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I think you should clarify your sample. I'm a liberal, was in favor of school closings early, my daughter went to her first year of kindergarten remote, and I w

I think you should clarify your sample. I'm a liberal, was in favor of school closings early, my daughter went to her first year of kindergarten remote, and I was very aware of the tradeoffs. People like Emily Oster have been excellent at raising concerns.

yonaguska 4y ago
You were aware of the tradeoffs for your daughter. Were you aware of the tradeoffs for children in less fortunate situations? And while being aware, did you still support schools closing early? Do you stand by your support knowing the trauma it has inflicted now? The school closings have had catastrophic effects on children with poor home lives. School for me was a place to eat, and in middle school, even just showering when the gas or electricity had been cut at home. Many of these kids were dodging abusive relatives, gangs, and drugs by going to school. The more fortunate kids were lucky to drop high school in exchange for working to support their families. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-11-year-old-reports-sexual-abuse-20210108-rqax7xobanas5npruzoiaclu7i-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-11-year-old-... https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-online-sex-abuse-caught-charged-20201017-fepiggml2bcopkduhoaqmpcofi-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-online-sex-a... https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-help-their-families-during-the-pandemic-chicago-teens-are-skipping-class-to-work/ba108579-4fc9-4dcb-b9fc-9ffc82e08c2e https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-help-their-families-during-t...
- ryanklee 4y ago
  Yes, I was aware of the tradeoffs up and down the line. And we should not fall prey to outcome bias. Given the massive unknowns of the virus early on and through the first full year of school, it seems to me we made the right choice. We've created many problems for many families and children, but we were avoiding a worst case scenario of a mountain of dead children. We know now that that was never going to be the case, but we didn't then.
  - xorcist 4y ago
    Do you still think it was the right choice in retrospect? There were no reports of "a mountain of dead children" anywhere in the world.
    - ryanklee 4y ago
      Again, we should not fall prey to resulting. It's not about what we did know, it's about what we didn't. Early on, we had no idea how the virus was interacting with children and the school system. Being under-cautious would have been the wrong move, because the worst case scenario was horrifying.
      - xorcist 4y ago
        Schools didn't close until late March. There was weeks of data from western society by then. The basic understanding of the contagion, what drove the pandemic, and mortality numbers across age groups was known. The data has become more specific since, but not dramatically different.
        ryanklee 4y ago
        The schools closed before we allowed the virus to course through the school system. We did not have good data. The decisions to close the schools was made to prevent the conditions that would supply that data.
      - mattcwilson 4y ago
        If you can’t evaluate decisions or experiments on outcome, what can you measure them on? And why would you bother to? How would you learn from those decisions? The worst case scenario is bound to be horrifying, by definition. That’s not an excuse for waffling out of making a tough call.
        ryanklee 4y ago
        The evaluation of the quality of the decision should be made by taking into account the constraints and quality of priors that were inputs into the decision. Outcomes are probabilistic. Using results as the evaluation metric is mistake. We did not know how the pandemic was interacting with children and the school system. But we did know that it had deathly, chaotic, fast moving properties. The worst case outcome was not a fantasy. We had reasons to think that the worst case outcome was not improbable. Because we were dealing with an existential threat to possibly our most precious resource, we acted defensively, even though many of us were aware of the deep, problematic tradeoffs. It was the right decision.

yonaguska 4y ago

You were aware of the tradeoffs for your daughter. Were you aware of the tradeoffs for children in less fortunate situations? And while being aware, did you still support schools closing early? Do you stand by your support knowing the trauma it has inflicted now? The school closings have had catastrophic effects on children with poor home lives. School for me was a place to eat, and in middle school, even just showering when the gas or electricity had been cut at home. Many of these kids were dodging abusive relatives, gangs, and drugs by going to school. The more fortunate kids were lucky to drop high school in exchange for working to support their families. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-11-year-old-reports-sexual-abuse-20210108-rqax7xobanas5npruzoiaclu7i-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-11-year-old-... https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-online-sex-abuse-caught-charged-20201017-fepiggml2bcopkduhoaqmpcofi-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-online-sex-a... https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-help-their-families-during-the-pandemic-chicago-teens-are-skipping-class-to-work/ba108579-4fc9-4dcb-b9fc-9ffc82e08c2e https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-help-their-families-during-t...

ryanklee 4y ago
Yes, I was aware of the tradeoffs up and down the line. And we should not fall prey to outcome bias. Given the massive unknowns of the virus early on and through the first full year of school, it seems to me we made the right choice. We've created many problems for many families and children, but we were avoiding a worst case scenario of a mountain of dead children. We know now that that was never going to be the case, but we didn't then.
- xorcist 4y ago
  Do you still think it was the right choice in retrospect? There were no reports of "a mountain of dead children" anywhere in the world.
  - ryanklee 4y ago
    Again, we should not fall prey to resulting. It's not about what we did know, it's about what we didn't. Early on, we had no idea how the virus was interacting with children and the school system. Being under-cautious would have been the wrong move, because the worst case scenario was horrifying.
    - xorcist 4y ago
      Schools didn't close until late March. There was weeks of data from western society by then. The basic understanding of the contagion, what drove the pandemic, and mortality numbers across age groups was known. The data has become more specific since, but not dramatically different.
      - ryanklee 4y ago
        The schools closed before we allowed the virus to course through the school system. We did not have good data. The decisions to close the schools was made to prevent the conditions that would supply that data.
    - mattcwilson 4y ago
      If you can’t evaluate decisions or experiments on outcome, what can you measure them on? And why would you bother to? How would you learn from those decisions? The worst case scenario is bound to be horrifying, by definition. That’s not an excuse for waffling out of making a tough call.
      - ryanklee 4y ago
        The evaluation of the quality of the decision should be made by taking into account the constraints and quality of priors that were inputs into the decision. Outcomes are probabilistic. Using results as the evaluation metric is mistake. We did not know how the pandemic was interacting with children and the school system. But we did know that it had deathly, chaotic, fast moving properties. The worst case outcome was not a fantasy. We had reasons to think that the worst case outcome was not improbable. Because we were dealing with an existential threat to possibly our most precious resource, we acted defensively, even though many of us were aware of the deep, problematic tradeoffs. It was the right decision.