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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

#281

Post by freewilly1040 »

eigenrick wrote: post #162
axby wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the issue is that public policy is based around two flawed notions that omicron has brought to light: 1. The vaccines will become decreasingly relevant, unless we can provide technology to update vaccines as quickly as they mutate. Even then, it'll be like flu vaccines. They'll help, but won't stop the spread. 2. Barring some technological breakthrough, Covid will never go away. We'll all contract it. Then it…

I would add a 3rd flawed notion: that COVID is COVID, all variants are to be avoided at all costs.

At this point we've got well established indications of omicron being an unserious infection (sparing the lungs entirely, being no more than a bad cold for the vast majority of those who contract it). Not 1000% confirmed, of course ongoing study is warranted, but it would be shocking if omicron turns out to be a serious driver of illness and death.

But policy makers and media commentators are allergic to optimism on what this implies long term, so we are stuck in a state of alarm.

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

#282

Post by MattGaiser »

the__alchemist wrote: post #224

I speculate that students who spend time learning from internet resources like Khan Academy will get a significant leg up over their colleagues in this case; even more so than usual. This applies both in the sense that "They will learn more effectively", and "They'll have a better shot at getting into universities".

This has always been true in a way. A lot of schools have nothing to offer the top 10% of students, so the students/parents of the students who broke away from the pack were finding ways to learn on their own/have their kids learn on their own.

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

#283

Post by telman17 »

bunfunton wrote: post #269
pianoben wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't have the source available but was told that the concern was there is some kind of evidence that the vaccine had a low chance of causing long term heart issues in some children, which is why it hasn't been approved for children under 5 yet.

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

#284

Post by klyrs »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #165
ploika wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland is similarly keen to keep schools open. Children from age 5 upwards are being vaccinated as of today, and the main focus in school buildings is on getting adequate ventilation and HEPA filters into classrooms. Contact tracing in schools has been not been a priority, for better or for worse. The will is there, and there's money available to spend, but the implementation has been a bit less than stellar.

Yeah,I just don't get why we stopped contact tracing schools. Well I do actually, it was causing so much disruption that it made in person schooling almost impossible. HEPA filters seem like an obvious win, but there's clearly a bunch of RCT extremists in NPHET ;)

I've got a kid in grade 1, and I honestly don't know how contact tracing is supposed to work. Ten minutes after talking to grandma, if you ask him who he's spoken to today, he can't remember. If you ask him what he talked to grandma about, it's a mix of truth and fiction. He doesn't know the names of many classmates. Contact tracing depends on reliable narrators -- young children are far from that.

I do wish that we'd have something though. Our local government has just given up altogether.

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

#285

Post by double_nan »

autarch wrote: post #268

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 encourag…

I’m wondering what has changed in the human nature (if any) that we need day care for ppl older than 18-19 years now. What did such ppl do 100 (or 1000) years ago to overcome all that.

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

#286

Post by freewilly1040 »

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.

Because "remote learning" is a joke.

I volunteered a bit in a virtual high school classroom. The teacher running it is making a frankly heroic effort to keep her students in the school system at all.

But no one was engaged, cameras were off, students regularly don't show up at all or drop off in the middle of class.

These are comparatively adults compared to younger grades.

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

#287

Post by thinkcontext »

eigenrick wrote: post #141

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…

> My takeaway from all of this: Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping. Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.

Vaccines, masks and social distancing helped lessen the impact of the previous variants, in particular with Delta. They got us to Omicron.

However, hospitalizations are the highest they've been of the pandemic in some places and cases are still rising fast. Taking measures to prevent an overwhelmed health system is not hysteria. My uneducated guess is that after this wave burns out we'll be in a place where such measures won't be necessary.

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

#288

Post by antisthenes »

Here's my somewhat selfish take on this:

I will absolutely hate interacting with these COVID kids once they start entering the workforce. The US already has a massive maturity and tribalism problem, and I only see the lack of school and any sort of discipline and structure here reinforce it several-fold. Thankfully, so far I haven't had to manage anyone just out of school.

Add missing 2 years of education (essentially) on top of this and you get a recipe for disaster. I doubt most parents are compensating for these atrocious school conditions in any way.

The only slight positive I can think of that will come of this, is that it may normalize staying home when you are sick and not coming to work. The current generation cares too little about spreading disease at work.

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

#289

Post by christkv »

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…

School year in Northern Spain went on as normal with a class intermittently being sent home due to a positive case. Classes were kept in "independent bubbles" and did not mix to ensure better social distancing.

From a parental point of view I don't think there is much more you can do. They just relaxed the rules further to only send home classes for a week if 5 or more kids test positive.

Having the classes have been incredibly good for the kids to be allowed to socialise and keep everyone including parents sane. Considering how low their change of getting seriously ill and how the new variant is spreading I think it will be back to normality in less than two months.

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

#290

Post by autarch »

double_nan wrote: post #285
autarch wrote: post #268

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 encourag…

I’m wondering what has changed in the human nature (if any) that we need day care for ppl older than 18-19 years now. What did such ppl do 100 (or 1000) years ago to overcome all that.

I'm not following. The vast majority of people in school are younger than 18. I agree with you that it should be fine for most parents to leave an older kid (say 14+?) at home alone.

But again, some kids just want to go to school to get some damn food, regardless of age!

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