Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills • Hacker News Board

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#211

Post by rwcarlsen » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

thex10 wrote: post #193

rwcarlsen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we have enough data for people to evaluate their own personal risk and generally take appropriate personal measures for safety. We can and should make efforts to accommodate those who assess their personal risk to be significant. But when you/others ask schools to close…

Most of this just speaks to how problematic it is for a society to rely on (poorly-funded and unevenly-resourced) schools alone for universal childcare, alleviating child hunger, ensuring safety from awful households, and other concerns that could have been addressed elsewhere (this is all orthogonal to the effects of COVID).

Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between fictitious ones - what do people want?

Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary, middle, and high school students? Or maybe 500,000 people dying a bit early (just making numbers up on this one - adjust up or down depending on various factors)? That is not so one-sided obvious as many people on the internet seem to want to make it.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#212

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #201

renewiltord wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and whether MMR 2 will kill you or your mind in 60 years isn't something that comes out in 42 years. We don't know that yet. But if I had to guess, you're probably pro-MMR-2 (as am I), so the question is what epistemology permits that view?

It could, but we have a lot of data on those diseases and typically a weakened or reduced dose live virus shot has a known outcome with some outliers where the shot leads to the disease or something worse in the relatively short term. For COVID-19 we are still guessing at most of this, hopefully the long term effects are not too bad and those effects of contracting the disease will get reduced over time. But I would…

I think we're close to agreement, but not quite. We're not, after all, guessing at most. For instance, it's pretty unlikely that COVID-19 will cause you to grow three extra feet from your nose within the next 60 years.

There are some things we don't have high certainty on, but our epistemology would be faulty if we ignored how other coronaviruses behave, just like it would be faulty if we ignored how other attenuated viruses behave when we examine if MMR-2 will cause instadeath at age 60.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#213

Post by cmurf » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

departure wrote: post #178

analyte123 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US implemented essentially an entire year of forbearance on federally backed mortgages (6 months automatically, and another 6 months for filing a form with no documentation). Remaining local eviction moratoriums will expire in the next few months, although court backlogs will probably provide an additional time buffer. There are still more initial unemployment claims than there were at the peak of the 2008 financ…

>Remaining local eviction moratoriums will expire in the next few months, although court backlogs will probably provide an additional time buffer. Only if you're lucky enough to live in one of the progressive states, Louisiana has already started evicting people. In Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already released documents saying that local governments can't stop or delay evictions.

Tennessee just made it a Class E felony to camp outside the capitol. Protesters have been doing this for months but it would apply to squelch protesters and homeless alike. Up to six years prison, and loss of voting rights, is the penalty.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#214

Post by fapjacks » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

gjs278 wrote: post #58

birken wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions? Then we'd actually put real effort into controlling it so we could go back to life as normal even with the virus not fully eradicated. The problem with all of these simple "risk profile" analyses is that we as a country are b…

> Then we'd actually put real effort into controlling it so we could go back to life as normal even with the virus not fully eradicated. ok now imagine the virus lives on surfaces for 5+ years and never dies. now what? you can’t eradicate this virus by quarantining, someone, and it only takes one, is going to spread it somehow. now answer with that in mind. “we would just fix it” is a cop out, we can’t fix it.

Your comments are all dead and I vouched for this one, but it's clear from your comment history why. Nobody likes reading "angry programmer" comments here because you're just not special around here, so nobody has to bear the cost of your malice in order to divine the meaning behind your words. "Shut the fuck up" and "delete your account" are really intolerable, stupid ass comments for HN, and if your response to this is that you know but you don't care, I would suggest finding a technical community that places more emphasis on free speech absolutism (like EFNet maybe) than just wasting bandwidth as you are here on HN.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#215

Post by chasd00 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #170

This is a terrible article. It’s subtle clickbait, seemingly designed too discourage constructive discussion while encouraging argumentation. The choices are ambiguously worded to the point that one could project a spectrum of meanings to them. We know nothing about the sample other than that there are 1000 of them and they are parents. We don’t know where they live. We don’t know whether they’re employed and what th…

"Just stay away from bullsh*t like this. It’s poison."

I say that to myself so much when reading any kind of news on the pandemic. The pandemic landing in a US presidential election year has made it at least 3x worse in my opinion.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#216

Post by gibrown » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

brink wrote: post #61

gibrown wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus we know nothing about the long term health consequences. Kids may not be dying at a high rate but they may suffer long term heart, lung, or organ damage. It feels like everyone is just assuming that if it isn’t death then it is fine. Just because you survive something doesn’t make you stronger.

> Plus we know nothing about the long term health consequences. I'm not anti-vax, but anti-vaxers use this same tactic; they use ambiguity to breed fear against vaccines. I get that some unknowns are dangerous, but there has to be a limit, right? We can't be afraid of everything we don't know.

I’m basing my risk assessment on evidence of likely long term damage to adults. Combined with very little data there is a huge amount of unknown risk still to children.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-h...

I hope I’m wrong. In six months or a year maybe I’ll feel more comfortable with the risk to my kids (and myself with a damaged spinal cord), but right now I don’t and to equate it to anti-vaxxers is fairly insulting.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#217

Post by adrianb » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

oxymoran wrote: post #123

I can’t believe how dismissive people are about people who are worried about their finances during this. So many false equivalencies being made about bankruptcy being preferable to death. I am not one of these people that is cavalier about COVID, it’s a real danger and the long term damage to the body is just being discovered. But we all know for sure what the long term health effects of poverty are. Whether you like…

People (especially online) have been shockingly dismissive of everything, in COVID context.

Worried about the economy? You probably only want to get rich on the stock market. Worried you might lose your job? You probably have one of those shit-jobs we've been hearing about, no big loss there. Worried remote schooling might affect children's long term development? Schools are useless anyway. Worried that art and culture like concerts, museums, theatres might disappear? We don't need them, just watch operas on Youtube and browse pictures of famous paintings. Travel? Just go to StreetView.

It's scary how quick people are to let go of elements of society and civilisation, some of which took centuries to build. Yes, nothing is perfect but these attitudes are not working towards implementing something better.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#218

Post by rwcarlsen » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

thex10 wrote: post #204

x87678r wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around my city I'm seeing a lot of kids lonely, anxious and unhappy where I've never seen before. My children were really looking forward to school and seeing friends, were crushed when told it wouldn't be happening.

And a lot of adults were similarly disappointed. I mean, aside from the whole possible loss of livelihood and disruption to earning potential thing... I’ve seen adults who were really looking forward to these things that didn’t pan out as planned thanks to COVID: - professional conferences - sport games - concerts - school reunions - weddings - grieving death of elder together with family - baby showers - travel/vaca…

I agree. Perhaps it is because we are rapidly approaching the date when most schools around the U.S. begin opening back up (or not) after summer vacation. So this is on many people's minds and many decisions are being made about it at local and state levels currently. This is why it is on my mind particularly anyway. I think people are way underestimating the negative consequences economic, social, psychological, etc. of covid mitigations generally. I think we have long passed the point where benefits are worth the costs.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#219

Post by koyote » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #186

screye wrote: post #169

I am going to sound like a looney, but bear with me. The mortality rate of Covid isn't that much higher than the seasonal flu for those aged under 50. (most children or their parents). It is far lower for those under the age of 30. Assuming 200k Americans have died from Covid, current stats put the number of deaths under the age of 18 at 70/200k and 18-44 at 6k/200k. In other words, you child is more likely to die of…

I think the big concern for young people is the lingering effects. Once people get a flu and recover, they’re back to normal. People with COVID are struggling to breathe months later and heart damage is being reported.

> Once people get a flu and recover, they’re back to normal.

Do you have a source on that?

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#220

Post by latchkey » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

rwcarlsen wrote: post #76

latchkey wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear is not death. How about the fact that long term effects are unknown. Or what sort of ongoing medical issues will people have for the rest of their lives? There is people who believe that once you're done with this virus, it is gone from your system and you're back to normal. Certainly that is the case for many, but there are still many more that will continue to suffer from what they are calling now 'long ha…

Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we have enough data for people to evaluate their own personal risk and generally take appropriate personal measures for safety. We can and should make efforts to accommodate those who assess their personal risk to be significant. But when you/others ask schools to close…

I think this is one of those cases where you are taking a bunch of anecdotal evidence and drawing the wrong conclusions from it or at least biasing them towards your own dislikes... 'privileged SV and internet yuppies'. Your response feels a bit like Dunning-Kruger [0] effect going on here.

I am not a doctor so I won't give you advice, but Dr. Gupta is. I felt like his reasoning for not sending his kids back to school in this article [1] was spot on.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupt...