Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

531–540 of 793 posts

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

#531

I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong . The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. * The way they talk about…

> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall.

The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had cram even more people into the auditorium than it had seating. They did this for 3 hours, far longer than it takes to acquire COVID from someone sitting next to you. Kids were literally testing positive inside of the auditorium during this time.

> * The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me.

That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". It's baffling that you think the problem in this scenario is that he's concerned about a COVID-positive person in close quarters having a mask down, as opposed to the fact that a COVID-positive person has their mask down. You must be harboring some major biases.

> * Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school.

Did you miss the part where so many of the faculty and staff were out sick that they were struggling to coordinate everything? I agree it's uncoordinated and wasteful, but the point is that they're being forced to try to run a school when a huge number of the faculty are too sick to do so.

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

#532

I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong . The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. * The way they talk about…

It's minutiae to be concerned when someone who just tested positive for covid is talking to you with their mask down?

yes

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

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's minutiae to be concerned when someone who just tested positive for covid is talking to you with their mask down?

Given that guidance has said that close exposure for 10-15 minutes is required for transmission, yes - it does seem a little overboard.

That guidance is pre-omicron. Someone talking in your face seems like extremely high risk these days.

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

#534
Students shoudn't be tested for COVID. It should be allowed to spread until localized herd immunity is established.

Most of the public over-estimates the risk of COVID, by 10 to 100 times:

https://kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-19_o...

These over-reactions, and anxiety, along with all of the testing that is caused by, and contributed to the social obsession about it, does more damage to students than the COVID-19 virus.

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

#535
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't fault any schools for struggling from March 2020 to June 2020, being thrown into the pandemic and remote learning with no warning. But I was absolutely astonished to see that most administrators took the summer of 2020 off, assuming that everybody would be back in school that fall and things would be normal. They wasted several months of time that could've been spent planning contingencies and how remote lear…

Where are you going to get a few million surrogates? A lot of solutions shared here fail to realize that the majority of US public school teachers are routinely spending their own money on basic classroom supplies.

home/community school. public schools are a death trap

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

#536
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of what you say is just plain wrong. - Masking is highly effective and just a bit inconvenient. - Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive. - Vaccines are very effective even against transmission. - Nobody is aiming for 0 Covid anymore (except some Australians and China I guess), but getting through the winter wave without too many fellow citizens dead should be something we spend some effort on. Co…

> - Masking is highly effective and just a bit inconvenient. - Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive. - Vaccines are very effective even against transmission.

None of those appear to be true for Omicron, and we’re only sorta/kinda true for Delta. Vaccinated people are getting and spreading it at rates that are really quite shocking, and even pro-mask drs and scientists are admitting that cloth masks don’t seem to do much now…

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

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books have been remote learning for hundreds of years, whats wrong with remote learning especially now pupils can ask questions straight away from a pool of teachers online?

Even hundreds of years ago there were classrooms with teachers.

Simply because technology was slow back then, if the technology existed for faster than horseback/carrier pigeon communication and costs were not prohibitive would the world of teaching/knowledge acquisition have evolved a different form of society?

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

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look folks, yes I know I flunked out of BS Molecular degree but.. It will be a pandemic of 5 to ten years in total. In short words like you were 5, two factors converged to make this a reality: 1. World for the most part failed to lead like China an stop it cold fast and yes places like the USA gets fair blame for that. 2. Speed of mutations. Only have one of those factors then it would be far less years of a pandemi…

i think it would be fair to say that science failed us if this is due to a lab leak, which appears to be the case. science made by possible by public health funding, in fact.

It's not a lab leak. Seriously shut up with this conspiracy nonsense.

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

#539
post #510

I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong . The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. * The way they talk about…

Indeed, it's truly sad. It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. From his comments, I wonder if he actually thinks he will be dead from standing next to someone who just tested positive. The preliminary results from UK and SA indicate that this recent wave could be a blessing in that it serves as an innoculation rather than severe illness. And children his age are no…

> It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses.

Are we reading the same post?

The kids are going to school. The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school.

> And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with.

Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? They have older parents at home. They have older teachers in the classroom. Many of them see even older grandparents and relatives frequently, perhaps also at home.

Where do kids go if they get sick? Home, where they are cared for by older parents.

Kids don't just live in isolated bubbles with other kids. It's dishonest to ignore the second-order effects of kids getting sick.

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

#540
post #230

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?

"Vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic diseases". I got the data from the UK's "Technical briefing: Update on hospitalisation and vaccine effectiveness for Omicron VOC-21NOV-01 (B.1.1.529) 31 December 2021" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-...
Post reply on HN