Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#611

Post by gscott » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #327

seibelj wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…

> I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters The left doesn't hate charters, it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable. That's a subset of charters plus all vouchers. Actual public charters, by which public schools are granted some variance of generally applicable rules to trial new methods are not a problem to the left; the hijacking of that process to c…

I have had 3 kids in charter schools in San Diego for a total of 5 charter schools. The charter schools were all really good. Bad ones should close but the passion and excitement shown by charter school teachers are above and beyond the State run school teachers that my kids have also attended.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by marcell » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

shreyansj wrote: post #571

marcell wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

But if everyone had stayed locked in for 6 weeks and if that had prevented 50000 deaths, how is that not worth it?

I'm not sure if it's worth it or not, but after you end the lockdown, you have the same situation you did at the start of the lockdown.

I think there's a huge misconception in many media sources that lockdown will somehow eliminate the virus. It can change the onset pattern of the virus, but that's it.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by Avicebron » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

lubujackson wrote: post #609

usaar333 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a human aspect, but to be blunt, it's not a significant consideration as long as you aren't opening schools in an area with high community transfer (e.g. Houston today). IF you additionally filter out high risk-group teaches (known pre-existing health conditions, older than 65, etc.) excess death risk is quite low. (e.g. in the Bay Area, dying in a car crash remains far more likely (~10x) if you meet the criteri…

At least 30 teachers have died of COVID in NYC alone. That seems significant for a viral outbreak that is nowhere near containment or exhaustion, and if I was a teacher over 40 I would have serious reservations knowing it is extremely likely I will almost certainly catch the virus eventually. But you can say the same for tons of occupations - flight attendants, cashiers, barbers. People will either be ignorant/dismis…

Or there is the other option that we as a country acknowledge that being compassionate and finding solutions to feed these people is an all around better way to take care of our citizens.

Why is the solution: Generate corporate profits or die. Or expose yourself to needless risk or die? Seems...sociopathic?

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by thatguy0900 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

shreyansj wrote: post #571

marcell wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

But if everyone had stayed locked in for 6 weeks and if that had prevented 50000 deaths, how is that not worth it?

How could that possibly have happened? Food needs to be planted, harvested(in many situations primarily by migratory workers from other countries) and delivered, power needs to be kept up, necessary medical supplies needs manufactoring, water needs to be cleaned and delivered. There's no scenario where the world gets to collectively take a break

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#615

Post by strgcmc » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #593

marcell wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

Complete eradication is not what Europe nor China are doing and have better results.

This. And maybe we shouldn't trust China's reported data, but Europe is almost doing miraculously well if you compare to the USA. Not going for eradication, but containment.

With containment, everything else is possible (healthcare system not overloaded, economy can be opened up, schools can reopen, etc.).

The US has capitulated completely, and even containment isn't really on the table nationally; on a state-by-state basis, some states may achieve a level of containment, but others are simply not even trying (or like Georgia, actively banning containment measures like local mask enforcement orders).

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #607

monkeyfacebag wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait, what is the CDC then? I am not trying to argue with you. I haven't heard the take that the US government doesn't have a public health role and am looking to learn.

So there is theory and practice. In theory, public health is a purely state issue. In practice, it’s a mostly state issue. But there is a real legal limit here: the federal government has no general police power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_power_(United_States_co... > In United States constitutional law, police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory…

> In theory, public health is a purely state issue

No, it's not. The federal government is, in theory, fully empowered to use any of it's enumerated powers for any purpose not expressly prohibited, which public health is not, and has quite emphatically adopted policy around exercising its power for that purpose, starting at least as far back as the establishment of the marine hospitals in 1798, later, in many steps, reorganized into the modern US Public Health Service.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by isthispermanent » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

sfteus wrote: post #570

mtgp1000 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb. No no no no no. It's high time we stop treating everything as black and white in this country. It's not just callously disregarding the dead - it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus…

> if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations Not true, we're squarely between several 2nd and 3rd world countries: https://www.statista.com/chart/21176/covid-19-infection-dens... > until the recent protests (both left and right) began Not true, current research does not link any outbreaks to protests (BLM protests at least), mostly due to the fact that protesters we…

1. All sorts of problems with that Statista chart. Just for starters it doesn't take into account number of tests being performed per 1m/pp.

2. Would it be astronomical? Total speculation. That's just a hysterical statement that doesn't point to a problem or a solution.

There is some anecdotal evidence that a small fraction of those that develop symptoms but do not become fatal can have lasting effects from the virus. There is no evidence that this is widespread. However, it's a favorite place for people to point to when they want to move the goal posts when deaths aren't going up.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by marcell » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #593

marcell wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

Complete eradication is not what Europe nor China are doing and have better results.

It's not really clear they are having better results. I don't know what the numbers are out of China, but certainly in Europe they had really big outbreaks in Italy, France, the UK, Spain, and other places as well. Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States.

I think most media outlets are over-emphasizing the impact of government interventions, and under-emphasizing the impact of other factors that affect the severity of the virus. These could be factors like the health of the population--do they have a lot of smokers? obesity?, the age of the population, or other factors like the use of public transit.

It's appealing to assume that the most important factor in deciding outcomes is government policy. This is reassuring because we (society) can control government policy. But I haven't seen any good data to suggest that government policy is the most impactful factor compared to other hypotheses.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by mynameisvlad » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #507

morelisp wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will third this. Please, just look. You'll need to go through decades of multi-level marketing scams, private military contracting, torturous approach to treating autism and other behavioral therapies, and multi-generational Charismatic Christian hate groups before you can even dig into her atrocious educational policies.

Lots of people who believe divorce should be illegal out downvoting tonight!

This is a horribly disingenuous statement that shows you're not approaching in good faith.

Someone not agreeing with the original comment doesn't mean they suddenly agree with everything DeVos does, and just because someone linked to DeVos's Wikipedia article doesn't mean people shouldn't be critical of the rest of the comment (which is what the child you're replying to suggests).

Also, don't comment on voting. It's against the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Post by peterwoerner » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

mikeg8 wrote: post #360

politelemon wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? It pains me to admit that this didn't even occur to me as part of the topic of teachers being sent back. The human aspects of students-teacher relationships. I feel I've been desensitized to this after exposing myself to a constant stream of news, and now I'm thinking further about what other aspects lie behind other headlines. Thank you f…

I agree - this never really occurred to me either. My girlfriend's mother is a preschool teacher who just had to go back to in-person sessions and she believes some of these kids will have trauma's from being young and terrified. One little girl is afraid to touch anything and constantly asks if objects have been cleaned/safe to touch? it's heartbreaking to her.

Sounds like a bunch of children just got trained to have obsessive compulsive disorder. My wife has it and my life was filled with contamination fears before COVID-19.