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I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

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Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#21

Post by wutbrodo »

brohoolio wrote: post #9

I don’t understand why remote learning during this surge isn’t acceptable. I’ve seen opinion piece after opinion piece go on and on about how we need to have kids in school. The pieces attack school officials or teachers but complete ignore the logistics of having so many sick teachers. There aren’t enough subs to cover for the teachers. We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks. It’s a perfect time to pivot to r…

> I don’t understand why remote learning during this surge isn’t acceptable. I’ve seen opinion piece after opinion piece go on and on about how we need to have kids in school.

I agree that this would be a great time for temporary remote schooling. I think the problem is that months and months of unnecessary school closures have broken parents (and kids), as well as burned a lot of trust that this will be handled with a modicum of competence or compassion. I don't personally have kids, but the parents I know are very reasonably at their breaking points over how poorly-managed and dogmatic school closures have been. That excludes those whose kids attend or started to attend private schools, whose immunity to the cacophony of Discourse means that they've handled the risk of Covid sanely and compassionately.

I'm as annoyed as anyone at Covid denialists, but in my urban coastal context, the neurotic hysterics of restrictionist fanatics has been a lot more salient. There's been a faction of the conversation that insists that making any space to discuss the costs of restrictions is denialism, and the excess restrictions driven by those people are exactly why there's zero capacity left for NPIs like lockdown or school closures during a period where they would actually be helpful.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#22

Post by jaclaz »

detaro wrote: post #3

Has any country made noticeable progress in improving the situation for schooling (EDIT: during covid waves) compared to lets say 18 months ago? Here in Germany the mantra seems to be "keep the schools running at all costs!" - except if "costs" means spending anything or preparing anything. So we don't have meaningful improvements done to schools, still don't have universal setups for remote or hybrid schooling, any…

Italy is the same, "school must be in presence" is a kind of mantra, and though it is (IMHO) right in theory, it fails in practice (where/when teachers, janitors, bus drivers, and even pupils are COVID positive in more than a tiny fraction).

Schools (generally speaking) are due to reopen on monday the 10th, but very likely only a part of them will actually be able to.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#23

Post by beardedwizard »

fourseventy wrote: post #13

How many students that got sick are experiencing symptoms more severe than the common cold? It seems like the chaos is caused by the attempted solutions to covid and not the actual symptoms? Edit: 7 day rolling average of COVID cases according to https://www1.nyc.gov/ is 32k cases per day with 38 deaths. So there is a 0.1% mortality rate.

You are failing to consider the spread to vulnerable populations where the symptoms are fatal. Omicron is not mild, people with vaccines have mild symptoms due to its efficacy. All these kids come home to families with parents and grandparents. They also have young siblings.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#24

Post by fbmlk »

When we'll look back on the panic in 5-10 years, everyone will be mystified. Previous pandemics like the Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic) have stopped naturally without vaccines or major government intervention.

How has humanity survived without $BigGov? In Austria (highly locked down, fascist vaccine policy) the cumulative death rate now surpasses Sweden's. This means that you cannot avoid deaths, and if you allow them sooner, the pandemic will be over sooner.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#25

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

tomp wrote: post #18
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14

[flagged]

If you're afraid of the virus, get vaccinated yourself. That's literally the most you can do. If you're still afraid of the virus, you should know that vaccinating people (even forcefully) won't stop transmission. The virus is endemic. The only thing that can change between now and "back to normal" future is, your mind.

I'm not afraid. I am triple-vaxxed not for myself but out of solidarity for those around me. I am simply at the end of my patience with people going to protests clogging my city and creating politicians using the greenpass and constant checks and testing to create a divide.

mandatory vaccination will get rid of surveillance solutions like the Greenpass while also protecting everyone. there can still be an exemption if a physician approves that a person can not be vaccinated for some strange reason.

that's the only way to go back to normal, the rest is silly greenpass rules or noisy discussions about "shall we pay un-vaccinated people less?", etc ...

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#26

Post by VoodooJuJu »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14

[flagged]

>It offers anti-vaxxers a road out of their self-radicalization. They are able to tone down their conspiracy and blame the government for having been "chipped", and so it's not like they "betrayed their cult" but they were forced to.

I think that yours (and most people's) idea of the typical "anti-vaxxer" is a convenient caricature packaged and served to you by mass media and memes, that you've never actually listened to a real live one of these "anti-vaxxers", what they think and feel.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#28

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

rini17 wrote: post #5

The pandemic is constantly reminding us how our institutions weeded out all agency and were running on inertia. Still are trying to, in fact.

Before the pandemic I had this uncomfortable sense that the people running the place were asleep at the wheel, and everyone was tacitly expecting someone else to do the actual hard work/thinking so they could go back to their phones/Netflix in peace.

Now I’ve had to acknowledge that for a lot of institutions this more or less is the case.

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#29

Post by bertil »

brohoolio wrote: post #9

I don’t understand why remote learning during this surge isn’t acceptable. I’ve seen opinion piece after opinion piece go on and on about how we need to have kids in school. The pieces attack school officials or teachers but complete ignore the logistics of having so many sick teachers. There aren’t enough subs to cover for the teachers. We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks. It’s a perfect time to pivot to r…

Remote can be difficult if you have more members of the family than computers and rooms. That can seem absurd to you and me (I have five computers plus three smartphones and probably a tablet somewhere, for two people) but in many families, ressources are more scarce than that. Having my partner (medical doctor, so working out of the home most of the time) take a call during one of my meeting is frustrating, but it happens once a month. Eight hours a day can’t go smoothly.

There are more issues with younger kids who need supervision on this side of the screen, might fight with their siblings, etc. My sister has three boys (8, 10 and 12 y.o.) and she just can’t cope with the cabin fever. The lack of structured exercise seems a problem too.

Finally, in some cases, school offers free meals to families who need it. I feel like that could be substituted with a more universal service, but no one knows who can do that (has the time, budget, PPE, etc.).

Re: I am a New York City public high school student. The situation is beyond control

#30

Post by edw519 »

Wow, it looks like this is the closest our schools have ever been at preparing students for life in the real working world. I could have written this myself about work (with a few changes noted below):

Classes that I did attend were quiet and empty.

would be:

Meetings that I did attend were meaningless and pointless.

I arrived at school and promptly went to Study Hall...Second period I had another absent teacher...Third period I had a normal class period.

would be:

I arrived at work and promptly went to the break room...Second meeting I had another absent manager...Third meeting I had a normal standup, but no one was prepared and no one cared.

90% of the conversations spoken by students concern COVID. It has completely taken over any function of daily school life.

would be:

90% of the conversations spoken by I.T. workers concern AGILE. It has completely taken over any function of getting any real work done.

One teacher flat out left his class 5 mins into the lesson and didn't return because he was developing symptoms and didn't believe it safe to spread to his class.

would be:

One manager flat out left his team 5 mins into the meeting and didn't return because he had no idea what we were talking about.

I’ve removed the name of my school as it made me uncomfortable sharing such information, but I’ll say that it’s a specialized high school. This is occurring everywhere.

would be:

I’ve removed the name of my company as it made me uncomfortable sharing such information, but I’ll say that it’s a Fortune 500 company. This is occurring everywhere.

This is around 10% of my school. As of Monday, only 30 of whom were reported to the DOE ... which just seems like negligence to me.

would be:

This is around 10% of our transactions. As of Monday, only 30 of which were reported to the auditors ... which just seems like negligence to me.

I spent about 3 hours sitting around today doing nothing.

(Didn't have to change a word.)

Congratulations OP! You are officially ready to join our I.T. department at Megacorp.

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