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No one will pay the political price of causing infections among children by reopening rapidly. And I'd like to believe that as a society, we are cautious about

by rmk 6y ago

No one will pay the political price of causing infections among children by reopening rapidly. And I'd like to believe that as a society, we are cautious about letting children be infected with a novel disease whose long-term effects are unknown.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I’m not sure your reading of the political climate is accurate. A lot of places have already reopened schools, and I’ve heard a lot of politicians explicitly say that they’re willing to pay the price because it’s not a big deal if kids get it. Maybe they’re wrong, but if you expect that there’ll be public support behind keeping things closed when the death and hospitalization rates start plummeting, I think you’d better readjust.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > it’s not a big deal if kids get it The Academy of Pediatrics says this. It's not just some politicans who don't know anything about epidemology and likely have never even taken a college-level biology course.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rmk 6y ago
  I'm not saying that places will be shut down completely. I was talking specifically about masking and physical distancing mandates and other such restrictions. I don't think big business and the public will tolerate losing another season of attending (in-person) Football, Baseball, Ice Hockey, <insert favorite sport here> games.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    > I don't think big business and the public will tolerate losing another season The whole "COVID fatigue" thing is one of the craziest things I keep hearing with regard to this pandemic. The virus doesn't care if you're bored of the disease and "won't tolerate" staying home from more football games. It's not like it's just going to go away because we're tired of it! I sincerely hope governments aren't going to just open things up because 2021 is a different year and everyone's just really bummed of it all. Surely we have better sense than that.
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      Avoiding getting Covid is not the only thing that matters in life. As the cost (in months of normal life lost) of the lockdown increases, it may be perfectly rational for people to think it’s no longer worth the decreased risk of catching the virus. Seen in this light, “Covid fatigue” makes perfect sense. Said another way: imagine an alternate reality where none of the vaccines worked, and we kept getting winter flare-ups of Covid year after year - would you think we should continue the restrictions _forever_ ? If not, why not?
      - ryandrake 6y ago
        Assuming also that immunization did not emerge some other way also (like from getting the disease once) then yes I’d expect we would permanently change our way of life. What’s the alternative? Just accept the casualties year after year? For what? So we can eat at Olive Garden and go to football games?
        umanwizard 6y ago
        How can you reduce all of human social and cultural life to “Olive Garden and football” ? And yes, of course it’d be worth a slightly lower life expectancy in order to not live under permanent lockdown. If you don’t agree with that, we probably have such a fundamentally different worldview that we will never see eye-to-eye.
        ryandrake 6y ago
        Since we're doing scenarios, what do we do when a hypothetical COVID-21 comes along which is 20x deadlier and kills uniformly across age ranges? Do we simply ignore it because we're tired of stay-at-home and we all gotta live our (now potentially shorter) lives?
        umanwizard 6y ago
        Yes, if there were a virus that killed 10% of people of all ages and was as contagious as Covid-19, it would be a civilization-level threat and it would be worth extreme measures to attempt to stop its spread (I'm not optimistic that it _could_ be stopped, but it'd at least be worth trying). What's your point?
AndrewBissell 6y ago
Inflicting on all children the certain damage of social isolation, screen learning, and further economic precarity, to avoid theoretical and undemonstrated long-term effects (of a perhaps serious but not crippling nature) to a small percentage of them, does not strike me as societal wisdom in any way. Also, do you know what else has unknown long-term effects in children?
- rmk 6y ago
  I'm not arguing that children should be kept out of in-person school. In fact, I'm against it, and was against it even when the pandemic was raging last year. I agree with you that children have been silent victims of schoolteachers' refusal to do in-person school. I do, however, strongly support reasonable precautions including masking and physical distancing, which can be achieved with children (not very young children, but certainly 2nd grade and up) with continual reinforcement until it becomes a habit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruturo 6y ago
    > I agree with you that children have been silent victims of schoolteachers' refusal to do in-person school What should a schoolteacher do then, die? I'm not going to ask them to do that. They should be put in one of the top priority categories for vaccination, and THEN we can expect them to go in classrooms (but we shouldn't be doing that anyway unless all kids are also vaccinated - otherwise they will keep the virus in circulation. They tend to have extremely mild or completely asymptomatic cases, but they DO catch it and spread it further)
    - nanis 6y ago
      > What should a schoolteacher do then, die? Feudal traditions aside, no one has the right to draw an income from a position where they are not doing the job. So, if teachers don't want to teach, then they can find another occupation which they are comfortable doing.

by rmk 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I’m not sure your reading of the political climate is accurate. A lot of places have already reopened schools, and I’ve heard a lot of politicians explicitly say that they’re willing to pay the price because it’s not a big deal if kids get it. Maybe they’re wrong, but if you expect that there’ll be public support behind keeping things closed when the death and hospitalization rates start plummeting, I think you’d better readjust.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> it’s not a big deal if kids get it The Academy of Pediatrics says this. It's not just some politicans who don't know anything about epidemology and likely have never even taken a college-level biology course.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rmk 6y ago
I'm not saying that places will be shut down completely. I was talking specifically about masking and physical distancing mandates and other such restrictions. I don't think big business and the public will tolerate losing another season of attending (in-person) Football, Baseball, Ice Hockey, <insert favorite sport here> games.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  > I don't think big business and the public will tolerate losing another season The whole "COVID fatigue" thing is one of the craziest things I keep hearing with regard to this pandemic. The virus doesn't care if you're bored of the disease and "won't tolerate" staying home from more football games. It's not like it's just going to go away because we're tired of it! I sincerely hope governments aren't going to just open things up because 2021 is a different year and everyone's just really bummed of it all. Surely we have better sense than that.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Avoiding getting Covid is not the only thing that matters in life. As the cost (in months of normal life lost) of the lockdown increases, it may be perfectly rational for people to think it’s no longer worth the decreased risk of catching the virus. Seen in this light, “Covid fatigue” makes perfect sense. Said another way: imagine an alternate reality where none of the vaccines worked, and we kept getting winter flare-ups of Covid year after year - would you think we should continue the restrictions _forever_ ? If not, why not?
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Assuming also that immunization did not emerge some other way also (like from getting the disease once) then yes I’d expect we would permanently change our way of life. What’s the alternative? Just accept the casualties year after year? For what? So we can eat at Olive Garden and go to football games?
      - umanwizard 6y ago
        How can you reduce all of human social and cultural life to “Olive Garden and football” ? And yes, of course it’d be worth a slightly lower life expectancy in order to not live under permanent lockdown. If you don’t agree with that, we probably have such a fundamentally different worldview that we will never see eye-to-eye.
        ryandrake 6y ago
        Since we're doing scenarios, what do we do when a hypothetical COVID-21 comes along which is 20x deadlier and kills uniformly across age ranges? Do we simply ignore it because we're tired of stay-at-home and we all gotta live our (now potentially shorter) lives?
        umanwizard 6y ago
        Yes, if there were a virus that killed 10% of people of all ages and was as contagious as Covid-19, it would be a civilization-level threat and it would be worth extreme measures to attempt to stop its spread (I'm not optimistic that it _could_ be stopped, but it'd at least be worth trying). What's your point?

AndrewBissell 6y ago

Inflicting on all children the certain damage of social isolation, screen learning, and further economic precarity, to avoid theoretical and undemonstrated long-term effects (of a perhaps serious but not crippling nature) to a small percentage of them, does not strike me as societal wisdom in any way. Also, do you know what else has unknown long-term effects in children?

rmk 6y ago
I'm not arguing that children should be kept out of in-person school. In fact, I'm against it, and was against it even when the pandemic was raging last year. I agree with you that children have been silent victims of schoolteachers' refusal to do in-person school. I do, however, strongly support reasonable precautions including masking and physical distancing, which can be achieved with children (not very young children, but certainly 2nd grade and up) with continual reinforcement until it becomes a habit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gruturo 6y ago
  > I agree with you that children have been silent victims of schoolteachers' refusal to do in-person school What should a schoolteacher do then, die? I'm not going to ask them to do that. They should be put in one of the top priority categories for vaccination, and THEN we can expect them to go in classrooms (but we shouldn't be doing that anyway unless all kids are also vaccinated - otherwise they will keep the virus in circulation. They tend to have extremely mild or completely asymptomatic cases, but they DO catch it and spread it further)
  - nanis 6y ago
    > What should a schoolteacher do then, die? Feudal traditions aside, no one has the right to draw an income from a position where they are not doing the job. So, if teachers don't want to teach, then they can find another occupation which they are comfortable doing.