Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

151–160 of 793 posts

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

#151

Quoted post unavailable.

As others already pointed out, covid is not just a danger to the kid, it's a danger to anybody in contact with the kid, like the parents the kid lives with, the teachers and aux staff the kid interacts with, the people the kid passes on the way to school. >Edit: Please with the “but kids bring Covid home” hysteria. We have vaccines now. Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of severe covid and death, but it doesn't el…

At the beginning of all these craziness the reason for shutdowns is to flatten the curve. We did not have vaccines and hospitals were under stress. I think we did a right thing.

I’m not sure what is the goal now? We have vaccines and ICUs are not getting filled. Yeah, Covid can be though for some but oh well… we also have alcholism, drug addiction, flu, mono, etc. We cannot solve all.

I guess we all need to come to realization that COVID is here to stay and everyone will be eventually exposed to it. Vaccinated or not.

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

#152
post #139

Quoted post unavailable.

TL;DR: How did a vaccine with a reduction of hospitalizations by a factor of 20 (94%) take us from "shut everything down" to "cases no longer matter"? (Caveat: maybe for omicron it's even less severe?) Edit: specifically, from what I understand the healthcare system can't handle everyone being unvaccinated and getting the virus, it would be overwhelmed by hospitalizations. But with a 20 times reduction in hospitaliza…

Other ideas as I struggle to understand the current state of affairs: maybe the vaccine is really effective at preventing transmission, but only for some period, say 1 month to 6 months after vaccination? Maybe people in Canada received their vaccines between January and June of 2021, so maybe with boosters every 6 months, transmission would be under control?

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

#153
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Huh? You're leaving out some massive yet important parts of your argument here. It is a complete non-sequitur to go from you, personally, being perfectly safe and therefore mandatory vaccination is necessary to protect everyone. Fact is that mandatory vaccination doesn't seem to do much to change the risk to society at large. Coronavirus is tearing through fully-vaccinated Australia at a rate which suggests vaccines…

There are plenty of countries where the vaccination rate is too low to effectively prevent the healthcare system from being overrun. In Austria, we were in another lockdown due to this just a month ago, with a vaccination rate of about 70% at the time (IIRC). This is in a country with a relatively high number of unoccupied ICU beds, and we still peaked at a level just short of where doctors would have to triage patients (and well where the quality of care could be kept at its usual level due to i.e. fewer nurses and doctors per patient.)

So no, the unvaccinated aren't solely at risk personally, they could also prevent vaccinated people from getting treated at the standard of care that they would normally expect. I'm not okay with that, so mandatory vaccination with fines for non-compliance seems like the lesser evil to me.

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

#154

As I type this, I'm infected with Covid. I have a wife and three kids, all tested positive. The oldest complained of a sore throat for one day, the others were "a bit tired" for two days. I've had it the worst. I had intestinal issues for 3 says and now have a mild sore throat and fatigue. Overall, I skipped about 2 half days of work because I felt tired. (I work from home) Omicron has swept through pretty much every…

> Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against covid than the vaccines

That is my supposition too, based more on hope than facts.

> Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.

I have come to that conclusion as well.

> Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping.

This I don't agree with. Vaccines reduce the severity of an infection, and so the risk of hospitalisation, whether you are vulnerable or not. I'm confident that wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmitting the virus. And keeping your distance really can't hurt - the closer you get to someone who's transmitting, the more likely you are to catch it. That seems obvious. Maskless wonders going into supermarkets with clear signage on the door saying "MASKS MUST BE WORN" piss me off.

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

#155

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…

It's not "acceptable" because average families can't deal with their kids being home. This pandemic has revealed that for a large swath of kids home is a toxic environment actively destroying their potential. Add to this the terrible online learning implementations that are basically "beg to show up for attendance and then hope they participate" ...

[deleted]

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

#156
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others already pointed out, covid is not just a danger to the kid, it's a danger to anybody in contact with the kid, like the parents the kid lives with, the teachers and aux staff the kid interacts with, the people the kid passes on the way to school. >Edit: Please with the “but kids bring Covid home” hysteria. We have vaccines now. Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of severe covid and death, but it doesn't el…

At the beginning of all these craziness the reason for shutdowns is to flatten the curve. We did not have vaccines and hospitals were under stress. I think we did a right thing. I’m not sure what is the goal now? We have vaccines and ICUs are not getting filled. Yeah, Covid can be though for some but oh well… we also have alcholism, drug addiction, flu, mono, etc. We cannot solve all. I guess we all need to come to r…

I agree, covid is here to stay, and it's rather unlikely that anybody of us can avoid contracting it at some point. Right now, we're buying time with measures, time we need to understand more about covid and it's secondary effects and how to treat or avoid these.

Flatten the curve is still a thing, and hospitals are still under stress. While the fatality rate is lower, hospital care and especially ICU care is still running on fumes, largely thanks to a lack of health care workers, especially ICU trained nursing staff, at least here in Germany, and of course thanks to a higher infection rates which counteract the reduction of severe cases thanks to vaccines; we used to have more severe cases in fewer total infections but now we have fewer severe cases in more infections, which almost balances out at the moment here.

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

#157

As I type this, I'm infected with Covid. I have a wife and three kids, all tested positive. The oldest complained of a sore throat for one day, the others were "a bit tired" for two days. I've had it the worst. I had intestinal issues for 3 says and now have a mild sore throat and fatigue. Overall, I skipped about 2 half days of work because I felt tired. (I work from home) Omicron has swept through pretty much every…

> Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against covid than the vaccines That is my supposition too, based more on hope than facts. > Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have. I have come to that conclusion as well. > Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping. This I don't agree with. Vaccines reduce the severity of an infection, and so the risk of hospitalisation, wheth…

I agree about the vaccines. I misstated. I should have said "vaccines don't stop (or apparently slow) the spread of the omicron strain".

Vaccines do help reduce the severity of symptoms, though.

I guess my issue is that a lot of public policy was created when we thought we could eliminate the virus. Then it switched to "everyone is going to get it (once?) We just need to slow the spread."

Barring some technological breakthrough, we're going to get it. Then get it again, and again. It is a new influenza. That's our reality. Let's base our public policy on that.

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

#158

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…

[deleted]

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

#159
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> mandatory vaccination will get rid of surveillance solutions like the Greenpass while also protecting everyone.

It is unbelievably naive to think that after investing in any surveillance/control infrastructure that governments will relinquish that power willingly.

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

#160

The best thing about people talking about Covid is how civil and understanding everyone is about everyone else’s perspective. It restores my faith in our society (USA) when I see or overhear a conversation about Covid and our nation’s response to it. I think all people have very high emotional intelligence and have willingness to understand, and not fight. I’m glad that 99% of conversations don’t devolve into tribal…

say that's quite a rhetorical technique you've got going there, you got a name for it?
Post reply on HN