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I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hys

I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended. * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. * The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me. * Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school. * Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home. It just seems like there is a whole realm of paranoia that this kid is trying to fit on top of their life, and I don't think this sort of paranoia is in any way reasonable. I think that teaching kids to think about their world with this framing, and at a formative age, is and already has done major damage to their development.

starkd 5y ago
Indeed, it's truly sad. It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. From his comments, I wonder if he actually thinks he will be dead from standing next to someone who just tested positive. The preliminary results from UK and SA indicate that this recent wave could be a blessing in that it serves as an innoculation rather than severe illness. And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with.
- kixiQu 5y ago
  Good thing high school students never live in multigenerational households, right? Or otherwise have family members at high risk?
  - starkd 5y ago
    When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - other than to flatten the curve and relieve the burden on services. But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now?
    - majormajor 5y ago
      Hospitals tend to be most burdened in the winter anyway, which is unfortunate given transmission patterns, but I definitely think we're moving to a world of "only base policy on hospitalizations, not on raw case numbers" - and believe public health officials are largely moving in this direction too. In this world, once this surge is on the downswing, a lot more things look reasonable to relax. One major change there, I think, is that we need to change the messaging on masks to get a mask to protect yourself if you are vulnerable or will be near those who are. Cloth masks have shown themselves to be better at a population level than nothing in some studies, but that's hardly the same thing as a medical-grade mask, which are now much more widely available than they were a year ago.
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        Where I live that has been the policy from the beginning. Keep the hospital system running. That said, because hospitalizations lag case numbers, I assume they are trying to extrapolate from case numbers to future hospitalizations. Of course that changes depending upon the individual variant that is currently spreading.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - This couldn't be more wrong. Even if everyone eventually gets it, you'd much rather get it as late as possible and outside of an infection spike like this one where rescue medications are depleted and hospitals are overburdened. The medical knowledge and treatment options available today are far, far better than what we had at the beginning of the pandemic. And they continue to improve. Availability of the best treatments is also scarce, but continues to improve. The virus itself also appears to be slowly mutating to less fatal versions. Even if you think it's inevitable, you want to delay it as long as possible.
      - starkd 5y ago
        That was true at the beginning of the pandemic, but we're long past that now. The recent variant is literally popping up all over the place. Despite the masks and the testing. And this latest variant seems to be extremely mild as in a three day cold - just like you said. So why are we making scaring the kids like this? Protect the kids with existing conditions, we know which ones are at the most risk, which are very few in that age group.
- yabuttz99 5y ago
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. Are we reading the same post? The kids are going to school. The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school. > And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with. Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? They have older parents at home. They have older teachers in the classroom. Many of them see even older grandparents and relatives frequently, perhaps also at home. Where do kids go if they get sick? Home, where they are cared for by older parents. Kids don't just live in isolated bubbles with other kids. It's dishonest to ignore the second-order effects of kids getting sick.
  - Diesel555 5y ago
    > The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school. This depends on how you define "so sick". Tested positive? Yes. Hospitalized? I bet not all (or > 1.8% [1]) of them. I notice when verbiage sensationalizes COVID. The OP, I believe, is also sensitive to this. > Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? This is the primary argument. Your two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. He can believe that the kids are overly scared based on the statistics because, well, they are not at that much risk while at the same time recognizing that individuals not at risk put other people who are at risk in danger. This is why we fail to have beneficial conversation, we talk around each other. [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/omicron-patients-have-shorter-hospital-stays-6-houston-methodist-findings.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/omicron-...
    - tomjakubowski 5y ago
      You do not need to be in the hospital to be too sick to work. Probably 99% of sick days are taken without being hospitalized.
    - rnotaro 5y ago
      I am 25 years old, vaccinated two times (we are only eligible to 2 vaccines in Québec, Canada), had contact with a COVID positive case on sunday last week (January 2th) and I got sick enough to not be able to work from January 4th to January 9th. I was not hospitalized and I was not able to work due to some quite heavy symptoms that prevent me to talk or focus more than a few minutes on a task.
cipheredStones 5y ago
It's minutiae to be concerned when someone who just tested positive for covid is talking to you with their mask down?
- djrogers 5y ago
  Given that guidance has said that close exposure for 10-15 minutes is required for transmission, yes - it does seem a little overboard.
  - r1ch 5y ago
    That guidance is pre-omicron. Someone talking in your face seems like extremely high risk these days.
    - GavinMcG 5y ago
      Pre-delta, even: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-delta-variant-is-more-contagious-heres-what-it-means-for-you-11627473901 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-delta-variant-is-more-conta...
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Guidance often lags behind or doesn't match science because of political influence. What's legal doesn't determine what's right, science does.
  - kar5pt 5y ago
    You can catch omicron from walking into an elevator someone else coughed in.
- hidudeurcool 5y ago
  yes
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  In the context of the school, yes it does. If you're in a school: you're catching omicron, and unless all of the students are wearing at least PAPR hoods all the time, everybody is catching it. Allowing yourself to get worked up about seeing a kid with his mask down in the bathroom is insane.
deleted 5y ago
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PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had cram even more people into the auditorium than it had seating. They did this for 3 hours, far longer than it takes to acquire COVID from someone sitting next to you. Kids were literally testing positive inside of the auditorium during this time. > * The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me. That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". It's baffling that you think the problem in this scenario is that he's concerned about a COVID-positive person in close quarters having a mask down, as opposed to the fact that a COVID-positive person has their mask down. You must be harboring some major biases. > * Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school. Did you miss the part where so many of the faculty and staff were out sick that they were struggling to coordinate everything? I agree it's uncoordinated and wasteful, but the point is that they're being forced to try to run a school when a huge number of the faculty are too sick to do so.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- timr 5y ago
  > That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". You just said, a paragraph up, that they had all been in the auditorium for 3 hours, which (again, according to you) is "far longer than it takes" to get sick. Let's assume you're right -- we have an auditorium overcrowded with kids, many of whom are spewing aerosolized, highly transmissible virus into an enclosed space. For hours. So yes, worrying about a silly mask on one kid, in that context, is more than a little hysterical. I'm going to wager that most of these kids weren't wearing rigorously fitted respirators anyway. Even if you don't believe that (why wouldn't you?), the idea that a moment of "mask down" is going to present any sort of exceptional additional risk is clearly nonsense.
mafuy 5y ago
> Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school. > Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home. You've misunderstood - he's not blaming the students but the administration in these points.

starkd 5y ago

Indeed, it's truly sad. It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. From his comments, I wonder if he actually thinks he will be dead from standing next to someone who just tested positive. The preliminary results from UK and SA indicate that this recent wave could be a blessing in that it serves as an innoculation rather than severe illness. And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with.

kixiQu 5y ago
Good thing high school students never live in multigenerational households, right? Or otherwise have family members at high risk?
- starkd 5y ago
  When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - other than to flatten the curve and relieve the burden on services. But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now?
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Hospitals tend to be most burdened in the winter anyway, which is unfortunate given transmission patterns, but I definitely think we're moving to a world of "only base policy on hospitalizations, not on raw case numbers" - and believe public health officials are largely moving in this direction too. In this world, once this surge is on the downswing, a lot more things look reasonable to relax. One major change there, I think, is that we need to change the messaging on masks to get a mask to protect yourself if you are vulnerable or will be near those who are. Cloth masks have shown themselves to be better at a population level than nothing in some studies, but that's hardly the same thing as a medical-grade mask, which are now much more widely available than they were a year ago.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Where I live that has been the policy from the beginning. Keep the hospital system running. That said, because hospitalizations lag case numbers, I assume they are trying to extrapolate from case numbers to future hospitalizations. Of course that changes depending upon the individual variant that is currently spreading.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - This couldn't be more wrong. Even if everyone eventually gets it, you'd much rather get it as late as possible and outside of an infection spike like this one where rescue medications are depleted and hospitals are overburdened. The medical knowledge and treatment options available today are far, far better than what we had at the beginning of the pandemic. And they continue to improve. Availability of the best treatments is also scarce, but continues to improve. The virus itself also appears to be slowly mutating to less fatal versions. Even if you think it's inevitable, you want to delay it as long as possible.
    - starkd 5y ago
      That was true at the beginning of the pandemic, but we're long past that now. The recent variant is literally popping up all over the place. Despite the masks and the testing. And this latest variant seems to be extremely mild as in a three day cold - just like you said. So why are we making scaring the kids like this? Protect the kids with existing conditions, we know which ones are at the most risk, which are very few in that age group.
yabuttz99 5y ago
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. Are we reading the same post? The kids are going to school. The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school. > And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with. Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? They have older parents at home. They have older teachers in the classroom. Many of them see even older grandparents and relatives frequently, perhaps also at home. Where do kids go if they get sick? Home, where they are cared for by older parents. Kids don't just live in isolated bubbles with other kids. It's dishonest to ignore the second-order effects of kids getting sick.
- Diesel555 5y ago
  > The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school. This depends on how you define "so sick". Tested positive? Yes. Hospitalized? I bet not all (or > 1.8% [1]) of them. I notice when verbiage sensationalizes COVID. The OP, I believe, is also sensitive to this. > Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? This is the primary argument. Your two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. He can believe that the kids are overly scared based on the statistics because, well, they are not at that much risk while at the same time recognizing that individuals not at risk put other people who are at risk in danger. This is why we fail to have beneficial conversation, we talk around each other. [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/omicron-patients-have-shorter-hospital-stays-6-houston-methodist-findings.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/omicron-...
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    You do not need to be in the hospital to be too sick to work. Probably 99% of sick days are taken without being hospitalized.
  - rnotaro 5y ago
    I am 25 years old, vaccinated two times (we are only eligible to 2 vaccines in Québec, Canada), had contact with a COVID positive case on sunday last week (January 2th) and I got sick enough to not be able to work from January 4th to January 9th. I was not hospitalized and I was not able to work due to some quite heavy symptoms that prevent me to talk or focus more than a few minutes on a task.

cipheredStones 5y ago

It's minutiae to be concerned when someone who just tested positive for covid is talking to you with their mask down?

djrogers 5y ago
Given that guidance has said that close exposure for 10-15 minutes is required for transmission, yes - it does seem a little overboard.
- r1ch 5y ago
  That guidance is pre-omicron. Someone talking in your face seems like extremely high risk these days.
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    Pre-delta, even: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-delta-variant-is-more-contagious-heres-what-it-means-for-you-11627473901 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-delta-variant-is-more-conta...
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Guidance often lags behind or doesn't match science because of political influence. What's legal doesn't determine what's right, science does.
- kar5pt 5y ago
  You can catch omicron from walking into an elevator someone else coughed in.
hidudeurcool 5y ago
yes
thepasswordis 5y ago
In the context of the school, yes it does. If you're in a school: you're catching omicron, and unless all of the students are wearing at least PAPR hoods all the time, everybody is catching it. Allowing yourself to get worked up about seeing a kid with his mask down in the bathroom is insane.

deleted 5y ago

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PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall. The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had cram even more people into the auditorium than it had seating. They did this for 3 hours, far longer than it takes to acquire COVID from someone sitting next to you. Kids were literally testing positive inside of the auditorium during this time. > * The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me. That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". It's baffling that you think the problem in this scenario is that he's concerned about a COVID-positive person in close quarters having a mask down, as opposed to the fact that a COVID-positive person has their mask down. You must be harboring some major biases. > * Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school. Did you miss the part where so many of the faculty and staff were out sick that they were struggling to coordinate everything? I agree it's uncoordinated and wasteful, but the point is that they're being forced to try to run a school when a huge number of the faculty are too sick to do so.

deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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timr 5y ago
> That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". You just said, a paragraph up, that they had all been in the auditorium for 3 hours, which (again, according to you) is "far longer than it takes" to get sick. Let's assume you're right -- we have an auditorium overcrowded with kids, many of whom are spewing aerosolized, highly transmissible virus into an enclosed space. For hours. So yes, worrying about a silly mask on one kid, in that context, is more than a little hysterical. I'm going to wager that most of these kids weren't wearing rigorously fitted respirators anyway. Even if you don't believe that (why wouldn't you?), the idea that a moment of "mask down" is going to present any sort of exceptional additional risk is clearly nonsense.

mafuy 5y ago

> Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school. > Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home. You've misunderstood - he's not blaming the students but the administration in these points.