As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by 1experience » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #104

mrfusion wrote: post #16

That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. A quick summary of the lockdown harms: missed hospital visits for heart attacks and cancer screening, cancelled childhood vaccinations, school closures, child and spousal abuse, kids growing up without seeing facial expressions on others, pain from postponed elective (including dental) procedures, food shortages in the third world (and even in developed countries), the highest…

Vs traumatized from death of relatives, death from overloaded hospitals, food shortages because death of working family members. And why are kids grow up without seeing facial expressions? They are not isolated but spend more time with their parents, what's wrong with the world if this leads to mental health problems. Year after year it was told parents need to spend more time with their children to built up their co…

Please tell me where are all these deaths in Sweden, Belarus, Brazil, Florida...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

So you're telling me that in places like Brazil more people are being traumatized by deaths in overloaded hospitals compared to Westerners (who are less traumatized) thanks to a year of isolation? uhmm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcAYObnlehE&t=2623s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnKke19Ow8Q

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

#142

Post by sudosteph » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #36

germinalphrase wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US federal gov’t spends about 3x as much on those over the age of 65 than it does those under the age of 18 (including transfer payments to parents of those children)[0]. Personally, I think that should be flipped, but kid’s don’t vote. [0] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/23x...

> Personally, I think that should be flipped, but kid’s don’t vote. The most interesting place I've seen this type of argument made it along these lines: - US policy is for housing to appreciate in cost over time - Housing is demanded by young people starting new households, and freed up by old people dying or moving into group housing. - Housing policy is thus a massive ongoing transfer of wealth from incipient hous…

That dynamic is actually one of the reasons I think Corey Booker's "baby bonds" idea is so clever. If a child enters adulthood with some amount that has grown in a way that matches up with the economic growth at large, then maybe they won't be locked out of housing ownership.

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

#143

Post by emkoemko » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

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?

if US really cared about children they would ended the humanitarian crisis in Yemen... so far 85 000+ children under 5 starved to death and they saying 400,000 are going to if this blockade doesn't end.

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

#144

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #21

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?

“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.

Rich kids and poor kids alike were ignored by the school districts.

The vast difference is that rich kids had many other avenues for learning and some may even have progressed more quickly freed from the tyrannically slow pace of in-person schooling.

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

#145

Post by lupire » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49

crummy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. We should have closed restaurants, bars, whatever so we could keep schools open.

Matt Yglesias wrote an interesting (non-paywalled) piece about this: https://www.slowboring.com/p/school-closure > in the actual United States of America, it’s Congress that can write huge checks; it’s mostly states who write rules for restaurants; and schools are a local responsibility — often run by special purpose school boards that have no other governing powers. Given that Congress did not appropriate funds for…

Why can't CA bail out restaurants? Because they are afraid to raise taxes on tech billionaires who made a fortune during the pandemic?

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

#146

Post by decafninja » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #132

inglor_cz wrote: post #12

I am neither in the U.S. nor a student, not even an extrovert - and I still feel the effects of our local lockdown on my mental stability. So does my wife, who is usually more resilient than I am. This will have a lot of subtle consequences down the line.

Speaking for myself: the biggest consequence for me, in terms of mental health, has been the total erosion of my belief that most people were basically good, and decent, and cared about the welfare of others. It was a choice I made years ago; I wanted to be the sort of person that believed those things, even when there was occasional evidence to the contrary. But 2020 brought a trifecta of social stress that laid bar…

I empathize with this so much.

I too, feel the most significant way my mental health has been negatively affected was not due to the lack of in-person face-to-face social interaction, but rather the destruction of my faith in humanity. I will add a caveat that some countries, societies, or even enclaves, have done a lot better job than others.

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

#147

Post by lupire » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #133

croes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you get depressed if you are isolated and you get depressed if you have to fear to get infected. There is no undepressing way to handle the pandemic, only ways with less infections and deaths.

The way to solve it was to accelerate vaccines even more than we did. A couple trillion dollars to accelerate vaccine production and rollout (and approval) to cut 6 months off the pandemic. Avoided the big wave in December. We already did better than some feared with vaccine roll out, but we could have done even more. Also, a harder (but shorter) shut down and a firmer masking requirement and really good test and tra…

We were stuck waiting a year while the President used the pandemic only for personal in profiteering and to harm political opponents.

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

#148

Post by axiolite » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49

crummy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. We should have closed restaurants, bars, whatever so we could keep schools open.

Matt Yglesias wrote an interesting (non-paywalled) piece about this: https://www.slowboring.com/p/school-closure > in the actual United States of America, it’s Congress that can write huge checks; it’s mostly states who write rules for restaurants; and schools are a local responsibility — often run by special purpose school boards that have no other governing powers. Given that Congress did not appropriate funds for…

> Given that Congress did not appropriate funds for a bar and restaurant bailout, I don’t think it’s crazy that governors mostly decided they had to reopen their restaurants.

What you are talking about? There were multiple rounds of several federal bailouts for small businesses affected by COVID-19:

https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-o...

https://ilsr.org/information-on-covid-19-small-business-assi...

What's more, state governments are getting many billions of dollars from the federal government as well, which they can use to support for state bailouts of any businesses which fall through the cracks of those federal programs.

Re-opening the business where you have to take off masks and distancing is impractical is a good way to overwhelm hospitals, which costs a lot more money than keeping bars closed. Restaurants also have the option of switching to takeout-only to keep operating with no additional risk of infection.

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

#149

Post by thenaturalist » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #100

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 rem…

I suggest you might be seeing things too linearly. Consider all the evolved variants.

By letting it run wild you would a) just accelerate viral evolution and b) eventually and unpredictably find yourself in a situation where the mortality rate might spiral out of control across all kinds of demographics.

You would then do the same thing as now: lockdown measures to curb mortality.

I guess the question of lockdown is not if but when: After many more deaths and mutations which render costly vaccines ineffective or early, vaccinate as much as possible as fast as possible and get done with the virus.

All that being said: Do you have a source for your claim that certain countries triage patients with COVID to end of life care? I’d be genuinely interested in reading up on that.

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

#150

Post by _Microft » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #132

inglor_cz wrote: post #12

I am neither in the U.S. nor a student, not even an extrovert - and I still feel the effects of our local lockdown on my mental stability. So does my wife, who is usually more resilient than I am. This will have a lot of subtle consequences down the line.

Speaking for myself: the biggest consequence for me, in terms of mental health, has been the total erosion of my belief that most people were basically good, and decent, and cared about the welfare of others. It was a choice I made years ago; I wanted to be the sort of person that believed those things, even when there was occasional evidence to the contrary. But 2020 brought a trifecta of social stress that laid bar…

I have a similar experience.

The pandemic made me lose hope that we will adequately deal with something as abstract as the climate crisis when people cannot even act appropriately when the effect of their combined actions can be seen in the numbers just two weeks later.