Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 553 posts

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#91

Post by _Gyan_ »

monocasa wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also should have prioritized epidemiology studies involving schools --- there seems to be a growing consensus that K-8 schools aren't significant spreaders. The HVAC concerns about schools are apparently easily addressed with basic, portable air filters and box fans. There's a lot we could have done differently here.

> there seems to be a growing consensus that K-8 schools aren't significant spreaders There's almost no evidence for that. It boils down to the virus is absolutely out of control here, and kids are way more likely to be asymptomatic, meaning that it's way harder to nail down that a child to adult transmission occurred outside of the household.

From

Association between living with children and outcomes from covid-19: OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n628

"Conclusions In contrast to wave 1, evidence existed of increased risk of reported SARS-CoV-2 infection and covid-19 outcomes among adults living with children during wave 2. However, this did not translate into a materially increased risk of covid-19 mortality, and absolute increases in risk were small."

"Living with children aged 0-11 was associated with reduced risk of death from both covid-19 and non-covid-19 causes in both waves;"

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#92

Post by ilikedthatone »

DC1350 wrote: post #33

I'm not a child (uni student) but I've spent the last year sitting at a computer in my childhood bedroom for 14 hours a day and I'm fucking miserable. My life feels fake since nothing I'm working towards exists in the offline world.

I find this strange as you probably sitting at computer watching some twitch thing for 10 hours ? young people are spending their time with computerized things for many years already ...

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#93

Post by croes »

cpach wrote: post #26
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When times become hard, people turn to drugs, depression and religion. The wave will die down with the virus.

Maybe it will. But depression and drug abuse can have very long-lasting effects. For example losing a job or becoming homeless. It can be very hard to recover from that.

Long lasting effect like COVID. Just google long COVID kids.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#94

Post by swayvil »

monocasa wrote: post #30
cassalian wrote: post #9

Anyone else find it strange that a country that has often fallen in line with "think of the children" arguments for hypothetical dangers appears to be completely uncaring about very real dangers of social isolation that are impacting our youth?

They were balancing it against what they saw in Italy: allowing the virus to get out of hand and overwhelm the hospital system and your death rate from covid jumps into the double digits. Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too.

Yet Florida is perfectly ok.

Obviously this "8 digit body count" concept is a load of that which makes the grass grow green.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#95

Post by [deleted] »

monocasa wrote: post #78
wisty wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid barely spreads through children. It spreads through travel and large gathering of adults.

There's pretty much no evidence for that. Kids are asymptomatic and the virus is so out of control that it's difficult to track down the graph of infections from kids is all. Additionally teachers and school staff tilt pretty heavily to high risk groups. Watching so many of the adults die in their life would absolutely give kids depression too.

[deleted]

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#96

Post by afavour »

lisper wrote: post #29
afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“think of the children” has always been a lie, though. Or at best a surface level truth. When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. In many ways the pandemic response was in line with the norm: rich kids do just fine, poorer kids are mostly ignored.

It's not quite a lie, just a very narrow scope. The implied context of "think of the children" is usually something like, "Think of how horrible it would be if the children were exposed to temptations like sex and drugs." Other aspects of children's welfare don't figure as highly in the calculus of those who espouse this slogan.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking with "surface level truth". I think if you asked the majority of the US population if they cared about children they'd say yes and I don't think they would be lying. But there's an ignorance of the bigger picture.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#97

Post by zabzonk »

christkv wrote: post #86
croes wrote: post #77

What would it have been like if the schools had not been closed? If millions had been infected in a short time and the hospitals had been overloaded so that in addition to the deaths from Corona, the deaths from lack of capacity would have been added? How traumatic would that be for the children? Are there any studies on this from New York or Italy? Can the consequences of the lockdown be so cleanly separated from th…

Lots of European countries kept schools open during most of the pandemic so the answer is quit simple not much. I don’t know what studies you are referencing but they don’t seem to be backed by the experience in European countries.

> Lots of European countries kept schools open during most of the pandemic

More like "SOME European countries kept schools open during SOME of the pandemic". And look at the state of Covid in the EU now, with infection rates climbing yet again.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#98

Post by superflit »

renewiltord wrote: post #73
zamzoid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Maybe you didn’t intend this (or maybe you’re just trolling??) but this comment comes across as one of the most callous and tone-deaf things I have ever read. Like, Ebenezer Scrooge level. Families who can’t afford to send their children to private schools are clearly negatively affected by this through basically no fault of their own, and I cannot understand why you choose applaud that. Maybe consider deleting…

Okay, I can see how it comes across. Personally, I want America to succeed and I think closing schools is bad for that because we're damaging people who are far more precious than us (the next generation). But people get what people vote for. They could smash the teaching unions if they want to. But they could choose not to. So if you choose a path I warned you about and it hurts you, I'm happy to find some positivit…

You are right and you are being down voted for speaking the truth.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#99

Post by nradov »

ceejayoz wrote: post #67
nradov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's horrifying how we've allowed politicians to inflict collective punishment on our children for over a year. The data is clear that COVID-19 is less dangerous to children than seasonal influenza.

They can still bring it home to parents, grandparents, and the general community. It’s silly to dismiss the indirect effects as if they don’t exist.

There is little or no evidence that children frequently transmit the virus to adults. And even if there was, it wouldn't be ethical to collectively punish all children just to marginally reduce the risk to a minority of vulnerable people.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#100

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

croes wrote: post #77

What would it have been like if the schools had not been closed? If millions had been infected in a short time and the hospitals had been overloaded so that in addition to the deaths from Corona, the deaths from lack of capacity would have been added? How traumatic would that be for the children? Are there any studies on this from New York or Italy? Can the consequences of the lockdown be so cleanly separated from th…

The claim that a lack of lockdown means the healthcare system being overloaded with COVID victims, leading to no capacity for sufferers of other illnesses, depends on a major assumption: that hospitals would have to treat patients coming in with COVID symptoms. Another approach could be to triage COVID patients away from intensive care, providing them only with palliative, end-of-life care, and letting those beds remain available to the bulk of the population. That might sound pretty harsh, but it is actually how things have played out in some regions of the world.
Post reply on HN