6 ms·

At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. That som

At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened. People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents with kids in school know this is not true.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pgwhalen 5y ago
I agree that externalities are important to consider, but what would such a model look like? It seems that studies like this are a necessary precursor if we are to truly estimate these external costs (so kudos to those involved).
ravenstine 5y ago
- enkid 5y ago
  So you're just going to make vague allusions to some great evil being done while providing no data? Have you thought about why you get flagged when you discuss this topic?
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots? What else am I do to when providing authoritative or academic information puts my account at risk? And yes, there are many commingling factors for why I get flagged, none of which I consider valid. I can provide links to information straight from the horse's mouth, have done so in the past, and it never matters. The vast majority of people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything that suggests that they're staring at a mirage, or that they're victims of psychological warfare. > So you're just going to make vague allusions to some great evil It depends on what you consider evil. In this context, I've yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like you're imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy.
    - jstanley 5y ago
      > Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots? > ... > It depends on what you consider evil. In this context, I've yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like you're imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy. Perhaps if you connected your own dots rather than asking others to do it for you, they might not make connections that you didn't intend.
- User23 5y ago
  I prefer not to speculate about the motivations of policy makers, because I can't read minds. However, it's clear, judging by the rate of avoidable ills like opiate overdoses and type 2 diabetes, to name just a couple, that our government policy can't be called broadly successful for many of today's major public health issues. That's not to say it's a total failure. The sanitation improvements of the mid 20th century had a huge positive effect on public health. Indoor plumbing wasn't even available in wide swaths of the USA back then.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xxpor 5y ago
Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're working towards. Covid isn't going to go away (at least not for a while), which I think everyone at least implicitly accepts at this point. The people who are going to get vaccinated largely have (especially in a few months with the OSHA rule + booster rollout). So what are we even doing?
- happynacho 5y ago
  The "pandemic" is no longer about health, is about absolute government control.
- bryan0 5y ago
  > Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're working towards. Yeah I don’t think the goals have been clear, even if they have been changing over time. I think the clearest goal now should be a 90% vaccination rate to turn Covid into the common cold, and then going back to life as normal, but as long as huge swathes of the population refuse to get vaccinated this goal is unattainable. Edit: I believe Biden actually set a 70% vax goal for July 2021, and we missed it. No way we can hit 90%. I think possibly for anti-vaxers their goal is simply to not be told what to do and if they end up in an overwhelmed hospital so be it.
  - dempseye 5y ago
    I live in a country with a vaccination rate over 90% and we still have partial lockdowns. So I suggest you reassess whether meeting that goal in your location would result in things going back to normal for you.
    - bryan0 5y ago
      Good to know. Which country? Why are they implementing lockdowns? The other problem is that just hitting the % isn’t good enough. You need to keep up to date if boosters are required. So definitely not easy.
      - 5y ago
bryan0 5y ago
> At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened. What makes you think it hasn’t? I’m sure all lockdown decision makers are looking at these models along with models of hospital capacity. > People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents with kids in school know this is not true. My kids school life has basically gone back to normal and has been all year. It’s my WFH situation that is never “going back to normal” but I think that’s a positive.
- willhinsa 5y ago
  > Basically gone back to normal Do they have to wear masks? Do they have to socially distance?
  - bryan0 5y ago
    They wear masks. They do not social distance.
- evilduck 5y ago
  My kids wear masks to school too. My oldest is probably not as heavily impacted by this but I feel like my younger child has been (started K in 2019). He doesn't really know what his friends look like, he doesn't get to see facial expressions of his teachers or peers as part of their emotions, he doesn't get to see the teacher enunciate words with their mouth, he's spent a lot of time learning virtually at a young age, he gets to hide his own reactions behind a mask. He's soft spoken and his participation in class is probably suppressed a little further and dampening him being challenged or as confident. Compared to my older child, there's less enriching extracurricular activities available for the last two years as well, clubs and PTA events and sports have all been impacted. I have no way of quantifying any of this but there's just tons of little things that have the potential to be negative impacts to his long term success. Even if my kids cope, I worry about their peers and the worrying trends in academic test data compared to previous cohorts.
  - 5y ago
coldcode 5y ago
Children born during the pandemic are not yet in school. This research makes little sense, measuring cognitive differences of 2 year olds is highly unlikely to be meaningful.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  Oh word? Someone should have told the authors while they were getting their MDs and PhDs. Well glad that you were able to solve it, coldcode.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "measuring cognitive differences of 2 year olds is highly unlikely to be meaningful." Do you have expert knowledge, or at least experience with lots of different 2 year olds, to make such a statement? Because I got some experience and I can tell you, there are great differences to be meassured for sure. Whether they meassured correctly, I do not know, but I can imagine that the chaos of the pandemic was not always helpful for child developement. Just alone the social contacts are vital for developing - and they were greatly reduced (often replaced with screen time) compared to normal 2 year olds.
dnautics 5y ago
Unless I'm missing something, "Kids born during pandemic" would not be affected by school closures. If anything, having more parents stay at home with kids, I'd expect to result in better outcomes,though maybe I'm giving parents too much credit. Honestly, I'd suspect that parents are around kids more and noticing and reporting more.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  My child was born June 2019. I really worried about her development due to lock down: exhausted parents, no friends or extended family to interact with. Once nursery reopened her language abilities seemed to accelerate quickly. Kids really seem to thrive on a mix of experiences. Locked in house with mum and dad is not good.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrweasel 5y ago
> People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents with kids in school know this is not true. This illustrates pretty well the absolute massive difference in how people experience the pandemic. People with kids in school and people certain types of jobs is hit extremely hard. Some absolutely struggle with home schooling, being out of a job, feeling isolated and a myriad of other issues. For others, like myself, other than having to work from home some of the time, and getting regularly tested, the whole thing has made some aspects of life much much easier. The only downside, for both me and my wife, is that there's more work to be done than ever.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. Here's what happened. Fauci said almost immediately after putting himself on TV that his only focus was on the direct medical effects of corona, not on wider public policy related to education or the economy. Epidemiologists went nuts when he said that (to your point), but that's mostly been censored. (60,000+ doctors have signed the Stanford petition against Fauci.) Trump did not fire Fauci because he didn't want to create a martyr, but that was a huge mistake. (Trump had a report from the DOE LLNL in May 2020 that indicated Fauci/Daszak were lying about the possibility of the lab origin.) Fauci funded corona research at WIV, and other research 26 other Chinese labs. In addition, he has refused to cooperate with Senate oversight committees. Fauci is at the heart of the largest global scandal in history. He should be fired so that it can properly be investigated, a textbook written about his psychopathy, then he should be executed. Actual solutions used in Florida: "Ron DeSantis: Floridians know there will be no lockdowns" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XF5F2XrHHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XF5F2XrHHw
mindslight 5y ago
At this point in the pandemic we should have long since moved on to everybody wearing functional respiratory PPE instead of ersatz feel-good "masks" made of cloth. This wouldn't have required any paradigm shifts, just a revisiting of supply availability. Yet here we are. The policy contours were set back in June of 2020, and now we're just trudging it out.
dude187 5y ago
That needed to be done from day one. The economic shutdown combined with calling some people "unessential" has put us on a horrible path from day one. Anybody involved in any of that should never have any power ever again

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pgwhalen 5y ago

I agree that externalities are important to consider, but what would such a model look like? It seems that studies like this are a necessary precursor if we are to truly estimate these external costs (so kudos to those involved).

ravenstine 5y ago

enkid 5y ago
So you're just going to make vague allusions to some great evil being done while providing no data? Have you thought about why you get flagged when you discuss this topic?
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots? What else am I do to when providing authoritative or academic information puts my account at risk? And yes, there are many commingling factors for why I get flagged, none of which I consider valid. I can provide links to information straight from the horse's mouth, have done so in the past, and it never matters. The vast majority of people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything that suggests that they're staring at a mirage, or that they're victims of psychological warfare. > So you're just going to make vague allusions to some great evil It depends on what you consider evil. In this context, I've yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like you're imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    > Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots? > ... > It depends on what you consider evil. In this context, I've yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like you're imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy. Perhaps if you connected your own dots rather than asking others to do it for you, they might not make connections that you didn't intend.
User23 5y ago
I prefer not to speculate about the motivations of policy makers, because I can't read minds. However, it's clear, judging by the rate of avoidable ills like opiate overdoses and type 2 diabetes, to name just a couple, that our government policy can't be called broadly successful for many of today's major public health issues. That's not to say it's a total failure. The sanitation improvements of the mid 20th century had a huge positive effect on public health. Indoor plumbing wasn't even available in wide swaths of the USA back then.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xxpor 5y ago

Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're working towards. Covid isn't going to go away (at least not for a while), which I think everyone at least implicitly accepts at this point. The people who are going to get vaccinated largely have (especially in a few months with the OSHA rule + booster rollout). So what are we even doing?

happynacho 5y ago
The "pandemic" is no longer about health, is about absolute government control.
bryan0 5y ago
> Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're working towards. Yeah I don’t think the goals have been clear, even if they have been changing over time. I think the clearest goal now should be a 90% vaccination rate to turn Covid into the common cold, and then going back to life as normal, but as long as huge swathes of the population refuse to get vaccinated this goal is unattainable. Edit: I believe Biden actually set a 70% vax goal for July 2021, and we missed it. No way we can hit 90%. I think possibly for anti-vaxers their goal is simply to not be told what to do and if they end up in an overwhelmed hospital so be it.
- dempseye 5y ago
  I live in a country with a vaccination rate over 90% and we still have partial lockdowns. So I suggest you reassess whether meeting that goal in your location would result in things going back to normal for you.
  - bryan0 5y ago
    Good to know. Which country? Why are they implementing lockdowns? The other problem is that just hitting the % isn’t good enough. You need to keep up to date if boosters are required. So definitely not easy.
    - 5y ago

bryan0 5y ago

> At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened. What makes you think it hasn’t? I’m sure all lockdown decision makers are looking at these models along with models of hospital capacity. > People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents with kids in school know this is not true. My kids school life has basically gone back to normal and has been all year. It’s my WFH situation that is never “going back to normal” but I think that’s a positive.

willhinsa 5y ago
> Basically gone back to normal Do they have to wear masks? Do they have to socially distance?
- bryan0 5y ago
  They wear masks. They do not social distance.
evilduck 5y ago
My kids wear masks to school too. My oldest is probably not as heavily impacted by this but I feel like my younger child has been (started K in 2019). He doesn't really know what his friends look like, he doesn't get to see facial expressions of his teachers or peers as part of their emotions, he doesn't get to see the teacher enunciate words with their mouth, he's spent a lot of time learning virtually at a young age, he gets to hide his own reactions behind a mask. He's soft spoken and his participation in class is probably suppressed a little further and dampening him being challenged or as confident. Compared to my older child, there's less enriching extracurricular activities available for the last two years as well, clubs and PTA events and sports have all been impacted. I have no way of quantifying any of this but there's just tons of little things that have the potential to be negative impacts to his long term success. Even if my kids cope, I worry about their peers and the worrying trends in academic test data compared to previous cohorts.
- 5y ago

coldcode 5y ago

Children born during the pandemic are not yet in school. This research makes little sense, measuring cognitive differences of 2 year olds is highly unlikely to be meaningful.

cool_dude85 5y ago
Oh word? Someone should have told the authors while they were getting their MDs and PhDs. Well glad that you were able to solve it, coldcode.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"measuring cognitive differences of 2 year olds is highly unlikely to be meaningful." Do you have expert knowledge, or at least experience with lots of different 2 year olds, to make such a statement? Because I got some experience and I can tell you, there are great differences to be meassured for sure. Whether they meassured correctly, I do not know, but I can imagine that the chaos of the pandemic was not always helpful for child developement. Just alone the social contacts are vital for developing - and they were greatly reduced (often replaced with screen time) compared to normal 2 year olds.

dnautics 5y ago

Unless I'm missing something, "Kids born during pandemic" would not be affected by school closures. If anything, having more parents stay at home with kids, I'd expect to result in better outcomes,though maybe I'm giving parents too much credit. Honestly, I'd suspect that parents are around kids more and noticing and reporting more.

bennysomething 5y ago
My child was born June 2019. I really worried about her development due to lock down: exhausted parents, no friends or extended family to interact with. Once nursery reopened her language abilities seemed to accelerate quickly. Kids really seem to thrive on a mix of experiences. Locked in house with mum and dad is not good.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrweasel 5y ago

> People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents with kids in school know this is not true. This illustrates pretty well the absolute massive difference in how people experience the pandemic. People with kids in school and people certain types of jobs is hit extremely hard. Some absolutely struggle with home schooling, being out of a job, feeling isolated and a myriad of other issues. For others, like myself, other than having to work from home some of the time, and getting regularly tested, the whole thing has made some aspects of life much much easier. The only downside, for both me and my wife, is that there's more work to be done than ever.

redis_mlc 5y ago

> we've should have come up with models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy decisions. Here's what happened. Fauci said almost immediately after putting himself on TV that his only focus was on the direct medical effects of corona, not on wider public policy related to education or the economy. Epidemiologists went nuts when he said that (to your point), but that's mostly been censored. (60,000+ doctors have signed the Stanford petition against Fauci.) Trump did not fire Fauci because he didn't want to create a martyr, but that was a huge mistake. (Trump had a report from the DOE LLNL in May 2020 that indicated Fauci/Daszak were lying about the possibility of the lab origin.) Fauci funded corona research at WIV, and other research 26 other Chinese labs. In addition, he has refused to cooperate with Senate oversight committees. Fauci is at the heart of the largest global scandal in history. He should be fired so that it can properly be investigated, a textbook written about his psychopathy, then he should be executed. Actual solutions used in Florida: "Ron DeSantis: Floridians know there will be no lockdowns" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XF5F2XrHHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XF5F2XrHHw

mindslight 5y ago

At this point in the pandemic we should have long since moved on to everybody wearing functional respiratory PPE instead of ersatz feel-good "masks" made of cloth. This wouldn't have required any paradigm shifts, just a revisiting of supply availability. Yet here we are. The policy contours were set back in June of 2020, and now we're just trudging it out.

dude187 5y ago

That needed to be done from day one. The economic shutdown combined with calling some people "unessential" has put us on a horrible path from day one. Anybody involved in any of that should never have any power ever again