Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by ketamine__ » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #168

matz1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdown cause massive unemployment, bankruptcy, mental health issue, kids not getting proper education, delayed treatment/care for non-covid cause, etc. All this for what ? for the virus that for vast majority of people if you do get infected you are not going to be sick (asymptompatic) or only have mild symptom and less than 1% death rate ?

There is precisely zero evidence that a lockdown leads to even a measurable fraction of 1% deaths.

There is zero evidence that a suppression strategy with lockdown will work. And as you said in your other comment the pandemic is not over yet so pulling data from other countries isn't helpful.

As to evidence...

"One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they've considered suicide in the past month because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data that paints a bleak picture of the nation's mental health during the crisis."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/cdc-mental-health-p...

Perhaps it is time for parents to talk to their children about what they would like for a future? Most of the comments here are about the desires of the parents to be anxiety free.

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

#232

Post by mikem170 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

eirini1 wrote: post #179

oxymoran wrote: post #123

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…

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…

>mostly because covid requires certain measures in order to be eradicated

I thought we were flattening the curve...

What makes you think this can be eradicated? Source?

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

#233

Post by bezmenov » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

NationalPark wrote: post #203

bezmenov wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, the handful of half-competent governments who have handled the pandemic the best disagree: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/forced-is...

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

#234

Post by rwcarlsen » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

heylook wrote: post #229

rwcarlsen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how many people? Should 10,000 kids lose school and all the problems that can avalanche into for the future to save 1 year of 1 life of one person who already has degrading health?

I would happily trade away: - 1 whole semester of in-person instruction for all 56 million school-aged kids in the US In exchange for: - The cumulative remaining years of the 50k(?), 100k(?), possibly even more that will die directly from the virus in the US alone - Freedom from long-term health issues caused by the virus for another several hundred thousand at minimum who won't die but also won't get "the flu" Now y…

I acknowledge that we are choosing between two bad alternatives here. I personally believe that we should trade all N hundred thousand lives for a normal school year for 56 million kids.

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

#235

Post by leereeves » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

gibrown wrote: post #226

makomk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence from other countries suggests that there is no way of getting this under control and returning to normal, and it wouldn't save the economy anyway. Europe is seeing a resurgence of cases, previous success story South Korea is stuck unable to reopen without a similar resurgence and with no path to eliminating the disease, even the latest remaining success stories Vietnam and New Zealand discovered the hard way…

The “resurgence of cases” in these other countries are less than 1 per 10k. Florida has been having 30-40 per 10k. It isn’t binary. All economies will take a hit. But if the US was doing 30x better then the economy would be better. And if there is any seasonality at all the Fall could get quite a lot worse and make the economy worse than it already is.

> if the US was doing 30x better then the economy would be better.

As a counterexample to that claim, the Euro zone GDP fell 12.1% in the second quarter. That's an annualized rate of 40%, even worse than the widely reported annualized drop of 33% in the US.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/euro-zone-gdp-q2-2020-as-cor...

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

#236

Post by cmurf » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

solaceb wrote: post #207

cmurf wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some appreciate it. Some find it too tedious to bother pushing back on it. Meltdown on aisle 5! Toddler requires, and has gone, Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!

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

#237

Post by cmurf » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

HumblyTossed wrote: post #225

cmurf wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tennessee just made it a Class E felony to camp outside the capitol. Protesters have been doing this for months but it would apply to squelch protesters and homeless alike. Up to six years prison, and loss of voting rights, is the penalty.

Republicans hate the poor and yet are so willing to create more of them.

I'm not sure they want to create more, there is a risk of "rebel's dilemma" if there are too many or things get too awful.

But the Republican party is merely the political wing of a certain aristocratic mind set which includes conservatism: rich people are better people, it is a fact. There should be either no public services or inferior versions compared to the free market, because that's how rich people are rewarded for being inherently superior people - they can afford to buy more and better things. This properly includes education, health care, clean air and water, and justice. These things are not rights. They are products you buy.

It's similar to prosperity theology. The closer to god, the more you are rewarded. The more rewarded you are, the closer to the deity you must be. Monarchies, feudalism, and Mandate of Heaven.

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

#238

Post by gibrown » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #235

gibrown wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “resurgence of cases” in these other countries are less than 1 per 10k. Florida has been having 30-40 per 10k. It isn’t binary. All economies will take a hit. But if the US was doing 30x better then the economy would be better. And if there is any seasonality at all the Fall could get quite a lot worse and make the economy worse than it already is.

> if the US was doing 30x better then the economy would be better. As a counterexample to that claim, the Euro zone GDP fell 12.1% in the second quarter. That's an annualized rate of 40%, even worse than the widely reported annualized drop of 33% in the US. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/euro-zone-gdp-q2-2020-as-cor...

US decreased 9.5%. The difference seems fairly marginal and could be affected just by timing of when the virus started. Germany though bought something with that. The interesting question will be what Q3 and Q4 looks like.

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

#239

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

Well of course - they can delay retirement, cut back, or work longer hours later to make up for financial hardship and address debts eventually. They cannot bring their children back from the dead.

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

#240

Post by saddlerustle » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

thomaslord wrote: post #112

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 risk due to lockdown are greater than this virus. I'm gonna have to ask for a source on this, because every single legitimate source I can find says the exact opposite.

An analysis from the UK government [1] summarised:

> Socio-economic effects are estimated to have the greatest impact on quality of life of all categories investigated, over the short and long term combined; from March 2020 to more than five years from now, the impacts of lockdown and a resulting recession are estimated to reduce England’s health by over 970,000 QALYs – the health impacts of contracting COVID-19 are still unclear in the long term, but between March 2020 and March 2021, these represent 570,000 lost QALYs.

So with even all the coronavirus deaths in the UK, which had one of the highest mortality rates in the western world, the lockdown is having a bigger impact on health than the virus. This is justifiable if you believe without the lockdown orders of magnitude more people would have died. But there's reasons to believe that's not the case: some recent research suggests regions are hitting "herd immunity" at only ~20% infected with basic precautions due to cross-immunity. And indeed, Sweden which didn't do a major lockdown isn't looking much worse off than the UK when comparing excess mortality.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...