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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

11–20 of 714 posts

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#11

> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults. At first we didn't know how much harm the virus would cause to children. But now that we see it is much less dangerous for them we shouldn't be preventing them from learning because we are afraid of getting sick. The children are the future, and in order to secure a positive growth in society it is our obligat…

Human nature. Harm through inaction is more palatable than risky action.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#12
post #7

The article mentions increased suicide rates, especially among adolescent females, as part of "The Toll", but the study linked to specifically says: "(6). Finally, this analysis was not designed to determine whether a causal link existed between these trends and the COVID-19 pandemic."

I don't think its much of a stretch. Besides, what are you going to do, ask them why they committed suicide?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#14
So, is Covid the shock that leads to the education system being reinvented for the better or do school boards just keep bumbling along like before?

Do zero-tolerance policies really work? Why are students falling behind in mathematics compared to the rest of the world? Does overloading of take home work produce better test scores, or does it just consume free time and stress out kids? Are teachers ever going to be paid more? What about later start times for high schools?

There's so many things that can be questioned.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#15

I am very thankful that my youngest graduated high school in 2020. The last couple of months were screwed up, but there wasn't much real education lost by then; most seniors pretty much check out after Spring Break anyway. I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.

No post body was provided.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#16

> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults. At first we didn't know how much harm the virus would cause to children. But now that we see it is much less dangerous for them we shouldn't be preventing them from learning because we are afraid of getting sick. The children are the future, and in order to secure a positive growth in society it is our obligat…

Counterpoint: at first it was extremely obvious that this virus was affecting you harder the older you are, with 60+ populations starting to be at risk. Nobody thought it was harming children.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#17
I personally know healthy people not in the "old" age groups who have permanent nerve damage from mild cases of unvaccinated (pre-vaccine) Covid. We have known from the beginning that Covid sometimes causes nerve and/or brain damage (sensory loss) that may be permanent. As I am not a virologist any more than the author of this piece, I am not comfortable making blanket pronouncements like this from TFA:

> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.

There is already precedent for other acute respiratory infections (Scarlet Fever, influenza) causing cardiac damage that persists for decades. I don't understand how so many people are willing to make conclusions about long-term complications from pediatric Covid in the absence of long-term studies.

I also don't understand how one could write about tradeoffs for children without mentioning the growing ranks of Covid orphans, some of whom will be adrift in our anemic social services system for the coming decades. Besides that, losing a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can experience. Discounting to zero that trauma given the scale of death in American is not doing the reader a service.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#18
I'm not sure I like this article. They seems to overstate what the sources they link to claim.

For example the article says

> Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances.

But when you go to the study they link, it says

> Although school closures reduce the number of contacts children have, and may decrease transmission, a study of 12 million adults in the UK found no difference in the risk of death from covid-19 in households with or without children.

There's a big difference between, "You're just as likely to die from COVID if you have children" and "Children going to school doesn't increase the spread of COVID". The study even points out that closing schools "may decrease transmission", but the article completely ignores that.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#19

In 30 years these kids will be running the world. I can only hope they'll understand why this happened to them, so the next generation will be a bit wiser.

Hope sure. But any optimism should be tempered by observing how adults who had less coddled childhoods 30 years ago are raising their kids today. What have they understood?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#20
post #8

Quoted post unavailable.

Typically, reliable authority. Though the organization as a whole is often targeted by right-wing propaganda outlets much more critically than right-wing propaganda is denounced by the rest of society.

This article is a hashing out of concerns parents or others have regarding children and how they've experienced COVID-19 as well as associate non-pharmaceutical interventions. Dynamic control problems are hard, even more so when agents (people) are autonomous like public health contexts. Time-consistent preferences expressed in policy are also hard, as there is incentive to bend rules in the very moments those policies are written for.

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