4 ms·

> children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay hom

> children often end up congregating elsewhere in even closer contact Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". > stay open until there are actual cases associated with the schools. That's really fucking stupid. By then it's too late.

Noos 7y ago
I wonder if the problem is a ripple effect. If you close schools, a lot of parents will have to stay out of work. This means more closings, and overworked remaining staff.
- carapace 7y ago
  People just don't know the horror of the plague. I think it's just that simple. A lot of people have no living memory of a bad outbreak. We're victims of our own success.
jedberg 7y ago
> Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? The best they can do is get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages so no one starves. Only privileged kids have the option to "just stay home".
- carapace 7y ago
  > If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? Anywhere that minimizes contagion of the virus. I'm not trying to be coy or flippant. I recognize that there are hardships involved. You gave a very general scenario so I can only re-state the fundamental invariant. > get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages That could work. Except better not to move them around, and limit their exposure to adults who do move around. I'm not an epidemiologist so I'm not qualified to give detailed advice. I do feel pretty confident about telling people to stay home because that's how you slow down a pandemic. The streets should be deserted right now. Here's the messed up thing: the virus doesn't care. If we have set up our society in such a way that we can't respond properly to this thing it will fuck us up and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. IF there are too many parents working, and not enough extended family (or whatever), and/or not enough sick leave, and/or a system that can't make and distribute tests, or any of a bunch of other factors, THEN people are going to die. A lot of people. And if enough of the die (or just get really sick all at the same time) major additional problems could occur. Most cities have only about three days of food in the pipeline. After that, the only food is our pets, and then "long pork". The best thing you can do to stave that off is stay home now before it's too late. Maybe our civilization are fundamentally at odds with surviving a pandemic, I hope not, but be clear about the danger here.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    If you live paycheck to paycheck, your choices are to stay home and starve when you run out of money, or to continue with life while making sure you wash your hands a lot and don't touch your face. Sounds to me like the choice is pretty obvious. I suppose the government could step up and provide to replace your paycheck while you stay at home with your kids, but honestly, this isn't that bad of a virus to warrant that. People that are high risk should stay home. Everyone else should wash their hands and avoid their face and avoid crowds. > The streets should be deserted right now. You're probably overreacting. And let's hope all the health care workers decide that work is more important than staying home.
    - chefkoch 7y ago
      > but honestly, this isn't that bad of a virus to warrant that. How bad would it have to be?
      - jedberg 7y ago
        Measles but without the vaccine. And even then, people seemed to get by just fine for thousands of years with it out in the wild.
        danielrpa 7y ago
        Back then, diseases often spread much more slowly, if at all, due to the limited transportation methods.
        jedberg 7y ago
        I don’t think that’s true at all. It just takes one person to start a new city. After that transportation doesn’t really matter. For reference, only 20% of the world’s population has ever flown in airplane. In 2020 there will be about 40 million flights. In 1965, when the measles vaccine was first introduced, there were about 5 million flights, and about 1/2 the world population. But in both cases the majority of those flights were by the wealthiest people in the world. So really not a significant difference in travel. If anything it would be density that would be the problem, since a lot more people live in cities now.
- pfranz 7y ago
  At least for Northshore, which has decided to close, they're reaching out to parents who need backup childcare, rely on a meal plan, lack the equipment at home to access online. They said 15% of their staff were high risk and 20% of students were calling in absent. I imagine a higher than normal amount of staff would call in sick for symptoms they would previously "work through." So /something/ out of the ordinary needed to be done in the medium term.
- actfrench 7y ago
  Even when schools are open normally, the childcare schools provide for kids like this is mediocre at best in terms of hours and quality. Co-ops/childcare swaps can be good solution, but they don't necessarily mitigate the risk of the disease spreading, though it hasn't impacted kids so much as of yet.

Noos 7y ago

I wonder if the problem is a ripple effect. If you close schools, a lot of parents will have to stay out of work. This means more closings, and overworked remaining staff.

carapace 7y ago
People just don't know the horror of the plague. I think it's just that simple. A lot of people have no living memory of a bad outbreak. We're victims of our own success.

jedberg 7y ago

> Well that's just fucking stupid. The situation isn't "get out of school", it's "stay home". If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? The best they can do is get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages so no one starves. Only privileged kids have the option to "just stay home".

carapace 7y ago
> If you have a seven year old and both parents work an hourly job, where exactly is that kid supposed to stay? Anywhere that minimizes contagion of the virus. I'm not trying to be coy or flippant. I recognize that there are hardships involved. You gave a very general scenario so I can only re-state the fundamental invariant. > get a bunch of parents together and rotate which house all the kids will stay at each day and pool their wages That could work. Except better not to move them around, and limit their exposure to adults who do move around. I'm not an epidemiologist so I'm not qualified to give detailed advice. I do feel pretty confident about telling people to stay home because that's how you slow down a pandemic. The streets should be deserted right now. Here's the messed up thing: the virus doesn't care. If we have set up our society in such a way that we can't respond properly to this thing it will fuck us up and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. IF there are too many parents working, and not enough extended family (or whatever), and/or not enough sick leave, and/or a system that can't make and distribute tests, or any of a bunch of other factors, THEN people are going to die. A lot of people. And if enough of the die (or just get really sick all at the same time) major additional problems could occur. Most cities have only about three days of food in the pipeline. After that, the only food is our pets, and then "long pork". The best thing you can do to stave that off is stay home now before it's too late. Maybe our civilization are fundamentally at odds with surviving a pandemic, I hope not, but be clear about the danger here.
- jedberg 7y ago
  If you live paycheck to paycheck, your choices are to stay home and starve when you run out of money, or to continue with life while making sure you wash your hands a lot and don't touch your face. Sounds to me like the choice is pretty obvious. I suppose the government could step up and provide to replace your paycheck while you stay at home with your kids, but honestly, this isn't that bad of a virus to warrant that. People that are high risk should stay home. Everyone else should wash their hands and avoid their face and avoid crowds. > The streets should be deserted right now. You're probably overreacting. And let's hope all the health care workers decide that work is more important than staying home.
  - chefkoch 7y ago
    > but honestly, this isn't that bad of a virus to warrant that. How bad would it have to be?
    - jedberg 7y ago
      Measles but without the vaccine. And even then, people seemed to get by just fine for thousands of years with it out in the wild.
      - danielrpa 7y ago
        Back then, diseases often spread much more slowly, if at all, due to the limited transportation methods.
        jedberg 7y ago
        I don’t think that’s true at all. It just takes one person to start a new city. After that transportation doesn’t really matter. For reference, only 20% of the world’s population has ever flown in airplane. In 2020 there will be about 40 million flights. In 1965, when the measles vaccine was first introduced, there were about 5 million flights, and about 1/2 the world population. But in both cases the majority of those flights were by the wealthiest people in the world. So really not a significant difference in travel. If anything it would be density that would be the problem, since a lot more people live in cities now.
pfranz 7y ago
At least for Northshore, which has decided to close, they're reaching out to parents who need backup childcare, rely on a meal plan, lack the equipment at home to access online. They said 15% of their staff were high risk and 20% of students were calling in absent. I imagine a higher than normal amount of staff would call in sick for symptoms they would previously "work through." So /something/ out of the ordinary needed to be done in the medium term.
actfrench 7y ago
Even when schools are open normally, the childcare schools provide for kids like this is mediocre at best in terms of hours and quality. Co-ops/childcare swaps can be good solution, but they don't necessarily mitigate the risk of the disease spreading, though it hasn't impacted kids so much as of yet.