few changes noted
| below):
|
| _Classes that I did attend were quiet and empty._
|
| would be:
|
| Meetings that I did attend were meaningless and pointless.
|
| _I arrived at school and promptly went to Study Hall...Second
| period I had another absent teacher...Third period I had a normal
| class period._
|
| would be:
|
| I arrived at work and promptly went to the break room...Second
| meeting I had another absent manager...Third meeting I had a
| normal standup, but no one was prepared and no one cared.
|
| _90% of the conversations spoken by students concern COVID. It
| has completely taken over any function of daily school life._
|
| would be:
|
| 90% of the conversations spoken by I.T. workers concern AGILE. It
| has completely taken over any function of getting any real work
| done.
|
| _One teacher flat out left his class 5 mins into the lesson and
| didn 't return because he was developing symptoms and didn't
| believe it safe to spread to his class._
|
| would be:
|
| One manager flat out left his team 5 mins into the meeting and
| didn't return because he had no idea what we were talking about.
|
| _I've removed the name of my school as it made me uncomfortable
| sharing such information, but I'll say that it's a specialized
| high school. This is occurring everywhere._
|
| would be:
|
| I've removed the name of my company as it made me uncomfortable
| sharing such information, but I'll say that it's a Fortune 500
| company. This is occurring everywhere.
|
| _This is around 10% of my school. As of Monday, only 30 of whom
| were reported to the DOE ... which just seems like negligence to
| me._
|
| would be:
|
| This is around 10% of our transactions. As of Monday, only 30 of
| which were reported to the auditors ... which just seems like
| negligence to me.
|
| _I spent about 3 hours sitting around today doing nothing._
|
| (Didn't have to change a word.)
|
| Congratulations OP! You are officially ready to join our I.T.
| department at Megacorp.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| Here take my "Most Off Topic Comments Of the Year" Award!
| edw519 wrote:
| Hardly.
|
| OP is complaining about inconveniences that are standard
| everywhere I've worked for years.
|
| I noticed it immediately and pointed it out.
|
| Open your mind a little and you too may notice interesting
| parallels between the lines of code.
|
| It's way better that your reptilian "Most Snarky of the Year"
| response.
| mynameishere wrote:
| If they cut teacher pay whenever they are "sick" or told children
| they would have to make up missed days during summer or after the
| normal graduation date, I'm sure the Covid cases would
| mysteriously drop, and fast.
|
| There is a definite "Cartman" component to this whole thing, and
| if I was 11 I damn well know I'd have the same BS attitude.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=379oevm2fho
| sebow wrote:
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Dayam. What a sh*t show.
|
| 1. It'd be nice if they held classes outside, when it's not
| freezing/windy/snowing "bomb cyclones" and where it's not
| concrete Manhattan.
|
| 2. Forcing kids back to school during the middle of a 600k-1M+
| infections/day national peak seems absurd. Heck, the FAANG
| company I'm interviewing for cancelled all in-person interviews
| for 2021-2022. If the teachers are too worried and/or are getting
| sick, it's insane to "power through it" by getting more people
| sick. As much as people want "normalcy" because they're pandemic
| fatigued, it's not worth killing another million people. Heck, if
| lockdowns were done strictly similar to authoritarian countries
| like China or even resembling France's new laws, this pandemic
| wouldn't have reached endemic community spread. But no: must have
| no-mask "mah freedumbs".
|
| 3. Positive-tested non-symptomatic teachers should be setup with
| the technical capabilities to teach from home to school.
| [deleted]
| Jiejeing wrote:
| Regarding 2, France is still not in lockdown despite having a
| much higher number of cases per capita than the US (400k cases
| for 66M people last monday), and schools are run to the ground
| in a similar manner than what is described in the reddit post,
| if not worse (they _relaxed_ the isolation and testing rules
| very recently). edit: maybe you were referring to the "vaccine
| pass", but since vaccinated people can have and transmit the
| virus, it is not helping at all (the stated goal being to annoy
| the non-vaxxed people to death and nothing else).
|
| Lockdown is not being implemented because "omicron is mild". We
| have a somewhat good vaccination rate despite the strong
| antivax movement, but that is still leaving millions at risk,
| not in small part thanks to our asinine so-called leadership.
| bonzini wrote:
| > since vaccinated people can have and transmit the virus, it
| is not helping at all (the stated goal being to annoy the
| non-vaxxed people to death and nothing else).
|
| This is a very partial view. Vaccinated people can have the
| virus and transmit it, but they will have it less, transmit
| it less, and anyway have lesser symptoms if they catch it
| from someone else.
|
| The third is why a vaccine pass helps the healthcare system
| more than a "vaccine or test" pass, in a situation where
| vaccinated people can have or transmit the virus.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| This was a partial view, yes, the viral charge is lessened
| when the vaccine comes into play, which is a good thing,
| but it does not help much that much the several hundred
| thousand people for whom the vaccine is useless, nor the
| ones who got scammed with a fake vaccine pass (and are now
| in limbo since they can enter places where the pass is
| required but not get protected).
|
| Instead of a stupid pass, make the vaccine mandatory and
| work on transmission (better ventilation everywhere, which
| will be beneficial in any case, N95 masks, good planning to
| avoid spreader events, adapted plannings, burn openspaces,
| etc). Not working on transmission means the virus is free
| to mutate in he humongous pool of contaminated people
| (which is, due to statistics, a large majority of
| vaccinated), or even recombine with the delta strain which
| is still peaking in cases at the same time.
| bonzini wrote:
| The virus is not going away and will be able to mutate
| forever, yet sooner or later we'll have to go back to
| normality (though I hope that some degree of masking and
| remote working will remain).
|
| Vaccination is the only way to get there as fast as
| possible, but even if you make it mandatory you would
| have to check it somewhere for people to actually get the
| vaccine. Even if you add a 100 euro/month fine, there are
| plenty of people that have been spending more than that
| in tests to go to work.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| I believe it's hard to appreciate the frustration and costs
| that closing schools causes, at least for children to be too
| young to be left without supervision.
|
| I can't think of any other measure that gets even close. The
| effects of restaurant closures can be mitigated by throwing
| money at the problem. If you have to stay home and take care of
| children, your career will suffer even if you are compensated
| for lost income.
|
| There really isn't an easy solution to it. Maybe getting
| creative on the local level would help: taking turns among a
| (small) group of parents, or hiring a single person to take
| care of maybe 5 or 6 kids. Maybe getting the older children to
| watch the younger ones, etc. But everything comes with its own
| drawbacks, usually by reintroducing pathways to spread.
|
| One measure that seems to be missing, and that I cannot find
| fault with right now, is changing structures to keep classes
| fixed, possibly with only a single teacher (per week?). For
| younger children, it's quite possible for, say an English
| teacher to also teach biology. Having fixed classes is also
| common in many countries. It means you can't accomodate
| electives, of course.
| kylebyproxy wrote:
| > at least for children to be too young to be left without
| supervision
|
| Maybe school openings should just focus on that age group
| instead of being all-or-nothing? They could give extra focus
| to preschool & kindergarten, reallocate teachers from higher
| grades to decrease student-teacher ratios and help spread the
| infection risk thinner.
| watwut wrote:
| When schools move online, the higher grades teachers keep
| teaching higher grades - except online.
|
| But I agree, it should be perfectly possible to close
| higher grades and leave lower grades open.
| DarylZero wrote:
| > If you have to stay home and take care of children, your
| career will suffer even if you are compensated for lost
| income
|
| Not that big of a deal. Most people don't even have careers
| really, having children is already a career disadvantage,
| careers are mostly zero-sum competition so it balances out,
| etc.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but how are children dealing with non-
| fixed classes? Thinking about 7 year old children (or even
| adults), getting on time from one to another classroom
| according to an indvidual schedule would not be an easy task.
|
| Are there provided with extra help, like single-purpose
| classrooms according to subject? Do teachers announce where
| the next lessons take place? Are students split into sub-
| groups sharing the entire schedule, so they can team up and
| not lose track of it?
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| The best thing about people talking about Covid is how civil and
| understanding everyone is about everyone else's perspective. It
| restores my faith in our society (USA) when I see or overhear a
| conversation about Covid and our nation's response to it. I think
| all people have very high emotional intelligence and have
| willingness to understand, and not fight. I'm glad that 99% of
| conversations don't devolve into tribal affiliation signaling and
| wishes for bad outcomes for anyone not in their tribe.
|
| When my local social networks (friends, family, coworkers) talk
| about COVID I internally jump for joy because I know I will hear
| everyone's heavily considered thoughts and opinions on the
| subject, and not ones assigned to them by their own curated
| bubble of influencers. Yay.
| totetsu wrote:
| say that's quite a rhetorical technique you've got going there,
| you got a name for it?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| post-irony
|
| although this is obvious enough to be just satire
| mbg721 wrote:
| It'd be Times-Irony otherwise.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Laying it on pretty thick ;)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| A+ sarcasm
| dang wrote:
| The problem with comments like this is that they do the thing
| they're complaining about, which makes it worse.
|
| To help find our collective way out of this, we should each
| find it in ourselves to contribute in a different spirit.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's sad. COVID discussion has ruined multiple online forums I
| (used to) participate in. Well-moderated forums that I used to
| love and respect, all turn into the YouTube Comment Section
| whenever the topic comes up. Something about the COVID, even
| moreso than politics, draws the trolls like a lightning rod and
| is astonishingly resistant to effective site moderation. I
| think mods (not just here) have gotten really good at nuking
| obvious flamewars, spam, and left-vs-right political threads,
| but for whatever reason hesitate when it comes to
| misinformation. HN has a guideline about "political or
| ideological battles" but what do you do when the entire topic
| has become ideological?
| detaro wrote:
| Has any country made noticeable progress in improving the
| situation for schooling (EDIT: during covid waves) compared to
| lets say 18 months ago? Here in Germany the mantra seems to be
| "keep the schools running at all costs!" - except if "costs"
| means spending anything or preparing anything. So we don't have
| meaningful improvements done to schools, still don't have
| universal setups for remote or hybrid schooling, any non-standard
| concepts to roll out... (well, I guess some more moodle installs.
| but that's really not the biggest thing that needs solving. and
| do testing at schools now, but even that's seems to have been
| winged quite a lot.)
| jaclaz wrote:
| Italy is the same, "school must be in presence" is a kind of
| mantra, and though it is (IMHO) right _in theory_ , it fails in
| practice (where/when teachers, janitors, bus drivers, and even
| pupils are COVID positive in more than a tiny fraction).
|
| Schools (generally speaking) are due to reopen on monday the
| 10th, but very likely only a part of them will actually be able
| to.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I have two toddler granddaughters. Both their parents had
| COVID last year (presumably delta), so I guess the kids must
| have caught it too. Their mother teaches in primary school,
| and is tested daily.
|
| It's completely inadequate to rely on online schooling for
| small kids; a large part of what's important in their
| schooling is interacting with other kids. Over-12s: maybe not
| so much.
|
| So I think it's inevitable that more-or-less all schools are
| going to be disease-ridden. Really, they always have been
| (i.e. not just COVID). It's similar with hospitals; the whole
| point of a hospital is that it's full of sick people. I hate
| hospital waiting rooms.
| xattt wrote:
| I've got a kindergartener doing remote learning. The school
| system has adopted Google Suite as their platform(1). Default
| setup is a Chromebook. Format is pretty standard (recorded
| morning message and various activities throughout the day). A
| couple of live sessions are planned, with the class broken up
| into two groups to reduce the hectic video calls.
|
| Return to school is planned in two weeks. Testing before
| attending school will be mandatory. I'm sure there will be
| hiccups as desperate parents looking to shed their children
| will lie about kids being positive. However, the public health
| department has accepted Omicron infection as inevitable and is
| taking measures to slow spread, rather than eliminate it.
|
| (1) I should note that Google Suite being made available to
| schools is an amazing long-term strategy. It reminds me of
| Adobe's policy of lax licensing security for Photoshop two
| decades ago, which basically assured their current market
| dominance now due to familiarity with their product.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Well... Most Asian countries seem to only fail your definition
| because the situation there was mostly okay 18 months ago, so
| they didn't have room to improve.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Germany was most okay 18 months ago also...
| detaro wrote:
| fair point, clarified with an edit. (i.e. the standard is not
| "what were you doing 18 months ago", but "how prepared are
| you for schooling in a covid wave now vs how prepared you
| were 18 months ago")
| ploika wrote:
| Ireland is similarly keen to keep schools open.
|
| Children from age 5 upwards are being vaccinated as of today,
| and the main focus in school buildings is on getting adequate
| ventilation and HEPA filters into classrooms. Contact tracing
| in schools has been not been a priority, for better or for
| worse.
|
| The will is there, and there's money available to spend, but
| the implementation has been a bit less than stellar.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah,I just don't get why we stopped contact tracing schools.
|
| Well I do actually, it was causing so much disruption that it
| made in person schooling almost impossible.
|
| HEPA filters seem like an obvious win, but there's clearly a
| bunch of RCT extremists in NPHET ;)
| klyrs wrote:
| I've got a kid in grade 1, and I honestly don't know how
| contact tracing is supposed to work. Ten minutes after
| talking to grandma, if you ask him who he's spoken to
| today, he can't remember. If you ask him what he talked to
| grandma about, it's a mix of truth and fiction. He doesn't
| know the names of many classmates. Contact tracing depends
| on reliable narrators -- young children are far from that.
|
| I do wish that we'd have _something_ though. Our local
| government has just given up altogether.
| christkv wrote:
| School year in Northern Spain went on as normal with a class
| intermittently being sent home due to a positive case. Classes
| were kept in "independent bubbles" and did not mix to ensure
| better social distancing.
|
| From a parental point of view I don't think there is much more
| you can do. They just relaxed the rules further to only send
| home classes for a week if 5 or more kids test positive.
|
| Having the classes have been incredibly good for the kids to be
| allowed to socialise and keep everyone including parents sane.
| Considering how low their change of getting seriously ill and
| how the new variant is spreading I think it will be back to
| normality in less than two months.
| analog31 wrote:
| Interestingly, the prevailing belief seems to be that parents,
| teachers, and students, all want to keep in-person school going.
| Yet when you actually hear from each of those groups, it's a
| mixed picture. Here's a HS student with boots on the ground
| describing the situation in what seems to be a fairly objective
| way. Elsewhere, teachers unions are voting to suspend school.
| _This seems to be what a lot of people want_ , though of course I
| can't say that it's a consensus or how prevalent the view is.
| autarch wrote:
| Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this -
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w...
|
| The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable
| kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school
| away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people
| realize.
|
| It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say
| something like: We encourage all kids to stay
| home, but if you can't, that's ok. You can come to school and
| have a warm, quiet place to spend the day, and we'll provide free
| lunch to everyone who comes.
|
| Forget about the education piece for a while, just provide the
| (very important for some people) day care part.
| ubiquitysc wrote:
| Yeah the approach of everyone being remote or no one being
| remote seems shortsighted.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >> The National School Boards Association says that 1,384,000
| public school students are homeless.
|
| Holy fucking crap.
|
| (Sorry I don't normally react like that, and even given
| homeless might not be "living on street", that is a horrific
| statistic)
| brightball wrote:
| IMO this is probably the best solution.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Yes.
| double_nan wrote:
| I'm wondering what has changed in the human nature (if any)
| that we need day care for ppl older than 18-19 years now. What
| did such ppl do 100 (or 1000) years ago to overcome all that.
| autarch wrote:
| I'm not following. The vast majority of people in school are
| younger than 18. I agree with you that it should be fine for
| most parents to leave an older kid (say 14+?) at home alone.
|
| But again, some kids just want to go to school to get some
| damn food, regardless of age!
| auslegung wrote:
| Children can be raised as people who serve a purpose, not as
| a burden to serve. And just like adults, children thrive
| knowing they are wanted, and their actions make a difference.
| Children can have real chores as early as 3 or 4 years old,
| and by 18 can be expected to have developed the character and
| know how to be completely on their own.
|
| That's not to say they wouldn't continue to benefit, for the
| rest of their lives, from a nurturing, supportive, diverse
| community. But they can be a completely productive member of
| that community.
| fourseventy wrote:
| How many students that got sick are experiencing symptoms more
| severe than the common cold? It seems like the chaos is caused by
| the attempted solutions to covid and not the actual symptoms?
|
| Edit: 7 day rolling average of COVID cases according to
| https://www1.nyc.gov/ is 32k cases per day with 38 deaths. So
| there is a 0.1% mortality rate.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| You are failing to consider the spread to vulnerable
| populations where the symptoms are fatal. Omicron is not mild,
| people with vaccines have mild symptoms due to its efficacy.
| All these kids come home to families with parents and
| grandparents. They also have young siblings.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Omicron is not mild
|
| Anecdotally, I understand it can be pretty nasty - not "like
| a winter cold", more like bad 'flu (the anecdote relates to
| an antivaxx family).
| bally0241 wrote:
| I just got it along with family (both vaxxed and unvaxxed,
| there was no noticeable difference in symptoms). It was
| somewhere between a 'common cold' and the flu. Not fun, but
| definitely not something to panic about (understandably
| everyone will have a different reaction depending on their
| current state of health). However, I think we've reached
| the point of diminishing returns on any sort of
| intervention (they've all failed). Masking is ineffective,
| lockdowns and social-distancing are ineffective, and the
| vaccines are ineffective (at least w.r.t. to preventing
| transmission). We can continue to tear society apart aiming
| for a 0% safe zero-covid society (which we will never
| achieve), or get on with our lives and live with the risk.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It's a shame this is downvoted because you are completely
| right. Covid ain't going anywhere. Society needs to move
| on.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| All the interventions we've done have been too-little,
| too-late. Telling people they're safe with a cloth mask
| when the virus transmits via airborne respiratory
| particles is obviously insane. We should have used war
| time powers to mass produce N95s and rapid tests, and
| mailed them to everyone with instructions on fit-testing.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Vulnerable populations should get vaccinated and/or wear an
| N95 respirator. The entire world cannot accommodate you.
| pianoben wrote:
| There is no vaccine for children under five. As long as
| we've got children in our lives, we all need to go out of
| our way to protect them - even those of us with masks and
| vaccines are getting Omicron.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Why? It's not really harmful to children. Note all the
| verbage in the news that says "hospitalized with covid"
| instead of "hospitalized because of covid". They are
| going to the hospital mostly due to other reasons
| telman17 wrote:
| I don't have the source available but was told that the
| concern was there is some kind of evidence that the
| vaccine had a low chance of causing long term heart
| issues in some children, which is why it hasn't been
| approved for children under 5 yet.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Vulnerable population is like half of the population.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Same statement still applies. World must go on. We have
| vaccines now.
| ryan93 wrote:
| The vaccine is free
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Get vaccinated, lose weight. We're two years into
| pandemic and only fools haven't gotten the message.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >You are failing to consider the spread to vulnerable
| populations where the symptoms are fatal.
|
| In New York Cuomo killed many of these people early on.
| fourseventy wrote:
| No I'm not. Look at the data. Where are all these supposed
| deaths?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| COVID deaths are recorded as "deaths within 28 days of a
| positive COVID test". Omicron has only been around since
| November, and only became huge in late December. Give
| people time to die.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I keep seeing this Boogeyman argument of "vulnerable
| populations". Vulnerable people are welcome to get vaccinated
| and isolate and take all the extra precautions they want for
| themselves; we're 2 years into the pandemic at this point and
| they should have figured out how to make it work by now. It's
| not a good argument for shutting schools because it's
| argument by hypothetical outlier.
| _bohm wrote:
| I encourage you to go compare the plots of cases and deaths
| in NYC over the past 3 weeks and reconsider this statement.
| bagacrap wrote:
| and ~everyone has had the opportunity to get a vaccine so...
| mixedCase wrote:
| The flu had the same property at different rates. What are
| the numbers you are expecting for people to start treating it
| like the flu?
| mcguire wrote:
| New York State Flu Tracker
| (https://nyshc.health.ny.gov/web/nyapd/new-york-state-flu-
| tra...):
|
| 5075 new cases this week (2227 in New York City).
| christkv wrote:
| The current data from the UK shows a mortality of 0.15% for
| Omicron. However the data is from daily mail so take it with
| huge pinch of salt.
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10372285/Covid-19-U...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I think the fear was that teachers would get the virus and then
| have to duck out. Even worse, many of the sub teachers we had
| in school were semi-retired teachers who would be even more
| vulnerable.
|
| You could make a case for putting up a plexiglass wall between
| students and teachers just to end this headache and I think you
| wouldn't find as much opposition now as you would have in 2020.
|
| That said, some kids have to be physically restrained/handled
| and you can't very well do that behind plexiglass.
| gpm wrote:
| Your link doesn't lead to any data, I'm assuming you meant to
| link to something like this instead:
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily Of
| course that says 44 deaths in the latest 7 day rolling average,
| not 38, and it loudly warns "Data from the most recent days are
| incomplete.", so presumably you meant to link to some other
| page...
|
| Your interpretation of the data is also just flat out wrong.
| You can't divide cases from today by deaths from today and get
| a case mortality rate, because deaths lag cases very
| significantly (2-8 weeks was a number studies were showing
| early on, not sure if there's a more accurate one since). A
| month prior to the latest day with a deaths number (01/04) the
| 7 day rolling average of cases in NYC was 2404 (data from my
| link above). That's _also_ an inappropriate number to use,
| given that the recent giant spike in cases means that a
| disproportionate number of deaths will be from relatively
| recent cases, but it serves to demonstrate the point about your
| derivation being completely inappropriate.
|
| A 0.1% mortality rate is also _really_ bad if you 're talking
| about students, but we're not, the data your citing is for the
| entire population... for the entire population it's just bad.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| See also this Bloomberg article:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-08/new-york-...
| rdl wrote:
| This sounds like some kind of incarceration or at best day care
| program, rather than actual learning. Unclear if that is the
| baseline for schools vs something specific to a Covid surge. I
| don't have children but if I were to do so I don't think I would
| put them in a schoool like this for 12+ years.
| kodah wrote:
| > One student tested positive IN THE AUDITORIUM, and a few
| students started screaming and ran away from him. There was now a
| lack of available seats given there was a COVID-positive student
| within the middle of the auditorium.
|
| This is really awful behavior.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Media & policy is to blame for it, isn't it?
| megablast wrote:
| Why?? This is normal and natural.
| eigenrick wrote:
| As I type this, I'm infected with Covid. I have a wife and three
| kids, all tested positive.
|
| The oldest complained of a sore throat for one day, the others
| were "a bit tired" for two days. I've had it the worst. I had
| intestinal issues for 3 says and now have a mild sore throat and
| fatigue. Overall, I skipped about 2 half days of work because I
| felt tired. (I work from home)
|
| Omicron has swept through pretty much every family we interact
| with.
|
| 1. We and most people we interact with are very responsible wrt
| stopping the spread. Vaccines, Masks, social distancing. Both my
| wife and I work from home.
|
| We got infected anyway.
|
| 2. For people under 65 with no comorbidities, Covid, in general,
| is nothing to be afraid of. My in-laws (both over 70) got it just
| before us. They basically had nasty head cold symptoms for 3
| days.
|
| 3. Omicron is far more mild than prior strains.
|
| 4. For people with comorbidities, even the flu is something to be
| afraid of. Before covid, the flu was the cause of most cardiac
| and pnemonia related mortality. Prior strains of Covid are worse,
| for sure, but deaths due to influenza should be enough to make
| people panic. We just never assigned flu as the underlying cause
| of death. *[0]
|
| 5. I think the last data I saw on the Pfizer vaccine said it was
| 24% effective against omicron. I don't know what this means
| exactly. But current evidence says that was too optimistic. *[1]
| 3 shots of it wasn't enough to stop the contagion, though maybe
| it made my symptoms milder. Who knows.
|
| 5. Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against
| covid than the vaccines which all now appear to be outdated. *[2]
|
| My takeaway from all of this: Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and
| social distancing aren't helping. Omicron itself might be the
| biggest help we have. It's time to work to stop the hysteria, and
| also update our covid policies, because they're no longer
| relevant.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5158013/
|
| [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01451#
|
| [2] https://www.ahri.org/omicron-infection-enhances-
| neutralising...
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Your conclusion may be broadly correct (of course some of these
| things help a non-zero amount, but maybe are futile long-term).
| However, if you want to convince people that a different
| solution to the shared problem is better, it doesn't sound
| honest to call them "hysterical", as the favorite insult goes
| right now.
| eigenrick wrote:
| > it doesn't sound honest to call them "hysterical", as the
| favorite insult goes right now.
|
| You're right. I don't blame the people for their excessive
| fear of the virus. I blame the media and politicians using
| the virus for leverage.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| "All my family had covid and nobody died" led you to conclude
| that "vaccines are not helping"?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against
| covid than the vaccines
|
| That is my supposition too, based more on hope than facts.
|
| > Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.
|
| I have come to that conclusion as well.
|
| > Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't
| helping.
|
| This I don't agree with. Vaccines reduce the severity of an
| infection, and so the risk of hospitalisation, whether you are
| vulnerable or not. I'm confident that wearing a mask reduces
| the risk of transmitting the virus. And keeping your distance
| really can't hurt - the closer you get to someone who's
| transmitting, the more likely you are to catch it. That seems
| obvious. Maskless wonders going into supermarkets with clear
| signage on the door saying "MASKS MUST BE WORN" piss me off.
| eigenrick wrote:
| I agree about the vaccines. I misstated. I should have said
| "vaccines don't stop (or apparently slow) the spread of the
| omicron strain".
|
| Vaccines do help reduce the severity of symptoms, though.
|
| I guess my issue is that a lot of public policy was created
| when we thought we could eliminate the virus. Then it
| switched to "everyone is going to get it (once?) We just need
| to slow the spread."
|
| Barring some technological breakthrough, we're going to get
| it. Then get it again, and again. It is a new influenza.
| That's our reality. Let's base our public policy on that.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > My takeaway from all of this: Vaccines aren't helping. Masks
| and social distancing aren't helping. Omicron itself might be
| the biggest help we have.
|
| Vaccines, masks and social distancing helped lessen the impact
| of the previous variants, in particular with Delta. They got us
| to Omicron.
|
| However, hospitalizations are the highest they've been of the
| pandemic in some places and cases are still rising fast. Taking
| measures to prevent an overwhelmed health system is not
| hysteria. My uneducated guess is that after this wave burns out
| we'll be in a place where such measures won't be necessary.
| alfor wrote:
| Everyone in the north, take vitamin D and vitamin C.
|
| It help fight _every_ respiratory infection
|
| Source: medcram, Dr in pulmonary diseases
| detcader wrote:
| Seconded, I ordered more D3 gummies online recently and they
| came pretty quick (Nature's Way brand are vegan)
|
| We introverts are staying inside even _more_ than usual so it's
| probably a very good thing to do
| crate_barre wrote:
| What this little pretentious kid doesn't get is that public
| school has always been like this and the majority of kids wing it
| through K-12 (many even wing it through a bullshit degree in
| college). There has never been serious learning going on, and
| kids love any and all disruptions to class.
|
| Bomb threats is one that kids in my school used to call in as
| pranks daily when I was in school. For weeks everyone missed the
| first 3 periods of the day. Everyone loved the disruption. I can
| absolutely promise you nothing is bringing more joy to the kids
| than this COVID fiasco.
|
| Now, is education really being missed here? Not really. The kids
| that were going to excel anyways have somewhat involved parents
| that will expect them to prep and score respectable grades in
| standard tests/classes (your ap classes, SATs). Those kids
| already know they have to study more than whatever bullshit goes
| on in school. The parents/kids relying on the school system to
| help them achieve were never going to achieve just due to that
| reliance (it's always been the case in public school).
|
| So what is this stupid post about? It sounds like business as
| usual to me.
| detcader wrote:
| Agree with a lot of this but there's something to be said about
| 1. daily routine and morale, having a normal routine is a good
| thing for everyone, even kids who don't "succeed" in academic
| measures at all, and 2. losing years of time of socializing in-
| person where you make lifelong friends or have experiences that
| form your place in the world.
|
| I had no friends in school until 10th grade when I joined a
| club that somewhat let me be myself and have fun with other
| weird kids. If that was taken away from me soon after I joined
| it would have been pretty terrible!
| fxtentacle wrote:
| They got all the learning disruptions without any of the fun.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Where do you get these ideas from? Simply not having to
| commit to class work is fun. You can literally play a video
| game if you are remote too. It's a dream come true for these
| kids.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >It offers anti-vaxxers a road out of their self-
| radicalization. They are able to tone down their conspiracy and
| blame the government for having been "chipped", and so it's not
| like they "betrayed their cult" but they were forced to.
|
| I think that yours (and most people's) idea of the typical
| "anti-vaxxer" is a convenient caricature packaged and served to
| you by mass media and memes, that you've never actually
| listened to a real live one of these "anti-vaxxers", what they
| think and feel.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Ohhhh... I have. As a matter of fact, he's going to go to
| Walgreen's today to get his first "DNA changing" jab because
| his Dollar General store manager salary won't keep up with
| the tests needed to maintain employment at his employer.
|
| He's also the dude who will go outside and take random
| pictures of the sky so that people are aware of the contrails
| being used to control people's minds.
| davidgrenier wrote:
| You don't seem to spend much time on anti-vaxx forums. I
| don't either but the stories my sister share with me are
| quite telling.
|
| Not to mention every news channel covid-related videos on
| youtube is swarmed with comments from a minority of anti-
| vaxxer, regardless of the country of origin, regardless of
| the political stance of the channel.
|
| I'd say the evidence is against you.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > you've never actually listened to a real live one of these
| "anti-vaxxers"
|
| don't think you know me but:
|
| I lost my mother due to covid. she was an anti-vaxxer right
| until the last minute when she died just before Christmas.
| She was a vulnerable nutcase for years and easily gamed into
| any kind of MLM scheme.
|
| I was forced to cut off one of my 2 best friends (of 40
| years) because they could no longer be reasoned with. we
| ignored his alternative life-style and individualism because
| why wouldn't we. but it also put him into a risk-group of
| suckers that get brainwashed. the same guy now cut off
| relations to his mother who is battling cancer on the grounds
| that "she chose to be vaccinated".
|
| These people are crazy, and it's their right to be crazy, but
| the cost of being crazy can not be exploited by media and
| politicians. That's why I am 100% for reducing their freedom
| and have them undergo a "forced medical procedure" (as they
| call it).
| fbmlk wrote:
| In any highly vaccinated area COVID-19 cases are sharply
| rising. You got the vaccine, have a sunk cost fallacy, and want
| others to take a useless religious sacrament out of spite.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > highly vaccinated area COVID-19 cases are sharply rising
|
| omnicron's effect on healthcare would be a lot worse without
| majority of people being vaccinated. everyone is anti-vaxx
| but it's always shocking how many of them clowns are not
| anti-respirator or anti-ICU.
| cruelty2 wrote:
| analogdreams wrote:
| where is your proof of this statement. this is an
| assumption, not a fact.
| pfg wrote:
| This study[1] shows 70% effectiveness against
| hospitalization for the Pfizer vaccine (based on a two-
| dose regime; the level of protection would likely be
| significantly higher for boosted populations).
|
| I'll leave it to you to do the math on what this would
| mean for the healthcare system if we take current daily
| infections and remove that effect.
|
| [1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270
| maxerickson wrote:
| The vaccines are very protective against severe disease, not
| "useless". Of course that is more important for people over
| 40 or 50 where severe disease is more common.
|
| For younger people, they don't completely stop transmission,
| but it's very likely that they slow it down (preventing some
| infections, lessening the severity of others, etc).
| nomad225 wrote:
| Vaccinated folk -- while still being infectious -- have
| milder forms of the disease. For the unvaccinated Omicron is
| not mild relative to the OG strain.
| op00to wrote:
| You are spreading health misinformation. Please stop it.
| miles wrote:
| >> In any highly vaccinated area COVID-19 cases are sharply
| rising.
|
| > You are spreading health misinformation. Please stop it.
|
| Chile sees Covid surge despite vaccination success
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56731801
|
| World's Most Vaccinated Nation Is Spooked by Covid Spike
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/business/economy/covid-
| se...
|
| Vermont sees the biggest surge in COVID cases despite
| having the country's highest vaccination rate
| https://fortune.com/2021/08/12/vermont-covid-cases-
| vaccinati...
|
| Iceland has been a vaccination success. Why is it seeing a
| coronavirus surge?
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-covid-
| su...
|
| 99.7% of Waterford adults fully vaccinated against Covid-19
| https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40704104.html
|
| Waterford Now Has Highest Incidence of Covid in Ireland
| https://waterford-news.ie/2021/10/11/waterford-now-has-
| highe...
|
| Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of
| vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the
| United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10
| 654-021-00808-7
|
| 76% of September Covid-19 deaths are vax breakthroughs
| https://vermontdailychronicle.com/2021/09/30/76-of-
| september...
|
| Covid cases hit records in South Korea and Singapore
| despite widespread vaccinations.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/covid-cases-hit-
| rec...
|
| Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates
| https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-
| pande...
|
| Most vaccinated place on Earth told to cancel holiday plans
| amid 'exponential' rise in Covid cases
| https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/most-
| vaccin...
|
| Portugal returns to COVID restrictions despite high jab
| rate https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-
| lifestyle-he...
|
| COVID Cases Are Surging in the Five Most Vaccinated States
| https://www.newsweek.com/covid-cases-are-surging-five-
| most-v...
|
| Coronavirus outbreak sidelines ship whose crew is fully
| immunized, Navy says
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
| security/2021/12/24/...
|
| Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid-19
| despite strict measures
| https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium-all-
| news/199687/belgia...
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Cant you print the qr code and have it on paper. Your batter
| going flat wont matter. You can have multiple copies one in any
| jacket/car/bag you have.
|
| Also, where in Europe are cops stopping you for vaccination on
| the street?
| kaybe wrote:
| You can. I do and I know multiple people who have. You can
| also get it printed on a piece of plastic in many of the
| quicktest locations.
| nmlaT wrote:
| Austria has a "strong leader" again. Papers please:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/austria-covid-lockdown-
| polic...
|
| It also has a higher cumulative death rate than Sweden, so
| all of this is virus-theater and authoritarianism.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| yepp it's the former minister of interior and he has a
| strong authoritarian streak.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Also, where in Europe are cops stopping you for vaccination
| on the street?
|
| have seen it in Germany Austria and France. The worst is when
| you're also guilty of being a brown person, when you look
| poor, or belong to a specific group like the Roma.
| lordnacho wrote:
| How mandatory is mandatory though? Is it just gating everything
| with a vaccine passport, or strapping down people who don't
| want the vaccination and injecting them?
|
| The real issue is once you decide to force people to do this,
| what else would you do? The slippery slope is a common argument
| that you'll need to defend against.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > How mandatory is mandatory though?
|
| doctors exemption offers a way out. otherwise a hefty fine
| (unable to pay means prison time like it is done in Austria)
| djbebs wrote:
| You need to relax.
|
| There is no legitimate reason to force people to undergo any
| medical procedure.
| op00to wrote:
| Legitimate reason number 1: based on your low effort reply,
| you're unable to understand how not to pass on a highly
| communicable disease that causes misery, disruption, and
| death.
|
| Don't post that anymore.
| kbelder wrote:
| How rude you are.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I am very relaxed. We had mandatory vaccination against
| smallpox and measles, and it worked well. There weren't even
| any discussions. The doctor came to school, we formed a queue
| and each got their jab. Nobody whined or wrote home about it.
| And hopefully we'll do it again very soon whether anyone
| whines or not.
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| If you're afraid of the virus, get vaccinated yourself. That's
| literally the most you can do.
|
| If you're _still_ afraid of the virus, you should know that
| vaccinating people (even forcefully) won 't stop transmission.
| The virus is endemic. The _only_ thing that can change between
| now and "back to normal" future is, your mind.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I'm not afraid. I am triple-vaxxed not for myself but out of
| solidarity for those around me. I am simply at the end of my
| patience with people going to protests clogging my city and
| creating politicians using the greenpass and constant checks
| and testing to create a divide.
|
| mandatory vaccination will get rid of surveillance solutions
| like the Greenpass while also protecting everyone. there can
| still be an exemption if a physician approves that a person
| can not be vaccinated for some strange reason.
|
| that's the only way to go back to normal, the rest is silly
| greenpass rules or noisy discussions about "shall we pay un-
| vaccinated people less?", etc ...
| mizzack wrote:
| > mandatory vaccination will get rid of surveillance
| solutions like the Greenpass while also protecting
| everyone.
|
| It is unbelievably naive to think that after investing in
| any surveillance/control infrastructure that governments
| will relinquish that power willingly.
| roenxi wrote:
| Huh? You're leaving out some massive yet important parts of
| your argument here. It is a complete non-sequitur to go
| from you, personally, being perfectly safe and therefore
| mandatory vaccination is necessary to protect everyone.
|
| Fact is that mandatory vaccination doesn't seem to do much
| to change the risk to society at large. Coronavirus is
| tearing through fully-vaccinated Australia at a rate which
| suggests vaccines do literally nothing to stop the spread.
| Since the vaccines don't protect bystanders, all the
| surveillance and mandating of medical treatments should be
| scrapped immediately.
|
| We are in territory where if someone isn't vaccinated, they
| are bearing all the risk personally and that is acceptable.
| pfg wrote:
| There are plenty of countries where the vaccination rate
| is too low to effectively prevent the healthcare system
| from being overrun. In Austria, we were in another
| lockdown due to this just a month ago, with a vaccination
| rate of about 70% at the time (IIRC). This is in a
| country with a relatively high number of unoccupied ICU
| beds, and we still peaked at a level just short of where
| doctors would have to triage patients (and well where the
| quality of care could be kept at its usual level due to
| i.e. fewer nurses and doctors per patient.)
|
| So no, the unvaccinated aren't solely at risk personally,
| they could also prevent vaccinated people from getting
| treated at the standard of care that they would normally
| expect. I'm not okay with that, so mandatory vaccination
| with fines for non-compliance seems like the lesser evil
| to me.
| kbelder wrote:
| I mostly agree. I think it is certain that vaccinations
| slow the spread somewhat; probable that they're stopping
| medical services from becoming overwhelmed; and almost
| certain that they will not eliminate covid from
| circulating.
|
| You'll probably catch covid, whether vaccinated or not.
| Your elderly relatives will probably catch covid, whether
| you and they are vaccinated or not.
|
| They'll probably catch it even if everyone on the planet
| become vaccinated tomorrow.
|
| Vaccination is simply one tool to moderate the effect.
| It's wonderful that we have them, but having 20% of the
| population stay unvaccinated is not going to drastically
| affect the spread of the disease.
| xaedes wrote:
| > mandatory vaccination will get rid of surveillance
| solutions like the Greenpass while also protecting
| everyone.
|
| Would you not still need a vax-proof when vaccination is
| mandatory? How does it differ then to the greenpass? It
| would then be mandatory to be able to produce that proof.
| Failing to do so may result in fines or land you in jail.
|
| How does that help with the greenpass situation you
| described?
|
| > And what is more annoying is that the "greenpass" is
| actually (at least where I live in Europe) a way that
| allows cops to stop, frisk and harass anyone. It enables
| the busybodies to play "I aM an auThOrItY and will use my
| imaginary authority to exercise power over you ..."
|
| > The "greenpass" assumes I am always carrying my phone. It
| gives me anxiety about my battery going flat.
|
| Making it mandatory seems to only make this worse.
| unabirra wrote:
| Got it, so you want to get people submitted into a
| procedure they don't want, while at the same time claiming
| you are "triple-vaxxed not for myself but out of solidarity
| for those around me". Why pretend you care about anyone?
| just say, hey I want everyone to do this so I feel safer.
| gorbachev wrote:
| How lucky you are not having to worry about co-morbidity.
|
| I'm sick and tired of people generalizing their own
| conditions to the entire population. You are not like
| everyone else. Stop telling other people they don't need to
| worry.
| rini17 wrote:
| The pandemic is constantly reminding us how our institutions
| weeded out all agency and were running on inertia. Still are
| trying to, in fact.
| bmj wrote:
| The U.S. government allocated $190 billion dollars to schools
| for pandemic response[0][1]. Some school districts updated
| their athletic facilities.
|
| There is no single solution to the current problem. Remote
| learning is a heavy burden on families with two working parents
| or single parent families that are not afforded the ability to
| work remotely (and even remote work is challenging -- my
| teammate can really only work from 8pm-2am without distraction
| because his two young kids are home and his wife has to go to
| the office). Yet, because of the current surge, many, many
| teachers are sick. Administrators are put into awful positions
| because nothing is going to work at the moment.
|
| [0] https://theweek.com/us/1008705/how-america-could-have-
| kept-s...
|
| [1] NB: I don't agree whole cloth with the opinions in the
| article, but it does a nice job outlining that the Federal
| government handed out large sums of money to local school
| districts with almost no oversight for how that money was
| spent.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| Before the pandemic I had this uncomfortable sense that the
| people running the place were asleep at the wheel, and everyone
| was tacitly expecting someone else to do the actual hard
| work/thinking so they could go back to their phones/Netflix in
| peace.
|
| Now I've had to acknowledge that for a lot of institutions this
| more or less is the case.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I wonder if decades of malinvestment in those institutions
| and routing our most educated people to editing spreadsheets
| with dollar signs on them or selling ads ( _Now With Code!_ )
| has had negative consequences for our society.
| sangnoir wrote:
| When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave
| the industry _" Oh, that's just the free hand of the
| market."_ When a multilateral, societal disaster strikes
| and schools struggle with contradicting demands: _" What an
| inept bunch we have running these schools"_
|
| Very few are being honest on why the kids have to be in
| school (so it doesn't disrupt parents' labor), so it's
| framed as "think of the children" when TFA shows that
| little education happens at school when teachers are sick.
| Zoom class is terrible, but its better than the shitshow
| described in the fine article. Worse, if students get into
| dangerous situations while at school/playing hooky because
| there isn't adequate adult supervision, the same people
| will have the gall to blame the schools.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| The land of the free, home of the brave. Never expected this land
| would have a lot of problems. I thought only 3rd world countries
| have a lot of problems.
| mlindner wrote:
| Seems to me that the school is unnecessarily scaring kids more
| than doing anything else. These teens have almost nothing to fear
| from covid. Most of the rest of the country (outside major
| cities) almost ignores covid exists. Good article on the subject:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/where-i-li...
| tomp wrote:
| This exemplifies the worst part of this pandemic - the _mind
| virus_.
|
| A lot of people in the society are LARPing (pretending) that the
| virus is serious - staying home, testing constantly, "close
| contact notifications", "running away from a positive student" -
| yet at the same time, acting as if it's obviously not a dangerous
| virus - if it were, _they 'd all be staying away from each
| other_.
|
| Basically new "security theatre" like after 9/11.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| It's not a mind virus which is causing some places to have peak
| hospitalizations of the pandemic.
| cabalamat wrote:
| Heathcare theatre.
| op00to wrote:
| This makes no sense. How is "staying home" not staying away
| "from each other"?
| lozenge wrote:
| I think they're saying that people have abandoned the number
| one effective policy (besides vaccines) - avoiding social
| visits and working from home - and trying to make up the
| difference with contact tracing, "being careful", masks,
| ventilation, lateral flow tests etc.
|
| The difficulty is, nobody wants to Zoom with me any more, so
| I have to meet them in person or not at all. When it was
| illegal to meet, people were happy to Zoom 90% of the time,
| but now they are not.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It's not even that the virus is not necessarily serious: all of
| these precautions are basically useless.
|
| Many people are spreading covid but are completely
| asymptomatic, and tests are limited so they aren't getting
| tested. Omicron is also extremely contagious, spreading despite
| masks and other sanitation protocols.
|
| It's too late and too contagious: if you're not 100% isolating
| in your home you _will_ get Omicron. Masking / testing /
| precautions like these only give false security, and _maybe_
| slow the spread a bit. But the virus is still spreading
| ridiculously fast. Look at Quebec - lockdown and cases are
| still increasing.
|
| Idk, I don't see the point in these guidelines. Maybe it will
| reduce viral load? A key point governments can do is hire more
| nurses and substantially increase nurse pay, that would reduce
| the strain on hospitals and ultimately increase capacity and
| treatment outcomes. But governments don't seem to be doing
| this. It seems like people are doing things without really
| understanding the justification, or doing them just for
| publicity.
| blondin wrote:
| well, umm, did the lockdown in Quebec happened before or
| after the cases started increasing?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| After. And i do think it will slow the spread. But cases
| will increase as long as people go to essential jobs and
| use essential services.
|
| Omicron is one of the most contagious viruses known to man.
| It managed to spread everywhere despite countries initially
| closing their borders to SA, to the point where most people
| know relatives who are positive ~1 month in, whereas the
| original strain took much longer even in regions with few
| precautions. It has spread to a base in Antarctic despite
| extremely strict containment protocols. The only country I
| know of which has still managed to quarantine the virus is
| China, and even they are having some issues in the Xi'An
| province.
| daenz wrote:
| I love going into a restaurant, wearing my mask while the
| host walks me to my seat, surrounded by unmasked people
| talking loudly, then sitting down and removing my mask. And
| if I don't do this, I'm not allowed to enter the
| establishment. It's all big joke.
| II2II wrote:
| The virus is dangerous, albeit not in the way that most people
| think.
|
| Our institutions, like health care and education, have been
| running so close to the edge for so long that the added
| pressure is pushing them over the edge. Before the pandemic,
| teachers would show up to work sick since they knew there may
| not be a substitute to take their place (and certainly not a
| substitute who would ensure continuity in teaching). Before the
| pandemic, nurses would work marathon shifts since there was a
| staffing shortage even before taking sick days into
| consideration.
|
| Now we are in a situation where we have to slow the spread of
| the virus to protect our institutions. I cannot speak to
| whether the measures are genuinely effective or a manifestation
| of security theatre, since that is not my domain. What I can
| say is it is putting more pressure on the limited amount of
| staff available. This is more than missing work because of a
| close contact. It is because of people missing work because
| they are genuinely sick or people being unable to keep up with
| the added responsibilities (such as teaching when they are
| supposed to be prepping).
|
| Unfortunately, we cannot solve the resource shortage overnight.
| Even if we could magically train the people to fill the role
| overnight, we don't have the infrastructure to support them. So
| now we are paying the price.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fair analysis. But why is this (truth) so far from the
| narrative? At some point there needs to be accountablity. I
| understand that might not be right now. But the list of names
| and institutions should start sooner rather than later.
| roenxi wrote:
| And a supplementary question: Is this what the people
| making the decisions actually think, or is this being
| projected on them by II2II?
| II2II wrote:
| The narrative has been changing continually during the
| pandemic, which is to be expected since we've gone from not
| understanding what it is and realizing that we were
| completely unprepared, to lulls where we thought we were
| getting over it, to spikes where we were largely willing to
| use what we learned earlier on, to the current spike where
| people are figuring out that this may be with us for the
| long run.
|
| As for holding people accountable, where would we even
| begin? I saw politicians closing beds and physically
| demolishing hospitals 30 years ago. Politicians of varying
| stripes did little to rebuild the system after that. While
| there was a push to hire more people at the start of the
| pandemic (both in health care and education), the interest
| seems to have dwindled off since no one wants to deal with
| the long term costs. Even if they were willing to live with
| the costs, few sensible people are willing to take on those
| roles because the involve continual sacrifice. There is
| also no guarantee that months or years of training will be
| rewarded with a career since the demand is likely to be
| short-term. There are so many people who can be blamed, so
| many people who should be blamed, but it won't address the
| problem since the decisions were either made in the distant
| past or are a consequence of inaction rather than of
| action.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Our institutions, like health care and education, have
| been running so close to the edge_
|
| Do you have some hard numbers about this? Here in Buenos
| Aires we had a big wave in July 2021, and we had a daily
| report of the ICU occupation rate and at the peak it was like
| 95%. We delayed some medical procedures to keep the number
| under 100% and there was a huge discussion about increasing
| the lockdown. Lucky, we keep the number under 100%. Now we
| have a new big omicron wave, but the ICU occupation rate is
| still low, finger crossed.
|
| > _Before the pandemic, nurses would work marathon shifts_
|
| We have the same problem here. I don't understand how it's
| consider to be sane.
| bonzini wrote:
| If the peak was 95%, it's quite likely that at least in
| some places some people were triaged out of the ICU.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Has technology for teaching remotely improved this pandemic?
| Anyone heard of anything?
|
| It has been two years and the high school teachers I talk to say
| it has not at all.
| walkhour wrote:
| Around half a million cases of child abuse are reported in USA
| [0]. It hard/impossible to find data post 2019 (if you have it,
| please share), but there are estimates that the number of
| reported cases lowered by between 20 to 40%, mainly due to kids
| not going to school and teachers not being able to report it
| [1][2]. Less than a 1000 kids ages of 5-18 have died of Covid
| [3].
|
| Tentatively tens/hundreds of thousands of kids are being silently
| abused in their homes, and they have been prevented to go to
| school, where teachers can find out. I can't find a way to
| justify the policy of keeping children at home, which is
| effectively a transfer of health from kids to adults after we
| have vaccines, it's simply immoral.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/639375/number-of-
| child-a... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/has-
| child-abuse-s... [2] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/child-
| abuse-cases-got-more... [3]
| https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...
| mrkramer wrote:
| I think the main question is how much are we willing to sacrifice
| of our lifestyle? People die every day of various reasons
| alcohol, drugs, strokes, car accidents etc. COVID is imminent
| danger to the people with underlying conditions and they should
| practice maximum precautions(distance, masks etc. plus Vitamin D
| intake). Other people should carry on living. COVID is coming to
| endemic soon.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| What's Study Hall?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Traditionally, a "class" where you study, do homework, etc.,
| but which in practice is usually a lot of so nothing and
| goofing off. I think it's a way to get funding for educational
| minutes without actually having to have anything taught for a
| period.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| OK thanks. Does it (despite the name) take place in a
| conventional class room? Just wanted to check that the
| implications wasn't that it was particularly bad for covid
| transmission, like a big crowded gymnasium or something.
| gpm wrote:
| > Does it (despite the name) take place in a conventional
| class room
|
| I think usually yes, otherwise you call it something like a
| "spare" (i.e. a period where you don't have a class and
| aren't monitored).
|
| I suppose "hall" probably traditionally refers to something
| like a "great hall" or "meeting hall" not a "hallway", i.e.
| a relatively large room.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| From the description it seems like a good problem to solve is
| "how do we get students the support they needed in 2020 while not
| creating a dangerous situation?"
|
| they should treat homerooms as the place students stay all day to
| attend classes semi-remotely. This allows teachers to work while
| quarantining and students to keep learning if at home
| temporarily. An issue with covid is it spreads so fast but
| symptoms may be nothing so I bet most students and teachers could
| continue at home while isolated and prevent as much disruption
| (its obviously still not ideal).
|
| at the same time it gives students a place to go. it gives them
| technical and other support a school provides students.
| fourseventy wrote:
| COVID is not dangerous to students. Look up the number of
| deaths of people under the age of 18 due to COVID. It's
| basically nothing.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| To put a bunch of students in a crowded auditorium and fears
| of a spreading virus as the student described... seems
| unnecessarily dangerous. Just purely from a crowd control
| perspective.
|
| To allow students to spread the virus and infect staff
| without intervention is negligent.
|
| This isn't even accounting for unknown long term effects and
| recent studies suggesting kids with covid are more likely to
| be type 1/2 diabetic.
|
| So something has to be done and what is being done is
| suboptimal. Students need support. They are, as you mention,
| unlikely to die but still not possible to allow known spread.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Even if it is not dangerous to them, it gives really fertile
| grounds for spread to student's families, friends, etc who
| may be in the vulnerable group.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Even if is not dangerous to them, it could be tomorrow. We
| are just giving the virus more and more time to kill us and
| golden opportunities to mutate again, maybe the next time
| for a sudden worse turn. And we call ourselves a smart
| species...
|
| The non vaccinated people are a life saver from the point
| of view of the organism and this people are purposely
| destroying the economy for everybody.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Here's my somewhat selfish take on this:
|
| I will absolutely hate interacting with these COVID kids once
| they start entering the workforce. The US already has a massive
| maturity and tribalism problem, and I only see the lack of school
| and any sort of discipline and structure here reinforce it
| several-fold. Thankfully, so far I haven't had to manage anyone
| just out of school.
|
| Add missing 2 years of education (essentially) on top of this and
| you get a recipe for disaster. I doubt most parents are
| compensating for these atrocious school conditions in any way.
|
| The only slight positive I can think of that will come of this,
| is that it may normalize staying home when you are sick and not
| coming to work. The current generation cares too little about
| spreading disease at work.
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