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

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

#921

Post by mistermann »

rorykoehler wrote: post #437
mistermann wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who... Were all of these issues nonexistent under prior administrations? Or, as for turning it around, are you asserting that Clinton both could have and would have done so? If so, how do you know this?

Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name. I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

> Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name.

This is subjective and necessarily highly speculative.

> I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

Predicting or thinking (about) that is perfectly fine and reasonable. Mistaking subsequent predictions for conclusive facts is what is actually delusional. There are many examples of such delusional behavior on HN every day: mind reading, future predicting (and stating the results as facts), you name it. I think it is fairly true to say that conspiracy theorists (for example) and "smart" people differ more in degree than in kind, although we do not have the means (or ambition, or epistemic skills) to determine the degree to which this is true.

Most of the time, what we consider to be true, is actually unknown.

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

#922

Post by thu2111 »

nswest23 wrote: post #919
thu2111 wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the case. This is clear because lots of countries are having problems with teaching unions refusing to go back to work, but only one country has Trump. There's a lot of evidence teachers aren't actually afraid, but rather, are in hock to hyper-aggressive unions. They have been paid to not work. They can keep being paid to not work. Why would they work? To go back to the US context, there's now a teaching uni…

I followed this link which contained the blurb about “defunding the police...” to the next link and read the summary of the actual research paper from the teachers union. Nowhere in that summary does it mention any demands wrt defunding the police or Medicare for all.

Your comment prompted me to read the actual "research paper", vs the press article.

The article is correct. The paper is filled with hyper-leftist demands. You read the summary, not the actual paper.

Here are some quotes:

[we demand] "Explicit plans to carry out health and safety protocols without resorting to punitive policing and punishment"

"No standardized testing infringing on instructional time"

In the section about federal funding:

"Medicare for All: Coronavirus shows definitively why we need Medicare For All."

"Wealth Tax: A new tax on unrealized capital gains to California billionaires only, 1% a year until capital gains taxes are met. This would generate an estimated $10 billion a year initially"

"Defund Police: Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue.65 We must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing, to education and other essential needs such as housing and public health"

It says:

"Because of the forces of structural racism, Blacks, Latinx, and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles County are dying of COVID-19 at twice the rate of white residents"

"Meanwhile, U.S. billionaire wealth has surged by more than $584 billion. Over 150 of those billionaires live in California. There is money to safely restart schools, if federal, state, and local governments are willing to finally prioritize pupils over plutocrats."

"No matter the scenario in August, it’s clear that it will not be a “normal” school year. But when “normal” means deep race and class fissures that result in increased infection and death rates in Black, Brown, and high-poverty communities; when “normal” means increasing police budgets even as schools, libraries, and public health face catastrophic cuts; when “normal” means corporations receiving trillions in bailout funds as federal commitments to support special education and high-poverty students remain unfulfilled; when “normal” means working families lining up for miles for food banks while US billionaires increased their wealth by over $584 billion — it is clear that going back to normal is not an option. This crisis presents an opportunity to create a new normal."

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

#923

Post by dllthomas »

pdonis wrote: post #357
dllthomas wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? What they were describing applies to every federally elected position, in different amounts. Whether it's a bug or a feature (as a whole or for each position) is very much up for discussion, but it's orthogonal.

> If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? It does. I didn't mean to imply that what I said didn't also apply to the Electoral College. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

In that case, I don't think anything really remains of your original comment in this thread? Your follow-ups have blurred the line between factual questions and normative, but in both cases the comment you initially replied to applies at least as much to things other than the presidency.

(I'll note that this doesn't mean there weren't interesting points worth discussing that you've been trying to get at, just that you've at least wound up unclear in how you've been expressing them.)

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

#924

Post by DennisP »

orf wrote: post #906
DennisP wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vietnam. Long border with China, two million people cross every year, population of 95 million, zero covid deaths because they got serious early and everyone more masks.

There is absolutely no chance that they had 0 covid related deaths anywhere in the country of 95 million. None. Not to say that they didn’t act well and where prepared though.

Perhaps not, but Western reporters have confirmed that they're not noticeable problems at all.

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

#925

Post by dang »

xnyan wrote: post #162

Thinking about having a kid. There's no way I would ever have a kid in my current US state. Not saying anyone has done it well vs rest of the world, but there are clearly states (and counties/cities) that have done a much better job at protecting human life than others. As someone who has lived in the US South for most of my childhood and adult life, I truly don't think it's responsible to have children here if you h…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874043.

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

#926

Post by marcell »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #905
marcell wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing may be a controlled burn approach under a different name. After a certain point, the virus infects the entire susceptible population, and then it stops because everyone susceptible has died or obtained immunity. Suppose 30% of the population is susceptible to covid. If lockdown policy slows the spread of the virus to 1% of the population per month, it would take 30 months before the pandemic pa…

I'm sorry but you making one incorrect assumption after another. No, it would not be logical to let the virus go. It would kill some people and causes other health effects. We don't want a few million deaths. Plus now there is clear evidence that some people don't have antibodies after they get it, a few months later, and this is not completely unknown in other diseases. Some people have some protection though. Plus…

I think some of what you are saying is true, but you may be lacking some balance in your sources of information. For example you say:

> It would kill some people and causes other health effects. We don't want a few million deaths.

A few million deaths would be in the 2-3 million range. This doesn’t seem realistic based on the data we have so far. About 140,000 people in the United States have died from the virus after about 5 months. It would require a 20x increase to have 3 million people to die from it. That seems like a really big reach.

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

#927

Post by Izkata »

jedberg wrote: post #631
marcell wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imp…

> Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States. Except that they are all now on downward trajectories while being more open (as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory). Travel is allowed in Europe. Schools are open. Bars are open. And they are still on a downward trajectory.

> as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory

You have the wrong scale in mind. The US is closer to the EU than a single country here - individual states have totally different trajectories. For example, Illinois, where I am, looks like those European countries that were hit hard early and is also opening up.

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

#928

Post by nickysielicki »

nickysielicki wrote: post #82
leetrout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong statement: dumb kids are better than dead kids.

There are 74 million children CDC says that 1.7% of COVID cases belong to children. [2] Among children, CDC says 1.8% of cases required hospitalization. [2] >>> 74000000*0.017*0.018 A dumb kid is better than a dead kid, I agree. But are 74M dumber kids worth less than 25000 ICU visits in the entire country? [1]: https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/number-of-children [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm69…

I just woke up when I wrote this. The math makes no sense. Please disregard this stupid comment.

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

#929

Post by thephyber »

mistermann wrote: post #851
thephyber wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "dubious" claim (I was imprecise and meant to credit it to the president's quote, not the "without replenishing it") was basically affirmed by your Politifact link. More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate. [1] https://www.usatoday.c…

> More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate. Obama behaved no differently.

There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2.

The presidents could not differ more in:

  - lead time between inauguration and first epidemic reaching the USA (6 weeks versus 3 years)
  - seriousness with which the presidential transition team took pandemic response
  - the authority given to pandemic response (Obama made NSC responsible while Trump made HHS responsible)
  - speed and intensity of initial response once the outbreak was identified
  - empowerment medical professionals
  - use of Defense Production Act
  - treatment of WHO, CDC, and FDA as institutions

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

#930

Post by koop123 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #53
koop123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents are both nurses and they went to work and they were fine.

I've never died of cancer, therefore it doesn't exist.

I actually know someone that died from cancer. I don't know anyone that died from covid-19. I'm just talking from personal experience, and am not regurgitating statistics you hear from the news.
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