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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

#261

Post by sangnoir »

ethanbond wrote: post #50
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if decades of malinvestment in those institutions and routing our most educated people to editing spreadsheets with dollar signs on them or selling ads ( Now With Code! ) has had negative consequences for our society.

When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave the industry "Oh, that's just the free hand of the market." When a multilateral, societal disaster strikes and schools struggle with contradicting demands: "What an inept bunch we have running these schools"

Very few are being honest on why the kids have to be in school (so it doesn't disrupt parents' labor), so it's framed as "think of the children" when TFA shows that little education happens at school when teachers are sick. Zoom class is terrible, but its better than the shitshow described in the fine article. Worse, if students get into dangerous situations while at school/playing hooky because there isn't adequate adult supervision, the same people will have the gall to blame the schools.

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

xapata wrote: post #230
viraptor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With omicron 2 doses still don't give you much protection. (25% effective) One booster is good, but still ~55% effective. (UK stats) Then you get immunocompromised people and older population where breakthrough infections are still very dangerous. I don't know if reducing the contract would change anything anymore. But in terms of spread via kids, don't think of just the working / school / bar-going population.

Much protection against infection or against hospitalization?

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by pb7 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #249
pb7 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the nicest way possible, fuck those people. They’ve had plenty of time to get vaccinated. It’s not our responsibility to tip toe around irresponsibility.

Some people cannot get vaccinated. A friend of mine can't because she's immunocompromised. Their family has done their part by staying home and finding new activities for their kids to accomplish in the house (which, fortunately for them, is pretty easy because they're huge nerds and aren't hurting for money). They're lucky because her husband is a self-employed remote contractor and she is a remote special education…

Immunocompromised people (as a group, many of whom can get vaccinated anyway) generously make up ~3% of the total population. What is the other 22% of the aforementioned 25% doing? There’s no need to point to exceptions when there is a much bigger unexplained group, it just gives them undue plausible deniability.

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

#264

Post by sebow »

Forget myocarditis, forget the f#cking covid for a second.

If we want to apply about "let's think of the kids" mentality, then let's think of the kids.What will we do now or in the upcoming years when suicide rates, cognitive development problems, and a lot of other issues from subfields of psychiatry are >boundTo me this is the biggest hypocrisy and bullsh#t indicator of this whole mentality of "protecting others".We don't need >restrictive< measures to protect kids themselves, the best thing we can do to protect them is to let them develop, which is the exact opposite kind of measure we take to protect adults and elderly people.

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

#265

Post by thinkcontext »

tomp wrote: post #16

This exemplifies the worst part of this pandemic - the mind virus . A lot of people in the society are LARPing (pretending) that the virus is serious - staying home, testing constantly, "close contact notifications", "running away from a positive student" - yet at the same time, acting as if it's obviously not a dangerous virus - if it were, they'd all be staying away from each other . Basically new "security theatre…

It's not a mind virus which is causing some places to have peak hospitalizations of the pandemic.

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

#266

Post by spookthesunset »

bally0241 wrote: post #221
denton-scratch wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Omicron is not mild Anecdotally, I understand it can be pretty nasty - not "like a winter cold", more like bad 'flu (the anecdote relates to an antivaxx family).

I just got it along with family (both vaxxed and unvaxxed, there was no noticeable difference in symptoms). It was somewhere between a 'common cold' and the flu. Not fun, but definitely not something to panic about (understandably everyone will have a different reaction depending on their current state of health). However, I think we've reached the point of diminishing returns on any sort of intervention (they've all…

It’s a shame this is downvoted because you are completely right. Covid ain’t going anywhere. Society needs to move on.

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

#267

Post by khazhoux »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #250
khazhoux wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH the thought has crossed my mind many times lately. At this point, I strongly believe we're all going to get Omicron (and the next variant) eventually, and it's just a matter of time. So, more and more I just want to get it over with. Except for the fact that ICUs would overflow, it would be fantastic to just have a "once and done" event. Let (and encourage) COVID to sweep undeterred, and all the vaccinated adults…

I'm sure the antivax people would prefer this approach, but killing off 5 or 6 million people (based on a 1.4% CFR) in the US is fucking insane.

Not only does the antivaxxers prefer this approach, it's the approach they are already actively taking. In Florida, for example (but pick whatever southern-US state you prefer): people actively refuse the vaccine and violently refuse all other accommodations (no masks, no distancing, no reduced capacity at bars).

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

#268

Post by autarch »

Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w...

The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize.

It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like:

    We encourage all kids to stay home, but if you can't, that's ok. You can come to school and have a warm, quiet place to spend the day, and we'll provide free lunch to everyone who comes.
Forget about the education piece for a while, just provide the (very important for some people) day care part.

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

#269

Post by bunfunton »

pianoben wrote: post #252
parkingrift wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is no vaccine for children under five. As long as we've got children in our lives, we all need to go out of our way to protect them - even those of us with masks and vaccines are getting Omicron.

Why? It’s not really harmful to children. Note all the verbage in the news that says “hospitalized with covid” instead of “hospitalized because of covid”. They are going to the hospital mostly due to other reasons

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

#270

Post by kerneloftruth »

pb7 wrote: post #220
tzs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the ~25% of US adults that are not vaccinated? As far as I know they are at least as likely as vaccinated adults to have school age children. Even taking into account that they probably have a higher chance of homeschooling, that still leaves a lot of kids in public schools whose parents are not vaccinated. Are you in the "they've had enough time to get vaccinated, so if they haven't done so yet let them g…

In the nicest way possible, fuck those people. They’ve had plenty of time to get vaccinated. It’s not our responsibility to tip toe around irresponsibility.

They're basically saying the same words in response. I think those who wish to be vaccinated have already done so.

Given how the reality of it has unfolded, it's fascinating (horrifying) to see the continued hysteria: one _must_ take the vaccine invented less than 2 years ago, that has been available for only a year, whose makers are immune from litigation re: unforeseen effects, is far less effective than it was first promised to be, and where even triple-dosed people catch Covid, regardless. It's super bizarre to see the desire/demand to vaccinate children with the brand-new drug...as young as 5!?!

As the virus evolves, our experience with it increases, the reality of the vaccines becoming clearer (they help, but not as much as we hoped for), and therapeutics become more available -- mandates that require vaccines seem less valid. It's appropriate to reconsider them, like _all emergency powers_. I'm actually hoping the SCOTUS knocks down the OSHA mandates. It's bad precedent to grant an agency such powers via fiat (executive order); and, what's being mandated is not at all what we thought it was.

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