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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

#931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe there are any states currently issuing stay at home (which is different than SIP) orders. It also has 100% not been an overreaction. It saved countless lives by preventing spread. That whole flattening the curve thing and how well countries that have actually followed through and did not open early should show you how effective it has been.

The median death rate is 80: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-da... At best it saved a few people who would have died in a couple of years.

It's a fallacy to think that the only outcome of COVID is binary (i.e. death or perfect recovery).

Just browse r/covidpositive. There are so many "survivors" who say they still have so much internal organ pain 4 months after being diagnosed, and now they feel hopeless, have suicidal ideation, etc.

And from the sounds of it, a lot of these people are in their 20s-40s and could run a marathon pre-COVID.

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

#932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed this link which contained the blurb about “defunding the police...” to the next link and read the summary of the actual research paper from the teachers union. Nowhere in that summary does it mention any demands wrt defunding the police or Medicare for all.

Your comment prompted me to read the actual "research paper", vs the press article. The article is correct. The paper is filled with hyper-leftist demands. You read the summary, not the actual paper. Here are some quotes: [we demand] "Explicit plans to carry out health and safety protocols without resorting to punitive policing and punishment" "No standardized testing infringing on instructional time" In the section…

Has America swung that far to the right? Those demands sound to me pretty rational... How come are they hyper-leftists? What's your definition of left?

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

#933
post #932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment prompted me to read the actual "research paper", vs the press article. The article is correct. The paper is filled with hyper-leftist demands. You read the summary, not the actual paper. Here are some quotes: [we demand] "Explicit plans to carry out health and safety protocols without resorting to punitive policing and punishment" "No standardized testing infringing on instructional time" In the section…

Has America swung that far to the right? Those demands sound to me pretty rational... How come are they hyper-leftists? What's your definition of left?

I'm not American. Beyond all the "structural racism" junk, shifting all the police funding to education sounds like a pretty hard left suggestion to me, as does abolition of standardised testing i.e. accountability of teachers.

The naked hatred of wealthy people visible in that document is also very left. Really, just read the whole thing. If it doesn't seem hyper leftist to you, that probably just means you're far to the left ;)

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

#934
post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a classic example of whataboutism. BLM protests where, on the whole, at least masked. This is a huge contrast from the literal “we will not wear masks” protests that erupted from the radical right. There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to capturing videos of such people refusing to wear masks or socially distance. Based on the non-negligible amount of (sometimes racist) right-wing talking points they often devo…

Well just in terms of chance of infection a mass gathering is much worse than individuals refusing to follow orders. We have those her e in Germany as well, including right and left wing conspiracy theorists.

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

#935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate. Obama behaved no differently.

There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2. The presidents could not differ more in: - lead time between inauguration and first epidemic reaching the USA (6 weeks versus 3 years) - seriousness with which the presidential transition team took pandemic response - the authority given to pandemic response (Obama made NSC responsible…

> There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2.

"the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2" was not the topic of conversation. The topic of conversation was:

>>> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks.

>> Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.

>> [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d....

You are now expanding the scope of your original argument. Before we do that, can we finish with your first point?

Did the Obama administration refill the inventory of masks after they were drawn down, or not? My reading of the evidence is that they did not, does your reading leave you with a different conclusion, are you maybe referring to different evidence than what I posted above?

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

#936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all the evidence from European countries tells us a lot about non-lockdown spread following a proper lockdown.

...proper lockdown... Which the US refuses to do. It's like we're the kid in school who refused to do their work, then has a tempter-tantrum because they have to forgo recess. And much of the EU (and Taiwan, Singapore, HK, etc) are the nerdy kid who finished early and now get to spend the afternoon doing something fun.

Excellent analogy, actually.

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

#937
post #438
post #13

My mother is an elementary school teacher, and I don't want her to go back to school this year. The federal government is worse than useless, and the state government is feckless and unwilling to make the tough calls to protect people's lives. She's been a teacher for ~15 years and still makes less than $30k a year teaching. She loves helping the kids, but her life isn't worth it.

My mom works as an administrator in a public school. She is one year away from being eligible for medicaid, which is when she planned on retiring. She said as of right now, she plans to go back, because getting private insurance with her pre-existing conditions for the next year isn't feasible. I'm seriously considering seeing if my siblings and I can fund it for her for a year so she can just retire now and not have…

The ACA (aka Obamacare) made it so insurance companies can't discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions. Check the exchange in her state for options.

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

#938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which right is being violated in your opinion? And why is that more important than others' right to stay alive?

Because I am selfish and, by and large, don't care about others. Selfish? Yes. Just being honest.

How fascinating, to see someone brag about being selfish.

Everyone is on a spectrum of selfishness vs. selflessness, of caring for themselves alone vs. caring only for others. Different societies have different ways of optimizing these balances.

Sometimes we "reward" selfishness: a CEO who mercilessly crushes his or her rivals makes a lot of money. A criminal kingpin can "buy" safety and protection, fame and adulation.

But humanity hasn't improved over the past ten millennia by embracing selfishness.

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

#939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance is in fact divergent by party; see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_... . Blue counties are doing worse than red in both state cohorts due to population density, but counties of either party are doing worse in R states. Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are…

> Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not. The relevant metric is not "amount of time doing relatively better or worse." You can get all over with quickly like NY did, but they ended up with 8x the deaths of FL. NJ has 3x FL's. AFAICT…

Speaking of relevant metrics, comparing total deaths (lagging indicator) between NY and FL is pretty misleading, considering that NY has been on the down slope for several weeks, and FL is still climbing.

For instance, my velocity is much faster on the downhill part of the ski trip when compared to the lift ride up the mountain.

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

#940
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe keeping schools closed is better than reopening? Have you looked into the research? Most of my findings indicate that the benefits of opening safely outweigh the the risks and the adverse effects of school closure (to the children, families and society) outweigh the benefits. Just one quote out of many: > Weighing the health risks of reopening K-12 schools in fall 2020 against the educational risks…

That's not research. That's opinion pieces from research organizations. There's a question of values, which is a personal question. I don't want the moral weight of risking that my child catch COVID19 and cause someone else to die. If I were a teacher, I wouldn't want to be in a position where a mistake I make can make people die. I can run the numbers as well as the next guy, and I know the risks. I don't want my sc…

It's not really a question of values because depending on what the actual death rate actually is, you can make informed objectionable decisions based off of it that two rational people with different values should agree upon. For example, if you determined that the risk of death from Covid was less than the risk of death from driving in a year, than I would argue that you should accept that risk if you're okay with driving.

Basically, in order to be rational, you should be willing to accept the risk of dying from Covid if it is less than something else you do that is more risky on a daily basis. So the idea that it is a question of morality and differing opinions of N and M isn't really accurate. It's also why we compare death rates from Covid to Influenza and other diseases because we need to understand just how big of a risk to society it actually is to properly weigh our response.

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