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Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

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Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#61
post #46

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

Plus we know nothing about the long term health consequences. Kids may not be dying at a high rate but they may suffer long term heart, lung, or organ damage. It feels like everyone is just assuming that if it isn’t death then it is fine. Just because you survive something doesn’t make you stronger.

> Plus we know nothing about the long term health consequences.

I'm not anti-vax, but anti-vaxers use this same tactic; they use ambiguity to breed fear against vaccines.

I get that some unknowns are dangerous, but there has to be a limit, right? We can't be afraid of everything we don't know.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#62
post #14

Worrying about a potentially deadly illness that you can do little about, vs worrying about losing your source of income and having to.. look for another job. I'm definitely more worried about infection, too.

You can shield your kids from your financial problems much of the time. You can't shield them from a communicable disease.

you also have far more influence on your financial problems then a disease.

Financial problems are, aslong as the basic needs are met (food, water, housing etc) purely a societal problem.

A disease with a deadly track record and no cure is far worse and is something you or anybody else in society has little to no control over.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#63

I wish there was more conversation happening about other countries who have already successfully put kids back at school. That might give confidence to people in North America who feel uncertain about it.

Those countries have been more successful overall in limiting the spread of covid. In the US it's pretty much out of control in many areas. You can send kids back to school if community spread is limited and you can do effective contact tracing - but neither of those things is true in the US.

Also, a lot of countries have far more centralized authority to figure things out.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#64
post #39

Makes sense in the US. The Trump administration has done an abhorrent job handling the virus and isn't making the slightest effort to change course.

s/abhorrent/malicious/

I subscribe to Hanlon's Razor, but at this point we're well past any benefit of the doubt.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#65

I've personally heard from several tens of parents that they are primarily worried about the economic and social affects of all these so-called safety measures governments and communities are taking. Just because it's easy to measure cases and deaths and hard to measure lost human connection, depression, children being left in environments of neglect, delayed/paused innovation and economic growth, etc. doesn't mean t…

It's a sad affair. The measures wouldn't have to be so severe if there wasn't so much noise about it. A bit of cool headed thought, compliance, and leaders we could trust might have saved our grandparents while ensuring a pretty good upbringing for our children.

Alas, that's not the world we live in. We don't trust anything, the media is busy being sensational, big money only cares about making more money in way possible, our leaders continuely lie to us and foster partisanship and miscommunication.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#66

I've personally heard from several tens of parents that they are primarily worried about the economic and social affects of all these so-called safety measures governments and communities are taking. Just because it's easy to measure cases and deaths and hard to measure lost human connection, depression, children being left in environments of neglect, delayed/paused innovation and economic growth, etc. doesn't mean t…

The fear is not death.

How about the fact that long term effects are unknown. Or what sort of ongoing medical issues will people have for the rest of their lives?

There is people who believe that once you're done with this virus, it is gone from your system and you're back to normal. Certainly that is the case for many, but there are still many more that will continue to suffer from what they are calling now 'long haulers'.

Spend some time in a large (91k people and growing) Survivors group [0] to get a feeling of what people are facing.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#67
post #37

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

It’s impossible to force a parent into the choice between working a life-threatening job interacting with the public or eviction so long as they have a child at home. The parent will not abandon the child home alone to go to work, no matter how big the stick. School being effectively state subsidized working hours daycare, it must resume before low wage workers can once again be coerced back into risking their lives…

It’s impossible to force a parent into the choice between working a life-threatening job interacting with the public or eviction

It's a failing of the government that so many Americans have to face this choice.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#68
post #46

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

Plus we know nothing about the long term health consequences. Kids may not be dying at a high rate but they may suffer long term heart, lung, or organ damage. It feels like everyone is just assuming that if it isn’t death then it is fine. Just because you survive something doesn’t make you stronger.

Or people are assuming that the long term effects of COVID on children are similar to that of the flu on children, given similar death rates. (Which seems plausible, if you count '10x higher' as 'similar'. Overall, the flu is about 1/30th the IFR of COVID-19, but apparently most of the difference is at older ages)

EDIT: And, in fact, the CDC says that the Flu is more dangerous to healthy children than COVID-19: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm and search for 'children'. Though the CDC may not be a trusted source for many...

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#69

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different species when it comes to covid.

Those people think "opening the economy" is worth more than human (kid or otherwise) lives. They're either politicians trying to convince an electorate that they didn't fail miserably at their job, or are regular Joes falling victim to disingenuous cable news networks.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#70
post #67
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s impossible to force a parent into the choice between working a life-threatening job interacting with the public or eviction so long as they have a child at home. The parent will not abandon the child home alone to go to work, no matter how big the stick. School being effectively state subsidized working hours daycare, it must resume before low wage workers can once again be coerced back into risking their lives…

It’s impossible to force a parent into the choice between working a life-threatening job interacting with the public or eviction It's a failing of the government that so many Americans have to face this choice.

How is this a failing? The system is performing well for its stakeholders - maximizing wealth extraction for the upper class, with a simulation of free market choice to keep the middle and lower classes occupied and pacified. From this perspective, a 1% fatality rate should merely translate into the stock market declining by 1%, and then we move on.
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