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

reuters.com

321–330 of 553 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, end of March was 900 people dying a day, December was 1000 people dying in a day.

Yes, after a year of treating the illness now each patient takes less hospital resources. They were able to get the death rate from 900/day during a time with 5000 new infections per day, down to about the same daily death rate with 25,000 new infections per day. This is kind of my point.

You don’t know anything about the amount of infections in March other than that it was more than 5000 per day, because there was a shortage of testing kits, which is my point.

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

#322
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are things really that different than they were before though? I still chat with my neighbors, doctors etc etc... everyone is just as friendly as before. I think it’s just our main connection to the outside world has been doomscrolling... I don’t think the people in this world are that different. They are good, caring, loving... despite what some would have us believe.

It's different in the sense that there was a forced reckoning of idealism vs. ground truth. We learned a great deal more about our family, friends, and neighbors. Sure, they may still be as outwardly friendly as before, but many of them, far too many, aggressively support some really heinous things. I don't want to venture into off-topic political stuff here. And, let's just acknowledge that everything about the pand…

It wasn't a small, isolated thing, and I don't think people should be described as good, and caring, and loving, while they identify with and support so many terrible things.

Both supporters and opponents of lockdowns could read this and agree 100%.

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

#323
post #31
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a second-order effect of not prioritizing school reopenings. Lockdowns aren't all-or-nothing.

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

I don't understand these half assed measures. The original goal was to shut everything down to explicitly flatten the curve and not swamp hospitals. That was the fear, the exponential curve of millions on millions dead in a few weeks time if this wasn't contained, but as we have seen, this is simply not happening. Yes, this virus is bad, it is highly contagious, it kills people and deserves a serious response to control, but the lockdowns, at best, were to slow the spread and a stop gap to larger secondary effects.

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

#324
post #62

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?

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.

"Collective punishment" better describes the normal state of the public school system.

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

#325
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID does worse in warmer climates; it would be useful to see data adjusted for factors such as ventilation, climate, baseline prevalence, viral variants, etc. No one AFAIK has attempted to do any of this work. All I've seen are unsubstantiated claims for each side's agenda. We need to know what hard conditions guarantee an R0 small enough to prevent disease transmission in schools. There has been zero leadership he…

> COVID does worse in warmer climates Is that really substantiated or has it just been theorized? California and Texas have been doing poorly compared to Florida so heat itself doesn’t seem to be the differing factor if it is a factor at all.

> > COVID does worse in warmer climates

> California and Texas have been doing poorly compared to Florida so heat itself doesn’t seem to be the differing factor if it is a factor at all.

California is much colder than Florida, if you weight it by population and not land area.

Wouldn't be surprised if that is also true of Texas. Both have large tracts of sparsely populated arid, very hot land that contributes to popular image but isn't where most people live.

Also, California has not been doing poorly compared to Florida, but there are a whole lot of non-climatic differences.

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

#326
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Italy. Their death rate was in the double digits when hospital capacity was overrun.

Their hospitals are overrun every second winter, dude. They had as much a medical system problem as they had a COVID-19 problem. Check this article from 2018. https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

> Their hospitals are overrun every second winter, dude

No, they aren't. Your article is talking about the 2017-2018 flu season, which was an anomaly when it came to hospitalizations and deaths. Both hospitalizations and deaths that season were about double what they normally are[1]. About 61k people died in the US during that flu season, where about 20k-35k normally die. There were 810k hospitalizations, while hospitalizations usually fluctuate between 250k-500k.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..with lockdowns in effect enough to keep hospitalization rates below capacity. “Want to buy this vampire repelling rock?”

School closings have been shown to be one of the most effective government interventions. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6531/eabd9338

There are many studies showing just the opposite.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rest of their lives" is a pretty bold and, frankly, made-up thing to say about an illness that has barely existed for a year.

If that bothers you, replace it with "Having one or both parents spend the rest of their children's lives in graves isn't exactly great for kids either." > frankly, made-up thing The CDC disagrees with your opinion. From the CDC's "Long-Term Effects of COVID-19" article[1]: > The most commonly reported long-term symptoms include: > Fatigue, Shortness of breath, Cough, Joint pain, Chest pain > Other reported long-term…

And how all of this compares to any other bacterial or virus infection?

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

#329

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?

> 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?

No, because (1) it hasn't fallen in line with “think of the children” so much as invoked it as a post-hoc rationalization, and (2) isn't indifferent to the danger here; both the left side (who has been arguing the need to apply the resources for safe reopening of schools) and the right side (who has been opposing those expenditures but pushing reopening anyway) are in agreement that it is a serious concern.

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

#330
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we've done a poll asking that question. At any rate this is a representative democracy so we expect our leaders to trust the experts.

> I don't think we've done a poll asking that question. You don't have to, it is common sense. Would a country be willing to go into social distancing, schools and restaurants closed, etc. in order to save one elderly person somewhere? Of course not. How about two? That is where the debate starts, but that debate is foreign to people (whether public-health academics interested in pushing numbers to zero, or health mi…

I’m sorry I disagree.
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