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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give you one possible side effect: sterility. There are plenty of viruses that when caught as a child do not give much in terms of symptoms but will make you sterile for life. That's not something that will come out in the next two months.

True, and whether MMR 2 will kill you or your mind in 60 years isn't something that comes out in 42 years. We don't know that yet. But if I had to guess, you're probably pro-MMR-2 (as am I), so the question is what epistemology permits that view?

It could, but we have a lot of data on those diseases and typically a weakened or reduced dose live virus shot has a known outcome with some outliers where the shot leads to the disease or something worse in the relatively short term.

For COVID-19 we are still guessing at most of this, hopefully the long term effects are not too bad and those effects of contracting the disease will get reduced over time.

But I would definitely not rule out some shocker long term effect at this stage that we are unaware of, especially not when taking into account developing organisms such as children, where effects can stay hidden for a long time.

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

#202

I can’t believe how dismissive people are about people who are worried about their finances during this. So many false equivalencies being made about bankruptcy being preferable to death. I am not one of these people that is cavalier about COVID, it’s a real danger and the long term damage to the body is just being discovered. But we all know for sure what the long term health effects of poverty are. Whether you like…

If you care about the economy, the best thing we (the US) can do is follow the lead of other countries that have gotten this under control with evidence-based measures, and push the government to provide support to those in need, so the economy can bounce back quickly, rather than sliding into depression.

I'm sorry but this is just poorly informed. The US is projected to be either near the top, or at the very worst right in the middle, of projections for GDP growth to finish out 2020.

There is a sliding scale here, of course. If we locked everybody in their houses, we could get the covid numbers to 0, but it would also completely destroy our economy, and obviously would result in substantial loss of life due to the effects of poverty. What the US has done instead is to take a hit on covid in service of economics. So far it seems to be working (with regards to GDP, I mean.)

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You currently do not have a government that will be swayed by evidence.

Yes, we’d be much better off with the currently sidelined government that has suggested the evidence should be ignored as long as you’re protesting civil rights.

People were pretty worried about this, but so far there isn't any evidence that protests caused spikes in case numbers. Obviously there's a lot about the virus we don't know or can't fully explain, but the prevailing explanation is that the combination of widespread mask usage by protesters, quarantining by would-be protesters who know they've been exposed, and being primarily outdoors prevented transmission.

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

#204
post #95

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…

Around my city I'm seeing a lot of kids lonely, anxious and unhappy where I've never seen before. My children were really looking forward to school and seeing friends, were crushed when told it wouldn't be happening.

And a lot of adults were similarly disappointed. I mean, aside from the whole possible loss of livelihood and disruption to earning potential thing... I’ve seen adults who were really looking forward to these things that didn’t pan out as planned thanks to COVID:

- professional conferences - sport games - concerts - school reunions - weddings - grieving death of elder together with family - baby showers - travel/vacations - birthday parties - having friends over for support while stuck at home with a newborn (editors note: it me)

It’s been hard of everybody. Maybe this is my perspective from having grown up in poverty/underclass talking- but I don’t get this hand wringing over how hard this is for children in particular.

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

#205
post #157
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.

> Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself. Even if this is true (we already have evidence it's not for some children), it's completely irresponsible to allow schools to open. We know children are infectious and easily spread the disease. There are other members of society besides children. Letting the virus run rampant in schools will lead to parents and other adults get…

there's other forces at work with the rush to open schools than just covid19. Keep in mind, extended unemployment is expiring as well as a number of other emergency programs. School is the only place where many kids get a semi-square meal regularly. For many kids it's also a much safer environment than not school.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything novel has this problem, and fortunately our epistemology is up to the task. We set our priors to a weighted linear combination of other similar things and then revise as evidence comes in. For instance, MMR II was approved in 1978. How do we know that people who were given MMR II won't spontaneously die at the age of 60? Or perhaps to bring it closer to another problem, how do we know they won't spontaneou…

There is no indication whatsoever that MMR has likely long-term health effects, and there are indications that C19 could have long-term health effects, and what we appear to learn month by month is more alarming, not less, with respect to the question of whether or not C19 is a "you either die of it in a month or you're fine" situation. It also doesn't have to be a universal effect for it to generate effectively univ…

I agree with these (hopefully not incorrectly) restated things I think you believe:

* It is more likely that MMR has few significant long-term health effects than if COVID-19 does

* COVID-19 effects are unlikely to be binary outcome

* Effects need not be universal for them to affect parental behaviour

However, none of that agreement is important to the discussion I was hoping to have. My comment was solely on the epistemology. I suspect you also use the same methods I was talking about in my previous comment.

If that is the case, then perhaps some other day we can argue about what the priors are. If we're good about it, we'll end up with the Aumann Agreement Theorem (+ corollaries) result, and rapidly agree (through likely both of us shifting our priors as we exchange information).

I think we have no disagreement and am happy to conclude this here.

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

#207
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You currently do not have a government that will be swayed by evidence.

It isn't only the government, it's a significant minority of the population nationally; and at a local level it can approach significant majority. A Marion County Florida Sheriff ordered that staff and visitors to his office cannot wear masks. That order is uncivilized behavior. The state governor should have removed him from power. People speeding on roads get sanctioned more, for being less of a menace to society.…

You've touched on exactly what worries me most about the Trump era. Somehow, unnecessary combativeness and flamboyant disagreement has come to be valued in and of itself. As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

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

#208
post #176

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…

> And I am absolutely willing to sacrifice possibly a few years of extra time I could have my grandparents around for that. My grandparents are also happy to make that sacrifice so their grandchildren ... Sigh. I can’t believe this needs to be spelled out for you and your ilk. There are other people out there beyond your grandparents. Regardless of how you and they personally feel — I don’t want to die just because y…

I think this is really unfair to OP. Who among us hasn't taken health risks because we enjoy our culture? When I heard about heart disease as the leading cause of death I did not immediately change my diet. I assume many others here did not as well.

And yet isn't not eating bacon a relatively easy step to take so one is around to spend time with family? The answer is not so clear.

One question I have is why you believe lockdowns will help? A vaccine may be approved but it's likely it won't work for obese Americans that make up 40% of the population.

> “Will we have a COVID vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way,” said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

> “Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

> In 2017, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill provided a critical clue about the limitations of the influenza vaccine. In a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity, they showed for the first time that vaccinated obese adults were twice as likely as adults of a healthy weight to develop influenza or flu-like illness. [0]

This essentially means we are going to have large numbers of cases for the next 3+ years.

[0] https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/09/americas-obesity-epidemic-th...

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

#210
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is not people who are worried about their finances - that is understandable. The problem is people who want to put finances over covid, mostly because covid requires certain measures in order to be eradicated (objectively) whereas an economy can (at the very least temporarily) be switched to a mode where people do not have to worry about their finances (such as UBI or a command economy). What makes at lea…

100% this. The economy isn't part of nature. In it's current form it's a relatively new social construct that honestly doesn't seem to be working very well for a lot of the global population

I would even dare to the say that post keynesian economics has been worse for a major part of the population inside a western economy.

Economic growth in and of itself might be better, but how much of the population sees the result of that? basic commodoties like housing and social wellbeing/services are worse, while most of the economic growth seems to be stuck at the top.

Also, having massive growth is simply not sustainable for our planet.

Dire change is needed, the question is what? It seems most major forces in politics are stuck in maintaining the status quo and not thinking long term. Change from that system would be hard to realise, especially in the complete gridlock of american politics.

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