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Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

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Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#41
post #4

Covid was a wealth transfer from the youth to the elderly

This is a bad take. At most, Covid was a wealth transfer from governments and middle-class to many lucky corporations and wealthy investors. But in reality, everyone is suffering. Let's say the opposite reaction happened and we prioritized heathy youths over vulnerable seniors. There would have been orders of magnitude more deaths by now, society would have collapsed in some places temporarily or permanently as healt…

There is no evidence society would have collapsed. Many countries do not have the health infrastructure the US has and have not undergone societal collapse. Yes more elderly would have died. More people with comorbities would have died. But societal collapse?

The shutdown lasted for far too long. Mock Florida all you want, but they weathered the pandemic far better than many states with strict lockdown regimes (California/New York). Consider Florida has one of (if not the) largest senior populations in the US too.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective behavior in response to COVID was a life transfer from the youth to the elderly.

Both are true. Fiscal and monetary stimulus drove financial assets owned mostly by 40+ and retirees to the moon. House prices have become more unaffordable just as millennials (already saddled with college debt) are getting ready to buy their first homes. Inflation has eaten into real wages even with increases. We also locked up an entire generation of zoomers in a house for two years. I was all for lockdowns in earl…

Assets going up in value isn't really a wealth transfer by itself. The buyer is just exchanging a lot more cash for an asset worth a lot more. Their wealth doesn't change overall. Rents are a different story perhaps.

The unfair property taxes in California and similar states is certainly wealth transfer though, which got vastly more unfair.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#43
post #4

Covid was a wealth transfer from the youth to the elderly

This is a bad take. At most, Covid was a wealth transfer from governments and middle-class to many lucky corporations and wealthy investors. But in reality, everyone is suffering. Let's say the opposite reaction happened and we prioritized heathy youths over vulnerable seniors. There would have been orders of magnitude more deaths by now, society would have collapsed in some places temporarily or permanently as healt…

Words words words. Tl;dr yeah he’s right. That $250k house you were supposed to buy? Yeah, it’s $450k now. Pay up.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#44
post #22

I think one thing that will make the history books is how little innovation or adaptation there was in educational technology, rendering a truly depressing set of prospects for learning over the pandemic. A lot of companies have made a LOT of money in edutech going back to the 90s CDROM days and what do students get when the system escapes these companies's grasp and students need some real imagination put to the mat…

What were they supposed to do? They had about two weeks to go from fully in-classroom to fully-remote with no warning, in the middle of the school year. I don't care what kind of technology you have, that is going to be a clusterfuck.

[deleted]

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#45
post #22

I think one thing that will make the history books is how little innovation or adaptation there was in educational technology, rendering a truly depressing set of prospects for learning over the pandemic. A lot of companies have made a LOT of money in edutech going back to the 90s CDROM days and what do students get when the system escapes these companies's grasp and students need some real imagination put to the mat…

What were they supposed to do? They had about two weeks to go from fully in-classroom to fully-remote with no warning, in the middle of the school year. I don't care what kind of technology you have, that is going to be a clusterfuck.

The problem was this clusterfuck lasted for far too long and public guidance was and still is a complete mess.

We panicked everyone instead of having a level-headed policy where we stratified risk by age and health condition.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#46

Quoted post unavailable.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can find many of those politicians, reporters, and public personalities who supported the invasion of Iraq still slinging their opinions out to the world and receiving lots of attention. Something tells me that this, like many other tragedies and fuck-ups of our time will be memory-holed and we will learn less than nothing in aggregate.

[deleted]

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#47

Quoted post unavailable.

> [...] a virus that was nowhere near a risk to children.

People continuously forget about (or maliciously omit) even a single step beyond someone's infection. One infected person can spread it to others. Even if the individual's risk may be low, soon, you start spreading it to people that are more at risk. Schools can thus become superspreader locations that put their parents and teachers and whatnot at risk. Whether or not everything we did with schools is right, not doing anything would've led to millions of more people dead.

> [...] our hysterical reaction to Covid, [...]

Everyone certainly did some wrong things and arguably are continuing to do so, but "hysterical" is not how I would put it. We were facing a [relatively] unknown virus with poorly-understood effects to this day. We still can't predict who will be affected how by it.

I think this rhetoric is dangerous and some points of it are [to me] blindingly obviously wrong.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#48

Quoted post unavailable.

This shows a gross misunderstanding of viruses.

1. Children don't exist in a vacuum. Even if they don't become symptomatic, they can still be a carrier and they can still infect adults that they're in contact with. Should teachers be sacrificing themselves? Should families isolate their children within the house?

2. It's a low risk to healthy children. What do you do for children with other health complications? America has a lot of diabetic children. Covid is also shown to increase the risk of pre-diabetic children becoming diabetic https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/covid-19-substan...

3. Covid is not a one and done. You get it, and it can have long term lasting effects even if it doesn't kill you. That applies to children as well.

4. Covid spreads very quickly with a relatively high risk to the greater population. Lockdowns were a safety measure at the very least to be able to keep pace with things. It was absolutely the right thing to do till the virus was more understood.

5. As the virus was more understood, it reinforced the above points because covid has very complex side effects

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#50
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are true. Fiscal and monetary stimulus drove financial assets owned mostly by 40+ and retirees to the moon. House prices have become more unaffordable just as millennials (already saddled with college debt) are getting ready to buy their first homes. Inflation has eaten into real wages even with increases. We also locked up an entire generation of zoomers in a house for two years. I was all for lockdowns in earl…

Assets going up in value isn't really a wealth transfer by itself. The buyer is just exchanging a lot more cash for an asset worth a lot more. Their wealth doesn't change overall. Rents are a different story perhaps. The unfair property taxes in California and similar states is certainly wealth transfer though, which got vastly more unfair.

It is an indirect transfer.

Central bank balance sheet coupled with debt monetization debases fiat. That means if I worked for an hour and made $10 and your house goes up by 30%, I can buy less house while you can borrow against your house at low interest rates to buy more financial assets or even my time.

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