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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

#621

Post by oezi »

happyopossum wrote: post #536
oezi wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I don't know where you got your information from, but Omicron doesn't change any of the physics of virus particle spreading.

Mask are absolutely working. Even cloth masks. But of course when we are talking masking nowadays we mean N95 for everyone which provides roughly a 25x reduce risk of contracting covid if both source and target are wearing it.

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

#622

Post by llimos »

cipheredStones wrote: post #512
thepasswordis wrote: post #501

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, because for schoolkids, Omicron is literally a cold, if that. The other variants, call it a bad cold. The only reason to stop them catching it is to stop them spreading it. Had someone three years ago been that concerned about someone with a cold, yes, that would be minutiae.

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

#623

Post by oezi »

nojs wrote: post #407
oezi wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> except for some Australians Australia has more new daily cases per capita than US right now, according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

My point was: Australia is the only non-asian country from which I still have heard voices of aiming for a ZeroCovid strategy. Everybody else has given that up (for now).

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

#624

Post by xrd »

alach11 wrote: post #432
another_story wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Double up classes. You could have a 60 person class taught by one teacher, with the other acting as support.

My brother is a teacher, his class sizes have increased by 30% this year. He's exhausted and was long before COVID surged. It is not an easy job.

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

#625

Post by valachio »

csense wrote: post #607

Contrarian viewpoint: Everyone's eventually gonna catch COVID-19 and it can't be stopped. All the travel restrictions, testing, school closures, quarantines, vaccine mandates, etc. are accomplishing is imposing costs and creating chaos. People will be hospitalized. People will die. Hospitals will be overwhelmed. It's unavoidable at this point, but no politician or policy maker has the courage to admit that. COVID mig…

Yeah what you said is pretty much it. And not only will everyone catch COVID at some point, but they will catch it many times over the course of their lives as the virus mutates; you'll get sick but it won't kill you (unless you are really unlucky). Sounds similar... oh right, just like the flu.

Imagine if you stepped on a nail. Guess what, it's gonna be painful no matter what you do. It's better to pull the nail out in 1 go and endure a large amount of pain in a short amount of time, than to pull the nail out 1cm a day and endure a moderate amount of pain over a long period of time. Right now, almost every human society has decided to do the latter and implement lockdown after lockdown; going into total mania over new variants and semi-mandating vaccines and pumping 3 shots (more to come!) of rushed, insufficiently tested vaccines within a single year. I say semi-mandating because if you are faced with a choice of losing your livelihood or getting a jab, do you really have a choice?

Here in Toronto, the government just started another 3-week lockdown. I believe this is the 3rd lockdown we've had.

In some weird way, I'm strangely at peace with everything that's happened. I think I have adopted somewhat of a fatalistic attitude, not towards COVID but rather towards human nature and our ape-like herd-like nature.

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

#626

Post by mafuy »

thepasswordis wrote: post #501

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…

> 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. > Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home.

You've misunderstood - he's not blaming the students but the administration in these points.

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

#627

Post by oezi »

dude187 wrote: post #558
oezi wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. No, it's really not. It's made no difference in the overall spread. It's also a LOT more than "just a bit inconvenient". It prevents normal face to face human interaction in public. > Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive. Well the "extremely expensive" part is somewhat right, though it would be more accurate to call them "extremely damaging t…

I am honestly amazed at the level of nonsense and fatalism from your post. As if common physics and virology doesn't apply to this virus.

Of course masking works. Why wouldn't it? It had a tremendous impact of making a virus that has a R0 of more than 3 spread rather slowly.

We don't have to argue about lockdowns anymore because we won't be getting another one. There are more nuanced tools available now. But of course lockdowns have worked to delay spread. It is just basic physics that you can't get infected if you don't spend time with somebody infected.

Last, your rejection of any measures does not make any sense. We are in the first winter after a tremendously successful vaccination campaign (over 10x risk reduction for those vaccinated). It is appropriate to keep some measures with high impact on spread and low impact on freedom (such as masks!) to slow the current wave to help the healthcare system.

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

#628

Post by jpster »

bsder wrote: post #609
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb question and I realize it may be. I've seen that said before, "Nearly everyone is going to catch omicron within the next 2 to 6 months"; the range changes both the quote is similar. I haven't really seen a why, it just seems to be a given. I know it's more virulent, but why is everyone going to have it so soon?

Omicron is roughly as contagious as chicken pox. Remember what happened when a single child got chicken pox before the vaccine? There was never a question that everybody was about to get chicken pox--the only thing you could do was manage the timeframe. Before the vaccine, people would have chicken pox parties so all the children were exposed simultaneously and everybody could get it over with. With Omicron, it's sim…

New variants have followed Omicron. And that will continue to happen. They may be more benign or less benign than what we’ve seen so far. But I keep hearing the assumption of “definitely mild”. I’m not sure the science is so definitive on that point.

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

#629

Post by renewiltord »

stefan_ wrote: post #426
sva_ wrote: post #365

I read this post earlier today, and found it quite shocking. I really hope this is an exception rather than the normal. I previously didn't think about it this way, and thought closing schools was the more sensible choice. But we're failing a whole generation like this. It more and more feels like we live in a society that sarcrifices their young, just to keep old people on their life support machines a little longer…

I don't understand. This is what you took away from this? I thought this post shows that keeping schools open is an absolute fantasy. This is one of the best funded schools in NYC; it's going to be absolute shambles in the rest of them.

At some point we have to face the facts: NYC’s school admins aren’t good enough. Private schools have been open in California for ages.

But this is normal. Public school workers are deep mediocre workers. Most of the time they skate by being mediocre. But this moment demanded that they do their job well. They, challenged to act outside mediocrity, found their skills wanting.

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

#630

Post by bsder »

jpster wrote: post #628
bsder wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omicron is roughly as contagious as chicken pox. Remember what happened when a single child got chicken pox before the vaccine? There was never a question that everybody was about to get chicken pox--the only thing you could do was manage the timeframe. Before the vaccine, people would have chicken pox parties so all the children were exposed simultaneously and everybody could get it over with. With Omicron, it's sim…

New variants have followed Omicron. And that will continue to happen. They may be more benign or less benign than what we’ve seen so far. But I keep hearing the assumption of “definitely mild”. I’m not sure the science is so definitive on that point.

I said nothing about mild. I said "contagious".

Before Omicron, we had a hope of creating an R0 Omicron, irrespective of whether it is mild or not, is simply going to blow through the population no matter what we do. Afterward everybody will have been infected with Covid, vaccinated, or both.

At that point, we'll have a background level of deaths from endemic Covid every year just like we do the flu. Welcome to the new world.

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