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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

#721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in a hotel does qualify as homeless in my opinion. Same as trailer or anything that is not a fixed home. The definition of homeless doesn not equate to just to simply sleeping under the stars.

I grew up in West Virginia. A LOT of people lived in a trailer - as in they actually owned the trailer and in many cases the land, too (my parents). Why does it make sense to count these people as homeless? And even if you're renting... Why count someone who rents a trailer as homeless but not someone who rents an apartment?

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

#722
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. There's a substantial difference between "everyone will get it in a year or two" and "everyone will get it all within a couple of weeks", especially where hospital capacity is concerned. My city has one ICU bed available and hospitals have been diverting ambulances. > But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now? We've done it several times. After…

We sort of expected that when you spend a trillion or two of our federal tax dollars, the hospitals might get better at dealing with it. This does not appear to have been the case.

This is fair in that there's a lot we'll need to learn about how our system works and fails under pressure from this all. Maximizing efficiency in peacetime leaves you ill-prepared for war, as it were.

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

#723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really wouldn't have. It'd buy you an extra percent or two; the numbers have been vanishingly small. Mayo Clinic lost about a percent. Factor in the fact they're more likely to get sick and it's even closer to a net zero. I'm not inclined to treat antivax beliefs as "professional", especially in the healthcare field.

I have been vaccinated so definitely not antivax. That type of thinking is completely wrong. Hospitals are already working at or over capacity, they don't have 1 or 2 % to loose. If the workers have made it this far, either they have had it and have immunity or they are very good at keeping themselves safe. In either case we should want them working.

> If the workers have made it this far, either they have had it and have immunity or they are very good at keeping themselves safe.

"Have immunity" turns out to be a flexible thing. If they're unboosted, they're more likely to be re-infected by Omicron.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evade...

"The new report (Report 49) from the Imperial College London COVID-19 response team estimates that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19%."

"Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Similar estimates were obtained using genotype data, albeit with greater uncertainty."

> Hospitals are already working at or over capacity, they don't have 1 or 2 % to loose.

All the more reason to have a vaccination mandate.

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

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nursing's a 2-4 year degree. Doctors take substantially more, and training both requires docs/nurses as professors and clinical instructors. I'm quite dubious that chucking money at the problem would've solved the staffing issue effectively.

Why would we require either a nursing or a doctor degree? I do not understand why we didn't just train a crop of "covid specialists" who could handle caring for covid positive people and recognizing when they needed help from the real medical staff. Doing something like this I feel we could have easily and quickly increased medical capacity as much as needed for covid.

> I do not understand why we didn't just train a crop of "covid specialists"...

Who'd be doing a wide variety of nurse/doctor tasks?

Vented ICU patients are complicated. They need more than a babysitter.

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

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they should ensure they're not diabetic, above 60, and just be perfectly healthy, right? "It is what it is" but as of now staff can't work because they're out sick.

Let the natural immunity develop quickly rather than dragging it out. Everyone is getting this disease.

The natural immunity is preventing people from getting good medical attention for other emergencies. It's preventing vulnerable people from not dying.

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

#726
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…

Yeah. It's okay for these kids to be sent off to die in war the day after graduation but keep the boomers away from illness.

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

#727

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...

My wife is a teacher. We spend our own money every year.

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

#728
post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That will not necessarily continue to happen, at least not soon. Once you've been exposed to omicron (+ vaxed or exposed to original/delta) a new variant has to be very different from both omicron and delta. And this isn't the flu; it only has so far it can mutate. However, it's impossible to get rid of it because it infects animals and we're not going to vaccinate them.

I don’t understand your statements. Omicron had many changes vs delta — why would successive variants not have the same?

> Only has so far it can mutate

Says who?

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

#729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the natural immunity develop quickly rather than dragging it out. Everyone is getting this disease.

The natural immunity is preventing people from getting good medical attention for other emergencies. It's preventing vulnerable people from not dying.

Sounds like we should get through that situation quickly rather than slowly. Everyone is getting this disease.

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

#730
post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I believe the main difference comes down to the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) being slow and hidebound about approving rapid tests, with the result that the few manufacturers who got through the whole arduous approval process have been able to reap near-monopoly profits.
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