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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

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Re: No Way to Grow Up

#281

Post by 323 »

vitro wrote: post #156
_jal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be a weird blind-spot when discussing COVID outcomes - anything short of death appears to be discounted or ignored. So hospital issues, long COVID, etc. just don't exist, so catching it either didn't matter or you're dead. On a planet where that was true, that sort of reasoning would make sense. (As it does if you're trying to encourage other people to ignore risks.) What I don't understand is why so…

The quora answer [1] by Franklin Veaux to question "How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?" explains nicely that it is not binary live/die at all. Mind though that this was written in the beginning of the pandemic when we didn't have the same information as now, so numbers may be imprecise, but the explanation still stands. https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shu...

Times have changed, we are more sensitive now to death.

In the past it was considered normal to lose 50k soldiers in a war, have 3 of your kids die as infants, ...

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#282

Post by [deleted] »

taneq wrote: post #260
chmod600 wrote: post #227

It seems like this is a case where science doesn't tell the whole story. The pro-science stance is very numbers-focused, but ignores hard-to-quantify things that really do matter. People see their kids suffering. Masks do have a cost. Millions of years of evolution say that facial expressions are really important, especially for adolescents. Fear has a cost. And quality of life matters. Everyone knows this. Even the…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#283

Post by nradov »

_jal wrote: post #54
superfrank wrote: post #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 diffe…

There appears to be a weird blind-spot when discussing COVID outcomes - anything short of death appears to be discounted or ignored. So hospital issues, long COVID, etc. just don't exist, so catching it either didn't matter or you're dead. On a planet where that was true, that sort of reasoning would make sense. (As it does if you're trying to encourage other people to ignore risks.) What I don't understand is why so…

Most any serious viral infection can potentially cause post-viral fatigue syndrome. We've known that for decades. COVID-19 is nothing special in that regard.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3063394/

But many cases of "long COVID" appear to be psychosomatic.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

And none of that is really relevant to school closure policy anyway. All of us will eventually get infected. At most closing schools again would only delay the inevitable. Instead we should focus on reducing risk factors by encouraging more people to get vaccinated and aggressively treating chronic metabolic diseases.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#284

Post by galaxyLogic »

ModernMech wrote: post #163
CountDrewku wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the opposite about the other side as well... Anything short of eradication (which is impossible) means nonstop lockdowns, masking, vaccine mandates and making the unvaccinated pariahs. What I don't understand is why you would shut down schools and enforce silly unhelpful mask mandates on them when the science shows children do not spread the disease in any meaningful way and are not badly affected by it.…

Schools in my district are shut down because there aren’t enough substitute teachers to fill in for sick or retired faculty. The older ones are getting sick and dying, or quitting before they do. The younger ones don’t want to be paid $35k a year to be screamed at by parents for not teaching subjects the way parents want them to be taught. Browse /r/teachers some time. It used to be a sub full of teachers venting ste…

Good point. Also flights are cancelled not because of a government mandate but because personnel to fly the planes are sick with Covid.

It would be bad business to fly with a sick crew.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#285

Post by candiodari »

tdeck wrote: post #229
ajmurmann wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For the past two years, large parts of American society have decided harming children was an unavoidable side effect of Covid-19." This sentence also implied that there had been consensus about what the trade-off is which I don't think everyone would agree with. I definitely know some parents who are afraid if their children returning to badly ventilated classrooms

Also parents are the caretakers of children. If they're sick or incapacitated or die, that's going to have a negative impact on children. As will having a greater number of essential workers becoming sick or dying.

If it was not possible to establish a clear link between school class surges and infection rates in 2 years, then there is no link. The CDC does have a list on which places transmit the virus and restaurants/cafe/bar/dancing/... were 3 of the top 5 entries if memory serves. The remaining 2 were hospitals and doctors’ offices.

Many places that people think would spread the virus don’t. For example anything outside is very safe, as are swimming pools. Outside it takes rock concert like crowd densities before clusters form. Viruses cannot deal, even for milliseconds, with uv light or rapid temperature changes and many places are already hardened against infection, and therefore quite safe, even with many people without face masks. Again, there’s a density limit, but it’s pretty high.

One study did point out that risks in school and hospital settings are closely related to the quality of the ventilation system. And yet, I haven’t read even once about attempts to identify substandard facilities for kids/patients or money for improving them being allocated. And obviously, all data suggests smaller classes drastically reduce risk.

Can’t find the list but here’s a study. Schools are not mentioned. Restaurants and any setting with on-site eating or drinking are the big vectors of infection it seems.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a5.htm

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#286

Post by amelius »

Jtsummers wrote: post #174
amelius wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm sure there are more diplomatic ways.

Then: 1. What power do kids have with which to influence adults? 2. Why does the pandemic have anything to do with anything? It's a weird non sequitur if your intent wasn't to suggest bioterrorism.

> Why does the pandemic have anything to do with anything?

Pandemic versus climate is basically the adult's future versus children's future.

That's why I'm saying children should take a stand here.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#287

Post by rdtwo »

runako wrote: post #222
giraffe_lady wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parents don't create that pressure though. Americans use school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare. People don't have leave, paid or otherwise, to take care of their children at home, but they must go to work anyway. This is a labor issue, not an "individuals are mean" problem.

Granted, but it’s not a “schools run poorly” issue as it is frequently positioned in the Covid era.

Yeah it is. Schools are run poorly because they fail to acknowledge that they are child care and as such it needs to be consistent and reliable. If school closes for 6 months where is childcare plan b going to come from. How do you replace a skilled teacher that can handle 20-30 kids with one that does 2-3 and not cause huge pain for a family’s finances?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#288

Post by fundad »

yupper32 wrote: post #99

Honest question: At what point do we give up? I'm in the Bay Area and it'll be coming up on 2 years soon of what basically amounts to a social shut down. -- Many social groups are just not getting together anymore, including most of mine. -- Concerts, sporting events, parties of most sizes, crowded bars/clubs just seem off the table at this point. -- Masks for the majority of it, which makes gym going and working out…

I know it's intimidating to go places alone and try to make friends there, it's what a lot of us have had to do any time we moved away from our social groups.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#289

Post by 323 »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #240
vitro wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quora answer [1] by Franklin Veaux to question "How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?" explains nicely that it is not binary live/die at all. Mind though that this was written in the beginning of the pandemic when we didn't have the same information as now, so numbers may be imprecise, but the explanation still stands. https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shu...

Nobody wants to get the disease which POSSIBLY could kill them or put them to hospital and perhaps financially bankrupt them and or give them bad long-term health outcomes. That has an effect on the behavior of everybody, except of course those who believe Covid is a "democratic hoax". Also with an evolving disease you don't know what its death-rate will be and it will depend on the preventive measures you and the go…

> mortality rate is 7.5% in Mexico

That is probably the CFR (case fatality rate). This depends on actually testing. If you don't test mild or asymptomatic cases, the mortality will look way larger.

But we know the actual global mortality, is about 0.7%.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#290

Post by rdtwo »

smm11 wrote: post #243

This is all we need. I have two kids just out of college, and they already have the attitude that they're defeated, the world is out to get them, if everyone older would just die, why can't we buy a new car for $4000 or a house for $20K?

Try multiplying by 10-20…
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