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

reuters.com

481–490 of 553 posts

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

#481

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'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 goo…

You need to put it in the context of over 500,000 Americans dead from COVID.

A proportion of which are directly and indirectly caused by the behaviour of young people.

So yes mental health of children is important but for many people not as important as staggering numbers of people dying.

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

#482
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a part of the picture (although it's a good number to see). You also need to know whether children spread the disease.

Not according to several studies shared by epidemiologists that are parents at my kids' school. The only place they saw spread from children was at schools in Israel early in the pandemic where kids were crammed close together when waiting.

a) There is evidence of children spreading COVID-19, "children under 15 were about half as likely as adults to be infected, and only half as likely as adults to transmit the virus to others". [1]

b) In order to have children at school, you need teachers at school. In order to have teachers at school, you need public transport. Suddenly, you have a significant amount of people moving around spreading the virus.

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/we-now-kn...

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's direct evidence: school closures are one of the most effective government interventions. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6531/eabd9338 What I have an issue with is people stating crazy stuff like "covid barely spreads through children" even though they have no real data on it.

If you read between the lines the study makes quite a few points consistent with my argument: > Primary schools may be generally less affected than secondary schools (20, 25–28), perhaps partly because children under the age of 12 are less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 (29). The study also goes on to state, in a profound bit of self-awareness: > Our approach cannot distinguish direct effects on transmission in schools an…

The clear solution is to test. Look for a suitable district that wants to open up the schools, open them up for a bit and do a rapid lockdown if it instigates an outbreak.

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

#484

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.

You should figure out why your child's household is so toxic. My son spent about 6 months last year at home. Between daily online classes, video calls with friends/cousins and activities at home. He was missing school/outside but I don't see any lasting negative impact of it.

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

#485

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. 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) but probably not life-changing.

It's pretty incredible how easily hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, each of which is a full human life, becomes a statistic to some people let alone the millions. Don't we teach students in history classes about how easily people allow themselves to justify mass death when it is convenient?

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

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

#486
It is really nothing particular about schools. In Spain the first day schools were closed children started playing on the streets, or playing basketball and soccer(you can play soccer anywhere). They were quite happy doing that.

Then the authorities said: No, no no! Kids must stay in house all day, closed all public spaces, something contranature for kids.

It was the get "in house", secluded, don't do anything socially. Too many don'ts with no does.

I can stay indoors playing guitar or piano. Reading books,or HN, or cooking. Even then I need to get out from time to time. It is not realistic to expect children doing the same.

Most of those activities were not really dangerous with some restrictions.

You can go in a bus or car with mask if people don't talk and introduce air from the outside.

You can play different basketball or football games with little risk. You can jump rope. But bureaucrats decided they were little monks. They are not.

School is not the necessary thing here. It is playing socially and exercising what children need like water and air.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The death rate in April was high because we didn’t understand how to treat Covid. The primary issue is that almost every hospitalized person was being put on a ventilator. But since then, we’ve learned that ventilators were actually iatrogenic and leading to much higher death rates.

How much more slowly would we have learned to treat Covid if the many more of the hospital staff studying it were dying and drunk with fatigue?

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 goo…

You need to put it in the context of over 500,000 Americans dead from COVID. A proportion of which are directly and indirectly caused by the behaviour of young people. So yes mental health of children is important but for many people not as important as staggering numbers of people dying.

[deleted]

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

#489

It is really nothing particular about schools. In Spain the first day schools were closed children started playing on the streets, or playing basketball and soccer(you can play soccer anywhere). They were quite happy doing that. Then the authorities said: No, no no! Kids must stay in house all day, closed all public spaces, something contranature for kids. It was the get "in house", secluded, don't do anything social…

Sure, but the entire point of closing the schools is to force the kids to stay home (or at least stay isolated from others) so just accept the terms mean basically the same thing.

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

#490

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'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 goo…

> 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.

Could this be a cultural or geographical thing? Having lived both in Asia and Europe and also visited USA on a number of occasion I find that kids misbehaving in front of parents is more common in EU than Asia.

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