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

#291

Post by ubiquitysc » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

autarch wrote: post #268

Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…

Yeah the approach of everyone being remote or no one being remote seems shortsighted.

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

#292

Post by newsbinator » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

analyte123 wrote: post #226

newsbinator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those children bring covid home. If you're going to design a virus incubation factory, what you do is put 30 people in a room for 8 hours, turn on the heat, close the windows, try to keep them talking, singing and yelling, then at the end of the day put them on a bus to distribute to every household in town. Repeat for 22 days a month.

If it's true that kids being together in a room is such a biohazard then all schools, music venues, churches, mosques, and gyms should be shut down immediately and never opened again. The buildings would be either demolished or converted into single-bedroom housing. After all, there will be more infectious diseases in the future.

Omicron is the second most contagious virus in the world. It has the ability to poof out of the labor pool 10% ~ 20% of teachers, aux staff, nurses and doctors for somewhere between a week and a year (long covid), in any given week.

This is the case here in Canada in my sibling's hospital right now, and in my sibling's kid's school.

Omicron also has the ability to overflow hospitals even when they've pre-planned with a solid buffer of excess capacity. Most hospitals here in Canada didn't have any such buffer to begin with. For 2 years they've been run ragged, so today the backlog is worse than ever.

Omicron is a new problem we didn't have to deal with before.

With Flu, you can get away with letting some % of the population get it in any given flu season, because it won't deprive your hospital system (or your school) of 20% of its staff for weeks or months on end.

This is all independent of who does or doesn't end up dying from the virus.

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

#293

Post by ransom1538 » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

brohoolio wrote: post #9

I don’t understand why remote learning during this surge isn’t acceptable. I’ve seen opinion piece after opinion piece go on and on about how we need to have kids in school. The pieces attack school officials or teachers but complete ignore the logistics of having so many sick teachers. There aren’t enough subs to cover for the teachers. We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks. It’s a perfect time to pivot to r…

"I don’t understand why remote learning during this surge isn’t acceptable."

What about kindergarten? Teaching 20+ students 5-6 years olds through zoom??? - seems like a fools errand. This could be their most important years for learning.

"The pieces attack school officials or teachers but complete ignore the logistics of having so many sick teachers."

Everyone will get covid. Period. Just get it. You might get it once per year - but that is true for the entire human race. Give up on logistics the war is lost.

"We know this surge will die down in 4-6 weeks."

Maybe for this variant? What about the next? Just keep children on zoom?

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

#294

Post by miles » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

op00to wrote: post #55

fbmlk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You are spreading health misinformation. Please stop it.

>> In any highly vaccinated area COVID-19 cases are sharply rising.

> You are spreading health misinformation. Please stop it.

Chile sees Covid surge despite vaccination success https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56731801

World's Most Vaccinated Nation Is Spooked by Covid Spike https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/business/economy/covid-se...

Vermont sees the biggest surge in COVID cases despite having the country's highest vaccination rate https://fortune.com/2021/08/12/vermont-covid-cases-vaccinati...

Iceland has been a vaccination success. Why is it seeing a coronavirus surge? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-covid-su...

99.7% of Waterford adults fully vaccinated against Covid-19 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40704104.html

Waterford Now Has Highest Incidence of Covid in Ireland https://waterford-news.ie/2021/10/11/waterford-now-has-highe...

Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

76% of September Covid-19 deaths are vax breakthroughs https://vermontdailychronicle.com/2021/09/30/76-of-september...

Covid cases hit records in South Korea and Singapore despite widespread vaccinations. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/covid-cases-hit-rec...

Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-pande...

Most vaccinated place on Earth told to cancel holiday plans amid 'exponential' rise in Covid cases https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/most-vaccin...

Portugal returns to COVID restrictions despite high jab rate https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-he...

COVID Cases Are Surging in the Five Most Vaccinated States https://www.newsweek.com/covid-cases-are-surging-five-most-v...

Coronavirus outbreak sidelines ship whose crew is fully immunized, Navy says https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/12/24/...

Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid-19 despite strict measures https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium-all-news/199687/belgia...

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

#295

Post by kcplate » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

axby wrote: post #203

kcplate wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is the word “vaccine”. The mRNA vaccines do not really work in a way that other vaccines do, and more importantly how we understand other vaccines to work. Prior to this pandemic the layman understanding of a vaccine was that they generally prevented you from “contracting” the disease. You get the shot, you don’t get the disease. We were basically sold this notion for the mRNA vaccines early in 2021.…

TL;DR: I agree that the public thought vaccine = no more virus. But I'm not sure if traditional vaccines actually mean that you're incapable of spreading it, or even getting sick in some cases. I agree that the public was misled as to how effective vaccines would be at preventing transmission. Especially when the CDC said that fully vaccinated people didn't need to wear masks. But how much more effective are traditio…

I think if the covid vaccines managed to have a MMR level (90%+) preventive effect against symptomatic infection rather than 20% (I can’t find where I read that stat, it might be wrong, but I don’t think by much) against symptomatic infection, you would find less skepticism in the existing covid vaccines.

At this stage, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted, I absolutely expect to be exposed to and symptomatic from Omicron in the next 45 days.

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

#296

Post by christkv » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

fourseventy wrote: post #13

How many students that got sick are experiencing symptoms more severe than the common cold? It seems like the chaos is caused by the attempted solutions to covid and not the actual symptoms? Edit: 7 day rolling average of COVID cases according to https://www1.nyc.gov/ is 32k cases per day with 38 deaths. So there is a 0.1% mortality rate.

The current data from the UK shows a mortality of 0.15% for Omicron. However the data is from daily mail so take it with huge pinch of salt. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10372285/Covid-19-U...

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

#297

Post by auslegung » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

double_nan wrote: post #285

autarch wrote: post #268

Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…

I’m wondering what has changed in the human nature (if any) that we need day care for ppl older than 18-19 years now. What did such ppl do 100 (or 1000) years ago to overcome all that.

Children can be raised as people who serve a purpose, not as a burden to serve. And just like adults, children thrive knowing they are wanted, and their actions make a difference. Children can have real chores as early as 3 or 4 years old, and by 18 can be expected to have developed the character and know how to be completely on their own.

That’s not to say they wouldn’t continue to benefit, for the rest of their lives, from a nurturing, supportive, diverse community. But they can be a completely productive member of that community.

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

#298

Post by analog31 » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #282

the__alchemist wrote: post #224

I speculate that students who spend time learning from internet resources like Khan Academy will get a significant leg up over their colleagues in this case; even more so than usual. This applies both in the sense that "They will learn more effectively", and "They'll have a better shot at getting into universities".

This has always been true in a way. A lot of schools have nothing to offer the top 10% of students, so the students/parents of the students who broke away from the pack were finding ways to learn on their own/have their kids learn on their own.

Top 10% of what? I was technically in the top 10% of my high school class, GPA wise. I also got a national merit scholarship, and had learned computer programming.

I would simply not have had the self discipline or motivation to learn everything on my own, no matter how good the learning materials were. Oddly enough, even through college, there were subjects that I easily taught myself, such as electronics and programming, others that I needed to learn in a classroom, such as math and physics.

I would have had no parental supervision at home -- both of my parents worked.

The kids who succeed will succeed. That's not to say that everybody succeeds in school either.

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

#299

Post by mcguire » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #56

beardedwizard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are failing to consider the spread to vulnerable populations where the symptoms are fatal. Omicron is not mild, people with vaccines have mild symptoms due to its efficacy. All these kids come home to families with parents and grandparents. They also have young siblings.

The flu had the same property at different rates. What are the numbers you are expecting for people to start treating it like the flu?

New York State Flu Tracker (https://nyshc.health.ny.gov/web/nyapd/new-york-state-flu-tra...):

5075 new cases this week (2227 in New York City).

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

#300

Post by analog31 » Sat, Jan 08, 2022, 10:51 PM UTC

Interestingly, the prevailing belief seems to be that parents, teachers, and students, all want to keep in-person school going. Yet when you actually hear from each of those groups, it's a mixed picture. Here's a HS student with boots on the ground describing the situation in what seems to be a fairly objective way. Elsewhere, teachers unions are voting to suspend school. This seems to be what a lot of people want, though of course I can't say that it's a consensus or how prevalent the view is.