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

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

#751

Post by dpark » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

eftychis wrote: post #743

dpark wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we know how to return to relative normalcy. We just aren't doing it, for reasons that have nothing to do with facts and reason. I would absolutely love to know what this plan you mention is. Because I absolutely do not know if any real path back to normalcy.

Well the tools we have are vaccination and avoiding human contact. We don't do either. Unlike what politicians say the models and prior history simply say you got to vaccinate everyoe that can get vaccinated. Also we need international soft real time cooperation and transparency. We are incapable of either. It is just that COVID has the sweet spot of being transmissible but not causing grueling enough of deaths like…

I get that you’re frustrated and just kind of venting, but this in no way answers my actual question.

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

#752

Post by CogitoCogito » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 3:29 AM UTC

kcplate wrote: post #750

CogitoCogito wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean that when you advertise that something is going to do a thing (end the disease; prevent them from catching it), encouraging people to get the vaccine because of those benefits. Maybe we have different sources of information. I've never heard anyone claim that the vaccine will end the disease or prevent them from catching it. I've heard that the vaccines will decrease the likelihood of becoming sick which it…

> Personally I had hoped that the entire pandemic would have gone away once vaccines became available, but that hope was clearly misplaced Where did you get that hope from? You said the information you were getting did not provide that hope, that it set expectations to what they are. If you didn’t get that idea from the authorities touting the vaccine…where did you get it? Likely it was the assumption that these vacc…

> If you didn’t get that idea from the authorities touting the vaccine…where did you get it?

It was optimism. I was hoping that the strains wouldn't evolve so quickly. My optimism was misplaced.

> Likely it was the assumption that these vaccines would work like all the others.

Ignoring the methods (e.g. mrna), this vaccine _does_ work like all the others. It increases the likelihood that your body will be able to successfully fight off an infection without it progressing to serious/dangerous illness. What vaccine doesn't work this way? All viruses/bacteria roughly do the following:

1. They infect some percentage of people. 2. After some period of time they eventually make those people contagious (so spread is possible). 2. They mutate at a certain rate.

If viruses mutate very quickly, vaccines have trouble dealing with them. If they are highly contagious they have a lot of opportunity to spread and mutate. If they are able to quickly make hosts highly contagious then they have even more opportunity to spread an mutate.

You seem to imagine a "vaccine" to be something that is able to entirely protect a host from the disease and entirely protect a host from spreading it. This just isn't the case. The fact that there are vaccines for diseases which mutate/spread/etc. slowly enough so that you can _incorrectly_ believe this is a success of modern science. But the fact is that it never was and never will be true. Covid is a bitch and it will clearly take some time (if ever) to get it under control.

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

#753

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 3:31 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #713

rayiner wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm inclined to believe this. I was in a discussion about this yesterday with friends and a clear statistic would have helped. But the chart you've got there --- I know it's not the fulcrum of your whole argument, I'm not sniping --- doesn't really make the case you make in your comment. It says that we spend 0.1% more than the OECD average on primary/secondary schools, but are boosted in the overall rankings by spen…

I usually take the G7 as the benchmark—what oil emirates like Norway or banking havens like Switzerland spend aren’t a relevant comparison to a big diversified economy like the US. We spend a bigger percentage of our economy on K-12 than all but one other G7 country. And since our GDP per capita is so high, that share of GDP represents 20%+ more purchasing power than other G7 countries. That should be more than enough. We need to stop acting like money is the problem in education.

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

#754

Post by CogitoCogito » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 3:34 AM UTC

xapata wrote: post #710

CogitoCogito wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No vaccines protect against infection. Maybe you mean does it protect against asymptomatic infection? Or asymptomatic transmission? (I don't know how effective it is for either.)

The polio vaccine doesn't protect against polio infection? I guess I'm not familiar with the technical meaning of infection.

I think the problem is that you imagine "infection" to mean "disease" or something similar. Infection means that the pathogen gets in your body and starts to grow. There is no vaccine that can prevent that. What a vaccine can do is to cause your body to respond to an infection more quickly and more effectively. If you're lucky, the response comes so quickly that you never knew you were infected.

So that aside, what did you mean exactly? When you said

> Much protection against infection or against hospitalization?

Did you mean to say: "Much protection against asymptomatic spread or against hospitalization?" Or maybe you meant to say something else?

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

#755

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 3:35 AM UTC

UnknownUser1234 wrote: post #727

rayiner wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them?

American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing.

These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their times tables.

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

#756

Post by timr » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #560

timr wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". You just said, a paragraph up, that they had all been in the auditorium for 3 hours, which (again, according to you) is "far longer than it takes" to get sick. Let's assume you're right -- we have an auditorium overcrowded with kids, many of whom are spewing aerosolized, highly transmissible virus into an enclosed space…

Infection isn't a binary yes/no switch that occurs after a specific interval. This should be obvious. The more viral load you're exposed to, the higher the infection risk. Someone speaking directly to you in close quarters with an active infection is, indeed, a significant risk factor for acquiring the virus. It doesn't make sense to argue that it doesn't matter because they were also possibly exposed to other studen…

> The more viral load you're exposed to, the higher the infection risk. Someone speaking directly to you in close quarters with an active infection is, indeed, a significant risk factor for acquiring the virus.

No. Infectious dose may matter for severity of disease (this is a hypothesis; it has never been demonstrated). Concluding that it matters in this situation is clearly silly. You're talking about hours in a room, with hundreds of kids. You think they're all wearing perfectly fitted respirators? Come now. You honestly want to suggest that one kid pulling his mask down makes a big difference in the overall aerosol rave being described here?

Remember, we don't even know what kind of mask is being discussed. If the kid in question is wearing a cloth mask, it probably didn't matter either way, based on all current evidence.

Also remember: SARS-CoV2 shows a clear pattern of overdispersion. Most people don't spread to anyone. The chances that any particular encounter will lead to your infection are very low, regardless of masks. Put a hundred kids in a room, though, and those tiny probabilities start to multiply. Sitting for hours in a room full of hundreds of other people is dramatically higher risk than some guy pulling his mask down for a second (but the former doesn't let you blame your outcome on specific person, so it isn't nearly as satisfying, is it?)

This is the problem with Covid discussions on the internet. People get one fact half-right ("viral load matters"), and use that to generate the scariest possible hot-takes.

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

#757

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 5:30 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #755

UnknownUser1234 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them? American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing. These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their t…

Many teachers spend their money essentially replacing the role of 1) parents and 2) administrators.

I know a lot of teachers spending money on hygiene products:tampons, deodorant ect, because it is distracting if students are bleeding at their desks and smell like garbage.

2) they also spend money on basic supplies, pens pencils, as well as heaters and coolers for the room because the administration blew the funds on some bs like a marble facade for the school

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

#758

Post by alar44 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #755

UnknownUser1234 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them? American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing. These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their t…

No post body was provided.

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

#759

Post by yes_really » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 6:11 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #757

rayiner wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them? American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing. These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their t…

Many teachers spend their money essentially replacing the role of 1) parents and 2) administrators. I know a lot of teachers spending money on hygiene products:tampons, deodorant ect, because it is distracting if students are bleeding at their desks and smell like garbage. 2) they also spend money on basic supplies, pens pencils, as well as heaters and coolers for the room because the administration blew the funds on…

Although I sympathize with the student's issues, it is not taxpayer's fault that these issues occur.

For (1) the government already gives housing assistance, food stamps and a bunch of other welfare programs, so the parents can easily afford basic hygiene products and they should be paying for it, not the school.

For (2) it is the administration's malice or incompetence that is burning away the money. We shouldn't increase the budget even more, we should hold the administration and the parents accountable.

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

#760

Post by yes_really » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 6:22 AM UTC

alar44 wrote: post #758

rayiner wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what? Do you buy textbooks with them? American teachers spend a lot of time, as my Asian mom would always complain, on “arts and crafts.” The volume of construction paper and pipe cleaners and other junk my kids bring home is truly astonishing. These expenses are symptomatic of curricular problems—and the solution isn’t to allocate more money for craft supplies. It doesn’t cost that much to have kids drill their t…

Quoted post unavailable.

The comment you are replying to didn't even touch on "what are the appropriate ages to learn multiplication".

That level of discussion is really astonishingly low. You respond to something the parent comment didn't even touch on, and half of your comment is offenses to the parent commenter.