The case against masks at school • Hacker News Board

Re: The case against masks at school

#931

Post by taylodl » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

caddemon wrote: post #878

pcmoney wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a wealthy area. Now envision: You are a parent who HAS to work to make ends meet. Your work has to be in person (nurse, meat packing plant etc). You have two kids 3 years apart, say 7 and 10. One you just were able to adjust to school after years of sensory and social issues. The school is closed. The kids cant go in but bars are open.

Certainly my circle is wealthier, but it is a major city and any mandates would apply city-wide. Rural areas have even fewer COVID restrictions. Please point me to a school district in the United States that has had no in-person option this school year.

I live in a large U.S. city. For this discussion I'll include the metropolitan area which has a total population of roughly 2.5 million. The schools closed in the Spring of 2020 - just as the disease was first spreading. In the Fall of 2020 they were partially open - kids would go to school 2-3 days per week. By Spring of 2021 they were completely back at school though there was a mask requirement. That's the state we've been in since. So in total we had 3-4 months of no in-person school. Certainly not the 3 years the commenter you're replying to has claimed - as you pointed out this pandemic hasn't even hit the two year mark yet!

It's been the norm for some time to have in-person classes. School districts make the headlines when they cancel in-person classes and even then that situation only lasts a couple of weeks. Look at the most recent case in Chicago - it lasted one week. Since I live across the street from a large park I can tell you the kids are in school, they're playing outside, they're doing after school activities, and they're playing sports. I don't know what these people are getting on about acting like kids have been locked in their homes for two years.

Re: The case against masks at school

#932

Post by JPKab » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

kingaillas wrote: post #886

JPKab wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he should foot the bill for private school because people like you don't understand basic statistics, or even bother to look at the data? With all due respect, there's a name for fear that is divorced from reality and not in proportion with the actual risk: paranoia. And that's what this is. The number of kids who have died of COVID is in the hundreds, over a two year period. TWICE AS MANY KIDS DROWN EVERY YEAR. V…

Kids aren't the only ones at risk - he also mentioned teachers, some of whom don't want to take the higher risk of in-person teaching or dealing with 100+ kids every day that aren't wearing masks. Is that over reaction? Maybe, maybe not, but the thing is, it's really easy to shove the risk onto somebody else because it's more convenient for you.

My wife is a kindergarten teacher. We face the "risk" on two fronts. Unlike many of her colleagues, she was unhappy with the obvious impeded ability to teach resulting from the school closures. A large percentage of her colleagues were clearly enjoying working from home. That's a dark side of this that people on your side are unwilling to admit.

I deeply resent it when people call it an issue of convenience. Proper emotional and social development of children is not an issue of convenience despite the constant claim from people like you that "You're just mad because you lost your free babysitting. Get over it."

The teachers were first in line to get vaccinated. Every other kind of employee in public places faces equivalent risks. As usual nobody is talking about numbers because your side has no numbers to back you up. It's just waving your hand and talking about people's comfort levels. Unquantifiable emotional nonsense, with people who are impervious to any form of facts or statistics or actual numbers.

Consequences be damned.

Re: The case against masks at school

#933

Post by prepend » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

brimble wrote: post #653

dsl wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know multiple households where the initial infection vector was the kids. Grandpa might be stupid and refuse the vaccine, but keeping little Billy from becoming a carrier lessens the hospital load. If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning, we need to mask test and vaccinate in the schools.

> If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning In defense of the Karens (ew, I feel gross even typing that) remote learning absolutely was the disaster they say it was. It was really, really bad. It's hard to exaggerate how bad it was. And I mean specifically for the kids, not for the parents (it also sucked for them/us, obviously). We can probably recover well-enough from a semester or two of it, bu…

It was so bad in my school district. I think it was worse than no school for a year because of the chaos of teachers doing different things and no good monitoring or follow-up.

Classes ranged from some teachers sending out a single email a week with assignments and tests and grades to teachers taking attendance the minute class started and then disconnecting. For 10 year olds.

This means I would get silence for a long time, no posts in the classroom site or Teams and then an email saying “major test is tomorrow, make sure your kids study X,Y,Z” with X being chapters in a pdf, Y being a broken link, and Z being some slapdash PowerPoint posted minutes before the email. And there’s multiple subjects.

It was such a surreal experience with countless “we’re doing our best” emails from school leadership.

It was even more performative and useless than normal school.

I know my mileage may vary and it may be problems with my school district. But in the same district they didn’t suffer like this and my kids performed better.

And this is with me spending 1h+ every day helping, running around between telework. I can’t help but think how it fared for kids who didn’t have parents who could flex their work schedule to support digital school.

Re: The case against masks at school

#934

Post by acdha » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

015a wrote: post #773

acdha wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, mandates have convinced everyone who will ever be convinced. There is no more convincing in our future. A subset of people will always reject masks and vaccines. This is defeatist and I don't think it's true. Most of those people have never had a mandate — as we've seen everywhere those have actually been implemented, there are a very few dedicated antivaxers and a whole ton of people who are comfort…

Its only defeatist if you give up. And that's effectively what our leadership has done; keep screeching about masks and vaccinations, some listen, some don't, and nothing changes. The curve keeps oscillating. Ok; recognize that. Pivot. If the best solution won't work, then it isn't the best solution; continuing to believe so is like standing on the Titanic as its going down and yelling "god damn it just don't hit the…

> And that's effectively what our leadership has done; keep screeching about masks and vaccinations, some listen, some don't, and nothing changes.

This is wrong, and the reason resolves the seeming problem: “our leadership” never did that. Some people in some places did, many did not, and in many cases they actively worked against it. The experts’ plan works everywhere it’s actually been tried.

I do agree that we need to improve conditions for healthcare workers but that’s slow to train people up and it’d be much easier and faster if we had fewer Republicans driving them out. The politics around basic health measures is the most widely mentioned reason for burnout.

Re: The case against masks at school

#935

Post by prepend » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

ern wrote: post #866

gilbetron wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. My kids and their friends repurposed their remote learning tools (MS Teams) and have had more creative interaction with their peers than they would have had otherwise (it's always been a pain organizing real-world play-dates). I'm surprised that this wasn't a more widespread experience.

My kids didn’t. What’s your point?

It’s hard to measure this systematically and I’m glad that your experiences were positive. My kids had marked drop in grades and really suffered. It wasn’t so much the social aspect as teachers and schools not being to adapt to new methods.

I’d like to see trends in standardized tests during this period as I think the real harm was in knowledge not gained.

Re: The case against masks at school

#936

Post by taylodl » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

gilbetron wrote: post #779

dsl wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It wasn't that bad. School still continued. Your children are at most slightly inconvenienced during a global pandemic that has killed MILLIONS of people. All you have to do is keep your kid looking at a screen. They may need to repeat a year of school. At some point in their future your kids boss may say "oh right, you were a pandemic kid, here let me show you." It's like someone in WW2 UK complaining that the G…

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

Here's the thing - my wife works for the school system, I have 3 kids, and I'm involved in kids activities. The "shutdown" happened in the Spring of 2020. In the Fall of 2020 all the sports leagues resumed as normal and all the kid activities resumed as normal. The schools were partially open and they went to fully open in the Spring of 2021. In total there were 3-4 months where the kids were "locked up" in their homes. I don't know where this narrative is coming from that kids have been "locked up" for the past two years, but they have not. At least not for the overwhelming majority of kids in the U.S.

There have been cases where a school system makes headline news by cancelling in-person classes as the infection peaks in their area. These shutdowns have only been for 1-2 weeks. The kids are in school. The kids are doing activities. The kids are alright.

Re: The case against masks at school

#937

Post by gilbetron » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

GiorgioG wrote: post #823

gilbetron wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

You're wrong. Deeply wrong. There is no deep psychological damage. Children are not fragile snowflakes - they're adaptable, resilient little humans. That's why as a species we continue to thrive. Stop inventing new problems that don't exist - there's already enough to go around.

They are resilient, my son will (probably) be fine - but that doesn't mean there wasn't damage done. I ask all his teachers what the effect has on the kids in comparison, and without an exception, they all point out that nearly all kids aren't as far along as they normally would be: emotionally, socially and academically. Most of them will mostly catch up. Some won't, and all will have an imprint of the pandemic on them in many ways.

Minimizing this does nothing for them. And remember, a depressed kid doesn't always look sad, but can seem happy go lucky as they are trying to be what their parents want them to be.

Re: The case against masks at school

#938

Post by reylas » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

zippzom wrote: post #870

WillPostForFood wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hospital case load is overwhelmingly, screamingly, massively dominated by the elderly unvaccinated. Are you sure this is true? The data you linked to shows that hospitalization rate for 65+ unvaccinated is 7x 65+ vaccinated. But WA has a great vaccination rate, over 99% for 65+ with one or more shot. So even with 7x the rate, unvaccinated elderly probably aren't massively dominating hospitalizations because it is…

I think the relevant table is on page 13 "COVID-19 hospitalizations in unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals in Washington state by age group, February - December, 2021" It shows that 79% of hospitalizations in the state are unvaccinated people and that of those, 3,000 are under 34, 11,000 are between 34-65, 7,000 are over 65. So it is indeed largely elderly unvaccinated in the hospital.

So, help me here. If 7000 hospitalized are over 65 and 11,000 are under 65, does that not show that there are 4000 less elderly hospitalized than middle-aged?

If I look at those numbers, the elderly are not "dominating" the hospitals. In fact, that would show that if you looked in a hospital at any given time, there would be more middle-aged than elderly. I get that "per-capita" the rate is higher, but that does not matter to the hospital census.

What am I missing?

Re: The case against masks at school

#939

Post by gilbetron » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

ern wrote: post #866

gilbetron wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. My kids and their friends repurposed their remote learning tools (MS Teams) and have had more creative interaction with their peers than they would have had otherwise (it's always been a pain organizing real-world play-dates). I'm surprised that this wasn't a more widespread experience.

My son would totally be in to that, and I figured he'd have an ok time in the pandemic because of that. Unfortunately, his friends (were 6th grade, now 7th grade) turn out to be complete cyberbullies online. They just get hyper aggressive with each other and every other week during the pandemic my son would be in tears because his friends were so toxic. Once back in person at school, they are totally fine (well, within standards for middle schoolers!) and have a great time, but even now there are several he can't be around online because they just want to find a target and gang up on them. Sometimes it is my son, sometimes some other kid.

Plus a lot of parents are paranoid about online interaction to a crazy degree and will hardly let kids interact online - it makes no sense, but they consider it to be the great bogey man of the 21st century and think that pedophiles are ready to instantly jump on their kids, even if they are in a private discord room just chatting.

Re: The case against masks at school

#940

Post by JoBrad » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

reylas wrote: post #938

zippzom wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the relevant table is on page 13 "COVID-19 hospitalizations in unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals in Washington state by age group, February - December, 2021" It shows that 79% of hospitalizations in the state are unvaccinated people and that of those, 3,000 are under 34, 11,000 are between 34-65, 7,000 are over 65. So it is indeed largely elderly unvaccinated in the hospital.

So, help me here. If 7000 hospitalized are over 65 and 11,000 are under 65, does that not show that there are 4000 less elderly hospitalized than middle-aged? If I look at those numbers, the elderly are not "dominating" the hospitals. In fact, that would show that if you looked in a hospital at any given time, there would be more middle-aged than elderly. I get that "per-capita" the rate is higher, but that does not…

Isn’t it 3,000 + 11,000 65?