551–560 of 793 posts
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Given that guidance has said that close exposure for 10-15 minutes is required for transmission, yes - it does seem a little overboard.
That guidance is pre-omicron. Someone talking in your face seems like extremely high risk these days.
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When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - other than to flatten the curve and relieve the burden on services. But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now?
Hospitals tend to be most burdened in the winter anyway, which is unfortunate given transmission patterns, but I definitely think we're moving to a world of "only base policy on hospitalizations, not on raw case numbers" - and believe public health officials are largely moving in this direction too. In this world, once this surge is on the downswing, a lot more things look reasonable to relax. One major change there,…
That said, because hospitalizations lag case numbers, I assume they are trying to extrapolate from case numbers to future hospitalizations. Of course that changes depending upon the individual variant that is currently spreading.
I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong . The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. * The way they talk about…
> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had…
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. For hours.
So yes, worrying about a silly mask on one kid, in that context, is more than a little hysterical. I'm going to wager that most of these kids weren't wearing rigorously fitted respirators anyway.
Even if you don't believe that (why wouldn't you?), the idea that a moment of "mask down" is going to present any sort of exceptional additional risk is clearly nonsense.
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…
give kids the chance to choose to go to school or not ... most won't go and then outside of learning the biggest benefit of socializing/making freinds/fully enjoy being human which to me is with others is lost. People at my job have given the same choose and really no one goes in. COVID is scourge to the world ... whose is to blame for it? Does any one country benefit from it? What's going on with Covid in China ...…
I mean...that's really up to the parents, not the kids.
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…
>90% of conversations about covid, it has taken over daily life this is what the powers that be want to happen. they want you to live in a state of panic and fear. when i was in school (i am 30 now), i had many severe illnesses like pneumonia twice, shingles, mono, staph. nobody ever gave a shit, and nobody died.
> this is what the powers that be want to happen. they want you to live in a state of panic and fear. Do you think this is a conscious desire? Is it something that our leaders developed after attaining power, or is it a preexisting desire that led them to seek power in the first place? Why do they want people to live in a state of panic and fear?
Let us not forget that the roaring 20s and laissez faire capitalism, all of which were voted for, came after an era of pandemic flu, a world war, and increased government control of things under Wilson.
They should really consider repeating grades for kids. The pandemic is robbing the kids of proper education. I suppose this is too late.
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I just got it along with family (both vaxxed and unvaxxed, there was no noticeable difference in symptoms). It was somewhere between a 'common cold' and the flu. Not fun, but definitely not something to panic about (understandably everyone will have a different reaction depending on their current state of health). However, I think we've reached the point of diminishing returns on any sort of intervention (they've all…
Most of what you say is just plain wrong. - Masking is highly effective and just a bit inconvenient. - Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive. - Vaccines are very effective even against transmission. - Nobody is aiming for 0 Covid anymore (except some Australians and China I guess), but getting through the winter wave without too many fellow citizens dead should be something we spend some effort on. Co…
No, it's really not. It's made no difference in the overall spread. It's also a LOT more than "just a bit inconvenient". It prevents normal face to face human interaction in public.
> Lockdowns are extremely effective just very expensive.
Well the "extremely expensive" part is somewhat right, though it would be more accurate to call them "extremely damaging to society". However, they also are ineffective at at preventing an easily transmittable virus that is spread across ever corner of the globe. At most you just give up one day of your life at the beginning, when they are the most valuable, and trade it for an extra day at the end.
It's a harmful juggling of freedom NOBODY should be forced to be subjected to.
> Vaccines are very effective even against transmission.
Not these ones.
> Nobody is aiming for 0 Covid anymore (except some Australians and China I guess), but getting through the winter wave without too many fellow citizens dead should be something we spend some effort on.
Well all the measures being pushed only make sense in the context of "zero covid". It's time for people to wake up and reject the attacks on freedom that make no sense in the reality of a commonly occurred but rarely deadly coronavirus we will encounter for the rest of our lives.
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…
> 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. Unfortunately, "let COVID run rampant and kill olds and other at-risk people" isn't a great strategy. And are people in their 40s-50s "old people on life support machines"? Because COVID-19 was the leading cause of death for people ages 45-54 years as recently as Oct…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had…
> 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…
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 students for 3 hours earlier.