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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

#691
post #201
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning of all these craziness the reason for shutdowns is to flatten the curve. We did not have vaccines and hospitals were under stress. I think we did a right thing. I’m not sure what is the goal now? We have vaccines and ICUs are not getting filled. Yeah, Covid can be though for some but oh well… we also have alcholism, drug addiction, flu, mono, etc. We cannot solve all. I guess we all need to come to r…

Where are you that ICUs are not filling up right now? Here in Ontario we’ve more than doubled ICU occupancy since December 18 and the rate is currently accelerating

FYI: the number of ICU beds in use in Ontario has been trending down over the last 4 days:

https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations#hospitaliz...

Over those same 4 days, a significantly increasing number of the folks in those beds are testing positive with Covid, but it's not clear to me whether that is the reason they're in the ICU. The hospitals need to provide better data about the reason these patients were admitted.

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

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be year 3 of covid and this is 100% the fault of the same people who have created every other problem in the education system: the administrators. There is no perfect way to open schools, that much is certain after looking at other countries. But looking at the state of things, it doesn’t even seem like people are trying. Japan has students come in on alternate days, so that the school can operate at 50% capa…

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…

> 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.

The virus had spread too widely for that to be possible. If you blame the USA, you also have to blame China for suppressing and destroying early information about the contagion.

I would prefer to blame nobody, since everyone’s systems played a part in the outcome.

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

#693

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.

Just. Stop. You’re hurting kids by spreading the myth that school funding is the problem, because it allows the real problems to continue festering. US public schools are among some of the best funded in the world: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15434/the-countries-spend... Plus, schools have tons of unused covid relief money: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/school-federal-covid...

New York City spends close to $30k per public school student. They should be able to afford anything with this kind of spending.

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

#694

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…

All I see in the survey is that people have largely overestimated the impact of the pandemic, how many people have been infected and how many have died. In other words, they overestimated the current progression of the pandemic at the scale of society. That doesn't indicate people misunderstand the risk of the disease at personal scale.

This survey specifically looks at risk at the personal scale, and finds the same order of over-estimation:

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...

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

#695
post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could at least manage things so hospitals are not overwhelmed. Lots of people are dieing simply because they are swamped. Also, there are several promising therapies that should help this population. Even a few months for them to ramp up availability will help a lot.

Ok, that is understandable. When making arguments like this, I think it would be good for people to say what their criteria for completely ending restrictions are (if any). It seems like the vast majority agree that keeping restrictions forever is too extreme, but many of the covid-conservative arguments I see imply keeping restrictions forever, because they are based on factors that are unlikely to change in the for…

Sure. Look, the seasonal flu is dangerous for this population. But they manage, when the health care system is working well, you can get antiviral meds, etc.

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it's too late for it to matter and that was a bit of hyperbole. But I also think it's fair to say that anyone who insists on doing nothing and acting like COVID is a complete scam, vaccines are a complete scam, masks are complete scam, etc., is basically behaving pretty much criminally.

I’m thrice vaccinated and think masks are the biggest scam out there. It’s a worthless political virtue signal that gives people a false sense of security. Go ahead and lock me up…

Agree that folks can sometimes treat masks more as tchotchke talismans than considerate tools, but I also think it's real obvious that you can't win a watermelon spitting contest with a mask on. And a lot of people are splattery speakers.

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

#697
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.

I assume this could be done with one surrogate per teacher rather than per student and would be almost as effective.

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

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools …'[0] 'There are 130,930 public and private K-12 schools in the U.S.'[1] $190 billion divided by 130,930 is $1.45 million dollars per school. Now, I will readily grant that a million dollars just ain't what it used to be, but it is, even in 2021, still a heck of a lot of money, and it sure sounds from the raw numbers that p…

There's around 50M K-12 students in public schools. That's roughly $4k per student over the course of about 18 months, at the time the article was written. Subtract six months for summers, if you like; that's still ~360 days, for about $11/student/day. It's not nothing, but a single rapid test costs more than that.

I am probably being a smartass but if the purpose is to check whether there is at least one positive student (no matter who) you can do so with one single collective test a day.

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

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools …'[0] 'There are 130,930 public and private K-12 schools in the U.S.'[1] $190 billion divided by 130,930 is $1.45 million dollars per school. Now, I will readily grant that a million dollars just ain't what it used to be, but it is, even in 2021, still a heck of a lot of money, and it sure sounds from the raw numbers that p…

There's around 50M K-12 students in public schools. That's roughly $4k per student over the course of about 18 months, at the time the article was written. Subtract six months for summers, if you like; that's still ~360 days, for about $11/student/day. It's not nothing, but a single rapid test costs more than that.

> but a single rapid test costs more than that.

Still find the difference in that so weird. rapid tests are a 2-3 € supermarket item here, if you'd be buying in bulk for a school system they'd be cheaper. And at least some schools/day cares have been doing pool testing.

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

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rapid testing every student wouldn’t be necessary to open the schools.

The continual testing and quarantining of healthy students and staff is what keeps schools from being able to reliably stay open.

Rapid test will test negative when someone is already contagious.

It won’t be an effective means of stopping spread. Instead give out surgical masks or n95 to all kids. Cloth masks allow 90%+ of the virus to enter/leave. Add hepa filters. Add space heaters and leave the windows open. Maybe teach outside in parklet if possible.

That’ll be more effective at preventing spread.

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