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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

#881

Post by neilparikh »

_qn5w wrote: post #229
ashtonkem wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, except I’m dubious about the prospect of having a child in America.

You’re fulfilling the Idiocracy prophecy. Those who think about their life choices are less likely to breed than those who are more reckless and have children with less hesitation. The similar survival rate of children of the two groups means the more-reckless genes & culture will out-propagate the less-reckless genes & culture. I’m pretty sure less-reckless is what we need more of, but without some extreme and quest…

If you believe that your child will have a net-negative life, but you have one anyway (and force them to live under the horrible conditions you recognized!), just to balance out the more-reckless children, I question your ethical framework.

It doesn't seem ethical at all to bring new beings into an existence you acknowledge to be negative, and thrust the responsibility of fixing the world onto them.

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

#882

Post by neilparikh »

larntz wrote: post #363
ashtonkem wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, except I’m dubious about the prospect of having a child in America.

I think people have felt the same about having children throughout most of history. Do you want a child born into slavery? Do you want a child subject to a totalitarian government? Do you want a child born into extreme poverty or famine? I feel like if you want to have a kid you have one and you deal with whatever adversity comes along. Take the opportunity to prepare your child to deal with the world that exists reg…

> I feel like if you want to have a kid you have one and you deal with whatever adversity comes along.

The thing is, it's not only you who will be dealing with "whatever adversity comes along". Your child will also have to deal with it, and just because you're okay with dealing with it doesn't mean they will be too.

Forcing a child into existence when you think it's likely they will have a negative life, just because "you want to have a kid", is an incredibly selfish decision to make. We shouldn't encourage people to take a gamble on their potential children's lives just because they want a kid.

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

#883

Post by edflsafoiewq »

brnt wrote: post #880
war1025 wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decimate means you kill 1 out of every 10. It's probable that we decimated the virus and more. It's just that doesn't really make a difference.

Decimate means leaving 1 out of 10 alive. A 90% reduction.

> Decimation was a form of Roman military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort. ... The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".

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

#884

Post by MagnumOpus »

brnt wrote: post #880
war1025 wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decimate means you kill 1 out of every 10. It's probable that we decimated the virus and more. It's just that doesn't really make a difference.

Decimate means leaving 1 out of 10 alive. A 90% reduction.

No it doesn’t. Look it up.

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

#885

Post by nickserv »

schoolornot wrote: post #825
oramit wrote: 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…

JFK international airport is a 20 minute ride from the heart of Manhattan and we have a "transportation security agency" that can't find physical contraband in a suitcase much less be expected to be gatekeepers of health for the nation. Suppose we drastically lower transmission. How many times should NYC and the surrounding areas be locked down because someone flew in from a country with loose contagion protocols? Be…

Close the border, it's as simple as that. All countries that were able to lower infections did this.

In Europe this was done even between neighboring countries both part of Shengen.

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

#886

Post by strken »

yongjik wrote: post #832
schoolornot wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK international airport is a 20 minute ride from the heart of Manhattan and we have a "transportation security agency" that can't find physical contraband in a suitcase much less be expected to be gatekeepers of health for the nation. Suppose we drastically lower transmission. How many times should NYC and the surrounding areas be locked down because someone flew in from a country with loose contagion protocols? Be…

Logistically, it's easier to force everyone arriving into mandatory two-week quarantine, than finding a contraband whatever hidden in a sea of suitcases. What's lacking is political willpower.

Australia does this. The border is somewhat porous, but it's worth mentioning that Australia is worrying about hundreds of cases right now.

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

#887

Post by tremon »

FuckButtons wrote: post #858
quicklime wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has higher case and death counts than Iran, both in absolute terms as well as per-capita. The US also looks to be on a worse trajectory.

Yeah, based on the self reported numbers out of Iran, which you can trust about as much as you can their state news agency on any number of topics. Let’s not forget they were simultaneously denying the virus’ prevalence while their political leaders were dropping like flies and they were digging mass graves that could be seen from space.

With the White House issuing orders for hospitals to report directly to them instead of the CDC, I'm not sure how long we'll be able to trust the US numbers.

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

#888

Post by tremon »

isthispermanent wrote: post #608
ihumanable wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine. Interesting, Sweden suffered more deaths than their neighbors and does not appear to be any better off economically. Sweden Has Become the World's Cautionary Tale - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-c... Sweden had no lockdown but its economy is expected to suffer just as badly as its European neighbors - https://www.cnbc.com…

Except for your NYT article, these are all pieces from more than 2 months ago. And the NYT has been exceptionally poor at reporting on covid with an even hand. What it fails to mention is that though Sweden's economy will contract by the same amount as it's Scandanavian neighbors, about -8%, it's a huge win compared to UK/Italy/France which will contract by 22-30%. src: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06…

UK/Italy/France which will contract by 22-30%

Not sure where they got those numbers, France is projected to see a 10% decline, not 30%.

https://publications.banque-france.fr/en/macroeconomic-proje...

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

#889

Post by scarface74 »

bjustin wrote: post #691
shreyansj wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different political leader - we don't know. A different political leader who was not divisive and dismissive of science - yes, it would have been better.

I do think more or less any other leader likely would have done at least a little better. But if the same events in late 2019/early 2020 had happened under President Obama in 2015/2016 instead, I think it likely that many people in the opposing party would have ended up taking the same anti-science positions we see now. Federal action would have made the pandemic less bad but individuals and other levels of governmen…

Only Nixon could go to China. Imagine how much different things would have been if Trump had embraced the CDC and science like the other nations did. His followers would have gone along with it.

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

#890

Post by orbifold »

gowld wrote: post #702
isthispermanent wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is largely the problem. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have mattered whether it was a left or right president. The side not in office would have done the opposite. Everything is a political proxy war right now.

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).

And this is because protesting during a pandemic never leads to a rise in infections, so the thousands of BLM protesters surely had nothing to do with rising case numbers.
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