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I know multiple households where the initial infection vector was the kids. Grandpa might be stupid and refuse the vaccine, but keeping little Billy from becomi

• pcmoney 5y ago
  So basically harming Billy possibly violating his rights and not respecting Grandpa’s autonomy to make his own decisions regarding risk/return tradeoffs is the solution? Hasn’t worked well to date.
• perardi 5y ago
  Or…grandpa can get vaccinated. I'd be more than happy to test and vaccinate in schools. In particular vaccinate. But having kids wear masks…which they don't do well, because they're kids…not like adults do it well either…is a fig leaf. It's not going to work. And you can see that from the massive infection rates in schools that have masks.
  • dsl 5y ago
    Of course all of our problems go away when you convince the remaining 40% of the population to get vaccinated. I'm actually in favor of doing away with masks and social distancing. Just create a nationwide policy that the unvaccinated will not be admitted or treated for COVID and we can all return to our daily lives.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • sleepybrett 5y ago
      Convincing that 40% to get vaccinated while members of our elected government preach to that particular choir about how things that are partially or mostly effective (masking, vaccines, etc) are NOT effective simply because they are not 100% effective is a losing battle. Watch the widely circulated video of the Florida's nomination hearing for their new Surgeon General, where a democrat asks the nominee if he, yes or no, believes the vaccines to be effective. It was asked five times, his answers were nothing but stuttering, rambling, dissembling, meandering madness ('i mean what does effective actually mean' level bullshit). The republicans passed him out of committee once the democrats walked out in frustration. We have a party that is in full denial mode because that's what their anti-vax constituents want to hear. The only upside might be that their vote share goes down because their constituents die in higher numbers.
      • jjeaff 5y ago
        The denial is so palpable. I know a couple in their early sixties who refused to get vaccinated because "COVID is way overblown". They were both regular weight and normal health. The wife contracted COVID and died in the hospital. Later, when asked if he was going to get vaccinated, he said no, because "COVID is no worse than a cold." He apparently believes that even though his wife went into the hospital for COVID, she actually died from pneumonia, and not COVID. I guess no doctor explained to him that pneumonia is simply an infection that has spread to the lungs. You can't help people like this.
        • jlawson 5y ago
          Consider what he would have to accept if he faced the truth: That his incorrect beliefs directly caused his wife's death. Not surprising he'd perform basically any level of mental gymnastics to avoid that. Ego-protective delusions are extremely common and most are motivated by far less than this.
    • fullstackchris 5y ago
      I'd argue it in a more adult way than just punishing those who are different from you. Just do away with the masking and social distancing regardless. As soon as we were throwing out the first doses of expired vaccine, the choice by every american to get vaccinated or not had been made. If the hospitals are overrun, it will be the unvaccinated, so they'll be punished anyway - no need to legally do it. Also you need to update your Sam Harris stats, its not 40% unvaccinated anymore like some outlets continue to harp on, check CDC numbers, its closer to only 20% of the population remaining.
      • rthille 5y ago
        https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-onedose-pop-5yr https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-... I guess it depends on what you mean by vaccinated: 75.1% of total us population has had at least on dose (79.8% of eligible (>= 5 yr) Fully vaccinated drops to 63.6/67.6% And Boosted is at only 41% of the fully vaccinated, 86.5M.
      • rrose 5y ago
        hospitals being overrun doesn't just affect the unvaccinated, it affects anybody who needs medical attention. just allowing the hospitals to get overrun is not a reasonable option
      • srj 5y ago
        Is saying "Sam Harris stats" some kind of dig?
    • RubberMullet 5y ago
      All of our problems go away?! Which demographic do you think this policy will affect the most, for example, in California[0]? [0]: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#ethnicity-gender-age https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#ethnicity-gender-age
    • rcurry 5y ago
      If only modern medicine was reserved for the Master Race, it would be so much simpler, and cost effective! But before you seek medical treatment we’ll just need you to fill out this questionnaire: 1. Have you ever had an alcoholic beverage? 2. Do you have a BMI greater than 18.5? 3. Have you ever eaten at The Cheesecake Factory? 4. Do you ride, run, or swim less than 40 miles per day? Please understand that your answers may disqualify you from eligibility for healthcare. Thank you, Acme Excellence Health Partners.
      • tjr225 5y ago
        None of those things have forced us to all drastically alter our lives in the forms of economic and social lockdowns like covid has. It is a pretty silly thing to compare.
        • rcurry 5y ago
          Covid is old and busted. Now all you have is OMG Omicron that’s just basically an annoying flu, you go ahead and lose your mind over it - it’s a free country. I’m still freaking out about dioxin so I don’t have time for this shit.
          • projct 5y ago
            Covid killed 3895 people yesterday, with a 7 day average of almost a 9/11 of people every single day this past week.
        • scarygliders 5y ago
          Covid didn't make economic and social lockdowns. Governments did.
          • rcurry 5y ago
            Shush, you’re going to ruin everything.
        • landemva 5y ago
    • throwawaythekey 5y ago
      Please refer to countries like Australia/Israel who are still experiencing massive case loads with a ~95% vaccination rate. It doesn't make it go away. For example please see https://twitter.com/orwell2022/status/1486330027549544452 https://twitter.com/orwell2022/status/1486330027549544452 Sure, you can deny some people medical treatment if you want to reduce the load on the hospital by a bit but it does not go away!
      • BeefWellington 5y ago
        > Please refer to countries like Australia/Israel who are still experiencing massive case loads with a ~95% vaccination rate. It doesn't make it go away. For example please see I think people underestimate how big a number 5% of a population of most countries -- even small ones -- actually is, especially when compared against available health care resources.
        • throwawaythekey 5y ago
          About 1/3 of the covid cases in the ICU where I live [1]. No idea how that stacks up compared to total ICU capacity (I think <10% but am not sure on this). https://twitter.com/VicGovDH/status/1486225759874486273 https://twitter.com/VicGovDH/status/1486225759874486273
  • amerkhalid 5y ago
    Another thing I wonder about is what are the affects of wearing masks at young age and not getting usual amount of exposure to viruses and other germs. I remember reading here and elsewhere that early childhood exposure to germs builds a robust immune system. While my kid doesn’t wear mask in his class but his school is following very strict cleaning procedures. So he hasn’t gotten sick as much before pandemic. Maybe that is good, definitely easier on us. Maybe we will always have higher level of hygiene now. Or maybe in future there will be a lot of young adults with underdeveloped immune system.
    • watersb 5y ago
      Good question. I believe that it's common for kids to wear masks during flu season in some countries. They probably have some relevant data. I think there's a belief that strict adherence to vaccination and masks would get us to a place where we won't need masks all the time, and kids can resume their usual immune-system adventures. That might be less realistic than we might want. I don't know.
    • jjeaff 5y ago
      Having young kids myself, I can say pretty confidently that kids are going to expose themselves to quite a lot of germs no matter what precautions we take, short of putting them in solitary confinement in clean rooms. So I think it's possible that precautions reduce viral and bacterial exposure, but since they don't completely stop it, immune systems may still get enough exposure to build immunity to things while still not getting enough exposure to actually make them sick.
      • esyir 5y ago
        This seems to run counter to the current hygiene hypothesis, which is the current mainstream scientific opinion on one aspect of allergy development. Children in developed countries are decreasingly exposed to various microorganisms, and this is thought to result in increased rates of allergic disorders.
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    Is there a massive infection rate? My kid’s elementary school sends an email with the count of positive test results in the school each week. It seems like it’s consistently under 1% per week. (Typically 1-4 people testing positive in a city K-5 school, students and staff being tested.)
    • bcrosby95 5y ago
      Our school has seemed to do OK keeping it from spreading between kids. But they also do weekly testing. And did surveillance testing at the end of winter break, which kept about 15% of the school's students at home for the first week back because they had covid. This statistic was also consistent with LA Unified surveillance testing after winter break - about 15%. Before winter break, some parents of 2nd graders had an indoor, maskless, holiday party. Apparently all the kids got covid. Then gave it to the teachers - all 4 2nd grade teachers were out of school with covid the week before winter break. But from what our school's testing showed, it didn't spread beyond that. I do know of a couple families who did seem to get covid from their school though.
      • hcurtiss 5y ago
        Our elementary school in Oregon has required masks. And I can't think of a kid who hasn't got it, including our own. It's run rampant through Oregon schools. By my assessment, masks do very, very little to stop the spread.
        • bcrosby95 5y ago
          That's interesting. I'm in California, and I know a lot of kids that have caught it, but only 2 that can trace it back to the classroom. We have caught about 3 things over the past ~year, but none of it covid (as far as tests showed) and all of them had obvious non-classroom links. Two of them were sick friends. And the third was probably when our 3 year old licked a trashcan at the zoo.
• tqi 5y ago
  1. If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem. 2. The idea that anyone who wants in person learning is a "screaming Karen" is fucking stupid. There is lots of evidence that remote learning has all kinds of negative outcomes for kids, and your (frankly sexist) dismissiveness is the reason this conversation never goes anywhere.
  • aqme28 5y ago
    > If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem. Unfortunately though that's not true. It's putting a huge burden on hospitals that affects us all.
    • tqi 5y ago
      True, but thats a % of a % of a % (ie Masks could prevent some % of COVID transmission at school, of some % of which would have be transmitted to other individuals in the home, of which some % of which would have required hospitalization), which makes it seem likely to be a high cost for not much reward.
      • mlac 5y ago
        Which at scale is still a significant number of hospital beds, and queues grow exponentially when a system reaches capacity.
    • beiller 5y ago
      Isn't the point way up that nurses are quitting. This creates a burden at the hospital. Why are they quitting? Because they are treated like cattle instead of employed human beings. See the court case on the hospital suing the nurses in an at will employment state for quitting and going to another hospital for higher pay. There are even some who are fired for not getting a vaccine regardless of any special circumstance the individual may have.
      • lhorie 5y ago
• stvswn 5y ago
  You somehow manage to be condescending against all parties here. Calling mothers who want their children to receive an in-person education "screaming Karens" is terribly out of touch. I have young children, and my position is simple: the hospital load, the vaccination status of the elderly, the burn out of the teachers -- it's not my child's burden. It's the adults' burden. You are free to wear a mask for the rest of your life for all I care. I find it pathetic, but I really don't care. But you and people like you do not deserve power over my children, and if you don't see the reckoning coming you are not paying close enough attention.
  • katbyte 5y ago
    Maybe take your kids out of public school then? Your kids are not the only ones there and don’t take priority over everyone else’s (and the teaches)
    • JPKab 5y ago
      So he should foot the bill for private school because people like you don't understand basic statistics, or even bother to look at the data? With all due respect, there's a name for fear that is divorced from reality and not in proportion with the actual risk: paranoia. And that's what this is. The number of kids who have died of COVID is in the hundreds, over a two year period. TWICE AS MANY KIDS DROWN EVERY YEAR. Virtually zero of those kids that died was healthy before they caught COVID. The number of children dying of COVID is the same as the number dying of influenza in previous years (despite a dramatically more contagious virus with far higher case rates), but for some odd reason, there wasn't a mass of parents demanding that all kids wear masks.... it's almost like maybe, just maybe, you've let your brain get hijacked by a mass panic and are refusing to acknowledge reality now, because that would require you to admit you've completely overreacted, and have done damage to children in the process. I don't blame you for not wanting to admit that to yourself, but at some point this has to stop.
      • kingaillas 5y ago
        Kids aren't the only ones at risk - he also mentioned teachers, some of whom don't want to take the higher risk of in-person teaching or dealing with 100+ kids every day that aren't wearing masks. Is that over reaction? Maybe, maybe not, but the thing is, it's really easy to shove the risk onto somebody else because it's more convenient for you.
• pcmoney 5y ago
  Why? Masks dont help much. Vaccines dont stop contagion or transmission. They do lower risk of severe covid but kids are very low risk even if unvaccinated.
  • AnthonBerg 5y ago
    > Masks don’t help much It depends what kind of mask. Proper respirator masks like N95 and FFP2 work very well. There are now very clear results that show that the main mode of transmission is respiratory aerosol. As an example, this Lancet paper captures it well: ”Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2”, The Lancet, 2021. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Numerous results have come out since. I can’t find fault with the data or the investigation or the conclusion – I act according to this: We’re dealing with an airborne pathogen. Aerosolized. Closed masks – respirator masks – N95/FFP2. These do work. Almost unreasonably well. “Surgical masks” that gape at the sides do not protect well against aerosolized particles.
    • pcmoney 5y ago
      Masks as used by 90% of the mask wearing population which is only 40%? Of the total population dont work well* If you feel like you should wear an N95 properly to be safe then you should do that. But let’s not pretend we can get everyone to properly wear N95s
      • monksy 5y ago
        Even improper usage of N95s give much more protection than a surgical with a mask brace. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/10/commentary-what-can-masks-do-part-1-science-behind-covid-19-protection https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/10/commenta...
      • AnthonBerg 5y ago
        Whether people currently wear a particular type doesn’t indicate whether they are effective. If people knew that they actually are effective, more would wear them.
• brimble 5y ago
  > If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning In defense of the Karens (ew, I feel gross even typing that) remote learning absolutely was the disaster they say it was. It was really, really bad. It's hard to exaggerate how bad it was. And I mean specifically for the kids, not for the parents (it also sucked for them/us, obviously). We can probably recover well-enough from a semester or two of it, but without some top-down moonshot level effort to make it better fast, continuing it would have been an actual catastrophe. I doubt anyone else with school-side insight into how it went would claim otherwise. It was bad.
  • dsl 5y ago
    No. It wasn't that bad. School still continued. Your children are at most slightly inconvenienced during a global pandemic that has killed MILLIONS of people. All you have to do is keep your kid looking at a screen. They may need to repeat a year of school. At some point in their future your kids boss may say "oh right, you were a pandemic kid, here let me show you." It's like someone in WW2 UK complaining that the Germans dropping bombs on their neighbors houses knocked some of the good dishes off the shelf.
    • wizzwizz4 5y ago
      The people getting hit hardest by remote learning are the poor kids, who have few enough opportunities as it is. (I can tell you from experience, these remote learning systems are horrible on a low-end device, yet almost tolerable on a high-end one. Parents with both the time and knowledge to assist with school-work aren't distributed evenly. etc, etc.) Universal education is supposed to be the great equaliser. I can't imagine the current state of remote learning achieves that, so I'm somewhat sympathetic to the people who push for schools to re-open in-person. I don't think it's worth people dying over, though, especially given that the qualifications are more important than the stuff you learn in school.
    • metadat 5y ago
      Actually, it didn’t go well. Nowadays we’ve got a bunch of 6th graders still at a 4th grade education level. Remote learning for children is substantially less effective for many of them. Think about it, what are the reasons making close supervision of school-aged children desirable? Their brains are still growing and developing! They often aren’t mature enough to be academically successful when they’re physically isolated and stuck on a shitty google hangout.
• eddieplan9 5y ago
  At what cost? If there were crazy people jaywalking onto the freeway, do you want to reduce speed limit nationally to accommodate that, or would you rather let it play out and people can realize certain things are just fatally stupid?
• hcurtiss 5y ago
  Yeah, but masks aren't doing much to prevent that. My kids go to an Oregon elementary school that requires full time masking and I can't think of a single kid who hasn't had it. COVID has run rampant through Oregon schools. I don't care what the lab studies show. Masks don't do shit in schools. The elderly and vulnerable need to get vaccinated, or be handled in a tent in the hospital parking lot. Stop punishing kids. This coming from a very large, male, angry "Karen."
  • JPKab 5y ago
    Indeed. My twin brother lives just outside of PDX, and the schools were closed for a full year, then hybrid classes. His son was in kindergarten when it hit, just like my daughter. His son is severely delayed now. On top of all of that, they finally open the schools back up and shove the kids into useless masks. His son (Jack) needs speech therapy. When he goes, the instructor is wearing a mask. He can't see what her lips are doing. It's an absurd horror show. I live outside of Boulder, and thank God, our schools weren't closed nearly as long, thanks to the culture here being a lot more common sense than the hysterical, politically radical group-think out there. I visited there in the summer of 2020 (drove), and they had the fucking beaches closed to 4x4s. Because God forbid you drive your truck on an empty beach and catch COVID from..... who??? It was a really tense vibe everywhere we went, and when I went to Oceanside and rented a house, everyone was masking outside like idiots. I've never seen such a nutty, poorly governed state in my life, and that foolish governor did everything she could to maximize the fear, when she should have been trying to calm everyone down.
    • hcurtiss 5y ago
      The strange part to me is that usually on policy issues there’s this band of reasonable behavior and people disagree on which end of that band we should fall, but if you’re honest you can understand the other side’s perspective. On COVID in Oregon, it’s the first time in my life I’ve felt like I’m looking at a completely different world than others. I’m just flabbergasted by the policy calls driven by COVID hysteria. I’m not some rabid right winger. (My wife and I are both triple vaccinated, AND we still recently got it!) I just feel totally, totally confused. We vacationed in Idaho over Christmas and it was like reorienting myself to reality. I have no idea what’s going on in Oregon, but I am confident that we have revealed a fundamental split in human psyches that some bad actor will exploit to terrible ends.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• closeparen 5y ago
  Until when? What’s the endpoint? Children are little bundles of disease; it has always been and will always be strictly better for public health to prevent children from interacting with each other. But what kind of world is that?