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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

#511

Post by ceejayoz »

School-Cotton wrote: post #234
ceejayoz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and? Educating children is more important than keeping elderly people alive. You know this to be true if you do a utilitarian analysis as objectively as possible rather than ceding to emotion.

False dichotomy, in more than one way.

You can still educate children via remote work - as a personal anecdote, mine have done better with a hybrid school approach - and a utilitarian analysis must still take into account emotional effects on children of losing a relative.

Quite a few grandparents are the caregivers for their grandchildren, as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/this-is-t...

> Some 2.6 million grandparents are raising their grandchildren, either because of a temporary change in circumstance for the parents, such as military deployment or joblessness, or something more lasting and terrible: mental illness, divorce, incarceration, death, or, as in Barb and Fran’s case, substance abuse.

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

#512

Post by Izkata »

kibibyte wrote: post #403
dcolkitt wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where can I find a source for this? This is new information to me, and searching "covid ventilator" is just bringing up the same studies about how patients who get ventilated have higher mortality, which isn't saying the same thing.

April last year: https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...

The short version:

Blood oxygen levels were falling into "should be dead" levels never really seen before (even though they were otherwise alert and fine and had no other hypoxia indicators), which caused doctors to panic about pneumonia and not being able to breathe, and put people on ventilators prematurely. However, it wasn't really having an effect, so the ventilators kept getting turned up to their maximum setting, which puts too much pressure on the lungs and causes additional permanent damage. In most people this caused a turn for the worse instead of recovery.

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

#513

Post by Izkata »

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.

> Kids are asymptomatic

Yeah, and that's why it's not really a thing. Large amounts of asymptomatic spread turned out to be an early fear that wasn't true: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-pat...

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

#514

Post by woolcap »

chii wrote: post #374
ipaddr wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

even if the 80 yr old has 20 yrs of life left, it still means that a 16 yr old is worth at least 3 80 yr olds. and the 80 yr olds do not contribute to the economy or work, and is indeed a "burden" (sad to say, but they can't really sustain themselves without external resources, as their economic value output is zero). The 16 yr old will likely contribute to society for 40 years at least. i'm not saying the lockdowns…

I find it repugnant to define the 'worth' of an individual solely in terms of 'economic output.' The elderly have much to offer society. I think of my own parents, now into their 80s. They planned well, are not an economic burden to their children, and continue to contribute in meaningful ways to their family and their community. Any 'burden' they may be in my life is far outweighed by what they sacrificed and provided for me throughout my life so far.

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

#515

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

CodeMage wrote: post #434
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a risk, but that risk needs to be weighed against the known risk of keeping them detained.

Because a kid will recover more easily from feeling responsible for their parent's death than they will from extended but finite lockdown?

I keep saying "do the cost-benefit" because you should do the cost-benefit.

One option harms every child and potentially saves some parents' lives.

The other harms practically no children and will likely lead to some more parents dying, although the data is unclear (as death rates in states with much more open schools is not consistently higher).

Harm all kids to save a few parents on the margin...potentially? Do the cost-benefit.

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

#516

Post by helen___keller »

Neither a parent nor an epidemiologist, so I'm going to stay out of the discussion of whether or not various lockdowns were worth it, but

> Of the 74 districts that responded, 74% reported multiple indicators of increased mental health stresses among students. More than half reported rises in mental health referrals and counseling.

Hasn't this been a trend for years pre-covid anyways? It will probably take many years to get reliable conclusions on how 2020-2021 actually affected the trajectory of young people, and I'm not convinced either way as of yet.

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

#517

Post by School-Cotton »

tehjoker wrote: post #433
School-Cotton wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying isn’t worth upending civilization over. You get fewer than 100 years on this earth regardless, to put it in perspective.

Thinking back to other periods of world history I learned about in school, I can easily see how people managed to rationalize away hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in the name of convenience.

Can you elaborate?

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

#518

Post by cap1434 »

nucleardog wrote: post #477
tehjoker wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep this. If you actually stop and think about the value of a life in a real sense instead of from an abstract or monetary perspective, you're either absolutely horrified by all of this and your path is clear, or you're a monster. For the past year I just look at my wife and look at my kid and imagine what it would be like to lose them. I would do _anything_ to protect them. I know what losing other family members to…

I would recommend you subscribe to your own advice and approach the disastrous side effects of these lockdowns with empathy instead of just chalking it up to an "inconvenience". There are people dying due to these policies and lockdowns and others will suffer long term negative effects. It's not just an inconvenience. People with preexisting conditions (depression, suicidal thoughts, addiction, violent/murderous) make up a significant percentage of the population. These policies will be a major factors in some percentage of them dying. They will also be a major factor in increasing the number of people with these conditions (more people will become depressed, suicidal, form addictions). Others will face years of mental and physical suffering due to economic effects.

It's essentially the same argument you are trying to make in favor of the lockdowns. Without the lockdowns, families will have to bury their loved ones and grow up without grandma/grandpa around. Other people will have long term health effects from catching this virus. With the lockdowns, some people will have to bury their (usually much younger) loved ones and grow up without brother/sister/son/daughter/friend around. Others will have long term mental health effects.

My cousin overdosed in May 2020. He had battled with addictions for a while before lockdowns but nothing to the point that we thought it would kill him. He went off the rails being forced to isolation and is now dead. His family had to bury him with no one else allowed to be present. In the same way that it's easy to overlook the impact of the virus if it has not severely impacted your family, its easy to overlook the lockdown effects if you and your family have not been severely impacted.

Stopping to think about the value of a life in a real sense should horrify you by all of the deaths and suffering caused by the virus but it should also horrify you to think of the value of the lives taken/affected by these sudden policy implementations. It does not make you a monster to consider both sides.

As for the clear path in terms of policies, both sides of the coin should be considered to the degree of certainty we know the risks to be. Unfortunately, this usually does require you put abstract/monetary/years-of-life-lost statistics in play.

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

#519

Post by throwaway8581 »

ipaddr wrote: post #346
hiram112 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

New Zealand is an island (two islands) that never had massive community spread. Once you cross into community spread you can't go back to being in a place like New Zealand. In most countries, there was wide community spread before anyone was even thinking about lockdowns.

Also, the average length of stay in a nursing home is under a year. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45950714_Length_of_...

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

#520

Post by Izkata »

onethought wrote: post #448
staplers wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's a lot easier to isolate an island than multiple international hubs for many different types of people (LA, SF, NYC). Also having leadership which denies anything is bad until a major sports league (NBA) takes action doesn't help.

This sentiment is trying to say the US doesn’t have effective border control. When it completely does. If the US wanted an international lockdown, it could have had one.

No, we don't have effective border control: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/18/us-mexico-im...
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