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Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#761
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation. Industrialized society has been reducing the long-term carrying capacity of the earth for over a century. These effects, until recently, have been masked by intensification i.e. continually increasing consumption of resources for use as inputs o…

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies. So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize? > Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse? My guess is that society wouldn't collapse, but again, this is s…

99% haven't chosen to. It's more that those few that did, quickly wiped out or assimilated their neighbors. The ones that are left today are those who lived in regions too remote for that to happen (but it's still an ongoing process, e.g. in Brazil and Papua).

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then she can stay home - 99.99% of children wont have issues.

You're grossly underestimating the prevalence of birth defects that lead to health issues in children. And adults for that matter. (Any teacher who has a similar immuno-comrpomised situation, or knows of someone similarly immuno-compromised is at risk). ------------ In any case, I "don't worry" about the potential death of my niece at all. What I care about are the long term health effects on her and her life. And fo…

keep moving the goal posts.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#763
post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

I actually chose stomp over eradicate because I wanted to imply that there would still be some left but that it would be a manageable amount. That's interesting that you took it the opposite way; I'm sorry for the confusion. I agree, eradication was probably impossible in the United States. What I thought we all agreed on at the start of this thing was to lock down so we could "flatten the curve". Remember that? Whil…

Well if you take eradication off the table, then you have to assume the entire susceptible population will eventually get the virus. So I guess, I don't see the benefit of "stomping" the virus down to some small level. It was at a very small level back in February, and then grew. If we get it back down to that small level, it will just grow again. There's no benefit to locking down for 3 months to have it grow in July instead of March.

A controlled burn approach makes a lot more sense, but that is not the same as "stomping" the virus.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, remote education has been a complete disaster. I know a few teachers. Apparently their students found out that the state was unwilling to hold anyone back a year during the pandemic, they shared this information with each other, and now a substantial amount of them are not doing any work. In some classes, more than half the students are permanently absent! Either their parents don't know, or don't car…

The third solution is to suck it up and wait it out until there's a vaccine, which still may be as soon as December. I hate having my kids out of school. Virtual learning is mostly useless. They are ( I think ) quietly becoming more and more withdrawn and I don't know how well they'll recover once things open up. We have two parents working from home and barely managing to stay productive. Still I think sending kids…

What if there is never a vaccine, or what if there is one but it takes years to become available, or what if a large portion of Americans refuse to be vaccinated?

We can't base our policies on wishful thinking.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#765
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to see how differently we treat the low probability, high impact events like active shooters and terrorism, but we completely fail to do the far easier task of dealing with the high probability, unknown impact events.

do you think low probability, high impact events are handled well on average?

Not necessarily well, but definitely with more focus. One 9/11 - you get a united country (for the first year after at least). A 9/11 equivalent every couple of days - "but I don't wanna wear a mask!"

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#766
post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two camps causing trouble preventing COVID-19 mitigation: the Radical Right where they are in office (Trump, Arizona, Florida,...), and the Radical Right where the Left or moderate Right are in office (Michigan).

This is what I'm talking about. I want to preface this with: I've voted blue ticket my entire life... The numbers just do not back this claim up. NY/NJ/CT all have the absolute worst outcomes so far. NY and Gov Cuomo couldn't be more adored by the media. Meanwhile the red south and others that never locked down are sitting at about 10% the deaths of the blue northeast. You can say wait two weeks, but we've been waiti…

>NY/NJ/CT all have the absolute worst outcomes so far.

They were also hit early in this ongoing pandemic and had to fight hard to get it under control. That red states are now ticking up is a sad commentary on their governance, which is a mix of hubris, denialism, and willful ignorance.

> Cases have gone up but deaths have not.

The average age of the infected is lowering, and they tend to survive.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue store workers have much higher exposure due to thousands of customers touching surfaces throughout the store everyday

Agree! Comment I made the other day: > What bothers me the most is that just like retail / grocery store workers we put people with the lowest earning potential and generally worst benefits directly in the path of this. I don’t want to get COVID but unless I convince my wife to quit her job my odds of getting it greatly increase due to situations out of my control.

Recently there came out huge serology study from Spain and according to it retail workers didn't have higher covid rates.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#768
post #751
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. Teacher pay is not extremely low. The median teacher salary is usually pretty close to the median salary for the state. Plus they get good benefits, a pension, and much more time off than other jobs. It's a solid middle class life.

Ehh... those statistics are often skewed. First hit on search for elementary school teacher median salary comparison[1]: > ...median annual income of $58,230. > This number would be above the average salary in the U.S., but it's the median of an awfully wide range of salaries. Elementary school teachers in the bottom 10% of income only made around $37,780, while those in the highest 10% could make as much as $95,270.…

In all states median teacher salary is higher than median income. Highest gap is 35k in New York and lowest gap is Oklahoma at 5.7k.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/05/16/stat...

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#769
post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually chose stomp over eradicate because I wanted to imply that there would still be some left but that it would be a manageable amount. That's interesting that you took it the opposite way; I'm sorry for the confusion. I agree, eradication was probably impossible in the United States. What I thought we all agreed on at the start of this thing was to lock down so we could "flatten the curve". Remember that? Whil…

Well if you take eradication off the table, then you have to assume the entire susceptible population will eventually get the virus. So I guess, I don't see the benefit of "stomping" the virus down to some small level. It was at a very small level back in February, and then grew. If we get it back down to that small level, it will just grow again. There's no benefit to locking down for 3 months to have it grow in Jul…

If you stomp it down enough then a few relatively light measures (masks, some distancing, some contact tracing) are enough to keep it down. That's what's happening in Europe right now. Sure, eventually everyone would be infected at least once given infinite time. But that doesn't matter, what matters is how many people get infected before a vaccine is developed and widely deployed.
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