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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

#101

Post by ghouse »

x87678r wrote: post #96
roland35 wrote: post #19

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 know 7 people now that have had it. The worst affected one had to stay in bed a day, most of the others just lost taste or felt a bit run down. Children had sniffles. 2 were asymptomatic.

I know two people who have had it. Once lost her sense of smell four months ago. Not back yet. The other died.

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

#102

Post by zaroth »

kingkawn wrote: post #90
umvi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different species when it comes to covid. Well, it's not that surprising when you have a disease whose harm factor is a function of your age. The vast majority of covid deaths are the elderly. The tiniest minority of covid deaths are young children. Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself.

There is absolutely no proof that children will not have long term health impacts that could reverberate for the rest of their lives. There are signs of chronic health repercussions for adults who have been infected. There is no telling yet what we can expect for children as they grow.

You literally cannot prove a negative.

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

#103

Post by dfxm12 »

brink wrote: post #61
gibrown wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that anti-vaxers make this point against vaccines that have been used for a long time about which we do understand the long term health consequences.

This is contrasted to the long term health consequences of COVID-19, which appears could be significant, but we just aren't certain yet only because there just aren't any long term survivors yet and thus studies [0] related to it haven't been completed. I don't think this is past the limit.

0 - https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2020/looking-forward-understa...

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

#104

Post by matz1 »

Vvector wrote: post #89
matz1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whereas with the pandemic we seemingly are just accepting high death rates Except the death rates are very low. The risk due to lockdown are greater than this virus.

The thing is, a lock down isn't required to stop the virus.

agree, i wish government around the world would think the same.

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

#105

Post by oxymoran »

dfxm12 wrote: post #69
roland35 wrote: post #19

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.

Painting your strawmen with very broad brushes.

What about the long term health consequences of poverty? At least those are known.

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

#106

Post by roland35 »

triceratops wrote: post #93
umvi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different species when it comes to covid. Well, it's not that surprising when you have a disease whose harm factor is a function of your age. The vast majority of covid deaths are the elderly. The tiniest minority of covid deaths are young children. Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself.

Even if the kids are fine, if both parents get sick at the same time it's going to be hell taking care of the kids. Especially when you can't hire outside help due to social distancing requirements.

That is my biggest concern as well. Plus the reality that if both parents come down with serious symptoms the kids likely have it, so it would not be ideal to send the kids to other family members to watch long term

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

#107

Post by WalterBright »

Animats wrote: post #20
dmurray wrote: post #11

People are, statistically speaking, really bad at figuring out what to worry about. See: terrorist attacks, plane crashes, shark attacks, abduction by strangers. So maybe this is good news about the pandemic.

This is encouraging. People are most worried about the most serious problem.

Are they? Nobody seems to care much about the ordinary flu, though lots still die from it. Hospital acquired infections are a major cause of death, but few worry about that. The most likely causes of death for children are drowning and car accidents, but people worry far more about terrorist incidents. And on it goes.

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

#108

Post by triceratops »

marpstar wrote: post #49

Not me. I'm more concerned about my kids going back to school so that I don't need to be here all day and try and monitor their education on my own AND trying to focus on my job. The risk of me or my children DYING from COVID is practically zero. The average age of a COVID death is 70+ years old. The average life expectancy in USA is < 80 years old. People won't live forever, no matter how many masks we wear or how h…

You might not die from Covid, but what if you and your partner are hospitalized for weeks at the same time? Who's going to take care of the kids? Maybe you have family or reliable friends around who can step in, but not everyone does.

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

#109

Post by tptacek »

koolba wrote: post #91
_jal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor Others have mentioned this, but just for emphasis: you do not know that. Nor does anyone else. Repeating it is irresponsible, and you should stop doing that. There have been a lot of lessons the epidemic can teach us. But one big one is that magical thinking is still accepted as a substitute for reason by a frightening number of people, and that's befor…

But we do know that. Or at least we can glean as much based upon the distribution by age for hospital admittance and death. We don’t know what, if any, the long term consequences will be. But the short term death risk for young children appears to be minimal.

The difference in worry parents have over short term and "long term" death risks for their kids is marginal. In particular: if something could happen to jeopardize your kids lives while they are still kids --- which we do not know --- it's an overwhelming worry.

This is one of those conversations where message board logic stands a good chance of taking us far away from how real-world humans would reason.

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

gdubs wrote: post #45
miketery wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about risk. Humans are terrible at understanding probability. There must be a threshold where it becomes ok to take on the risk (e.g. driving a car everyday for most Americans). So where is that threshold? Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions? It might be…

Risk and uncertainty go hand-in-hand. It’s clear what the risks are, generally, with cars. It’s unclear what the risks are with a novel pathogen.

[deleted]
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