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Cities are amazingly resilient and it feels like every generation has a moment in which the city largest and most local to them is having a revival. Seems most

Cities are amazingly resilient and it feels like every generation has a moment in which the city largest and most local to them is having a revival. Seems most large metros are going through some post-COVID pains: Increase in crime, extreme high cost of living, etc. New York will, like always, come back. But! The benefit to our mid size cities is great. We need these mid size cities to grow, and from my understanding, they have! Larger mid size cities mean a better national network for travel, more opportunities for jobs, growth, and movement of people/families. I'm here for all that.

gandalfgeek 3y ago
The "resilience" argument was misused and misapplied during the pandemic. You also saw it used for school closures -- "kids are resilient". It seems to justify inflicting known harms by having faith in "resilience".
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity.
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    > erodes my faith in humanity Opposite for me. Maybe people still care about freedom and agency after all.
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      Or maybe our inability to collectively act and sacrifice to save over a million people is damning. It absolutely gutted my faith that we'll successfully tackle climate change.
      - MrMan 3y ago
        [dead]
      - bugglebeetle 3y ago
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        wing-_-nuts 3y ago
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        Racing0461 3y ago
        [flagged]
        r2_pilot 3y ago
        If you are going to call bullshit on something, feel free to cite your source. However, regardless of what you think you're talking to, this source suggests that your claim of bullshit is bullshit. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
        sickofparadox 3y ago
        This "scientific article" isn't worth the bits on the hard drive its written on. It uses simple propaganda techniques to manipulate CDC data to give the desired answer. Firstly it only measures up through 2020, even though well before the time of publishing more data was available, why is that? It is to do the number crunching as close to the bottom of the Covid lockdown curve for car accidents (more WFH/distance learning = less car accidents). Except, that alone doesn't give the desired result, so they have to change what the definition of what a child is to include 18 and 19 year old adults, but that STILL isn't enough, so they need to exclude 0 - 1 year old children. I would be ashamed to have that attached to my name, let alone have it published in a journal of medicine.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      As well they should have. You realize you don't need a gym to exercise right? Walking and body weight exercises are totally sufficient and free.
      - deleted 3y ago
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      - zdragnar 3y ago
        In some countries, simply walking in the park was an offense that would involve the police. Nothing says public safety like taking a not-dangerous situation and making it worse.
      - n8cpdx 3y ago
        We also closed parks and beaches. I guess people can walk around in circles in their bedrooms.
        wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        The sidewalks weren't closed. Every lockdown order I've read in the US had an exclusion for exercise.
  - david38 3y ago
    A large percentage of the population relies on school for childcare. No childcare = no work = no money. A large percentage of those families didn’t have elderly in the home or visiting. For them, in-person school was critical.
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      ...and hence why we helped those people who were unemployed and had children.
      - pc86 3y ago
        "Helped" as in the $600 stimulus checks people got that was supposed to cover groceries for 6 months while they couldn't pay rent?
        wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        more the unemployment benefits and the massive child care tax credits, yes.
        hattmall 3y ago
        > massive child care tax credits massive? lol. It was like an additional $300 a month.
        Workaccount2 3y ago
        There was a rent moratorium in most places. People were not paying rent.
      - infamouscow 3y ago
        We? Who is we here?
        px43 3y ago
        US taxpayers I guess.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. A few months of shutdown was reasonable, but shutting schools down for a couple years is too big of a price to pay. Also, my kids were in daycare the whole time outside of Mar to May 2020, and they were spreading all sorts of viruses just like they were before COVID. How the government chose to allow the most prolific spreaders to congregate day after day, but prevent less prolific spreaders is very inconsistent logic.
    - starik36 3y ago
      > I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. Read what you just wrote and ponder on it for a bit.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        I have pondered about it for over a decade. Our societies drastically prioritize the elderly over the young. They are the ones with political power, after all. Here’s an easy example: why does the US pay doctors more via Medicare (for people over 65) than via Medicaid (for poorer people, including kids).
        bugglebeetle 3y ago
        We need to pick which out-group to sacrifice vs. take care of everyone is the kind of thinking that creates most of America’s problems.
        giantg2 3y ago
        That's not a great example. One is a single payer system funded by workers and the other is government welfare. Plus, the elderly can be on both programs simultaneously. If anything, this is an example of money influencing politics since the people who have been paying those taxes for Medicare are more likely to donate to politicians than people who require Medicaid.
        3y ago
  - tharne 3y ago
    > The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity. Or you could reasonably conclude that the policies enacted during COVID are yet another example of how we prioritize the elderly over children in the United States, arguably because children don't vote and the elderly do. We sacrificed the educational, emotional, and psychological development of children during the pandemic to help 90 year olds live to 91. Was this the right thing to do? I don't believe there's a clear answer to that - it's a tradeoff and one that many people felt was not worth it. That doesn't make them bad or selfish, they're just on the opposite side of very difficult question with no clear answer.
    - jupp0r 3y ago
      The 140k children who lost a parent or caregiver to COVID [1] would probably disagree with your statement. Losing your parents is also not great for emotional wellbeing or development. [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/more-140000-us-children-lost-primary-or-secondary-caregiver-due-covid-19-pandemic https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/more-140000-us...
      - gruez 3y ago
        >Overall, the study shows that approximately 1 out of 500 children in the United States has experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood or death of a grandparent caregiver. What about the other 499 children who missed 2+ years of in-person classes?
        red-iron-pine 3y ago
        they'll make it up. nothing is going to magically bring a dead parent back.
        gruez 3y ago
        >they'll make it up That remains to be seen. The 2022 PISA tests suggests that in developed countries, children have missed on the equivalent of 0.5-0.75 of a year's worth of learning. [1] https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pandemics-toll-on-schooling-emerges-in-awful-new-exam-results https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pande... > nothing is going to magically bring a dead parent back. nothing is going to magically bring back those years either, for all 500 students.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - parineum 3y ago
    > covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. If only there was a way we could stop the elderly from contracting covid from their grandkids that didn't involve isolating children from social interaction and learning at the most crucial periods of their development. I have an idea, maybe the people most at risk of dying can isolate themselves so everyone else doesn't have to.
    - tapland 3y ago
      Well, it would be great if that worked but in general people with this oppinion seemed to be fine to sacrifice (as in let die) anyone with a higher risk rather than contribute with money to allow this isolation.
      - parineum 3y ago
        Your comment is a blatant strawman. I had a much longer comment written but I really don't want to relitigate covid for the umpteenth time.
    - abathur 3y ago
      There are at least hundreds of thousands of teachers in high-risk age groups. I can't imagine any solutions to this logistical problem that wouldn't also significantly affect learning outcomes.
      - parineum 3y ago
        > I can't imagine any solutions to this logistical problem that wouldn't also significantly affect learning outcomes. Okay, what's the least harmful? It seems obvious to me the easiest solution (blanket ban of in person schooling) was chosen rather than trying to minimize harm. Just off the cuff, regarding high risk teachers, why not have _them_ work remote with an in class, lower risk, TA to handle the physical interaction required? I can't say I have all of the solutions or even a good suggestion but I can say that, after the initial closing of schools when there was very little information, once the risk factors became much more apparent, there was a minimal amount of rethinking of policy because everyone had already taken ideological stances when there was only ideology to make decisions with. That extends well beyonds schools as well but schools and retirement homes are essentially the opposite ends of the spectrum of risk and seemed to, at best, have the same solutions applied to them.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - scarmig 3y ago
    On the other hand, there's a deep learning deficit that that generation will never recover from. That has costs too, and people trapped in a bad economic situation because of shitty schooling have reduced lifespans as well.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      I agree that longterm closure of schools was a bad move and created many problems. However, I do think to be fair we need to look at some of the other issues at play regarding education. The system was barely working to begin with. It seems that countries with better school systems (or educational cultures), or just individual schools/districts here faired much better. The broken system can't play catchup if it was struggling to meet the basic education to begin with.
      - scarmig 3y ago
        There's always a strong tension between the two points: 1) School closures were good, kids weren't harmed at all and it saved lives! 2) Schools provide the basis for future success and are critical to our social and economic well-being! My stance is that, as mediocre as many public schools are, they provide a better environment for learning than home life for the majority of children. We should be moving toward making public schools great. (I'd be the first to agree that a broken system makes that a very difficult task.)
        0xy 3y ago
        There's really no evidence public schools are a better learning environment than homeschooling, in fact there's evidence to the contrary. Even when you include the extreme fringes of homeschooled children such as religious fundamentalists and unschooling, homeschooled students perform better on average. This is probably because many-to-one learning is MUCH less effective than one-to-one learning, even with a massive difference in skill. Individualized learning is far better. Schools are the opposite of individualized.
      - zdragnar 3y ago
  - baryphonic 3y ago
    > covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. Was someone forcing the grandparents to visit their infected grandchildren? In my own case, I didn't see my own grandmother for two years during COVID other than via Zoom/FaceTime. She has a history of bad lung infections, so none of us wanted to get her sick. This was despite her having four great-grandchildren and being a widow. When she finally got COVID this year for the first time, she developed some blood clots, but was able to pull through and now is back to great health. I think the damage to children who were isolated from one another was much worse, and unlike the elderly, they couldn't really understand why we lived so unnaturally. If elderly people wanted to "just see their grandkids," they knew the risks and made a choice. Every death is sad, but I have a hard time thinking we should adopt harsh and even draconian measures just to protect those who ought to know better.
    - lliamander 3y ago
      > In my own case, I didn't see my own grandmother for two years during COVID other than via Zoom/FaceTime. She has a history of bad lung infections, so none of us wanted to get her sick. Absolutely! I was already under personal quarantine of sorts before the pandemic even started, because I had immune compromised people under my care. I would bever expect society to turn itself upside down to accommodate my particular situation.
      - nec4b 3y ago
        What is the point of society if not to protect its weakest?
  - alex_lav 3y ago
    It's funny to see these bickerings still happening. It was a no-win situation. Trying to save lives inflicted measurable harm. Doing nothing would also inflict measurable harm. Either side presenting their position as the "correct" position is just biased. I would also assert that tying your faith in humanity to an unwinnable situation is probably not the correct move, but YMMV.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Perhaps the problem they have is that one was not allowed to choose which measurable harm was acceptable to themselves in the no-win situation.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        That doesn't work in a lot of cases though. It's the RTO/WFH struggle. If teachers decide they don't want to be in a classroom, sending your kid in isn't very practical. Or is it only parents who get a choice?
        giantg2 3y ago
        Ideally you would reshuffle - people who lost jobs in some areas and were qualified to be teachers could teach in person; teachers could take remote teaching jobs for the kids that wanted/needed a cyber school. Nothing is perfect, but some choice is better than none.
        caddemon 3y ago
        At least RTO and WFH companies can co-exist though, and there are hybrid models as well. With school parents are stuck with what their specific district wants to do, and the number of hours and days spent in school is extremely rigid. For the academic year that started in fall 2020, it's not inherently impractical that the two options could have co-existed for both teachers and parents. But obviously it was unrealistic given the state of the school system already pre-COVID. I think the broader issue with this sort of choice in a pandemic is it does have downstream effects. People going to school everyday could cause an uptick in community cases that then makes necessary trips like the grocery store more dangerous for those who do want to isolate as much as possible. Especially relevant in a city where many people are living together in apartment complexes. So I agree there's no clear answer here, and I think pre-vaccine I would've kept my kids home regardless. But more generally I am very dissatisfied with how homogeneous and inflexible the school system is, and that is something we should push for change in. Funnily enough, my district has done a full 180 since COVID and this past year stopped accepting doctor's notes to excuse absences! They are quite literally encouraging people to send their kids in even while sick. A friend's son has mono right now and the HS is threatening to hold him back over absences (grades are fine still because ofc that matters less than attendance record.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives" Did it actually significsntly save lives or prevent long covid? I'm wondering if any countries didn't shut schools that we could compare to? I would guess maybe in the initial wave by not overwhelming hospitals it would save a few lives. But when the policies were continually extended thier return on investment dropped as the harms they inflicted increased and the value they provided decreased. Perhaps a better approach would have been to tell the at-risk populations about the risks and mitigations to let them decide what level of protection they wanted for themselves (not talking about others since the whole masking thing turned out to be effectively useless without at least N95s). My main point is that I know we could save tons of lives by banning cars (not just traffic fatalies but forcing people to walk could prevent many chronic issues), but that doesn't mean the cost/benefit is justified by ignoring the downsides, forcing large opposing population segments into it, and merely stating it was to save lives.
    - frenchyatwork 3y ago
      It's worth bearing in mind that the people making these policy decisions in 2020 were doing so without any objective knowledge of how the pandemic would actually end up playing out. Car safety is somewhat different. While the harms of a car-dependent society are subjectively hard to come to terms with, especially for those who have grown accustom to it, it's a lot easier to objectively measure and predict.
      - giantg2 3y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Even in 2020, they knew that the fatality rate was very low for most of the population and was only an issue for the elderly and those with specific comorbidities. Many of the secondary and n-ary effects of either the pandemic or eliminating cars are unknown until they actually play out. There may be some projections, but those projections tend to change. For example, maybe electric scooter become a huge problem because people refuse to walk after cars are banned (negating the potential exercise related benefits).
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - throw__away7391 3y ago
    My observation/experience was that we had lots of younger people in lockdown in (expensive) cramped studio apartments in big cities for two years while their boomer parents living in the suburbs more or less went about life as normal all while watching the value of their homes and investments skyrocket as trillions of dollars of additional wealth was transfer to them. At least in my circle of friends this was near universally the case. Overall the entire situation was completely ridiculous on many levels, but it was the pro-lockdown forever crowd that made me lose my faith in humanity.
  - n8cpdx 3y ago
    How many kids not learning to read is an elderly life worth? Kids not eating? Child abuse going unreported and unchecked? How many years of learning loss is “just wanting to see grandkids” worth? And when did the benefits of closing school stop being worthwhile-how many years after the vaccine was widely available? Because the ongoing disruptions to education were measured in years- all while grandma and grandpa were living it up at bars and restaurants. Are you factoring in the many other ways that children and families could be kept safe (masking, air filtration, UV sanitizing, outdoor classrooms+heaters, etc)? The pushback on school closures isn’t because people hate grandma, it’s because some people are capable of a cost-benefit analysis and looking at second order effects when we do so. “Hurt millions of kids to spare thousands of grandmas” folks made me lose my faith in humanity.
    - nec4b 3y ago
      >>How many kids not learning to read is an elderly life worth? Kids not eating? Child abuse going unreported and unchecked? >>How many years of learning loss is “just wanting to see grandkids” worth? Luckily this wasn't the problem, because kids were still learning, maybe at little slower pace, but on the other hand got to learn a lot of things they otherwise wouldn't get to learn in school. Do you use all the knowledge you learned in school? Have you not learned anything new since then?
  - deleted 3y ago
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redavni 3y ago
Not sure "we" is, but I think the people who have had to uproot their entire lives because of poor leadership, would rather the poor leadership leave.
PedroBatista 3y ago
I think most of the "post-COVID" pains are actually much worse because they come from culture and macro-economic consequences, aka "chickens come home to roost". There seems to be general feeling that stealing stuff and robing people are only bad if you get caught and even when you get caught the are little to no consequences. Forgetting the politicization of this for a while, this type of stuff is one of the worse cancers for society, even if "nobody says nothing", they know and think and they will vote with their feet. Detroit type situations are not really that far for some cities. I don't think this applies to NYC but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
narcraft 3y ago
Detroit?
- 1270018080 3y ago
  Another good example of resilience.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Bound to return to its peak population of 1.85 million any day now... Cities always come back, something, something.
    - rm_-rf_slash 3y ago
      Rome hasn’t been the seat of empire for over a thousand years but it’s a rather nice place to live in today. Detroit won’t return to the way it used to be, but it will regain its footing in its own way over time.
cjbgkagh 3y ago
That assumption obviously has an availability heuristic bias / selection criteria bias, like speeding down a road is safe because you haven’t died yet. NYC no doubt has a lot of things going for it, I think being the financial center for the hegemony is the deciding factor. In my view survival of NYC probably has less to do with local crime than the outcome of future wars.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Detroit was the center of manufacturing for "the hegemony," which is currently in the process of losing its control of the financial markets, just like they did in manufacturing.
  - tomtheelder 3y ago
    Unlike Detroit, NYC has a very diversified economy. In addition to being the primary finance capital it is a major international player in media, art, fashion, tech, and more. NYC is simply not utterly dependent on finance in the way Detroit was on manufacturing- or SF is on tech, for a modern example. I think that’s what has made it, and the other global cities like it, so extremely resilient over a long period of time. That and financial services being, thus far, an evergreen industry.
    - caddemon 3y ago
      Finance is pretty meta itself, which is probably a contributing factor to NYC having such a diversified economy. Like an automotive company might still want a business-focused office in NYC, but a non-automotive company doesn't have much reason to open an office in the auto manufacturing capital.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        So was manufacturing. I will say that Detroit was probably over-indexed on auto workers more than other kinds of manufacturing.
nemo44x 3y ago
Covid maybe in part but it’s mainly because of the demands that enforcing laws must stop by activists and certain political organizations. So crime is up and the city looks shabby and there’s drugged out zombies and homeless everywhere. So people leave. It’s what happened in the 1960/70’s - lots of political changes made cities hospitable to crime and people left. As cities managed to become nice again, people moved back and tax revenues rose. NYC needs another Bloomberg that’s willing to cleanup the streets and keep them nice and to stop pandering to the worst aspects of society. To put the fringe idea weirdos back on the fringe where they are better complaining about things than actually getting things done.
- ModernMech 3y ago
  Which specific laws are not being enforced and which specific political organizations caused this?
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    Sure if you could clarify specifically what you mean.
infamouscow 3y ago
I generally agree with this sentiment. However, unlike the situation in the 1980's, there's no desire to address any of their problems because it undermines so many ideological premises the residents cling to. Coupled with the most morally narcissistic people on the face of the Earth, I don't see any turnaround. The mechanisms necessary to avoid becoming Detroit are not there
izolate 3y ago
> The benefit to our mid size cities is great This is a great point! I like the fact that the US is more decentralized and isn't dominated by a single large city. Germany is similar in this regard. I understand the appeal of NYC, especially to the young, but if other cities reap the rewards of increased inward migration, then I think it's a positive thing for the country overall. People too might realize they can have a better quality of life without the insane competition for resources.
giantg2 3y ago
I agree that the midsized, and even small cities are important. I think there are some real problems associated with the centralization of populations in large cities. We have tons of dying cities in former manufacturing regions that could be utilized instead of having population/density fights in the more popular locations. The main problem is the vicious cycle that causes the loss of job and the loss of amenities, which decreases the attraction. Instead we get into an infinite desire/density loop because that's where the jobs are. Having more options for cities to move to would provide better population distribution and alleviate many density or flux related issues.
randomdata 3y ago
> Seems most large metros are going through some post-COVID pains I don't know about the US, but here in Canada the 2016 census was already showing meaningful decline in communities with >100,000 people, with communities of 1,000-29,999 people picking up most of the slack. COVID may have accelerated things, but signs of a 'counterubranization' movement were already presenting itself long before we ever heard of COVID.
yaomtc 3y ago
Also, that national network for travel needs to include a much higher percentage spent on intercity/regional rail than we currently do.
game_the0ry 3y ago
> Cities are amazingly resilient... I concur. Some cities that have outlived their empires -- Rome, Istanbul (Constantinople), London, Baghdad, Alexandria, Cairo, Kabul, Mumbai. Even NYC, Boston, Philly predate the US constitution.

gandalfgeek 3y ago

The "resilience" argument was misused and misapplied during the pandemic. You also saw it used for school closures -- "kids are resilient". It seems to justify inflicting known harms by having faith in "resilience".

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  > erodes my faith in humanity Opposite for me. Maybe people still care about freedom and agency after all.
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    Or maybe our inability to collectively act and sacrifice to save over a million people is damning. It absolutely gutted my faith that we'll successfully tackle climate change.
    - MrMan 3y ago
      [dead]
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        [flagged]
        Racing0461 3y ago
        [flagged]
        r2_pilot 3y ago
        If you are going to call bullshit on something, feel free to cite your source. However, regardless of what you think you're talking to, this source suggests that your claim of bullshit is bullshit. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
        sickofparadox 3y ago
        This "scientific article" isn't worth the bits on the hard drive its written on. It uses simple propaganda techniques to manipulate CDC data to give the desired answer. Firstly it only measures up through 2020, even though well before the time of publishing more data was available, why is that? It is to do the number crunching as close to the bottom of the Covid lockdown curve for car accidents (more WFH/distance learning = less car accidents). Except, that alone doesn't give the desired result, so they have to change what the definition of what a child is to include 18 and 19 year old adults, but that STILL isn't enough, so they need to exclude 0 - 1 year old children. I would be ashamed to have that attached to my name, let alone have it published in a journal of medicine.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    As well they should have. You realize you don't need a gym to exercise right? Walking and body weight exercises are totally sufficient and free.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - zdragnar 3y ago
      In some countries, simply walking in the park was an offense that would involve the police. Nothing says public safety like taking a not-dangerous situation and making it worse.
    - n8cpdx 3y ago
      We also closed parks and beaches. I guess people can walk around in circles in their bedrooms.
      - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        The sidewalks weren't closed. Every lockdown order I've read in the US had an exclusion for exercise.
- david38 3y ago
  A large percentage of the population relies on school for childcare. No childcare = no work = no money. A large percentage of those families didn’t have elderly in the home or visiting. For them, in-person school was critical.
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    ...and hence why we helped those people who were unemployed and had children.
    - pc86 3y ago
      "Helped" as in the $600 stimulus checks people got that was supposed to cover groceries for 6 months while they couldn't pay rent?
      - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        more the unemployment benefits and the massive child care tax credits, yes.
        hattmall 3y ago
        > massive child care tax credits massive? lol. It was like an additional $300 a month.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        There was a rent moratorium in most places. People were not paying rent.
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      We? Who is we here?
      - px43 3y ago
        US taxpayers I guess.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. A few months of shutdown was reasonable, but shutting schools down for a couple years is too big of a price to pay. Also, my kids were in daycare the whole time outside of Mar to May 2020, and they were spreading all sorts of viruses just like they were before COVID. How the government chose to allow the most prolific spreaders to congregate day after day, but prevent less prolific spreaders is very inconsistent logic.
  - starik36 3y ago
    > I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. Read what you just wrote and ponder on it for a bit.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I have pondered about it for over a decade. Our societies drastically prioritize the elderly over the young. They are the ones with political power, after all. Here’s an easy example: why does the US pay doctors more via Medicare (for people over 65) than via Medicaid (for poorer people, including kids).
      - bugglebeetle 3y ago
        We need to pick which out-group to sacrifice vs. take care of everyone is the kind of thinking that creates most of America’s problems.
      - giantg2 3y ago
        That's not a great example. One is a single payer system funded by workers and the other is government welfare. Plus, the elderly can be on both programs simultaneously. If anything, this is an example of money influencing politics since the people who have been paying those taxes for Medicare are more likely to donate to politicians than people who require Medicaid.
        3y ago
- tharne 3y ago
  > The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity. Or you could reasonably conclude that the policies enacted during COVID are yet another example of how we prioritize the elderly over children in the United States, arguably because children don't vote and the elderly do. We sacrificed the educational, emotional, and psychological development of children during the pandemic to help 90 year olds live to 91. Was this the right thing to do? I don't believe there's a clear answer to that - it's a tradeoff and one that many people felt was not worth it. That doesn't make them bad or selfish, they're just on the opposite side of very difficult question with no clear answer.
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    The 140k children who lost a parent or caregiver to COVID [1] would probably disagree with your statement. Losing your parents is also not great for emotional wellbeing or development. [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/more-140000-us-children-lost-primary-or-secondary-caregiver-due-covid-19-pandemic https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/more-140000-us...
    - gruez 3y ago
      >Overall, the study shows that approximately 1 out of 500 children in the United States has experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood or death of a grandparent caregiver. What about the other 499 children who missed 2+ years of in-person classes?
      - red-iron-pine 3y ago
        they'll make it up. nothing is going to magically bring a dead parent back.
        gruez 3y ago
        >they'll make it up That remains to be seen. The 2022 PISA tests suggests that in developed countries, children have missed on the equivalent of 0.5-0.75 of a year's worth of learning. [1] https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pandemics-toll-on-schooling-emerges-in-awful-new-exam-results https://www.economist.com/international/2023/12/05/the-pande... > nothing is going to magically bring a dead parent back. nothing is going to magically bring back those years either, for all 500 students.
- deleted 3y ago
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- parineum 3y ago
  > covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. If only there was a way we could stop the elderly from contracting covid from their grandkids that didn't involve isolating children from social interaction and learning at the most crucial periods of their development. I have an idea, maybe the people most at risk of dying can isolate themselves so everyone else doesn't have to.
  - tapland 3y ago
    Well, it would be great if that worked but in general people with this oppinion seemed to be fine to sacrifice (as in let die) anyone with a higher risk rather than contribute with money to allow this isolation.
    - parineum 3y ago
      Your comment is a blatant strawman. I had a much longer comment written but I really don't want to relitigate covid for the umpteenth time.
  - abathur 3y ago
    There are at least hundreds of thousands of teachers in high-risk age groups. I can't imagine any solutions to this logistical problem that wouldn't also significantly affect learning outcomes.
    - parineum 3y ago
      > I can't imagine any solutions to this logistical problem that wouldn't also significantly affect learning outcomes. Okay, what's the least harmful? It seems obvious to me the easiest solution (blanket ban of in person schooling) was chosen rather than trying to minimize harm. Just off the cuff, regarding high risk teachers, why not have _them_ work remote with an in class, lower risk, TA to handle the physical interaction required? I can't say I have all of the solutions or even a good suggestion but I can say that, after the initial closing of schools when there was very little information, once the risk factors became much more apparent, there was a minimal amount of rethinking of policy because everyone had already taken ideological stances when there was only ideology to make decisions with. That extends well beyonds schools as well but schools and retirement homes are essentially the opposite ends of the spectrum of risk and seemed to, at best, have the same solutions applied to them.
- deleted 3y ago
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- scarmig 3y ago
  On the other hand, there's a deep learning deficit that that generation will never recover from. That has costs too, and people trapped in a bad economic situation because of shitty schooling have reduced lifespans as well.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    I agree that longterm closure of schools was a bad move and created many problems. However, I do think to be fair we need to look at some of the other issues at play regarding education. The system was barely working to begin with. It seems that countries with better school systems (or educational cultures), or just individual schools/districts here faired much better. The broken system can't play catchup if it was struggling to meet the basic education to begin with.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      There's always a strong tension between the two points: 1) School closures were good, kids weren't harmed at all and it saved lives! 2) Schools provide the basis for future success and are critical to our social and economic well-being! My stance is that, as mediocre as many public schools are, they provide a better environment for learning than home life for the majority of children. We should be moving toward making public schools great. (I'd be the first to agree that a broken system makes that a very difficult task.)
      - 0xy 3y ago
        There's really no evidence public schools are a better learning environment than homeschooling, in fact there's evidence to the contrary. Even when you include the extreme fringes of homeschooled children such as religious fundamentalists and unschooling, homeschooled students perform better on average. This is probably because many-to-one learning is MUCH less effective than one-to-one learning, even with a massive difference in skill. Individualized learning is far better. Schools are the opposite of individualized.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
- baryphonic 3y ago
  > covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. Was someone forcing the grandparents to visit their infected grandchildren? In my own case, I didn't see my own grandmother for two years during COVID other than via Zoom/FaceTime. She has a history of bad lung infections, so none of us wanted to get her sick. This was despite her having four great-grandchildren and being a widow. When she finally got COVID this year for the first time, she developed some blood clots, but was able to pull through and now is back to great health. I think the damage to children who were isolated from one another was much worse, and unlike the elderly, they couldn't really understand why we lived so unnaturally. If elderly people wanted to "just see their grandkids," they knew the risks and made a choice. Every death is sad, but I have a hard time thinking we should adopt harsh and even draconian measures just to protect those who ought to know better.
  - lliamander 3y ago
    > In my own case, I didn't see my own grandmother for two years during COVID other than via Zoom/FaceTime. She has a history of bad lung infections, so none of us wanted to get her sick. Absolutely! I was already under personal quarantine of sorts before the pandemic even started, because I had immune compromised people under my care. I would bever expect society to turn itself upside down to accommodate my particular situation.
    - nec4b 3y ago
      What is the point of society if not to protect its weakest?
- alex_lav 3y ago
  It's funny to see these bickerings still happening. It was a no-win situation. Trying to save lives inflicted measurable harm. Doing nothing would also inflict measurable harm. Either side presenting their position as the "correct" position is just biased. I would also assert that tying your faith in humanity to an unwinnable situation is probably not the correct move, but YMMV.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Perhaps the problem they have is that one was not allowed to choose which measurable harm was acceptable to themselves in the no-win situation.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      That doesn't work in a lot of cases though. It's the RTO/WFH struggle. If teachers decide they don't want to be in a classroom, sending your kid in isn't very practical. Or is it only parents who get a choice?
      - giantg2 3y ago
        Ideally you would reshuffle - people who lost jobs in some areas and were qualified to be teachers could teach in person; teachers could take remote teaching jobs for the kids that wanted/needed a cyber school. Nothing is perfect, but some choice is better than none.
      - caddemon 3y ago
        At least RTO and WFH companies can co-exist though, and there are hybrid models as well. With school parents are stuck with what their specific district wants to do, and the number of hours and days spent in school is extremely rigid. For the academic year that started in fall 2020, it's not inherently impractical that the two options could have co-existed for both teachers and parents. But obviously it was unrealistic given the state of the school system already pre-COVID. I think the broader issue with this sort of choice in a pandemic is it does have downstream effects. People going to school everyday could cause an uptick in community cases that then makes necessary trips like the grocery store more dangerous for those who do want to isolate as much as possible. Especially relevant in a city where many people are living together in apartment complexes. So I agree there's no clear answer here, and I think pre-vaccine I would've kept my kids home regardless. But more generally I am very dissatisfied with how homogeneous and inflexible the school system is, and that is something we should push for change in. Funnily enough, my district has done a full 180 since COVID and this past year stopped accepting doctor's notes to excuse absences! They are quite literally encouraging people to send their kids in even while sick. A friend's son has mono right now and the HS is threatening to hold him back over absences (grades are fine still because ofc that matters less than attendance record.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives" Did it actually significsntly save lives or prevent long covid? I'm wondering if any countries didn't shut schools that we could compare to? I would guess maybe in the initial wave by not overwhelming hospitals it would save a few lives. But when the policies were continually extended thier return on investment dropped as the harms they inflicted increased and the value they provided decreased. Perhaps a better approach would have been to tell the at-risk populations about the risks and mitigations to let them decide what level of protection they wanted for themselves (not talking about others since the whole masking thing turned out to be effectively useless without at least N95s). My main point is that I know we could save tons of lives by banning cars (not just traffic fatalies but forcing people to walk could prevent many chronic issues), but that doesn't mean the cost/benefit is justified by ignoring the downsides, forcing large opposing population segments into it, and merely stating it was to save lives.
  - frenchyatwork 3y ago
    It's worth bearing in mind that the people making these policy decisions in 2020 were doing so without any objective knowledge of how the pandemic would actually end up playing out. Car safety is somewhat different. While the harms of a car-dependent society are subjectively hard to come to terms with, especially for those who have grown accustom to it, it's a lot easier to objectively measure and predict.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Even in 2020, they knew that the fatality rate was very low for most of the population and was only an issue for the elderly and those with specific comorbidities. Many of the secondary and n-ary effects of either the pandemic or eliminating cars are unknown until they actually play out. There may be some projections, but those projections tend to change. For example, maybe electric scooter become a huge problem because people refuse to walk after cars are banned (negating the potential exercise related benefits).
- deleted 3y ago
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- throw__away7391 3y ago
  My observation/experience was that we had lots of younger people in lockdown in (expensive) cramped studio apartments in big cities for two years while their boomer parents living in the suburbs more or less went about life as normal all while watching the value of their homes and investments skyrocket as trillions of dollars of additional wealth was transfer to them. At least in my circle of friends this was near universally the case. Overall the entire situation was completely ridiculous on many levels, but it was the pro-lockdown forever crowd that made me lose my faith in humanity.
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  How many kids not learning to read is an elderly life worth? Kids not eating? Child abuse going unreported and unchecked? How many years of learning loss is “just wanting to see grandkids” worth? And when did the benefits of closing school stop being worthwhile-how many years after the vaccine was widely available? Because the ongoing disruptions to education were measured in years- all while grandma and grandpa were living it up at bars and restaurants. Are you factoring in the many other ways that children and families could be kept safe (masking, air filtration, UV sanitizing, outdoor classrooms+heaters, etc)? The pushback on school closures isn’t because people hate grandma, it’s because some people are capable of a cost-benefit analysis and looking at second order effects when we do so. “Hurt millions of kids to spare thousands of grandmas” folks made me lose my faith in humanity.
  - nec4b 3y ago
    >>How many kids not learning to read is an elderly life worth? Kids not eating? Child abuse going unreported and unchecked? >>How many years of learning loss is “just wanting to see grandkids” worth? Luckily this wasn't the problem, because kids were still learning, maybe at little slower pace, but on the other hand got to learn a lot of things they otherwise wouldn't get to learn in school. Do you use all the knowledge you learned in school? Have you not learned anything new since then?
- deleted 3y ago
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redavni 3y ago

Not sure "we" is, but I think the people who have had to uproot their entire lives because of poor leadership, would rather the poor leadership leave.

PedroBatista 3y ago

I think most of the "post-COVID" pains are actually much worse because they come from culture and macro-economic consequences, aka "chickens come home to roost". There seems to be general feeling that stealing stuff and robing people are only bad if you get caught and even when you get caught the are little to no consequences. Forgetting the politicization of this for a while, this type of stuff is one of the worse cancers for society, even if "nobody says nothing", they know and think and they will vote with their feet. Detroit type situations are not really that far for some cities. I don't think this applies to NYC but I wouldn't bet my life on it.

narcraft 3y ago

Detroit?

1270018080 3y ago
Another good example of resilience.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Bound to return to its peak population of 1.85 million any day now... Cities always come back, something, something.
  - rm_-rf_slash 3y ago
    Rome hasn’t been the seat of empire for over a thousand years but it’s a rather nice place to live in today. Detroit won’t return to the way it used to be, but it will regain its footing in its own way over time.

cjbgkagh 3y ago

That assumption obviously has an availability heuristic bias / selection criteria bias, like speeding down a road is safe because you haven’t died yet. NYC no doubt has a lot of things going for it, I think being the financial center for the hegemony is the deciding factor. In my view survival of NYC probably has less to do with local crime than the outcome of future wars.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
Detroit was the center of manufacturing for "the hegemony," which is currently in the process of losing its control of the financial markets, just like they did in manufacturing.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Unlike Detroit, NYC has a very diversified economy. In addition to being the primary finance capital it is a major international player in media, art, fashion, tech, and more. NYC is simply not utterly dependent on finance in the way Detroit was on manufacturing- or SF is on tech, for a modern example. I think that’s what has made it, and the other global cities like it, so extremely resilient over a long period of time. That and financial services being, thus far, an evergreen industry.
  - caddemon 3y ago
    Finance is pretty meta itself, which is probably a contributing factor to NYC having such a diversified economy. Like an automotive company might still want a business-focused office in NYC, but a non-automotive company doesn't have much reason to open an office in the auto manufacturing capital.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      So was manufacturing. I will say that Detroit was probably over-indexed on auto workers more than other kinds of manufacturing.

nemo44x 3y ago

Covid maybe in part but it’s mainly because of the demands that enforcing laws must stop by activists and certain political organizations. So crime is up and the city looks shabby and there’s drugged out zombies and homeless everywhere. So people leave. It’s what happened in the 1960/70’s - lots of political changes made cities hospitable to crime and people left. As cities managed to become nice again, people moved back and tax revenues rose. NYC needs another Bloomberg that’s willing to cleanup the streets and keep them nice and to stop pandering to the worst aspects of society. To put the fringe idea weirdos back on the fringe where they are better complaining about things than actually getting things done.

ModernMech 3y ago
Which specific laws are not being enforced and which specific political organizations caused this?
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Sure if you could clarify specifically what you mean.

infamouscow 3y ago

I generally agree with this sentiment. However, unlike the situation in the 1980's, there's no desire to address any of their problems because it undermines so many ideological premises the residents cling to. Coupled with the most morally narcissistic people on the face of the Earth, I don't see any turnaround. The mechanisms necessary to avoid becoming Detroit are not there

izolate 3y ago

> The benefit to our mid size cities is great This is a great point! I like the fact that the US is more decentralized and isn't dominated by a single large city. Germany is similar in this regard. I understand the appeal of NYC, especially to the young, but if other cities reap the rewards of increased inward migration, then I think it's a positive thing for the country overall. People too might realize they can have a better quality of life without the insane competition for resources.

giantg2 3y ago

I agree that the midsized, and even small cities are important. I think there are some real problems associated with the centralization of populations in large cities. We have tons of dying cities in former manufacturing regions that could be utilized instead of having population/density fights in the more popular locations. The main problem is the vicious cycle that causes the loss of job and the loss of amenities, which decreases the attraction. Instead we get into an infinite desire/density loop because that's where the jobs are. Having more options for cities to move to would provide better population distribution and alleviate many density or flux related issues.

randomdata 3y ago

> Seems most large metros are going through some post-COVID pains I don't know about the US, but here in Canada the 2016 census was already showing meaningful decline in communities with >100,000 people, with communities of 1,000-29,999 people picking up most of the slack. COVID may have accelerated things, but signs of a 'counterubranization' movement were already presenting itself long before we ever heard of COVID.

yaomtc 3y ago

Also, that national network for travel needs to include a much higher percentage spent on intercity/regional rail than we currently do.

game_the0ry 3y ago

> Cities are amazingly resilient... I concur. Some cities that have outlived their empires -- Rome, Istanbul (Constantinople), London, Baghdad, Alexandria, Cairo, Kabul, Mumbai. Even NYC, Boston, Philly predate the US constitution.