4 ms·

Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we have

Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we have enough data for people to evaluate their own personal risk and generally take appropriate personal measures for safety. We can and should make efforts to accommodate those who assess their personal risk to be significant. But when you/others ask schools to close - are you really considering what the short-medium-long term costs of those choices really are? I have personally taken neighborhood kids to pick up free lunches offered by schools while they were shut down - because those kids' parents didn't care to take them and neither cared to help them feed themselves. I've seen working parents leave their young children at home because child care logistics and cost were not acceptable for their circumstances. I know kids down the street that are basically ignored by their parents that are not likely to have a healthy structured school environment they can count on. I believe these hard to measure costs are enormous but easy to ignore because the affected demographic can't fight for their rights/desires - they can't even vote. And privileged SV folks and internet yuppies are happy to drive this line forward. I have friends who have lost their jobs. I have a cousin who has lost their small business. Not because of COVID - but because of the "cure" for COVID.

thex10 6y ago
Most of this just speaks to how problematic it is for a society to rely on (poorly-funded and unevenly-resourced) schools alone for universal childcare, alleviating child hunger, ensuring safety from awful households, and other concerns that could have been addressed elsewhere (this is all orthogonal to the effects of COVID).
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between fictitious ones - what do people want? Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary, middle, and high school students? Or maybe 500,000 people dying a bit early (just making numbers up on this one - adjust up or down depending on various factors)? That is not so one-sided obvious as many people on the internet seem to want to make it.
  - latchkey 6y ago
    How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. How many children will bring it home to adults? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. On the other hand, not all 56 million kids will end up ruined if education is delayed a bit or parents need to come up with new and creative ways to educate their children safely. You're basically arguing to 'stay the course' during a global pandemic and fact is that isn't workable either.
    - rwcarlsen 6y ago
      Everybody has a cost above which they are not willing to pay to save someone's life. If you can't admit that, then there is nothing we have to discuss.
    - curryst 6y ago
      > How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. This is equally as irrational as people who just want to fling the floodgates open. ~5 children per year die on playground equipment in the US. Are you actually proposing that we sit around until we've neutered a lethal virus enough that it's less dangerous than playground equipment? The IFR for school age children is astonishingly low. Low enough that we don't even really have a good sample size. CAs data right now is showing 1 death out of ~50k infections. My first Google hit with IFR estimates for those age ranges puts them at 0.0016% for 5-9, and 0.00032% for 10-17. Assuming every single one of those kids is in the higher risk 5-9 bracket and that every single one gets infected, we would end up with less than a thousand fatalities. That's about 10% lower than children that die from drowning (or congenital birth abnormalities, or drug overdose/poisoning, they all hover around 980 per year). It's slightly higher than the number of children who die from heart disease. On the other hand, it's less than a quarter the number of children who die in car crashes per year, and less than a third the number who die from firearm accidents. I don't suppose that you're going to stop putting your kids in the car, despite it being 4 times more likely to kill them than the worst case scenario of Covid in schools.
latchkey 6y ago
I think this is one of those cases where you are taking a bunch of anecdotal evidence and drawing the wrong conclusions from it or at least biasing them towards your own dislikes... 'privileged SV and internet yuppies'. Your response feels a bit like Dunning-Kruger [0] effect going on here. I am not a doctor so I won't give you advice, but Dr. Gupta is. I felt like his reasoning for not sending his kids back to school in this article [1] was spot on. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupta-essay/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupt...

thex10 6y ago

Most of this just speaks to how problematic it is for a society to rely on (poorly-funded and unevenly-resourced) schools alone for universal childcare, alleviating child hunger, ensuring safety from awful households, and other concerns that could have been addressed elsewhere (this is all orthogonal to the effects of COVID).

rwcarlsen 6y ago
Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between fictitious ones - what do people want? Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary, middle, and high school students? Or maybe 500,000 people dying a bit early (just making numbers up on this one - adjust up or down depending on various factors)? That is not so one-sided obvious as many people on the internet seem to want to make it.
- latchkey 6y ago
  How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. How many children will bring it home to adults? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. On the other hand, not all 56 million kids will end up ruined if education is delayed a bit or parents need to come up with new and creative ways to educate their children safely. You're basically arguing to 'stay the course' during a global pandemic and fact is that isn't workable either.
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    Everybody has a cost above which they are not willing to pay to save someone's life. If you can't admit that, then there is nothing we have to discuss.
  - curryst 6y ago
    > How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there. This is equally as irrational as people who just want to fling the floodgates open. ~5 children per year die on playground equipment in the US. Are you actually proposing that we sit around until we've neutered a lethal virus enough that it's less dangerous than playground equipment? The IFR for school age children is astonishingly low. Low enough that we don't even really have a good sample size. CAs data right now is showing 1 death out of ~50k infections. My first Google hit with IFR estimates for those age ranges puts them at 0.0016% for 5-9, and 0.00032% for 10-17. Assuming every single one of those kids is in the higher risk 5-9 bracket and that every single one gets infected, we would end up with less than a thousand fatalities. That's about 10% lower than children that die from drowning (or congenital birth abnormalities, or drug overdose/poisoning, they all hover around 980 per year). It's slightly higher than the number of children who die from heart disease. On the other hand, it's less than a quarter the number of children who die in car crashes per year, and less than a third the number who die from firearm accidents. I don't suppose that you're going to stop putting your kids in the car, despite it being 4 times more likely to kill them than the worst case scenario of Covid in schools.

latchkey 6y ago

I think this is one of those cases where you are taking a bunch of anecdotal evidence and drawing the wrong conclusions from it or at least biasing them towards your own dislikes... 'privileged SV and internet yuppies'. Your response feels a bit like Dunning-Kruger [0] effect going on here. I am not a doctor so I won't give you advice, but Dr. Gupta is. I felt like his reasoning for not sending his kids back to school in this article [1] was spot on. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupta-essay/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupt...