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> And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Many of them were at greater risk of death from driving to school than they we

> And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Many of them were at greater risk of death from driving to school than they were from Covid.

w-j-w 5y ago
Does this pass for an argument now? Plenty of teachers are also severely at risk, and there is good reason to think that many would have died painful, preventable deaths had they taught in person.
tboyd47 5y ago
You were downvoted because of how the current generation of adults judges your comment; but how will the next generation see things? I haven't heard any discussion about this question, at all, and frankly, it disturbs me, today's children are tomorrow's adults. Somehow, I don't think, "think of the teachers," or "we didn't think it through" will be good enough for them.
- w-j-w 5y ago
  This comment confuses me. The teachers themselves are worthy of moral consideration, and that doesn't change because they are going to be dead later anyways. The alternative also would have done considerable damage. Plenty of kids would have witnessed their teachers literally give up their life to teach them. Do you think those kids would view that as worthwhile?
Jill_the_Pill 5y ago
This argues we must drastically improve traffic safety, not just accept driving and covid risks.
- tmn 5y ago
  Not necessarily. There is an opposing argument that we need to accept the risk of death as a part of life. When does a population decide the risk has been reduced enough? I could argue we are well past that point. As a culture we have completely lost touch with the natural cycles of life. The boomers in positions of power have clearly prioritized their own safety at the expense of the upcoming generations. That's probably inflammatory. But it's a popular opinion where I'm from that isn't vocalized in the media. Without trying to say one take is right or wrong, this can in a lot ways be reduced to the security vs freedom tradeoff.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    This is a population that would have decided their own risk. A great many of them simply would not have shown up, and quit or be fired.
    - tmn 5y ago
      Right. And there are many who would have kept showing up, but policies mandated they could not.
void_mint 5y ago
When everyone runs the risk of dying in traffic accidents in quick succession, every individual traffic accident becomes more problematic
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  "Keeping schools closed was necessary to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed" is a different argument from "teachers don't want to face the mortal peril of in-person instruction," and not the one that was made in favor of keeping schools closed.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Kids infect eachother -> Kids infect teachers and their parents -> Hospitals overwhelmed When hospitals are overcrowded any injury has a higher mortality rate. Teachers not wanting to die is a totally fine reason to close schools, too.
jfengel 5y ago
No, they weren't. There are half a million COVID deaths last year. There are around 30,000 deaths a year from automobile accidents. COVID is more deadly than automobile accidents, by an order of magnitude.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Unlike automobile accidents, risk of death from Covid varies substantially according to age and whether one has any comorbidities.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mk81 5y ago
  >There are half a million COVID deaths last year. What a joke. Please read about excess mortality before saying stupid things. Most people who die in car crashes wouldn't have died otherwise. Huge numbers of people who died "from COVID" would have died from something else.
  - musicale 5y ago
    > Please read about excess mortality The World Mortality Dataset: Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240.2/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240.2/ "Summing up the excess mortality estimates across all countries in our dataset gives 3.3 million excess deaths. In contrast, summing up the official COVID-19 death counts gives only 2.1 million deaths." Interestingly enough, their conclusion was that covid deaths are being undercounted: "At the time of writing, the world’s official COVID-19 death count is 2.9 million. Our results suggest that the true toll may be above 4.5 million."
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      lol so in a year where tons of the developing world was forced into food insecurity as a byproduct of Covid response and lockdowns, they want to attribute every excess death to "Covid"?
intrepidhero 5y ago
My research says this claim is false. The mortality rate for COVID-19 for all age groups is much higher that mortality rates for drivers. How I compared the risks: In New York the mortality rate for COVID-19 for all age groups over 18 was found to be at least 0.2%[1]. The CDC[2] reports 18-29 years at 0.5%, 30-39 at 1.4%, 40-49 at 3.5%, 50-64 at 16.4%. There were 36,560[3] motor vehicle related deaths in 2018 in the US. With 273,602,100[4] cars on the road one could make a rough estimate of mortality of 0.013%. This number is conservatively high since it does not include passengers. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e1.htm#T1_down https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e1.htm#T1_down [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Several problems with this analysis: - Using confirmed cases as the denominator significantly overstates the fatality rate, because a large share of the total infections is never confirmed - "All age groups over 18" elides huge disparities between the younger and older age groups. It also obscures large differences in risk between those with comorbidities vs those without. The CDC does not make this easy to parse out, but in Canada after their first wave, "100% of the COVID-involved deaths under the age of 45 as of July 31 had at least one other disease or condition certified on the medical certificate of death." https://web.archive.org/web/20210219195135if_/https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2020001/article/00087-eng.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210219195135if_/https://www150... - New York as a region had one of the highest fatality rates of the entire pandemic - Covid is a "one-and-done" risk as far as we know, while the risk of a car accident is repeated year after year for as long as one drives on the roads. Even in the absence of vaccines, the risk of death from Covid is unlikely to remain as high in 2024 as it was in 2020. The most sound way to run this sort of comparison is something like "how many in risk group X (say, people aged 30-39 with no comorbidities) died in 2020 from Covid vs how many in that group die in a typical year from auto accidents?" If you want to say that overweight 60 year old teachers with diabetes should not have been forced back to in-person instruction you'll get no argument from me.
musicale 5y ago
I found this for Sweden: Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 19 teachers per 100000 received intensive care through June 2020, and it's unclear if any died. Sweden's motor vehicle death rate is relatively low, 2 per 100,000 over an entire year (vs. 11 in the US), but that's over the entire population, not just teachers. The effects of school closures on SARS-CoV-2 among parents and teachers https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118 This article says that keeping schools open without masks or quarantines doubled covid risk for teachers and also affected partners as well as students' parents. It concluded that "keeping lower-secondary schools open had minor consequences for the overall transmission" but "results for teachers suggest that measures to protect teachers should be considered." They estimated 9 parents (out of 646K), 1 teacher (out of 73K), and 1 partner (out of 47K) died from covid. However the data only appear to be through July.
- musicale 5y ago
  In 2020 in California, some 51,000 people died from covid vs. 3,723 from traffic crash injuries. I haven't found exact statistics for both covid and crashes in 2020, but it looks like around 20% of covid deaths are in the 24-54 age range, as are around 45% of crash deaths, for an estimated 10,000 covid deaths vs. 1675 crash deaths in that age range. So in spite of California's high traffic crash rate, covid deaths seem to have been a much greater risk in 2020 for the 24-54 age group.

> And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Many of them were at greater risk of death from driving to school than they were from Covid.

w-j-w 5y ago

Does this pass for an argument now? Plenty of teachers are also severely at risk, and there is good reason to think that many would have died painful, preventable deaths had they taught in person.

tboyd47 5y ago

You were downvoted because of how the current generation of adults judges your comment; but how will the next generation see things? I haven't heard any discussion about this question, at all, and frankly, it disturbs me, today's children are tomorrow's adults. Somehow, I don't think, "think of the teachers," or "we didn't think it through" will be good enough for them.

w-j-w 5y ago
This comment confuses me. The teachers themselves are worthy of moral consideration, and that doesn't change because they are going to be dead later anyways. The alternative also would have done considerable damage. Plenty of kids would have witnessed their teachers literally give up their life to teach them. Do you think those kids would view that as worthwhile?

Jill_the_Pill 5y ago

This argues we must drastically improve traffic safety, not just accept driving and covid risks.

tmn 5y ago
Not necessarily. There is an opposing argument that we need to accept the risk of death as a part of life. When does a population decide the risk has been reduced enough? I could argue we are well past that point. As a culture we have completely lost touch with the natural cycles of life. The boomers in positions of power have clearly prioritized their own safety at the expense of the upcoming generations. That's probably inflammatory. But it's a popular opinion where I'm from that isn't vocalized in the media. Without trying to say one take is right or wrong, this can in a lot ways be reduced to the security vs freedom tradeoff.
- jfengel 5y ago
  This is a population that would have decided their own risk. A great many of them simply would not have shown up, and quit or be fired.
  - tmn 5y ago
    Right. And there are many who would have kept showing up, but policies mandated they could not.

void_mint 5y ago

When everyone runs the risk of dying in traffic accidents in quick succession, every individual traffic accident becomes more problematic

AndrewBissell 5y ago
"Keeping schools closed was necessary to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed" is a different argument from "teachers don't want to face the mortal peril of in-person instruction," and not the one that was made in favor of keeping schools closed.
- void_mint 5y ago
  Kids infect eachother -> Kids infect teachers and their parents -> Hospitals overwhelmed When hospitals are overcrowded any injury has a higher mortality rate. Teachers not wanting to die is a totally fine reason to close schools, too.

jfengel 5y ago

No, they weren't. There are half a million COVID deaths last year. There are around 30,000 deaths a year from automobile accidents. COVID is more deadly than automobile accidents, by an order of magnitude.

AndrewBissell 5y ago
Unlike automobile accidents, risk of death from Covid varies substantially according to age and whether one has any comorbidities.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mk81 5y ago
>There are half a million COVID deaths last year. What a joke. Please read about excess mortality before saying stupid things. Most people who die in car crashes wouldn't have died otherwise. Huge numbers of people who died "from COVID" would have died from something else.
- musicale 5y ago
  > Please read about excess mortality The World Mortality Dataset: Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240.2/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240.2/ "Summing up the excess mortality estimates across all countries in our dataset gives 3.3 million excess deaths. In contrast, summing up the official COVID-19 death counts gives only 2.1 million deaths." Interestingly enough, their conclusion was that covid deaths are being undercounted: "At the time of writing, the world’s official COVID-19 death count is 2.9 million. Our results suggest that the true toll may be above 4.5 million."
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    lol so in a year where tons of the developing world was forced into food insecurity as a byproduct of Covid response and lockdowns, they want to attribute every excess death to "Covid"?

intrepidhero 5y ago

My research says this claim is false. The mortality rate for COVID-19 for all age groups is much higher that mortality rates for drivers. How I compared the risks: In New York the mortality rate for COVID-19 for all age groups over 18 was found to be at least 0.2%[1]. The CDC[2] reports 18-29 years at 0.5%, 30-39 at 1.4%, 40-49 at 3.5%, 50-64 at 16.4%. There were 36,560[3] motor vehicle related deaths in 2018 in the US. With 273,602,100[4] cars on the road one could make a rough estimate of mortality of 0.013%. This number is conservatively high since it does not include passengers. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e1.htm#T1_down https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e1.htm#T1_down [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...

AndrewBissell 5y ago
Several problems with this analysis: - Using confirmed cases as the denominator significantly overstates the fatality rate, because a large share of the total infections is never confirmed - "All age groups over 18" elides huge disparities between the younger and older age groups. It also obscures large differences in risk between those with comorbidities vs those without. The CDC does not make this easy to parse out, but in Canada after their first wave, "100% of the COVID-involved deaths under the age of 45 as of July 31 had at least one other disease or condition certified on the medical certificate of death." https://web.archive.org/web/20210219195135if_/https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2020001/article/00087-eng.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210219195135if_/https://www150... - New York as a region had one of the highest fatality rates of the entire pandemic - Covid is a "one-and-done" risk as far as we know, while the risk of a car accident is repeated year after year for as long as one drives on the roads. Even in the absence of vaccines, the risk of death from Covid is unlikely to remain as high in 2024 as it was in 2020. The most sound way to run this sort of comparison is something like "how many in risk group X (say, people aged 30-39 with no comorbidities) died in 2020 from Covid vs how many in that group die in a typical year from auto accidents?" If you want to say that overweight 60 year old teachers with diabetes should not have been forced back to in-person instruction you'll get no argument from me.

musicale 5y ago

I found this for Sweden: Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 19 teachers per 100000 received intensive care through June 2020, and it's unclear if any died. Sweden's motor vehicle death rate is relatively low, 2 per 100,000 over an entire year (vs. 11 in the US), but that's over the entire population, not just teachers. The effects of school closures on SARS-CoV-2 among parents and teachers https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2020834118 This article says that keeping schools open without masks or quarantines doubled covid risk for teachers and also affected partners as well as students' parents. It concluded that "keeping lower-secondary schools open had minor consequences for the overall transmission" but "results for teachers suggest that measures to protect teachers should be considered." They estimated 9 parents (out of 646K), 1 teacher (out of 73K), and 1 partner (out of 47K) died from covid. However the data only appear to be through July.

musicale 5y ago
In 2020 in California, some 51,000 people died from covid vs. 3,723 from traffic crash injuries. I haven't found exact statistics for both covid and crashes in 2020, but it looks like around 20% of covid deaths are in the 24-54 age range, as are around 45% of crash deaths, for an estimated 10,000 covid deaths vs. 1675 crash deaths in that age range. So in spite of California's high traffic crash rate, covid deaths seem to have been a much greater risk in 2020 for the 24-54 age group.