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

reuters.com

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

#341

Post by cylinder »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #337
reaperducer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too. Kudos for expressing an unpopular opinion. I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet. The school district where I live put out a press release lamenting an 18%…

I was briefly a pandemic student last fall, and am closely connected with a relatively large network of current students who I communicate with regularly (aka my friends). This is incredibly frustrating to read. Among students, the relevance of this topic - mental health issues spiking do to online curriculum - is painfully obvious. And yes, we are balancing this against the realized danger/negative health consequenc…

Sounds to me they likely don't have children. Even one week at home for my kid is damaging let alone a year. The kids weren't spreading covid to teachers. Teachers could have worn respirators and been fine.

Governments should have kept covid out but harming children in this way to make up for disastrous decisions and behaviours of adults is unacceptable.

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

#342

Post by danielheath »

whatthesmack wrote: post #222
monocasa wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point we have enough data. The CDC gives an approximate IFR of 0.7% in the US. That would translate to low 7 digits. Also, it's very heavily weighted to the 70+ population. ..with lockdowns in effect enough to keep hospitalization rates below capacity. > Strictly speaking from a kid's perspective, it would mostly be the experience of losing a grandparent early. It would be sad (as death almost always is) bu…

> ..with lockdowns in effect enough to keep hospitalization rates below capacity. My understanding is that lockdowns didn't really change things significantly, so the "with lockdowns in effect" is not really relevant. See California (extreme lockdowns from the top) vs Florida (a bit of lockdown from the top) and their associated infection rate per 100k, which is nearly the same.

Down here in Victoria, Australia: despite over 20k infections, a prolonged lockdown let us eliminate COVID entirely.

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

#343

Post by aidenn0 »

kortilla wrote: post #28
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” is a tool to manipulate people. It’s not an end-goal in itself, especially if it costs a lot of money.

You aren't the only one to suggest in this thread that "think of the children" is usually disingenuous. It is definitely an end goal for a lot of people (otherwise the argument would have no power to manipulate people).

I think people make many choices that are harmful to children because they are trying to protect them and/or work to ensure their children's success.

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

#344

Post by aidenn0 »

mrkramer wrote: post #306
kaesar14 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to…

>It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Economy depends on productivity and innovation. Who would've thought that the people like Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg and Ellison would create so much wealth and so many jobs without college degree. Robust US economy enabled them bringing their innovation to fruition but I'm afraid…

Ellison is the only one who had something even close to a typical public education; they dropped out of college after making it through all of the typical educational filters and did so to start companies.

Gates: Private Prep school, Harvard

Zuckerberg: Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard

Ellison: South Shore HS (Publicly funded, selective enrollment), UIUC

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

#345

Post by nathannecro »

rimliu wrote: post #327
monocasa wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you like to cite them?

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

#346

Post by ipaddr »

hiram112 wrote: post #236
reaperducer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too. Kudos for expressing an unpopular opinion. I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet. The school district where I live put out a press release lamenting an 18%…

Well let's say there was one extra suicide caused by lockdowns. And we know that something like 2/3 of Covid "deaths" are occurring in nursing homes among very elderly who, statistically, might live a year or so longer had they not got Covid. If we're comparing years of life, isn't one 16 year old worth 60-70 85 year olds in nursing homes? Maybe more because one year in the life of an 84 year old who's already experi…

Lockdowns have made a big difference. Places like New Zealand have 0 cases. The half lockdowns have lower but mixed results.

An 80 year old has a lot of life in them. Some may have a year or two but others will have 20 or 30 years left.

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

#347

Post by hourislate »

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?

>about very real dangers of social isolation that are impacting our youth?

Can you imagine if this happened when there was no Internet, Mobile phones, Long Distance still existed, no Satellite TV, etc? I grew up like that (Rural Farm) and there were periods of months during the summer I just read books, and wandered around outside and didn't see another kid for what seemed an eternity. If I complained my parents would find me some work to do. My wife thinks I'm normal so I guess it turned out ok, didn't need any mental therapy or anything.

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

#348

Post by antiterra »

reaperducer wrote: post #79
monocasa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too. Kudos for expressing an unpopular opinion. I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet. The school district where I live put out a press release lamenting an 18%…

> I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion

Tacky childish mocking of valid concern over the mental health of children, some of whom are truly not doing well, is a garbage take. There are kids crying on a daily basis because of this Zoom shit and the expectations placed on them. While they will (likely) survive, it’s not good for them. I’ve seen kids test scores decline, parents enduring outright mutiny and violence from their children. I’ve seen single parents trying to work from home while their kids, who were already struggling when they had someone to pay attention to them, are screaming at the top of their lungs and breaking things.

Mental health issues can persist even in privileged circumstances, and deserves our concern. The existence of worse suffering doesn’t make current circumstances magically better. In a way, your take feels like the mental health counterpart to ‘it’s just the flu’ style arguments.

I also believe that, during wartime, a lot of children were able to go outside and play with other children.

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

#349

Post by foobiter »

cylinder wrote: post #341
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was briefly a pandemic student last fall, and am closely connected with a relatively large network of current students who I communicate with regularly (aka my friends). This is incredibly frustrating to read. Among students, the relevance of this topic - mental health issues spiking do to online curriculum - is painfully obvious. And yes, we are balancing this against the realized danger/negative health consequenc…

Sounds to me they likely don't have children. Even one week at home for my kid is damaging let alone a year. The kids weren't spreading covid to teachers. Teachers could have worn respirators and been fine. Governments should have kept covid out but harming children in this way to make up for disastrous decisions and behaviours of adults is unacceptable.

my school district couldn’t even promise every classroom has windows that open, so i’m not sure what magical planet teachers are getting respirators on

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

#350

Post by sokoloff »

sjg007 wrote: post #212
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are you implying that the act of deciding to have a long lockdown necessitates that the decision makers do not care about children I do get this impression from watching interviews with some of the public-health experts advising governments. As an academic, I can recognize my fellow academics who are obsessively focused on their own field and passionate about it, but they might not realize that people outside the f…

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.

We tolerate cars, fast food, alcohol, and tobacco. It’s a fair bet that we tolerate those things, despite knowing the health harms that come inextricably linked to them. Our representatives presumably trust the experts there as well.
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