Future War Cultist wrote: They’re just anti government contrarian prats. I would happily bet money that if for some reason the situation was completely reversed and wearing masks was publicly banned, those exact same spankers who’ve been refusing to wear them so far would be down city hall demanding the right to wear them and making asses out of themselves in the bargain.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says..
Ah. Same here. This is Bike Week around these parts too. So many morons sans helmets. Also in shorts and t-shirts as well, which always makes me think of shredded meat stretched out across a highway.
Speaking of which, the motorcyclists [at their 'unofficial' event, that happens to correspond with the yearly official event] decided to join in on the BLM protest and 'militia' counter-protest today (the latter being openly armed in many cases, because Open Carry laws say that's fine). Made it extra fun. Tense, but happily no major incidents.
A fair number of folks weren't wearing masks, though, in all three groups. Neither were various tourists who wandered through the camera shots, as they tried to navigate sidewalks at the town square through crowds of protesters on opposing street corners.
Bullet dodged for immediate consequences, but we'll see what the statistics are like in 8-14 days.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says..
Ah. Same here. This is Bike Week around these parts too. So many morons sans helmets. Also in shorts and t-shirts as well, which always makes me think of shredded meat stretched out across a highway.
Speaking of which, the motorcyclists [at their 'unofficial' event, that happens to correspond with the yearly official event] decided to join in on the BLM protest and 'militia' counter-protest today (the latter being openly armed in many cases, because Open Carry laws say that's fine). Made it extra fun. Tense, but happily no major incidents.
A fair number of folks weren't wearing masks, though, in all three groups. Neither were various tourists who wandered through the camera shots, as they tried to navigate sidewalks at the town square through crowds of protesters on opposing street corners.
Bullet dodged for immediate consequences, but we'll see what the statistics are like in 8-14 days.
there is one big difference in the analogy though.
People refusing to wear helmets will help kill only them.
People refusing to wear masks will help kill people around them.
You should wear a helmet, but if you're a loon shouting about how god made your perfect head and its immoral to wear one, you know, whatever. It'll only effect you. If you're doing the same thing about masks, you're risking the health of everyone you interact with.
So, I decided to venture out to my local train store to grab some glue that i couldnt get elsewhere.
This is a small shop, imagine around your average 2 table GW store.
People where wearing masks, but no one had it over their nose, defeating the damn point.
Then, I went to hobby lobby to pick up some paint, Again, no mask over nose, one guiy even had it so his mask was just on his chin.
Went to my FLGS, no masks from employees either. or the local liquer.
People, it isnt the end of the world, wear a mask, unless you are spending hours a day, its only a few minutes, they are not making you do it outside.
Point is, stay off that bus till someone removes the windows. If you can, write in and tell the bus people they must do so if they ever want riders back to pour money on their death wagon industry.
All very easy sitting in an ivory tower discussing on a forum to say "don't use buses".
Problem is, that especially here in the UK, many of us don't have a choice. We don't all have the means to work from home. Most people live more than 5 miles from their workplace. Nor are we all able to just jump in the car and go off on a jolly good old drive.
There are quite a large number of people, in the UK, who do not drive for one reason or another and are reliant on public transport. And now we're all being expected to go back to work with a decimated public transport system, that was barely functional in the first place.
Our short-sighted govt., the media, and anyone with a car, would rather sweep that issue under the carpet.
The longer this pandemic goes on, the more it is highlighting the selfishness of people, particularly here in the UK.
Future War Cultist wrote: They’re just anti government contrarian prats. I would happily bet money that if for some reason the situation was completely reversed and wearing masks was publicly banned, those exact same spankers who’ve been refusing to wear them so far would be down city hall demanding the right to wear them and making asses out of themselves in the bargain.
hotsauceman1 wrote: So, I decided to venture out to my local train store to grab some glue that i couldnt get elsewhere.
This is a small shop, imagine around your average 2 table GW store.
People where wearing masks, but no one had it over their nose, defeating the damn point.
Then, I went to hobby lobby to pick up some paint, Again, no mask over nose, one guiy even had it so his mask was just on his chin.
Went to my FLGS, no masks from employees either. or the local liquer.
People, it isnt the end of the world, wear a mask, unless you are spending hours a day, its only a few minutes, they are not making you do it outside.
I actually had to look up tricks to keep my glasses from fogging up constantly and forcing me to pull down my mask just to see things. Real frustrating. Literally have to tape my mask down if I'm going extended period with a mask on.
regular masks also have issues if you've got a beard because not only are they not a perfect seal anyway; but the beard will steadily push the mask upward. Forget needing a noseband to keep it down; the mask keeps riding up under your eyes.
Overread wrote: regular masks also have issues if you've got a beard because not only are they not a perfect seal anyway; but the beard will steadily push the mask upward. Forget needing a noseband to keep it down; the mask keeps riding up under your eyes.
Then shave your beard. Hardly a hardship. Too many people making selfish excuses when it comes to wearing masks - if it is necessary to wear them, get on with it.
Overread wrote: regular masks also have issues if you've got a beard because not only are they not a perfect seal anyway; but the beard will steadily push the mask upward. Forget needing a noseband to keep it down; the mask keeps riding up under your eyes.
Then shave your beard. Hardly a hardship. Too many people making selfish excuses when it comes to wearing masks - if it is necessary to wear them, get on with it.
Eh the difference is marginal when you're wearing the general casual masks and a cloth one that wraps around is more covering. It would only make a difference if I was wearing the N35 or similar classes of mask - ergo those that block all in and out going air and have a filtered breather. Your standard cheap mask is only stopping my breath infecting others by spreading it around far less - even with the noseband there's still gaps around the face with that kind of mask.
Overread wrote: regular masks also have issues if you've got a beard because not only are they not a perfect seal anyway; but the beard will steadily push the mask upward. Forget needing a noseband to keep it down; the mask keeps riding up under your eyes.
Then shave your beard. Hardly a hardship. Too many people making selfish excuses when it comes to wearing masks - if it is necessary to wear them, get on with it.
Eh the difference is marginal when you're wearing the general casual masks and a cloth one that wraps around is more covering. It would only make a difference if I was wearing the N35 or similar classes of mask - ergo those that block all in and out going air and have a filtered breather. Your standard cheap mask is only stopping my breath infecting others by spreading it around far less - even with the noseband there's still gaps around the face with that kind of mask.
N95 class masks. And yet it is becoming mandatory in many places to wear a mask.
So, like I said, if it's necessary, i.e. mandatory, get on with it. People need to stop whining, making selfish excuses, and do their bit, if only to limit the impact on others! I know it's a novel concept to many but by helping others you help yourself.
stratigo wrote: I actually had to look up tricks to keep my glasses from fogging up constantly and forcing me to pull down my mask just to see things. Real frustrating. Literally have to tape my mask down if I'm going extended period with a mask on.
What works for me is lifting my glasses, tightening the nose clip tight across the top of your nose, and then sitting the glasses down atop the mask. If your glasses are fogging up, then your mask is not tight enough across the top. I know some people have limited mask availability so you may not be able to get a better seal.
I went in it for lunch with a mate yesterday! First time in a cafe since lockdown began. First off my stomach is in turmoil today which shows that 4 months of solid home cooking is better than I thought for the digestive system! Second, no one was wearing masks. We went to a bar over in the east of the city were my friend lives. I’m pretty isolated where I live but I have to say I was fairly surprised as I drove across the city at the lack of masks.
Surely wearing a mask is pretty easy. I wear one quite a bit during the day for tasks on farm. Not that hard. Although I have to laugh if you told me 20 years ago anyone would be advising people to wear masks in Belfast I would have thought you were mad. The whole city grew up terrified of men in masks!
In fairness if you're eating wearing a mask is kind of pointless. Staff certainly could/should be wearing them, but diners its not really practical. Which does raise the question about eating inside at present.
No I think we are pretty low in comparison to the rest of the uk. I didn’t wear one either, in truth I forgot about it. I only remembered when I saw one person in a mask. I just assumed from all the chat that loads of people would be in one.
Overread wrote: regular masks also have issues if you've got a beard because not only are they not a perfect seal anyway; but the beard will steadily push the mask upward. Forget needing a noseband to keep it down; the mask keeps riding up under your eyes.
Then shave your beard. Hardly a hardship. Too many people making selfish excuses when it comes to wearing masks - if it is necessary to wear them, get on with it.
Eh the difference is marginal when you're wearing the general casual masks and a cloth one that wraps around is more covering. It would only make a difference if I was wearing the N35 or similar classes of mask - ergo those that block all in and out going air and have a filtered breather. Your standard cheap mask is only stopping my breath infecting others by spreading it around far less - even with the noseband there's still gaps around the face with that kind of mask.
Which is point. Prevent you from spreading virus. Not to prevent you from catching it
stratigo wrote: I actually had to look up tricks to keep my glasses from fogging up constantly and forcing me to pull down my mask just to see things. Real frustrating. Literally have to tape my mask down if I'm going extended period with a mask on.
What works for me is lifting my glasses, tightening the nose clip tight across the top of your nose, and then sitting the glasses down atop the mask. If your glasses are fogging up, then your mask is not tight enough across the top. I know some people have limited mask availability so you may not be able to get a better seal.
When I've been wearing a mask at work, I tend to remove the crappy thin metal strip from the top edge and replace it with a straightened paperclip. It's that bit stiffer and holds its shape better, which helps it conform round my face more closely and stops my glasses fogging. We've got anti-fog wipes too, but I didn't find them that effective.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says..
Ah. Same here. This is Bike Week around these parts too. So many morons sans helmets. Also in shorts and t-shirts as well, which always makes me think of shredded meat stretched out across a highway.
Speaking of which, the motorcyclists [at their 'unofficial' event, that happens to correspond with the yearly official event] decided to join in on the BLM protest and 'militia' counter-protest today (the latter being openly armed in many cases, because Open Carry laws say that's fine). Made it extra fun. Tense, but happily no major incidents.
A fair number of folks weren't wearing masks, though, in all three groups. Neither were various tourists who wandered through the camera shots, as they tried to navigate sidewalks at the town square through crowds of protesters on opposing street corners.
Bullet dodged for immediate consequences, but we'll see what the statistics are like in 8-14 days.
there is one big difference in the analogy though.
People refusing to wear helmets will help kill only them.
People refusing to wear masks will help kill people around them.
You should wear a helmet, but if you're a loon shouting about how god made your perfect head and its immoral to wear one, you know, whatever. It'll only effect you. If you're doing the same thing about masks, you're risking the health of everyone you interact with.
I wasn't really making an analogy.
But, to me its an outgrowth of the same thing. People are spoiled children. They have to be forced to take measures to save lives, whether its stranger's lives, their friend's lives, family lives or their own lives. Way too many people have made it clear that their illusions and delusions are far more important than any amount of lives. So it has to be coerced with threats and penalties, same way you have to coerce a small child to put on a heavy coat in winter or take a bath.
For most people safety measures that appear to do nothing are hard to keep enforced as a way of life or even take up. That's why most jobs will have repeat health and safety training, even for experienced staff. It's a moment to basically ensure that staff are not only up to date with the latest changes, but also that they are keeping up with established methods and equipment.
Ensuring that bad habits have not crept in. That they are putting the uniform on correctly and not taking short cuts and the like.
We've already had several in this thread talk about mask wearing refresher courses that they've been put on at work, even if its been a normal part of their workplace before now.
The public and public activities tend to lack these refresher events and might even lack initial training events. Cycling doesn't have any formal requirement to train; meanwhile for cars and, say, wearing seatbelts whilst we don't have refresher car driving sessions* we do police the wearing of seatbelts and the like.
Mask wearing is no different and its very hard for some people to see outside of their own life bubble. If they haven't suffered from Corona or had close family/friends suffer then its not something on their radar. So its all worry about something somewhere else in the world.
*personally I think we really should. Cars are one of the few things you can get trained in formally and then NEVER need a refresher course unless you get caught doing something stupid.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says.
This is what we are dealing with I over. People who think their "freedom" is more important than other people's health. It disgusts me deeply.
Yeah. Brilliant move on the helmets though; helps improve the average intelligence of the population.
Not yet...surprising to be honest, with how some people have been acting.
I think they say there is a two to three week lag time between Trumpian type events and increases in infections. So yes indeed it wouldn’t be surprising if we had a spike in a couple of weeks. It would be tragic if we did after doing so well. Unfortunately so many people I’ve spoken to are now saying if the people in government are putting two fingers up to the law they won’t adhere to advice either. Which while utterly stupid is kind of predictable. When you see government ministers who are getting briefings from health officials laughing at guidance in their actions it will make many people think the advice is nonsense. What’s happened in Northern Ireland probably shouldn’t surprise us but it’s been bonkers on a whole new scale.
I'd say you're looking at a 2-4 week period after a major gathering to really see if a spike takes place. At 2 weeks you'd only be seeing the infections from those at the event plus a few family. It's the 3rd and 4th weeks where you see the real spike when they went home and spread the infection locally and into their local population.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says.
This is what we are dealing with I over. People who think their "freedom" is more important than other people's health. It disgusts me deeply.
Yeah. Brilliant move on the helmets though; helps improve the average intelligence of the population.
When i crashed my bike the first time, another biker pulled, helped me, and thanked me for wearing my helmet.
Most bikers are 100% for helmets and safety. when wtwo different family members of mine got in heqad one collisions they jumped from their bikes because their safety was more important than a thing.
Im sure most people dont like wearing masks, and it sucks, but most people ARE and are being serious. We just hear about morons. I just wish people would wear them properly.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says.
This is what we are dealing with I over. People who think their "freedom" is more important than other people's health. It disgusts me deeply.
Yeah. Brilliant move on the helmets though; helps improve the average intelligence of the population.
When i crashed my bike the first time, another biker pulled, helped me, and thanked me for wearing my helmet.
Most bikers are 100% for helmets and safety. when wtwo different family members of mine got in heqad one collisions they jumped from their bikes because their safety was more important than a thing.
Im sure most people dont like wearing masks, and it sucks, but most people ARE and are being serious. We just hear about morons. I just wish people would wear them properly.
Overread wrote: For most people safety measures that appear to do nothing are hard to keep enforced as a way of life or even take up.
I've found a good number of psychological articles about why some people react the way they do to the virus. In a way, the virus is successful because it happens to take advantage of the psychological weaknesses of humans. I should stress that this is not the only view of the psychology behind the virus, so I highly suggest further reading. I've noticed that on pretty every forum about the virus, posters, including myself, have fallen for these psychological traps when it comes to accessing the risk of the virus. (The article, frex, doesn't mention the asymptomatic period of the virus, which I would say also contributed to its spread. I've also found articles that explain why some people react strongly against the virus, because of a phenomenon when you constantly read and therefore experience negative events.)
"One reason for this subconscious Pollyannaism is that we don’t use the deliberative part of our brain very much. As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow, our brain has two modes: A fast, intuitive method that’s driven by feelings, and a more analytic (and evolutionarily more recent) way of thinking that’s driven by data. The intuitive process tends to dominate, says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon. “We don’t go around calculating things in a scientific way; we just kind of are guided by our feelings, which are very much influenced by our experiences,” he told me.
This knee-jerk part of our brains mostly takes only past events into consideration, making us “prisoners of our experience,” as Slovic put it. One 1962 study of people living on a flood plain found they were unable to conceive of floods bigger than the largest flood they had ever witnessed. It’s easy to infer that Americans similarly couldn’t fathom a disease worse than other, less deadly outbreaks the U.S. has recently faced, such as Zika and Ebola. Despite our brushes with past plagues, Americans might have struggled to imagine one that would cause more than regional disruption and a couple of weeks’ headlines.
In some cases, experience can be instructive. Shefrin points out that some Asian countries reacted differently than the U.S. to the coronavirus because the region had faced SARS in the past. While these countries were aggressively testing and contact tracing, American policy makers were scrambling to remedy the neglected supply of N95 respirators in the Strategic National Stockpile—never replenished after 2009’s swine-flu outbreak, because officials decided to shift their focus to terrorism.
The “fast” instinct in our minds tends especially to minimize risks that are harder to picture. Abstract dangers, such as invisible diseases, seem less threatening to us than do tangible threats, such as terrorists or tornadoes. Our brain interprets low-probability events as having a practically zero chance of happening, and it’s basically hopeless at contemplating exponential figures—such as, say, the way infections spread through a population. The number of cases starts out small, so our fast, intuitive brain tells us it will stay small forever. ...
By the time a disaster is on our doorstep—when hospitals are filling up in Italy but not yet in the U.S.—our minds wrongly soothe us once again. People have trouble envisioning themselves as the kind of person something bad might happen to. For instance, because elderly people have had the highest fatality rates from COVID-19, some younger Americans might think they themselves are invincible. ...
When the disease finally arrives, and people start dying, our brains fall into a different snare: The number of people affected is too large to be psychologically meaningful. Slovic has found that when many people are affected by a disaster, a kind of psychological numbing occurs. Though people are capable of feeling deeply for a single victim and her plight, “compassion fade” can set in when a tragedy involves two or more victims. People’s positive feelings about donating to a needy child decline for two needy children. This perhaps helps explain why Americans can round up thousands of dollars to donate to individual sick people’s GoFundMe campaigns, but hesitate to support a universal health-insurance system. Similarly, a disease that is likely to wipe out 60,000 Americans, most of whom are strangers, can seem less dangerous than it really is."
I hope it succeeds. People will claim their "Freeze peach" rights, tough. If people want to believe fox and it only affects them, that's one thing. But when fox lies and people believe it, act on it and endanger the lives of people who don;t watch fox, it's not jsut about their "freeze peach", it's affecting other peoples lives and yes, then it's time to stamp on them.
Meanwhile america continues to prove the 20% theory: There is no theory so stupid that 20% of people won't believe it.
Tell people that 5G towers cause cthe ovid virus to materialize in the air around them, they believe it.
Tell people the covid vaccine will contain mind control chips created by bill gates, they believe it.
I honestly think there's no hope for humanity anymore. I jsut wish someone would do a satire of the beatle's lonely people song as "Look at all the stupid people, where do they all come from?"
The problem is some of those shows (and others along the same political persuasion) have hid behind the defence that they're "performers" and not actual news agents, all the while having no disclaimer or any other indication of this in their actual content.
So I'm guessing that'll be the go-to here, they're an "entertainment network" or whatever made up classification lets them slip the loop.
I hope it succeeds. People will claim their "Freeze peach" rights, tough. If people want to believe fox and it only affects them, that's one thing. But when fox lies and people believe it, act on it and endanger the lives of people who don;t watch fox, it's not jsut about their "freeze peach", it's affecting other peoples lives and yes, then it's time to stamp on them.
Meanwhile america continues to prove the 20% theory: There is no theory so stupid that 20% of people won't believe it.
Tell people that 5G towers cause cthe ovid virus to materialize in the air around them, they believe it.
Tell people the covid vaccine will contain mind control chips created by bill gates, they believe it.
I honestly think there's no hope for humanity anymore. I jsut wish someone would do a satire of the beatle's lonely people song as "Look at all the stupid people, where do they all come from?"
Not gonna lie, I've been waiting about a week now for the closers over on Wikipedia/AN to release their verdict on the reliability of Fox News as a source. The bulk of the argument against Fox News' reliability this go round (this is a dust up on Wiki maybe every other year or so?) was all about their coronavirus coverage (EDIT: And climate change stuff now that I'm looking at it again) with more than a few people pointing out Daily Mail was basically determined unreliable for the same kind of reporting.
I've got my popcorn waiting. No matter which way it ends up going, it's gonna be gud.
Speaking of Belfast, I almost forgot....it’s the 11th night. Yet I haven’t seen any bonfires anywhere, not even in their usual spots. These had the potential to be problematic in the course of this pandemic but it looks like the precautions are being taken.
Nice to see an attempt at doing something against Fox News, in the larger picture fake news. This pandemic has made evident something the rational knew already; this type of 'reporting' negatively affects Americans in a significant way. It kills people. Indirectly, but it does.
Future War Cultist wrote: Speaking of Belfast, I almost forgot....it’s the 11th night. Yet I haven’t seen any bonfires anywhere, not even in their usual spots. These had the potential to be problematic in the course of this pandemic but it looks like the precautions are being taken.
I passed a couple of small ones on my way across town yesterday. Nothing big two of them had signs up for social distancing. Apparently they are being lit around 10 to keep the party down a little. Hopefully all will get pass off ok. The 12th organisers have behaved brilliantly right from the start. You can think what you like about the orange but they have done it right ever since this started. Just hope the idiots in the blue bag brigade don’t ruin things over the weekend.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I honestly don't get how a mask/face covering is any different from other required safety equipment most of us use all the time. Are seat belts, crash helmets, life jackets, hard hats, high vis vests, safety goggles and boots ect all an infringement on our freedoms as well?
In my state, one of the few that allows this, a helmet is not required on a motorcycle. Bikers will foam at the mouth here if you suggest they wear one so they survive a crash. Most of them go on about freedom and waking up in America, but when you quiz them on specifics of the Constitution, they generally don't know what it actually says..
Ah. Same here. This is Bike Week around these parts too. So many morons sans helmets. Also in shorts and t-shirts as well, which always makes me think of shredded meat stretched out across a highway.
Speaking of which, the motorcyclists [at their 'unofficial' event, that happens to correspond with the yearly official event] decided to join in on the BLM protest and 'militia' counter-protest today (the latter being openly armed in many cases, because Open Carry laws say that's fine). Made it extra fun. Tense, but happily no major incidents.
A fair number of folks weren't wearing masks, though, in all three groups. Neither were various tourists who wandered through the camera shots, as they tried to navigate sidewalks at the town square through crowds of protesters on opposing street corners.
Bullet dodged for immediate consequences, but we'll see what the statistics are like in 8-14 days.
there is one big difference in the analogy though.
People refusing to wear helmets will help kill only them.
People refusing to wear masks will help kill people around them.
I wish that were true. But the people that have to go out and scrape the meat crayon off an interstate are putting themselves at considerably more risk than the driver put themselves. What if they aren't wearing a helmet and they catch a rock to the face and steer in to another vehicle? A bug in the eyes and they lose control on a busy roadway?
When you are on the road, there is never a point when you are only risking your own life.
There is no point arguing with people about this. If at this point they don't understand, they are willfully ignorant and care only about themselves and their bottom line
Refusing to wear a mask to help your country and fellow citizens is not a choice someone randomly makes. It's ingrained in your psyche and usually people at large just didn't notice your selfishness before now.
My state is introducing mandatory masks in public spaces tomorrow, and I heard from the neighbor that a small portion of people have actually been talking about making fake, ineffectual masks to flaunt the system undetected.
Meanwhile, luckily....my wife and I have no symptoms yet, and it's been 5 days after potential exposure. So I may have gotten lucky.
BUT! I did find a new statement that makes masks magically appear, or get pulled up from chins when I come across them in public stores, or on deliveries. I just nonchalantly tell them I am wearing my mask to keep them safe, as I just got exposed the other day, and suddenly they are serious about that mask they were mocking. Well, look at that, lol. Even after this scare passes, I am using that as a little white lie to get anyone I see to be more responsible.
Azreal13 wrote: Florida has just recorded a number of cases in one day greater than any EU country at the height of their outbreak, according to C4 News.
Indeed it has, yet we're forging ahead with reopening our schools and our theme parks are fully open.
In my county, we're relying on parents to check their kids before sending them to school, but plan to temperature check teachers at the door.
Masks will be mandatory, but every other precaution is followed by the awful qualifier "where possible". It is going to be an ugly, ugly fall.
We don't have the staff to reduce class size, nor do we have the space to put 6 feet between the desks. We struggle to get 12" between every desk for testing. So we'll social distance as possible.
Aaand here in the UK we are back to mixed messages. Michal Gove who is a senior member of the government with the wonderfully vague post of Minister for the Cabinet Office, did the rounds on the Sunday news and politics programs. Saying that he's against compulsory mask wearing and "trusts peoples common sense".
*shrug*
GoatboyBeta wrote: Aaand here in the UK we are back to mixed messages. Michal Gove who is a senior member of the government with the wonderfully vague post of Minister for the Cabinet Office, did the rounds on the Sunday news and politics programs. Saying that he's against compulsory mask wearing and "trusts peoples common sense".
*shrug*
Azreal13 wrote: Florida has just recorded a number of cases in one day greater than any EU country at the height of their outbreak, according to C4 News.
Indeed it has, yet we're forging ahead with reopening our schools and our theme parks are fully open.
In my county, we're relying on parents to check their kids before sending them to school, but plan to temperature check teachers at the door.
Masks will be mandatory, but every other precaution is followed by the awful qualifier "where possible". It is going to be an ugly, ugly fall.
We don't have the staff to reduce class size, nor do we have the space to put 6 feet between the desks. We struggle to get 12" between every desk for testing. So we'll social distance as possible.
I have to admit, every time the school issues come up (regardless of country) the same questions occur to me (but they're _never_ asked by journalists or politicians). Where are they going to materialize double the teach staff and floor space (and all the support that requires) to 'social distance' class rooms and reduce class sizes?
It isn't even vaguely possible unless they're simply selecting children to not go to school, and that's just inherently ugly.
I wonder how much of my state is going to be plagued with medical illnesses that mean they can't wear a mask tomorrow, when the indoor requirements for being masked kick in?
Instead of a country of Patriots that willingly suffer a bit to keep everyone safe, we're going to all be victims with reasons as to why we don't have to step up, instead.
*This does not include people with the (very) small range of legitimate medical conditions that prohibit mask wearing, who are fragile enough anyways that they should simply be staying home when possible, and taking advantage of the widespread curbside services businesses offer.*
GoatboyBeta wrote: Aaand here in the UK we are back to mixed messages. Michal Gove who is a senior member of the government with the wonderfully vague post of Minister for the Cabinet Office, did the rounds on the Sunday news and politics programs. Saying that he's against compulsory mask wearing and "trusts peoples common sense".
*shrug*
of course he'd say that as a mask would prevent him from doing his Pob* thing
* Pob was a horrid puppet from 80/90s kids tv that bears more than some likeness to Gove
As for trusting common sense didnt he see the pictures in his missus paper of that beach and pubs
AegisGrimm wrote: I wonder how much of my state is going to be plagued with medical illnesses that mean they can't wear a mask tomorrow, when the indoor requirements for being masked kick in?
Instead of a country of Patriots that willingly suffer a bit to keep everyone safe, we're going to all be victims with reasons as to why we don't have to step up, instead.
*This does not include people with the (very) small range of legitimate medical conditions that prohibit mask wearing, who are fragile enough anyways that they should simply be staying home when possible, and taking advantage of the widespread curbside services businesses offer.*
My County said that while you are not required to wear a mask if you have breathing problems, you are required to then wear a face sheild with a cloth in order to prevent spreading
Things like that seem impossible to me and mine but then every once and a while we catch some of the "alternate reality updates" some people consume daily and it starts to make some sense how it can happen.
AegisGrimm wrote: BUT! I did find a new statement that makes masks magically appear, or get pulled up from chins when I come across them in public stores, or on deliveries. I just nonchalantly tell them I am wearing my mask to keep them safe, as I just got exposed the other day, and suddenly they are serious about that mask they were mocking. Well, look at that, lol. Even after this scare passes, I am using that as a little white lie to get anyone I see to be more responsible.
Better than coughing in public, which was what I was thinking of doing...
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Articles from the NewsNow newsfeed that are sorta related to some posts here...
The first article doesn't mention if the victim had a pre-existing condition. The second one does, with the teacher who died having "diabetes, lupus and asthma". Seems irresponsible to let someone with pre-existing conditions return to teaching.
Voss has a very good point -- where are these teachers going to come from? On a local forum, some don't want to return to the classroom. Some are in vulnerable demographics. While not all households can afford to keep children at home, online distancing and homeschool do work. I'm still looking for an article that explains why children have lower rates of infection than adults, or studies that take into account that children presently have a lower exposure to the virus than adults, which may be the only reason why they haven't been infected. Other viruses have decreased in infection rates among children this year, but not because children have suddenly acquired a healthier immune system than they had last year.
Are children actually 'as likely' to get COVID-19 as adults?
In a preliminary study, "The investigators found that children under 10 who were in close contact with people who had COVID-19 demonstrated a 7.4% infection rate — very similar to the 7.9% infection rate in adults. However, the researchers also determined that children were less likely to develop symptoms, even though they seemed just as likely as adults to contract the virus."
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/are-children-actually-as-likely-to-get-covid-19-as-adults
Pox-Parties are a thing. People do them for chickenpox for kids because its generally just an annoying itching and spots for most, however its far less deadly at a young age than at an older age for an adult to catch it. So its encouraged to spread it around between kids.
So the concept is not bad, the problem is this isn't kids swapping a disease that is mostly harmless to them (there are those who have a more serious reaction, but they are in a vast minority) with a view toward long term protection. Instead its adults who are missunderstanding/informed on the situation either because they think they are "young are immune and it only affects the retired"; or because they "don't believe it" and think its all a hoax.
The former is flawed but that young immune thing is still doing the rounds; the latter is deeply worrying since its showing vast lack of trust in the government. A curious thing when you consider that the USA is a modern developed nation not banana plantation being taken over by a very hostile and violent military group.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Perhaps banana plantations and corn plantations are not so different after all?
Well, when you have an torwards 2 party adapted system with these parties beeing so entrenched that no rival party can rise, haven't you just achieved a more stable plantation?
I love the language in this article. It's professional, but doesn't miss a chance to use its diction to express its profound disappointment in how the crisis has been handled.
Kilkrazy wrote: I see that tattoo parlours are now allowed to open for business ....
I'm unclear as to whether piercing is allowed, though.
Once they're open, they're open.
Don't piercings usually get done in a back room? No-one will know.
What in the world kind of back-alley piercing operations have you been getting? At least here in California, body-art is a very tightly regulated industry with strict sanitation protocols. That being said, opening them might not be the giant leap you think - They are already required to santize thier equipment between clients and masks were already a best practice even if they weren't required before the pandemic. Bigger concerns are industries that weren't health regulated to that level before. Hair Dressers, for example, didn't have such extensive santization requirements and aren't really equipped to do it now in most cases since a lot of equipment sanization was up to the individual.
Considering that headlice is about the worst thing most hairdressers would have to worry about and you can spot eggs/lice when working; chances are they didn't really worry vastly much about sanitising tools between clients. A quick dust off and the cutters are ready for the next person .
So yes masks, screens and such are all going to be new things for them as might be other aspects like talking less; fewer customers inside; faster work turn around;
Kilkrazy wrote: I see that tattoo parlours are now allowed to open for business ....
I'm unclear as to whether piercing is allowed, though.
Once they're open, they're open.
Don't piercings usually get done in a back room? No-one will know.
What in the world kind of back-alley piercing operations have you been getting? At least here in California, body-art is a very tightly regulated industry with strict sanitation protocols. That being said, opening them might not be the giant leap you think - They are already required to santize thier equipment between clients and masks were already a best practice even if they weren't required before the pandemic. Bigger concerns are industries that weren't health regulated to that level before. Hair Dressers, for example, didn't have such extensive santization requirements and aren't really equipped to do it now in most cases since a lot of equipment sanization was up to the individual.
Yeah, Piercings happen in the mall kiosks here. They are not exactly behind closed doors anymore.
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Overread wrote: Considering that headlice is about the worst thing most hairdressers would have to worry about and you can spot eggs/lice when working; chances are they didn't really worry vastly much about sanitising tools between clients. A quick dust off and the cutters are ready for the next person .
So yes masks, screens and such are all going to be new things for them as might be other aspects like talking less; fewer customers inside; faster work turn around;
To me personally i think that they should only open themselves up for basic haircuts. The reason being that it would reduce the time spent around those that are there and because its a basic service that is needed.
We need to rethink what is needed, getting nails and hair all dolled up isnt needed right now and offers an uneedched chance for infects.
I've found a good number of psychological articles about why some people react the way they do to the virus. In a way, the virus is successful because it happens to take advantage of the psychological weaknesses of humans. I should stress that this is not the only view of the psychology behind the virus, so I highly suggest further reading. I've noticed that on pretty every forum about the virus, posters, including myself, have fallen for these psychological traps when it comes to accessing the risk of the virus. (The article, frex, doesn't mention the asymptomatic period of the virus, which I would say also contributed to its spread. I've also found articles that explain why some people react strongly against the virus, because of a phenomenon when you constantly read and therefore experience negative events.)
"One reason for this subconscious Pollyannaism is that we don’t use the deliberative part of our brain very much. As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow, our brain has two modes: A fast, intuitive method that’s driven by feelings, and a more analytic (and evolutionarily more recent) way of thinking that’s driven by data. The intuitive process tends to dominate, says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon. “We don’t go around calculating things in a scientific way; we just kind of are guided by our feelings, which are very much influenced by our experiences,” he told me.
This knee-jerk part of our brains mostly takes only past events into consideration, making us “prisoners of our experience,” as Slovic put it. One 1962 study of people living on a flood plain found they were unable to conceive of floods bigger than the largest flood they had ever witnessed. It’s easy to infer that Americans similarly couldn’t fathom a disease worse than other, less deadly outbreaks the U.S. has recently faced, such as Zika and Ebola. Despite our brushes with past plagues, Americans might have struggled to imagine one that would cause more than regional disruption and a couple of weeks’ headlines.
This is really interesting.
What is surprising for me is how an understanding of this hasn't been used by governments to help reinforce messaging around the harmful nature of the virus, especially when they do around other areas: in the UK at least we used to have many adverts of horrible road accident (someone lying dead in a car), someone speaking through a voice box because part of their throat had been removed due to cancer (smoking warning). In the past, we know photos from the Vietnam war (of the naked crying child and the body bags of returning service men with hands and feet exposed) they think now were instrumental in helping to sway anti-war feelings. As you say, they all had a large impact on the emotional and relatable areas of our psychology.
There has been a distinct lack of utilisation of this, and in fact far less thought given to it than on 'get ready for Brexit', which really shows where priorities lie. Why not a picture of people in rows in ICU hooked up to ventilators? A crying family with a loved one lying next to them in bed? Why not even a video of someone rasping their last breath? These things are all horrible to envisage, yet they would be effective measures in driving to reinforce how important it is to socially distance, wear a mask etc.
Billions is spent on marketing things and yet so little thought seems to have been given to help reinforce messages that could actually help save lives.
Kilkrazy wrote: I bought myself a box of 20 German made surgical masks because I expect the government to make them compulsory very soon.
I see that tattoo parlours are now allowed to open for business, which is good news for queen_anne's_revenge.
I'm unclear as to whether piercing is allowed, though.
The wife has been making masks for both us and the two boys. We have been of the mind set that it won’t be long until masks are compulsory too, plus the lads were able to pick the fabric they wanted for their masks in the hope that getting them to wear them would be easier .
You knew CoVid had an asymptomatic period before symptom showed, but yet another "small study" says someone can still be infectious *after* symptoms subside. Great.
The media and public discussion centering around infections and death rates ignores the trauma of recovery and long-term symptoms. If you amputate your leg because of the virus, you're ok, right?
“My biggest concern is that there is little visibility into the reality of what recovery truly looks like, as recovery from a medical perspective simply means that the patient ‘did not die’ and simply does not capture the lingering and painful symptoms that the Covid-19 recovery road truly entails for some or many,” Nichols said, adding that some of her most alarming symptoms occurred in her third and fifth weeks of being unwell.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/lingering-and-painful-long-and-unclear-road-to-coronavirus-recovery-long-lasting-symptoms
"Another physician and public health expert, Dr. Esther Choo, says she has seen Covid-19 cases where the infection seems to last a long time. But she also points out that those who have a virus like Covid-19 are susceptible to secondary infections, which could be bacterial. So she advises patients who are still feeling sick after weeks to see a doctor. ... Choo also cautions that we don’t know enough yet about Covid-19 to draw any quick conclusions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/coronavirus-patients-describe-symptoms-that-last-a-month-or-more.html
Finally, one of the indicators of CoVid in seriously ill patients is low oxygen. Except that the body doesn't show symptoms of low oxygen levels, only high carbon dioxide ones. You can get a good one for under $50 and it's a non-invasive procedure that you can use with your household family members. Cheaper than Kickstarter.
"And so, what I'm saying to you is if you're having symptoms of viral illness, if you're known to have COVID, you should be checking your oxygen. … If you don't have an oximeter, increased breathing may be a sign of that, but also just feeling worse."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-pulse-oximeter-device-oxygen-levels/
"Although this sudden drop in the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream can indicate a coronavirus infection, the American Lung Association says this symptom usually doesn't manifest until an infected person has already become seriously ill. Fever, dry cough, muscle aches, and fatigue are much more common early indicators of COVID-19."
https://www.aol.com/everyone-buying-pulse-oximeters-don-110100279.html
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EDIT: I'll pick Hanlon's Razor over conspiracy theory any day. Because they're more incompetent people doing dumb things than cunning cabals with unlimited resources.
"The genetic makeup or “genome” of SARS-CoV-2 has been sequenced and publicly shared thousands of times by scientists all over the world. If the virus had been genetically engineered in a lab there would be signs of manipulation in the genome data. This would include evidence of an existing viral sequence as the backbone for the new virus, and obvious, targeted inserted (or deleted) genetic elements. But no such evidence exists. It is very unlikely that any techniques used to genetically engineer the virus would not leave a genetic signature, like specific identifiable pieces of DNA code. ...
There is evidence that early cases of COVID-19 occurred outside of Wuhan in China and had no clear link to the city’s wet market where the pandemic is thought to have begun. But that isn’t evidence of a conspiracy. It could simply be that infected people accidentally brought the virus into the city and then the wet market, where the enclosed, busy conditions increased the chances of the disease spreading rapidly. This includes e possibility of one of the scientists involved in bat coronavirus research in Wuhan unknowingly becoming infected and bringing the virus back from where their subject bats lived. This would still be considered natural infection, not a laboratory leak."
And, remember, the equipment in these labs were Made in China. Speculation time.
"IMAGES of broken seals on the doors of fridges housing deadly pathogens have emerged from a high-security Chinese laboratory close to the epi-centre of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, adding to speculation the virus may have leaked from a research facility.
But despite its reputation for high security, a pre-print scientific study written by a group of Chinese scientists from the South China University of Technology sensationally claimed that Covid 19 spread from the high-security science laboratory in Wuhan and not a "wet market" in the city. .. The research concluded that this laboratory hosted animals for research purposes, one of which was specialised in pathogens collection and identification.
What is surprising for me is how an understanding of this hasn't been used by governments to help reinforce messaging around the harmful nature of the virus
IMO its because a lot of the policy makers and there advisors have fallen victim to these exact biases .
Kilkrazy wrote: If I'm going to have to wear a mask I would like it to be effective and snazzy.
I wouldn't worry about this too much as you need to change the mask regularly to be effective (as in every 30 minutes or so). Hence spending lots of money on them looking snazzy is pointless. Most face coverings are fairly pointless other than psychological boost it gives to people to make people feel safer. It is much more effective to simply stay away from groups of people, avoid shops and public transport etc.
To be completely effective you need to change the item (safely) after short term use. For example if you take the public transport to a shop you want to:-
1) Buy medical grade masks (noting even some of the ones for the NHS have been shown to be ineffective). The supply of effective masks is very difficult at the moment so likely impossible for the public (in the UK at least).
2) Before leaving home put on the mask and gloves. Fit them properly (which in itself is a challenge and usually needs someone to help)
3) Travel by public transport on exiting the transport take off gloves and dispose, wash hands/sanitise thoroughly and put on new gloves. Now take off mask and dispose of. Remove gloves, dispose of them, wash hands and face thoroughly put on new gloves and then mask.
4) Go into the shop.
5) On leaving the shop repeat the process in 3)
6) Go on public transport
7) On exiting public transport repeat 3) again
8) Enter home
For those that do 3D printing with resin you've probably got the above procedure perfected.
Obviously not many people actually do this. For every step not followed there is a higher risk of cross contamination. For example messing around with one mask just puts your hands in contact with potentially a contaminated surface which you then touch on something and so forth. A mask that has been worn for many hours is likely heavily contaminated and saturated (realistically warm/moist environments are a haven for both viruses and bacteria) so after a while sneezing just carries particles from the mask to the environment anyway. Pulling up or down a mask to speak is pointless (not only does it reduce the effectiveness but you are also breathing in directly from the outside of the mask that may be a contaminated surfaces. And these are for medical grade masks....
In the UK they recommend face coverings which are basically just as effective as wearing a pair of underpants over your head and going "whubble". There is very little evidence that these are beneficial and there is a large question mark over whether masks in the wider community, when undertaking populace studies, actually make any benefit (or is a weak positive benefit). [This is different to medical grade masks used and fit correctly in medical environments where there is a significant positive benefit]. The problem comes that early in the pandemic there was some, arguably, rushing to get a name, research from the US that showed that moisture particles through a face covering dropped by 90% directly in front of the sneezer. However, later studies that looked at in more detail from Edinburgh showed that for face coverings although the direct impact of someone in front of you was lessened, several jets were observed coming over the top and side of the head (as they aren't properly sealed) - a comparison would be putting your thumb over a hose. They concluded that ultimately wearing face coverings made little difference in droplets emitted, other than direction and hence was more of a psychological benefit. However, the former study was picked up much more aggressively by the media than the latter. And I'm not going to get started on why plastic face shields are even worse unless you know someone that likes to sneeze over someone anyway.
In addition many scientists have recently written to the WHO to state that they believe the evidence is there to show COVID19 is an airborne virus (not just one spread by droplets of moisture). If that is the case then face coverings and plastic shields are even worse in this situation as they have been promoted to stop moisture. Anecdotally it could be suggested that masks seem to have been more effective in Asian countries and this could be hypothesised because the masks they tend to wear were used initially to reduce breathing in air pollution. These particles are much finer and can travel through face coverings and hence they already were wearing appropriate masks and had them to hand from the start....
So ultimately in crowded spaces do not rely on face coverings (despite promotion by several governments) they will not keep you safe from either catching or spreading the virus - they are being promoted to give you confidence to work/spend again. The safest thing to do is stay away from large population groups (shops, pubs etc) and keep as isolated as is possible and limit the circle of contacts. The latter approach is the only thing that for a wider populace group has been shown to be effective.
I have a feeling pants on head would earn you a fair bit distancing even in normal times
Not sure Im liking the uptick in people out and about but seems the local druids have got some fresh incomer blood and conjured up some gakky weather so fingers crossed
To be fair as someone with a beard, any mask is doubly pointless on me as they just don’t make a seal.
I did wrap my desert shemagh around my face to go to the shops but damn that wasn’t so nice after a while.
Still we’ve got masks made and ready so at least if we do need them to go in to a shop we are good to go.
Whirlwind wrote: For those that do 3D printing with resin you've probably got the above procedure perfected.
This is why I wear gloves when I go food shopping, which I do as little as possible - 3D printing has trained me to not touch my face or skin with gloves on, and to dispose of them after a single use.
Contactless pickup is now pretty easy around here though, so not as much of the above as before.
Is there a measurable difference between gloves in store and then dispose and washing hands upon entering and leaving a store?
One issue with gloves is incorrect handling when removing can put contamination on your hands; whilst with repeat washing that could cause skin damage/irritation if you're doing it a LOT.
If you're wearing a mask then in theory gloves nor fingers should be contacting your mouth; meanwhile any product you pick up is exposed to the same risk either way (the gloves would only prevent risk from yourself so any infection present within a store is still going to be transmitted to the products if you pick it up on hands or gloves).
xKillGorex wrote: To be fair as someone with a beard, any mask is doubly pointless on me as they just don’t make a seal.
I did wrap my desert shemagh around my face to go to the shops but damn that wasn’t so nice after a while.
Still we’ve got masks made and ready so at least if we do need them to go in to a shop we are good to go.
The objective isn't so much to form a seal as you would in a medical situation with high grade PPE, you're not trying to isolate your respiratory system, just baffle any infectious gak that you might unknowingly be exhaling, hence a piece of t-shirt folded over or any other number of Heath Robinson DIY projects are considered adequate.
I don't believe the impact is considered significant, but I guess the impact is considered sufficiently positive to be worth implementing.
Correlation is not causation, but when various countries mandated masks, infection rates dropped.
Austria Has 90% Drop in Coronavirus Cases After Requiring People to Wear Face Masks (April)
"This isn't the case in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As two of the first countries to make masks compulsory in Europe, they now enjoy a small infection rate per capita. Daily Mail said, "63 Czechs per 100,000 has been infected and less than two per 100,000 have died from the virus." It's lower in Slovakia, "21 per 100,000 people have caught it and just 0.2 per 100,000 have succumbed to the illness." In contrast, 182 out of 100,000 British have been infected, while 25 per 100,000 have died because of COVID-19. ... Meanwhile, Asian countries that enforced wearing face masks reported fewer cases. Hong Kong and Singapore has less than 1,000, while Japan has almost 3,000. South Korea has almost 10,000 cases, but the spread nearly plateaued at the 15th day until the 40th. Although China ranked fourth place at almost 100,000, the country also plateaued on the 20th day because they wore face masks."
Czech Republic used DIY cloth masks. So, imo, all this fine-tuning discussion of masks doesn't inviolate its use, even if it's a cloth mask, etc.. (April)
" A recent movement there led to the very widespread use of homemade cloth masks, and that country also has a very mild curve of new COVID-19 infections."
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-case-diy-masks-coronavirus.html
Note that when the mask restriction was lifted, other lockdown restrictions were lifted as well. IMO, While masks contribute to the decrease in CoVid infections, I'll agree that other precautions should be observed as well, if not moreso.
I think any sane approach has to take multiple angles. Masks (esp the general population quality and wearing practice) are but one tool of many in the fight.
Each tool you add increases the chances of reducing the spread of the virus.
I think that is one key aspect governments really need to hammer home in people. It's not enough to just socially distance; or just wear a mask. You've got to do as much of it as you safely and practically can. The more you do the better and the better you do each step the better as well.
Reducing trips out; reducing who you come into contact with; proper hand washing; avoiding the face; wearing masks; taking a cough and high temperature seriously; Every step you take helps reduce the spread.
Afaik the technology we use for genetic engineering would not work on viruses anyways since it relies on cellular mechanisms that viruses do not have. Could be wrong though, it has been a while since I updated myself.
My area is starting to go through an outbreak. Linked to a young woman who was diagnosed with it, then decided to go out to a house party anyways. Two counties are currently getting hit right now. We are a small rural area.
Because of this, the local schools had to announce new guidelines for fall sports and such. The locals are foaming at the mouth over it. Apparently they are calling for the teachers to be fired over it. Even though it is the state that is making the rules here. You cannot fight this kind of stupid.
Overread wrote: Is there a measurable difference between gloves in store and then dispose and washing hands upon entering and leaving a store?
One issue with gloves is incorrect handling when removing can put contamination on your hands; whilst with repeat washing that could cause skin damage/irritation if you're doing it a LOT.
If you're wearing a mask then in theory gloves nor fingers should be contacting your mouth; meanwhile any product you pick up is exposed to the same risk either way (the gloves would only prevent risk from yourself so any infection present within a store is still going to be transmitted to the products if you pick it up on hands or gloves).
If you are washing before and after shopping, being careful not to touch your face, with every store its not going to be enough to cause skin irritation. Unless you are visiting an excessive number of stores and/or using bleach to wash your hands. The typical person going shopping might go to 3 stores at most on a trip. That's 4 times you'd wash your hands. Soap and water isn't going to cause any damage with that few instances. Maybe if you are washing them 30+ times a day then you might have a worry of skin irritation.
Gloves are a bad idea for most people because they don't know how to use them. I see people with torn gloves that they've clearly been wearing all day instead of at least refreshing them before and after visiting a store. Just wash your hands and stop wasting gloves. Gloves are icky IMO too, your hands get nasty sweaty and wrinkly. Wearing gloves for hours on end is probably a bigger skin damage risk than just washing your hands 10ish times a day.
While LA and San Diego have declared they will go to distance learning next year, the Orange County Board of Education voted to reopen public schools with no mask and no public distancing requirements. Politics over the lives of children, parents and teachers.
One pub owner in uk got tired of people ignoring social dlstance. Solution? Electric fence. "works on sheeps, works on people". Nobody has yet tried is it on. And he declines to comment.
Future War Cultist wrote: These days are the worst time to suffer your first public nosebleed in like, 9 years. You have no choice but to touch your face. fething hay fever.
I don't get nose bleeds, but yeah I've been "touch wood" lucky enough that the food shopping day hasn't been too bad in general and a mint before I go in just about keeps me clear.
tneva82 wrote: One pub owner in uk got tired of people ignoring social dlstance. Solution? Electric fence. "works on sheeps, works on people". Nobody has yet tried is it on. And he declines to comment.
Put's the whole quote about army of lions lead by sheep and sheep by lion in a whole other perspective imagine if the persians had electro fences
And it was more preemptive than as a result of bad behaviour. That said if it was on it would certainly keep people back from the bar, electric fences are not nice to touch!
thats be due to use of lektrik requiring written permisson from the local Shaman down West Wales way
and ill confirm those electric fences are rather stingy as wee Turnip once doubted some string could contain Uncle Bobs sheep and Dad telling me it was magic string so I had to touch it #70sparentingftw
Turnip Jedi wrote: thats be due to use of lektrik requiring written permisson from the local Shaman down West Wales way
and ill confirm those electric fences are rather stingy as wee Turnip once doubted some string could contain Uncle Bobs sheep and Dad telling me it was magic string so I had to touch it #70sparentingftw
Razorwire and rusted barbed wire is stingy, electric wire isn't
I love the language in this article. It's professional, but doesn't miss a chance to use its diction to express its profound disappointment in how the crisis has been handled.
Well, my disappointment is with the American public. Certainly the governments of USA and Western countries were to blame for not locking down until March, when Asian countries did this in January and Italy was overrun by the virus. But it's July now, and safety measures are rather clear, with the latest being CDC's recommendation to wear face masks.The right wanted non-essential businesses to reopen, the left wanted to protest, and others wanted to party. This inevitably led to a rise in cases, partially from relaxation of lockdown measures, but also through disregard for safety. As much as government can issue policy, it's the people who choose whether or not to follow it, as shown by anecdotes on this board. While the crisis has been grossly mishandled, American citizens ignoring safety measures are also to blame -- and, I believe, would behave this way regardless of who was in office.
EDIT: Gonna post articles from NewsNow coronavirus search.
*****
As usual, "new study" means "needs more research".
Coronavirus immunity can start to fade away within weeks, according to a new study which puts a 'nail in the coffin' in the idea of herd immunity
"Immunity to the coronavirus may disappear within months for many patients, according to a major new UK study which found that antibodies peaked three weeks after symptoms appeared, before gradually fading away. ... It is the latest study to pour cold water over so-called herd immunity — the theory that a population will become immune to the virus if at least 60% of people catch it. A similar study in Spain, which was published last week, found that just 5% of people tested maintained coronavirus antibodies. Fourteen percent of people who tested positive for the antibodies in the first round of testing did not test positive in subsequent tests carried out weeks later. ... Katie Doores of King's College London, the UK study's lead author, said the findings could be a sign that any future vaccine for the coronavirus would need to be provided regularly for people to maintain immunity."
Note that the above assumes a vaccine that works identically to natural antibodies. We're gonna need more llamas.
Coronavirus immunity from antibodies may only last months: study suggests
““Similar short-lived responses are seen against other human coronaviruses that predominantly cause only mild illness, meaning that we can be re-infected as time goes by and outbreaks can adopt seasonality. With the more serious, sometimes fatal, outcomes of SARS-COV2, this is troubling indeed,” Griffins said. “Vaccines in development will either need to generate stronger and longer lasting protection compared to natural infection, or they may need to be given regularly.”
As of Monday, there were 23 Covid-19 candidate vaccines in clinical evaluation globally, according to WHO.
“Even if you’re left with no detectable circulating antibodies, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have no protective immunity because you likely have memory immune cells (B and T cells) that can rapidly kick into action to start up a new immune response if you re-encounter the virus. So you might well get a milder infection,” Dr. Mala Maini, professor of viral immunology and consultant physician at the University College London in the United Kingdom, said in a statement also distributed by the Science Media Centre on Monday.
You’d Rather Get a Coronavirus Vaccine Through Your Nose : Some experts say a vaccine puffed in the nose would be better at protecting people from infection. But nasal vaccines won’t be ready right away.
"But vaccines spritzed through the nose or mouth would also tap into another set of immune cells that hang around mucosal tissues. The B cells that reside here can make another type of antibody, called IgA, that plays a large role in bringing gut and airway pathogens to heel. And T cells in this neighborhood can memorize the features of specific pathogens, then spend the rest of their lives patrolling the places they first encountered them. ... Much of mucosal immunity also remains mysterious to researchers. “A lot of what we know about the rest of the immune system kind of goes out the window when we’re talking about a mucosal site,” said Dr. Frances Eun-Hyung Lee, a physician and immunologist at the Emory Vaccine Center. There are also fewer tried-and-true technologies for developing nasal and oral vaccines, compared with injectables.
Well, if you gotta get booster shots, a nasal vaccine might still be preferable...!
I think a little direction goes a long way, though - my state has declined to issue a statewide mask policy, but the county now requires them for adults in indoor public spaces. Despite the state cases spiking, our county's 2-week rolling average is on the decline.
I don't think the people in my county (which is fairly densely populated) are all that different from those in others... but a coherent policy we can all follow really helps!
The USA has had very mixed messages from local states saying one thing to counties saying another through to the President saying things utterly different.
This is before you even touch on the media presentation of information as well.
So its no surprise that people are picking and choosing; people go with what they think is right. Some might also be only paying attention to some information sources - someone following Fox news might be reacting very differently to someone following a different news outlet or information source.
This isn't unique to the USA, but I do get the feeling that the USA has had the most extreme divergences and differences between the various information sources.
This all goes alongside the issues every other country has, esp western ones or any nation where pandemics are basically something totally new to the majority of the population.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: While LA and San Diego have declared they will go to distance learning next year, the Orange County Board of Education voted to reopen public schools with no mask and no public distancing requirements. Politics over the lives of children, parents and teachers.
Orange County is a strange right-wing lipoma within southern California.
Hard to say for certain but the 7 day average suggests that we might be starting another rise of new cases per-day. Hopefully it might just be a blip or a very small rise and fall pattern. That said with all the general relaxations that have gone on it might be the start of a slow burn peak.
Deathrate seems pretty stable right now
Masks are going to be mandatory in 10 days time when shopping, I suspect the delay is to try and spread out the panic buying of masks somewhat.
The school question is a tough one, though (I say this as a parent). You've got kids in really critical stages of development on track to miss what could be a year and a half of school. This was probably discussed earlier, but the American pediatric society recommended that everything possible be done for children to physically attend school this year.
Maybe it's just a few days a week (which lets you, for example, alternate days and have only half the student body present at a time), and includes all possible social distancing measures... but not having any physical school for such a long period is going to have a lot of negative consequences for kids. Another possibility is the option of distance learning, so students with home conditions that make this work can participate that way, while those who do not attend in-person.
It's a tough balance - protecting teachers, family members, and the community, and still trying to educate. It would really help if politics could be left out of it, obviously, but that's tough to do in our current hyper-partisan environment... There are creative ideas to address these issues from a bunch of directions, but I'm afraid they're going to be drowned out.
I suspect the pediatric association has a political appointee at its head. They seem to weigh factors oddly.
In either event, OC is not offering us the option for distance learning. I have a heart condition and my wife had pneumonia 4 times in three years; pretty sure one year of home schooling is less detrimental to the kid’s development than “I caused mommy’s death.”
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I suspect the pediatric association has a political appointee at its head. They seem to weigh factors oddly.
In either event, OC is not offering us the option for distance learning. I have a heart condition and my wife had pneumonia 4 times in three years; pretty sure one year of home schooling is less detrimental to the kid’s development than “I caused mommy’s death.”
Predictably, that is very much NOT what the APA said.TL;DR, they would very much love for kids to be able to attend classes in person, but recommend that health officials make the determination on whether or not it's a risk of spreading the virus.
They of course say schools should be ready to adapt based on the level of viral transmission in the school and community, but after laying that out put this statement, with this section of the first sentence bolded in their document:
With the above principles in mind, the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality. Beyond the educational impact and social impact of school closures, there has been substantial impact on food security and physical activity for children and families.
Policy makers must also consider the mounting evidence regarding COVID-19 in children and adolescents, including the role they may play in transmission of the infection. SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based. Although children and adolescents play a major role in amplifying influenza outbreaks, to date, this does not appear to be the case with SARS-CoV-2. Although many questions remain, the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection. Policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within schools must be balanced with the known harms to children, adolescents, families, and the community by keeping children at home.
Finally, policy makers should acknowledge that COVID-19 policies are intended to mitigate, not eliminate, risk. No single action or set of actions will completely eliminate the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but implementation of several coordinated interventions can greatly reduce that risk. For example, where physical distance cannot be maintained, students (over the age of 2 years) and staff can wear face coverings (when feasible). In the following sections, we review some general principles that policy makers should consider as they plan for the coming school year. For all of these, education for the entire school community regarding these measures should begin early, ideally at least several weeks before the start of the school year.
They then give a lot of specific recommendations for mitigation, which are well worth reading - they're not suggesting to have students physically attend without taking as many precautions as possible. Note that the main author is a pediatric infectious disease specialist, not a politician.
Again, I can't see the article you linked to but looking directly at the source and the NYT discussion of it makes it pretty clear... they want students to be able to physically attend in some form if possible. The negatives for many students outweigh the positives of distance learning, or distance learning may simply not be possible/practical for some. It's a complex issue that's unfortunately caught up in our stupid endless political divide and not getting the attention it deserves...
Masks are going to be mandatory in 10 days time when shopping, I suspect the delay is to try and spread out the panic buying of masks somewhat.
Face coverings, not masks. There's a huge difference. You could cellotape a piece of tissue across your face and it would count. Plus if it is the same as public transport there's so many excuses not to wear one (including it makes you feel distressed) that it will be impossible to police. The Police are already saying this is the case before its even started.
My strong recommendation is that you avoid going into shops as much as possible. Too many people will either ignore the rules, wear something that just isn't effective or wear it in a way to make it ineffective. You can see this already in factories across the UK. Most localised outbreaks are at such sites. They mostly are following the guidance yet still these outbreaks occur. It's the ability to use items sensibly.
Cases are already flat lining and not dropping quickly in the UK, yet even in this circumstance we are still easing restrictions. The changes being implemented now are not based on infection rates but trying to get the economy moving again (you only have to look at the US as an example). People will start to use face coverings and think it will make them immortal and immune, stop thinking about keeping reasonable distances. There's a significant risk now that when the weather turns, people move indoors then infections will rise again compounded by the flu season and by Xmas we could be back in lockdown. What they really should do now is lockdown the country for another two months. Extreme, yes but it would go a good way to really squashing the infection. And also large scale mandatory randomised sampling of the populace (not targeted sampling where you find an infection) as this provides much greater certainty over the actual infections per population there is.
As such again I'd recommend, right now, is avoid shops, do everything online and delivered as much as possible.
The UK mask requirement gave me best laugh in a while. Predictable group is going ape over the issue. Out of all the things THAT is the thing they go nuts about?-)
Well when you have fellows who claim it's already vanished from UK no surprise...
Austria Has 90% Drop in Coronavirus Cases After Requiring People to Wear Face Masks (April)
You have to be very careful with quotes like this. There is no scientific basis for these statements only anecdotal circumstances. Most countries also introduced other stringent measures at the same time. Highlighting masks as the key factor is dangerous as it provides confidence in the masks when there is no evidence base for this. You are correct in that multiple factors likely contribute, but the masks can give confidence to ignore other advice (e.g. distancing) because people feel protected.
RiTides wrote: The school question is a tough one, though (I say this as a parent). You've got kids in really critical stages of development on track to miss what could be a year and a half of school. This was probably discussed earlier, but the American pediatric society recommended that everything possible be done for children to physically attend school this year.
Maybe it's just a few days a week (which lets you, for example, alternate days and have only half the student body present at a time), and includes all possible social distancing measures... but not having any physical school for such a long period is going to have a lot of negative consequences for kids. Another possibility is the option of distance learning, so students with home conditions that make this work can participate that way, while those who do not attend in-person.
It's a tough balance - protecting teachers, family members, and the community, and still trying to educate. It would really help if politics could be left out of it, obviously, but that's tough to do in our current hyper-partisan environment... There are creative ideas to address these issues from a bunch of directions, but I'm afraid they're going to be drowned out.
To add, one of public school's unspoken purposes is giving kids a chance to socialize with their peers and experience an environment with different rules/context/authority than their parents'. On top of the more obvious role of giving parents a chance to go to work.
RiTides wrote: The school question is a tough one, though (I say this as a parent). You've got kids in really critical stages of development on track to miss what could be a year and a half of school. This was probably discussed earlier, but the American pediatric society recommended that everything possible be done for children to physically attend school this year.
Maybe it's just a few days a week (which lets you, for example, alternate days and have only half the student body present at a time), and includes all possible social distancing measures... but not having any physical school for such a long period is going to have a lot of negative consequences for kids. Another possibility is the option of distance learning, so students with home conditions that make this work can participate that way, while those who do not attend in-person.
It's a tough balance - protecting teachers, family members, and the community, and still trying to educate. It would really help if politics could be left out of it, obviously, but that's tough to do in our current hyper-partisan environment... There are creative ideas to address these issues from a bunch of directions, but I'm afraid they're going to be drowned out.
To add, one of public school's unspoken purposes is giving kids a chance to socialize with their peers and experience an environment with different rules/context/authority than their parents'. On top of the more obvious role of giving parents a chance to go to work.
I dunno, I always thought the biggest benefit of school was to get you acclimated to the routine of "Go somewhere you don't like, doing something that's mostly pointless, being told what to do by someone you don't like and may very well be an idiot." most of the school curriculum is pretty pointless. For the average student it's just, time filler. Getting you used to deadlines and such.
Kilkrazy wrote:Mask wearing to be compulsory in English shops from 24th July.
We all saw it coming. I'm glad I ordered my masks at the weekend.
Huh, there wasn't one before? With how much I read about people complaining about (lockdown) restrictions I'd have guessed that was already the case over there. I though Germany was really lagging behind in that regard when we only got compulsory mark/face covering at the end of April (in Bavaria) for stores and public transportation.
Austria Has 90% Drop in Coronavirus Cases After Requiring People to Wear Face Masks (April)
You have to be very careful with quotes like this. There is no scientific basis for these statements only anecdotal circumstances. Most countries also introduced other stringent measures at the same time. Highlighting masks as the key factor is dangerous as it provides confidence in the masks when there is no evidence base for this. You are correct in that multiple factors likely contribute, but the masks can give confidence to ignore other advice (e.g. distancing) because people feel protected.
On the other hand the same "anecdotal circumstances" rhetoric also leads to people simply ignoring masks as they see them as useless, especially with the early signalling from health professionals against their usefulness (and the conflation of N95 and regular masks). They were looking for an excuse anyways.
From what I have read a high degree of simple mask wearing did correlate well enough with better results and fewer infections in Japan (where they had a few blunders in other corona policies) and South Korea (who did really well from the start) despite both countries having areas with very high population density where distancing is not alway easy. When mask wearing is one of the smaller burdens (next to distancing) we can try in regard to corona then I'd rather we try wearing masks even if they are (much) less effective than hoped for. At worst they can lead to people touching their faces less in public if they follow a strict protocol or just use them as a "reminder" to not do that while outside.
It's a pandemic and we don't have a "control group" or 100% independent variables.
RiTides wrote: Again, I can't see the article you linked to but looking directly at the source and the NYT discussion of it makes it pretty clear... they want students to be able to physically attend in some form if possible. The negatives for many students outweigh the positives of distance learning, or distance learning may simply not be possible/practical for some. It's a complex issue that's unfortunately caught up in our stupid endless political divide and not getting the attention it deserves...
TL;DR the APA saw what the Trump administration was doing with their advice, and hurriedly walked it back along with a "Jesus wept we didn't mean defund schools if they don't want to reopen, you monsters." You know, just in more polite language.
Do you have a link to a publicly available source? I think we might be talking about different things...
Their original recommendation is shown on their site, and as I said in my post politicization of the whole thing is a huge problem. "Defund schools" isn't part of what they're recommending, or what I posted.
I assume it was someone weaponizing it for political purposes, but again, that's different from what they're actually recommending (and why) regarding students attending school in-person in some manner, if at all possible.
Kilkrazy wrote:Mask wearing to be compulsory in English shops from 24th July.
We all saw it coming. I'm glad I ordered my masks at the weekend.
Huh, there wasn't one before? With how much I read about people complaining about (lockdown) restrictions I'd have guessed that was already the case over there. I though Germany was really lagging behind in that regard when we only got compulsory mark/face covering at the end of April (in Bavaria) for stores and public transportation.
One bias online is that I've noticed more people online seem to be more aware of corona risks and preventative/cautionary measures. Granted there's also a bias in that in the places I visit so it might be true to say more "geeky" people and forum users TEND to appear to be being slightly more aware/cautionary regarding Corona. Of course I'm leaving out big youth areas like Reddit and the like.
That said if you're also surfing in the same kind of circles then the image you get of people might be different to nations at large.
UK has oddly lagged in many things. It's odd because we almost seem to take the right path, but about a week or so later than everyone else at the very least; sometimes greater. I'm surprised that mask wearing wasn't one the first "unlock" phase steps in part of reactivating the country. Instead its appearing nearer to the end. Though we did have it earlier for public transport.
There are going to be issues with enforcing it, but at least making it mandatory is taking steps in the right direction. I would imagine that stores might well attempt to lead the way by wearing masks themselves (at the very least for staff on the shop floor who aren't behind a screen). I've noticed that when stores had people at the entrance, even if all they were doing was curtailing the flow into the store, people tended to be more aware/well behaved in the store. By and large its simply reinforcing and reminding people about the changes. Those who are going to cause trouble will cause it anyway.
RiTides wrote: Do you have a link to a publicly available source? I think we might be talking about different things...
Their original recommendation is shown on their site, and as I said in my post politicization of the whole thing is a huge problem. "Defund schools" isn't part of what they're recommending, or what I posted.
I assume it was someone weaponizing it for political purposes, but again, that's different from what they're actually recommending (and why) regarding students attending school in-person in some manner, if at all possible.
He's actually talked about/"suggested" withholding funding from schools that refuse to reopen in the fall. I believe the first mention was last week?
This is a big problem with discussing this without the ability to discuss the politics side of what is going on.
RiTides wrote: Do you have a link to a publicly available source? I think we might be talking about different things...
Their original recommendation is shown on their site, and as I said in my post politicization of the whole thing is a huge problem. "Defund schools" isn't part of what they're recommending, or what I posted.
I assume it was someone weaponizing it for political purposes, but again, that's different from what they're actually recommending (and why) regarding students attending school in-person in some manner, if at all possible.
In this climate it’s not “at all possible” to attend school safely. Whoever decided on putting out a statement with such obvious negative consequences has no idea what’s happening in this country. There was no way such a statement wouldn’t be abused.
Bob, have you read the links I shared above? This is not a one sentence headline, it's a detailed recommendation by an pediatric infectious disease specialist. I get that it's hard to trust things in the current climate, but this is one of the people worth listening to (i.e. a scientist / doctor).
Kanluwen, Ah that makes sense. It does not change the reasoning behind the recommendation, though. It's a shame it is being used as a political weapon, obviously, but it'd be nice to try to discuss the actual issues / science behind them.
Future War Cultist wrote: I’m hoping we make masks compulsory too. Too many people here aren’t bothering with them and it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Mandatory/compulsory masks doesn't stop people from "not bothering with them" when it gets emblazoned as "FREEDUMS!!11!!".
We have so frigging many people who refuse to wear them, despite it being mandatory in my state. Christ, you even can see it with actual law enforcement officers taking a political stance on it.
And just to add a bit of "how much worse can things get?", it's now been discovered that the White House has instructed hospitals to not report COVID numbers to the CDC first. instead directing them to the White House.
RiTides wrote: The school question is a tough one, though (I say this as a parent). You've got kids in really critical stages of development on track to miss what could be a year and a half of school. This was probably discussed earlier, but the American pediatric society recommended that everything possible be done for children to physically attend school this year.
Maybe it's just a few days a week (which lets you, for example, alternate days and have only half the student body present at a time), and includes all possible social distancing measures... but not having any physical school for such a long period is going to have a lot of negative consequences for kids. Another possibility is the option of distance learning, so students with home conditions that make this work can participate that way, while those who do not attend in-person.
It's a tough balance - protecting teachers, family members, and the community, and still trying to educate. It would really help if politics could be left out of it, obviously, but that's tough to do in our current hyper-partisan environment... There are creative ideas to address these issues from a bunch of directions, but I'm afraid they're going to be drowned out.
To add, one of public school's unspoken purposes is giving kids a chance to socialize with their peers and experience an environment with different rules/context/authority than their parents'. On top of the more obvious role of giving parents a chance to go to work.
I dunno, I always thought the biggest benefit of school was to get you acclimated to the routine of "Go somewhere you don't like, doing something that's mostly pointless, being told what to do by someone you don't like and may very well be an idiot." most of the school curriculum is pretty pointless. For the average student it's just, time filler. Getting you used to deadlines and such.
LoL how is science, art, math, literature, PE and gak like that useless lol.
RiTides wrote: Bob, have you read the links I shared above? This is not a one sentence headline, it's a detailed recommendation by an pediatric infectious disease specialist. I get that it's hard to trust things in the current climate, but this is one of the people worth listening to (i.e. a scientist / doctor).
Kanluwen, Ah that makes sense. It does not change the reasoning behind the recommendation, though. It's a shame it is being used as a political weapon, obviously, but it'd be nice to try to discuss the actual issues / science behind them.
I read it. I think you are misunderstanding me, though. There is a lot of nuance, and an awful lot of “maybe” statements, but the main takeaway statement was the bolded one, which is being used right now by real people to completely ignore all of the safety recommendations and nuance in favor of “open now”. Then there’s that “we’ve not seen a lot of evidence of children asymptomatically carrying it, therefor go ahead and assume they can’t” paragraph. None of the bullet points preceding that were addressed locally. No one n power is inclined to follow the hard recommendations when they can cherry-pick statements supporting their politics and convenience. The entire statement is worded in such a way that this result was inevitable. We’ve seen this approach used before, so whoever wrote that statement, unless they were purposefully undermining all responsible state governments, was woefully ignorant of the current situation.
If the APA statement was meant to help children, it has instead had the opposite effect regardless of original intent.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It would be like the person in charge of your kids deciding to skip all the directions on how to attach and use bungee cords, where to jump safely, and what to do if there’s an injury, and then pointing at the paragraph that says “with all that in mind, there’s no reason children shouldn’t be able to jump off bridges safely” as the reason the district must now throw all children off bridges.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And every day we have more and more cases of young people, even children, who were asymptomatic developing lingering medical conditions or suffering neurological damage.
That seems like blaming scientists for politicians faults, imo...
As for children, when I get time I can link you to some studies but the percentage that are affected themselves is extremely low. The bigger concern is, obviously, transmission, but more studies are showing that that is also much less than was thought initially.
But yeah, I get that it's being misused by the usual suspects... doesn't mean it should be ignored for its merits, though.
RiTides wrote: As for children, when I get time I can link you to some studies but the percentage that are affected themselves is extremely low.
Does this take into account the newer information coming out about the lasting damage to organs in adults who only suffered mild symptoms or were even asymptomatic?
Because whilst kids may be more likely to be asymptomatic, that is not a lot of comfort if you are setting them up for lifelong lung, kidney etc. damage.
Not only that but, we are forgetting we will still have adults in the school who can give it to, other adults
Distance learning only for the time being. Kids can make up skills with playdates with other parents who are isolating and gak or make it up later.
I would rather have a generation of introverts then a generation of kids with lung problems.
“This condition is extremely rare,” says Elizabeth Lloyd, M.D., pediatric infectious diseases physician at Michigan Medicine C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
“COVID-19 is affecting a very small number of children to begin with, and even fewer are getting severely sick or experiencing this inflammatory syndrome. While we don’t want to cause alarm, we do want the community to be aware of signs to watch out for. Parents should take this seriously and seek care right away if their children show any of these symptoms.”
However, this is not "a generation of kids with lung problems", and honestly that kind of language frustrates me. There is a lot that is unknown here, but there is also a lot that is known and has data coming out to support it. This is why, for instance, we all are trying to wear masks now. Something that at first wasn't suspected to help, and it turns out makes a huge difference.
Every source I can find and read says that children are rarely affected by this disease, and even much more rarely in a serious way, and are also not nearly as likely to transmit. There are a lot of kids in bad home situations, and it's well worth considering all possibilities for a return to in-person education in areas where this is feasible, and can be done with appropriate social distancing. It should not be written off with fearmongering... that's just as bad as people who write off the disease as if it shouldn't be feared at all, imo. Science should be what's driving our decisions... and the experts in this case are asking to consider the possibility.
Just to make things confusing and difficult for parents, CoVid toes made the rounds as another inflammatory symptom of the virus but has been called in question as a correlation with CoVid, not caused by it, because of the change in children staying at home and wearing socks or staying barefoot more often. Or, heck, these symptoms could be from both -- it's not like a single symptom has only one cause. I should mention that dermatology problems are some of the hardest to diagnose the root cause. Just ask anyone with a skin allergy or eczema.
Inflamed brains, toe rashes, strokes: Why COVID-19's weirdest symptoms are only emerging now (May)
This article does a good job of summarizing the unusual symptoms associated with CoVid, as well as pointing out the need for additional studies. Bet you didn't see that coming.
"One of the most recently discovered—and most inexplicable—signs of COVID-19 is a broad range of inflammatory symptoms that it seems to be provoking in the skin, including rashes, the painful red lesions that have come to be known as COVID toe, and the collection of symptoms in children that’s been labeled a “Kawasaki-like” syndrome."
What Are 'COVID Toes'? Dermatologists Say Foot Lesions May or May Not Be New Coronavirus Symptom ; Could walking barefoot or being sedentary during lockdown periods account for this symptom?
A reminder that correlation is not causation. And, of course, the need for continued studies.
"A research team in Belgium, reporting in JAMA Dermatology, described 31 mostly teenage and young adult patients with purplish-red lesions on their toes and/or fingers. None tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the illness, and all were negative for antibodies to the virus. Researchers suspect that these patients' skin symptoms may be due to community containment and lockdown measures imposed as a result of the pandemic. A majority (64%) reported decreased physical activity and more time spent in sedentary positions as they worked from home or were home schooled. Notably, most patients indicated that they remained barefoot or in socks most of the day. Similarly, researchers in Spain evaluated 20 children and teens who developed a purplish skin rash on their feet and/or hands. None had COVID-19 symptoms or evidence of infection based on nasal swab and blood testing. Writing in JAMA Dermatology, the authors say one possibility is that the kids' symptoms may have been related to the quarantine experience of going barefoot or only wearing socks and engaging in little physical activity. Of course, much remains unknown. Larger, well-designed studies involving control groups are needed to sort out any possible correlation between these toe lesions and coronavirus infections.
Speaking just for my little neck of the woods- right now, 20% of our cases are coming from people under 24. That's as close to school age children as I've been able to find on official data so far. Peak transmission seems to occur when a group of people are indoors, breathing the same air, for extended periods of time. Schools do a host of wonderful social things for children, there's no doubt about that. It also is going to immediately link at mine, the circles of 1400 families. There is no mandatory mask order for the state, although thankfully my district is requiring them to come to school. We will not check student temperatures at the door, instead we will rely on the parents to identify sick kids before dropping them off. We will not even give employees a temperature check before letting them in. Although we're attempting to limit the surfaces in the classroom, I haven't heard any plans for us to reduce class sizes or enforce social distancing. In an average classroom, I don't think you could fit 10 students in with 6 feet between them, and we do not have the resources for that.
My county has 20,000 active cases, and are adding 500 a day.Reopening schools is going to dramatically increase the numbers.of infections. We don't have the resources to do this thing safely- and if we do, it's going to take out these kids grandparents and their teachers. If the circumstances warranted closing the schools back in April... they really shouldn't be reopened when the circumstances are worse.
Understanding transmission better could help inform public health policy as schools and childcare centers decide how and whether to reopen or not, says Schuster. “Initially, there was a lot of thought that this virus could be spread by children in congregate settings, which is common for other respiratory viruses like influenza. What we’re seeing more and more from the data that comes out is that child-to-child or child-to-adult spread is actually not common,” she says.
Even among children hospitalized in a study it references (in this case 12 and under) it describes how their lungs are not affected in the same way as adults (it is much less severe for them).
I understand the fear of schools acting as transmission hubs, since they normally are for cold/flu... but the science and data is indicating this just isn't the same for covid, and we've got to weigh that and at least consider the possibilities.
I certainly hope you're right. I hate the thought of losing students. My initial article has 3.4% of positive cases in Florida coming from children 5-14, which is worrisome.
This article suggests that "Published last week in the journal the Lancet, the study found very little evidence of prior Covid-19 infection among children ages 5 to 9 years (the youngest included). But children ages 10 to 19 were as likely to have antibodies to the infection as adults ages 20 to 49 — and more likely than adults older than that."
If the 10-19 age bracket suffers infection and transmits as well as adults, middle schools and high schools are going to be major spreaders of the virus. Unfortunately, even your hopeful article says that
"Plus, the study’s age ranges “eliminated the sickest group that we’ve identified” in the US, Sills says. “The later teens, who fall within our pediatric population, have been some of our sickest patients,” she explains, adding that the authors may have missed sicker babies younger than one month as well. The authors did not respond to requests for an interview. ".
I'm certainly very open to the idea of treating children under 10 differently from middle and high school students. I think the data likely supports this in that the very youngest are the least susceptible, with a sliding scale as they get older and closer to adulthood.
That's a conversation worth having... but is very different from what people were posting last page, to be honest. I just want people to consider the facts... we know so much more than we did in March, and can hopefully make some informed public health (and schooling) decisions as a result.
RiTides wrote: I'm certainly very open to the idea of treating children under 10 differently from middle and high school students. I think the data likely supports this in that the very youngest are the least susceptible, with a sliding scale as they get older and closer to adulthood.
fwiw, Teenagers engage in behavior that is more likely to expose them (eg. partying, jobs) than children. I would say that adults, as an aggregate, have a higher exposure to the virus through work and hospitals.
*****
1 in 3 young adults ‘vulnerable’ to severe COVID-19 cases, especially smokers
"32 percent of people aged between 18 and 25 who took part in the study were “medically vulnerable” to the deadly pandemic — but that the figure dropped to 16 percent when smokers of cigarettes and e-cigarettes were removed from the sample"
https://nypost.com/2020/07/14/1-in-3-young-adults-vulnerable-to-severe-covid-19-study-shows/
Children, teens may transmit Covid-19 despite high proportion of mild or asymptomatic infections, says study
Analysis shows viral load is comparable to that of adults and that symptomatic children of all ages shed infectious virus in early acute illness, a prerequisite for further transmission
https://meaww.com/children-teenagers-shed-coronavirus-spread-disease-study-asymptomatic
Hanlon's Razor (the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one) would say the relaxation of lockdowns, protests, and disregard for protection is a more likely explanation for rising number than, say, teenagers and "young and healthy" people recently becoming less resistant to the disease, or the virus mutating to affect these groups in particular. Unfortunately, while we have data breaking down infections and deaths by age (as well as data for frontline workers), we don't have, or at least it hasn't been reported, data differentiating, within an age group, social activity. So far, from what I've read, health (including pre-exsisting conditions) and exposure (which includes personal protection use and isolation) to the virus are the most important factors for the virus, and, the younger the person, the more important exposure becomes.
RiTides wrote: I'm certainly very open to the idea of treating children under 10 differently from middle and high school students. I think the data likely supports this in that the very youngest are the least susceptible, with a sliding scale as they get older and closer to adulthood.
fwiw, Teenagers engage in behavior that is more likely to expose them (eg. partying, jobs) than children. I would say that adults, as an aggregate, have a higher exposure to the virus through work and hospitals.
*****
1 in 3 young adults ‘vulnerable’ to severe COVID-19 cases, especially smokers
"32 percent of people aged between 18 and 25 who took part in the study were “medically vulnerable” to the deadly pandemic — but that the figure dropped to 16 percent when smokers of cigarettes and e-cigarettes were removed from the sample"
https://nypost.com/2020/07/14/1-in-3-young-adults-vulnerable-to-severe-covid-19-study-shows/
Children, teens may transmit Covid-19 despite high proportion of mild or asymptomatic infections, says study
Analysis shows viral load is comparable to that of adults and that symptomatic children of all ages shed infectious virus in early acute illness, a prerequisite for further transmission
https://meaww.com/children-teenagers-shed-coronavirus-spread-disease-study-asymptomatic
Hanlon's Razor (the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one) would say the relaxation of lockdowns, protests, and disregard for protection is a more likely explanation for rising number than, say, teenagers and "young and healthy" people recently becoming less resistant to the disease, or the virus mutating to affect these groups in particular. Unfortunately, while we have data breaking down infections and deaths by age (as well as data for frontline workers), we don't have, or at least it hasn't been reported, data differentiating, within an age group, social activity. So far, from what I've read, health (including pre-exsisting conditions) and exposure (which includes personal protection use and isolation) to the virus are the most important factors for the virus, and, the younger the person, the more important exposure becomes.
I guess these young people should wear more masks.
Has anyone ever said children cant be harmed by it? Statistically children rarely contract and are at even less risk from Covid than they are the flu. This is not disputed by anyone as far as I know.
It's not that children are immune its that early evidence and some later support arguments are basically trying to make children out as totally safe. It's a near repeat of the same "the under 60s are safe" news that we heard before. It took months to really show that those younger are at just as much risk and can still develop life long damage to the lungs and other organs.
The risk is we treat children as "safe" and suddenly we find out that several generations are suddenly blighted with small percentage,s but significant numbers of people with life long damage to lungs and other body organs. Those are the kinds of thing that can very much damage an economy and health system.
Overread wrote: It's not that children are immune its that early evidence and some later support arguments are basically trying to make children out as totally safe. It's a near repeat of the same "the under 60s are safe" news that we heard before. It took months to really show that those younger are at just as much risk and can still develop life long damage to the lungs and other organs.
The risk is we treat children as "safe" and suddenly we find out that several generations are suddenly blighted with small percentage,s but significant numbers of people with life long damage to lungs and other body organs. Those are the kinds of thing that can very much damage an economy and health system.
Do we have the data on people who suffer permanent damage from the disease but don't die from it? I'd like to see that compared to all respiratory illness that causes permanent damage so we can see what the actual overall increase in permanent lung damage is over the population. We need prospective.
Has anyone ever said children cant be armed by it? Statistically children rare contract and are at even less risk from Covid than they are the flu. This is not disputed by anyone as far as I know.
Notice. Close to 0 cases in young children. This data is pretty convincing here.
Exactly - this isn't an argument (at least, with anyone here). Thanks for referencing the CDC, as well. I understand the public health concern about unknowns, but that's why it's even more important to reference scientific sources when discussing this.
Policy makers should be looking at data and considering the risks of different options. But there are risks to children both ways, and that's what the pediatric society recommendation was getting at.
From what I have read a high degree of simple mask wearing did correlate well enough with better results and fewer infections in Japan (where they had a few blunders in other corona policies) and South Korea (who did really well from the start) despite both countries having areas with very high population density where distancing is not alway easy. When mask wearing is one of the smaller burdens (next to distancing) we can try in regard to corona then I'd rather we try wearing masks even if they are (much) less effective than hoped for. At worst they can lead to people touching their faces less in public if they follow a strict protocol or just use them as a "reminder" to not do that while outside.
It's a pandemic and we don't have a "control group" or 100% independent variables.
If it's an argument about awareness of the virus then that is a different issue. Becoming more aware also can help prevent a pandemic. South Korea and Japan had much more effective early tracing of contacts, how it could have spread and could get in touch with those contacts earlier. They had these measures in effectively from day 1. In the UK its still not working effectively, only about 25% of those infected are contacted Masks are also a common thing to wear in Asian countries because of pollution levels (which are also better at filtering out fine particles. Hence the argument that there was a large number of people wearing masks during the pandemic could simply be attributed to a large number of people already wearing masks before the pandemic and people just carried on as normal. However in these countries it was used as a package of measures to go into 'lock down' the country. In the UK face coverings (not proper masks) are being sold as the way get out of the lock down. That's despite that many people aren't used to wearing them, or handling them properly and that face coverings (not medical masks) have no real evidence in actual infection scenarios (other than the assumption that less mouth/nose spray means less infection which definitely hasn't been proven because no one knows the viral load you need to become infected). As such in a perverse manner they are not being sold as an awareness of the virus, they are being sold as awareness of its safe if you wear them. Unlike the former method which makes people more wary and careful, the UK approach will make people less wary more inclined to worry about the virus and that ultimately means other measures (like keeping your distance) will be ignored because you are safe. Ultimately that opens up a huge risk of reinfection of the populace and we can see that already happening in the UK, there are now numerous areas where there are spikes of infections (and these are just the ones detected, without large scale random sampling there will be others that are missed). Hence why I would recommend that for the the UK (especially England) you avoid going to shops as much as possible because I feat the consequences of a mass return to normal.
It's a pandemic and we don't have a "control group" or 100% independent variables.
This isn't quite true, there have been controlled studies of the impacts of water borne virus infections of masks vs non-masks (measured during flu seasons etc just not specifically on COVID19). It's why the scientific advice can be confusing. The population studies show at best weak benefits from using mask for the wider populace (and very strong benefit in medical centres). The absolute studies of water transmitted through masks (not the virus note) show strongly that it reduces water particles transmitted. The two issues can't yet be reconciled, but I'd tend to err on the side of population studies because it represents the greatest risk scenario and plan according to this, whereas the UK (particularly England) is working on the best case scenario of using masks...
I think the argument is functionally "How many avoidably dead children are we good with"?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory or hyperbolic, just getting down to the core of the argument. What percentage of children will get Coronavirus if schools reopen, and what percentage of those will die, and are we good with that? As long as most people assume it's someone else's kids dying, I'm pretty sure it's at least 2%.
I personally don't think schools should reopen until there is a vaccine, or unless we can determine the number of children who die from school reopening is less than will avoidably die from other factors (I know some percentage of children will die from not going to school due to various factors like domestic violence and malnutrition). And of course, kids don't live in a magic bubble - those schools have teachers and janitors and administrators who will catch it, and children come home to families, and so on. No - my vote is not until a vaccine.
Imagine what life in the US could have been like if our country's leadership had mandated masks and lockdowns in February - we could be returning to normal by now.
Ouze wrote: I think the argument is functionally "How many avoidably dead children are we good with"?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory or hyperbolic, just getting down to the core of the argument. What percentage of children will get Coronavirus if schools reopen, and what percentage of those will die, and are we good with that? As long as most people assume it's someone else's kids dying, I'm pretty sure it's at least 2%.
I personally don't think schools should reopen until there is a vaccine, or unless we can determine the number of children who die from school reopening is less than will avoidably die from other factors (I know some percentage of children will die from not going to school due to various factors like domestic violence and malnutrition). And of course, kids don't live in a magic bubble - those schools have teachers and janitors and administrators who will catch it, and children come home to families, and so on. No - my vote is not until a vaccine.
Imagine what life in the US could have been like if our country's leadership had mandated masks and lockdowns in February - we could be returning to normal by now.
Imagine if america didnt elect a loon who couldnt handle a lice outbreak in a school let alone a country.
Ouze wrote: I think the argument is functionally "How many avoidably dead children are we good with"?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory or hyperbolic, just getting down to the core of the argument. What percentage of children will get Coronavirus if schools reopen, and what percentage of those will die, and are we good with that? As long as most people assume it's someone else's kids dying, I'm pretty sure it's at least 2%.
I personally don't think schools should reopen until there is a vaccine, or unless we can determine the number of children who die from school reopening is less than will avoidably die from other factors (I know some percentage of children will die from not going to school due to various factors like domestic violence and malnutrition). And of course, kids don't live in a magic bubble - those schools have teachers and janitors and administrators who will catch it, and children come home to families, and so on. No - my vote is not until a vaccine.
IMO that is an unrealistic and unreasonable position.
A larger % of children would die of flu if we reopen schools from influenza if schools reopen but we never consider shutting down schools because influenza exists. When it comes to teachers...they also aren't at a very significant risk ether. The average age of teachers in this country is low 40's - not a particularly dangerous age to be. In any case - wouldn't it be a better idea to have kids go to school and have teachers teach from home?
Has anyone ever said children cant be armed by it? Statistically children rare contract and are at even less risk from Covid than they are the flu. This is not disputed by anyone as far as I know.
Notice. Close to 0 cases in young children. This data is pretty convincing here.
Exactly - this isn't an argument (at least, with anyone here). Thanks for referencing the CDC, as well. I understand the public health concern about unknowns, but that's why it's even more important to reference scientific sources when discussing this.
Policy makers should be looking at data and considering the risks of different options. But there are risks to children both ways, and that's what the pediatric society recommendation was getting at.
The policy makers are cherry-picking data to justify their political decisions, not examining it.
It’s really easy to conflate a small number of deaths and likely much larger number of lifelong health issues with none at all when you believe it will only affect other people’s kids, and other kids’ parents.
I dont get how this is an argument
It doesnt matter is only 2% of kids can get it. Because those 2% can still go on to give it to others. and even "Low 40s" ignores the older teachers.
We should at this moment, be looking at ways to decrease any an all unnecessary contact that can be avoided.
It should be distance learning with accomodations made for those who do not have internet, such as packets and prerecorded lessons on DVDs or something.
Has anyone ever said children cant be armed by it? Statistically children rare contract and are at even less risk from Covid than they are the flu. This is not disputed by anyone as far as I know.
Notice. Close to 0 cases in young children. This data is pretty convincing here.
Exactly - this isn't an argument (at least, with anyone here). Thanks for referencing the CDC, as well. I understand the public health concern about unknowns, but that's why it's even more important to reference scientific sources when discussing this.
Policy makers should be looking at data and considering the risks of different options. But there are risks to children both ways, and that's what the pediatric society recommendation was getting at.
The policy makers are cherry-picking data to justify their political decisions, not examining it.
It’s really easy to conflate a small number of deaths and likely much larger number of lifelong health issues with none at all when you believe it will only affect other people’s kids, and other kids’ parents.
That is sadly how many people in the US think, things happen to other people, not me
My Cousin had to deal with a kid, dropped off by a parent who knew the kid had it, because they had to go to work.
This isnt a joke people, take this seriously
There are 6million kids with asthma in the US. The CDC has also been pretty clear that they want maximum safety measures taken and don’t know much about how badly this disease will affect children. Saying “it’s just like the flu” has been shown wrong again and again.
The problem here isn’t balancing the safety of the kids with the best result, mitigating the worst blah blah blah. It is literally the BoE telling you to put your kids in the virus hotbox or they’ll shut down education completely.
I have family who are teachers. They had to threaten a strike to get their school to consider distance learning...or even wiping down the damn tables between periods.
Future War Cultist wrote: We’re seeing what happens when you politicise a virus playing out in front of us.
Well,
When the response to the Virus is clearly driven by politics and economics, rather than rationale, it becomes political
Not to mention, people are starting to realize that, poltics affect every facet of our lives now and isnt something that happens in november every 2 years.
Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.
Does this mean we just go back to school without adhering to some level of safety? No. Of course, precautions must be taken and reasonable steps need to happen to mitigate the spread.
Most schools requires students to either walk through metal detectors or be wanded... it won't take much to take their temperature at the door either.
Frankly, the kids are way more at risks for other diseases than covid19.
If I had my druthers, I'd have schools employ both in-school and online classes where the students are at the school building part-time. Stagger the classes so that the overlaps are mitigated. I think that should be the new normal, avoid scenarios in cramming bodies in one locations sardine-like.
hotsauceman1 wrote: I dont get how this is an argument
It doesnt matter is only 2% of kids can get it. Because those 2% can still go on to give it to others. and even "Low 40s" ignores the older teachers.
We should at this moment, be looking at ways to decrease any an all unnecessary contact that can be avoided.
It should be distance learning with accomodations made for those who do not have internet, such as packets and prerecorded lessons on DVDs or something.
You know that logging or roofing much more dangerous than being a teacher during corona virus season...those people still go to work because it is their choice and they have to make a living. You let the market sort things out maybe going forward teachers will tend to be younger with healither immune systems - the positions will get filled.
We have an obesity epidemic in this country but you can still buy sugary drinks...You have to be realistic about this...if your goal is saving lives instead of protecting peoples freedoms - I can think of a lot better ways to save lives. Like if you banned cigarettes and drinks with over 5g of sugar in them youd save millions upon millions of lives and everyone could still leave their homes. Yet...we aren't doing those things.
I'd really expect those things over shutting down peoples lives / stunting social and physical development of children (not to mention their education quality)/ destroying the social wellbeing of an entire populace - to prevent some (lots of) deaths which no one can actually claim aren't inevitable anyways - because no one know if a vaccine will ever be very effective against this thing or what time frame it will arrive in.
Ouze wrote: I think the argument is functionally "How many avoidably dead children are we good with"?
I think Sandy Hook taught us the answer to that.
As long as they are someone else's kids. Grim.
My area has not decided what to do yet, and I have heard many options including partial days, rotating grades, extended hours season, and a classroom/digital combined approach. There has also been talk about doing nothing different.
Ouze wrote: I think the argument is functionally "How many avoidably dead children are we good with"?
I think Sandy Hook taught us the answer to that.
As long as they are someone else's kids. Grim.
My area has not decided what to do yet, and I have heard many options including partial days, rotating grades, extended hours season, and a classroom/digital combined approach. There has also been talk about doing nothing different.
Our area is looking into either a "hybrid" system with 2 days a week in the class (the rest at home), full time online learning, or full time homeschooling with support from the district. I am putting both of mine in online schools that are accredited and well established. I don't expect my school district to successfully generate a whole online curriculum in the span of 6 weeks.
Some friends of ours from California received the paperwork to send their kids to school for the next school year and included was a nice waiver to release the school district from any liability if their child dies from COVID. They too are putting their kids in online k-12 schooling.
Xenomancers wrote: You know that logging or roofing much more dangerous than being a teacher during corona virus season...those people still go to work because it is their choice and they have to make a living.
What an absolutely inane argument. "No job is really dangerous, as long as it's safer than some of the most dangerous jobs we have"? What do you even say to that?
Maybe people shouldn't have to risk death in a $25,000 a year job so they don't starve in allegedly one of the wealthiest countries in the world?
Roofing and Logging cannot be done without being there
However, Teaching can be done online and has been done online over the last several years.
You are not asking for your freedom to work and make a living.
You are asking the freedom to die.
People should not be afraid of going to work and dying when that wasnt the option before.
Whatr we should be doing is demanding the government do its damn job and handle this.
Missouri came up with the best way to make sure that everyone stays safe: Just have the parents sign an indemnity waiver, so that when their kids die they can't sue the district.
Some friends of ours from California received the paperwork to send their kids to school for the next school year and included was a nice waiver to release the school district from any liability if their child dies from COVID. They too are putting their kids in online k-12 schooling.
Nothing says your kids are safe like a liability waiver
Any UK Dakkites noticed an increase in mask usage yet? The vast majority of our customers are still bare faced, and even some of the few that do cover are not wearing them properly(best one so far this week was an older guy who walked around the shop before coming to the counter, told me what he was after and then put on his mask)
Laughing Man wrote: Missouri came up with the best way to make sure that everyone stays safe: Just have the parents sign an indemnity waiver, so that when their kids die they can't sue the district.
Laughing Man wrote: Missouri came up with the best way to make sure that everyone stays safe: Just have the parents sign an indemnity waiver, so that when their kids die they can't sue the district.
Sounds like the free market fixed Corona.
Sigh.
At that point it would be more humane to let them play russian Roulette....
You know that logging or roofing much more dangerous than being a teacher during corona virus season...those people still go to work because it is their choice and they have to make a living.
A few things to consider:
1) Logging/Roofing didn't just get more dangerous overnight due to a situation beyond your control.
2) Not everyone is a logger nor a roofer. In fact the majority are not in either of those professions nor many others of greater risk.
And yet teachers are far more common and the risk to them grew almost overnight with Corona. You can compare the relative dangers to other industries, but it overlooks that this danger is a new thing that has just appeared. You can bet if logging, roofing or any other industry got magically dangerous overnight that many of the more sensible would be pausing and going. "You know I'm not going to go logging in a hurricane, I'll wait until its over. Sure I won't make money, but I've a greater chance of surviving and being productive when its all over." Rather than taking a serious increase in risk that, even if they survive, they might well have long lasting injuries that might prevent them from working in the long term.
Furthermore the more people who go to work and who return to "normal life" the greater the risk becomes. The very act of trying to push back against Corona makes it stronger. The very act of "giving in" and going into isolation, reducing contact, taking precautions and generally slowing/shutting things down actually weakens its risk factors dramatically. Better yet, as proven by several countries, if you can take enough measures and track and trace you can push things to a point where your greatest risk are those who are fully off-grid and people from other nations. Ergo you actually reach a point where your general population is far safer to go back to work medium to, hopefully, long term .
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There are 6million kids with asthma in the US. The CDC has also been pretty clear that they want maximum safety measures taken and don’t know much about how badly this disease will affect children. Saying “it’s just like the flu” has been shown wrong again and again.
And the VP has been openly saying that "the CDC should not dictate schools opening back up".
It’s a well-known risk in logging that a felled tree may crush your parents and leave your child with long term lung damage that prevents him from living a normal life. And it’s still such a popular profession.
Changing gears a bit - here's why everyone should be masking it up in indoor public spaces. Two hairstylist tested positive after cutting over a hundred clients' hair, and seemingly didn't infect any:
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There are 6million kids with asthma in the US. The CDC has also been pretty clear that they want maximum safety measures taken and don’t know much about how badly this disease will affect children. Saying “it’s just like the flu” has been shown wrong again and again.
And the VP has been openly saying that "the CDC should not dictate schools opening back up".
I caught up on the news cycle and see now why this issue was so polarizing to try to discuss. It's a shame it became political fodder (not here, but in general) as there really are going to be downstream consequences, like an increased education gap, from the full-remote option.
Ah well... not much chance of having a good, honest debate about it with you-know-who weighing in...
RiTides wrote: Changing gears a bit - here's why everyone should be masking it up in indoor public spaces. Two hairstylist tested positive after cutting over a hundred clients' hair, and seemingly didn't infect any..
I remember this. The article doesn't mention that the business, on its own accord, had contact information for every client, so that contract tracing could be performed.
Pretty obviously, you can't do this for every indoor (or outdoor) gathering (eg. pubs, sports, rallies, protests). Some businesses (eg. appointments) routinely have contact information, but others do not (eg. stores, restaurants).
ced1106 wrote: Specking of contract tracing, contact tracers in NYC were told not to ask CoVid victims if they attended a protest. NYC had a spike in cases in young people in July.
If the George Floyd protests had caused a spike in Covid cases, you would have seen a spike in June, not July.
Instead of this:
You would see this:
Lets put aside the political element - that leadership in NYC is pushing mask wearing, and leaderships in other states - like Oklahoma* - are not. NYC saw almost half a million infections and had 32,000 people die within about a month or so due to this. People in NYC are wearing masks because they don't have the luxury of pretending it is a hoax. The reason you didn't see a spike is due to that more than any other factor - the people who had seen polio were the first to line up for vaccines. \
*Although, in a news update dripping with karma, the Governor of Oklahoma tested positive for Covid today. This is someone with great power to directly preserve the lives of his constituents and whom chose not to to score red points. Removed - BrookM
Well, lets look at it this way. My wife is a teacher, and while she and my 5 year old son will be at school this year, my immune-compromized mother will be watching my 3yo daughter.
So if either of my wife or son get sick with C19 at school (the same school) they can easily spread it through my daughter to my 66 year old mother who is recovering from bone cancer, along with my 65yo father.
If I get sick at work, does she have to quarantine from school for at least two weeks? Are those sick days she has to burn? How many times might she have to do that in this coming year?
Unfortunately those with an agenda to pursue will refuse to believe that. And they sometimes don’t even believe video evidence when presented to them so statistics have no chance.
It's almost like there's a direct correlation between having morons for leaders and droves of people getting sick and/or dead for no god damn reason whatsoever. It's not even partisan at this point. There are Red and Blue governors in the US who have behaved like thinking beings (Mark DeWine and Scott Wolf just to name two from opposing sides). Then you have the idiots who are telling people not to wear masks, inject bleach (which would still be laughable if it weren't so lethal), and shouting hoax.
For the life of me, the only possible explanation I can come up with is that the libs just want to ruin someone by any means necessary. Yup. That is the only explanation. There is no other possible connection between the resurgence of infections and idiotic leadership.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There are 6million kids with asthma in the US. The CDC has also been pretty clear that they want maximum safety measures taken and don’t know much about how badly this disease will affect children. Saying “it’s just like the flu” has been shown wrong again and again.
And the VP has been openly saying that "the CDC should not dictate schools opening back up".
Yeah well the VP has already shown himself to be totally clueless about viruses and epidemics so him saying that is excelent proof CDC SHOULD be dictating.
Xenomancers wrote: You know that logging or roofing much more dangerous than being a teacher during corona virus season...those people still go to work because it is their choice and they have to make a living.
Annnnddd.. onto the ignore list. What an utterly ridiculous comment to make, I don't even know where to start with it.
AegisGrimm wrote:Well, lets look at it this way. My wife is a teacher, and while she and my 5 year old son will be at school this year, my immune-compromized mother will be watching my 3yo daughter.
My family are going to have to make a similar hard choice.
My mother is immuno-compromised and currently helps with childcare for my nephew. That ends in September if he goes back to school and estimated infection rates are anything like they are now.
I know there are the stats that show very low additional infection from opening schools when the infection rates are still high, but those few percent, those few people dying are still someone's mother, someone's grandmother or grandfather.
Xenomancers wrote: You know that logging or roofing much more dangerous than being a teacher during corona virus season...those people still go to work because it is their choice and they have to make a living.
Annnnddd.. onto the ignore list. What an utterly ridiculous comment to make, I don't even know where to start with it.
i know:
the fact that you have to compare Covid -19 to some of the most dangerous jobs to get a favourable comparison for your position, in a country where worker protection is at best described as rudimentary for a developped country and which will be inevitably filled with the lower class of said society which allready is hit harder disproportionally allready, should make you question some things in said country?
It's almost like there's a direct correlation between having morons for leaders and droves of people getting sick and/or dead for no god damn reason whatsoever.
TBF, you stated the reason in the first half of your sentence
Though it does remind me not to let people who didn't vote complain about shutdowns. They threw up their hands and said 'someone else decide!' when it mattered, I'm not going to listen to them complain about the consequences.
AegisGrimm wrote: Well, lets look at it this way. My wife is a teacher, and while she and my 5 year old son will be at school this year, my immune-compromized mother will be watching my 3yo daughter.
So if either of my wife or son get sick with C19 at school (the same school) they can easily spread it through my daughter to my 66 year old mother who is recovering from bone cancer, along with my 65yo father.
If I get sick at work, does she have to quarantine from school for at least two weeks? Are those sick days she has to burn? How many times might she have to do that in this coming year?
First of all, that's an awful situation.
I share that concern- what happens when one of the students tests positive for COVID 19? Does the school mandate everyone in that classroom quarantine for 2 weeks?
If so... what happens the 2nd, or the 3rd time that year? We're not talking deaths here, just infected enough to test positive. Will it be any less jarring than doing elearning, like they've been doing for a semester, than losing 6 or 8 weeks of education at random to reasonable, safe quarantines?
And when your teachers get sick... who will teach their classes the 2 weeks, to several months it will take them to recover? It was already hard to find substitute teachers.
Laughing Man wrote: The states that are currently experiencing spikes also don't correlate with states that had mass protests.
California, Georgia and Minnesota all had spikes in cases this month and they all had large protests last month. California is seeing enough of a steady increase to reinstating lockdown. What is the evidence that shows there’s no link between the increase in cases and the protests in those states? Large gatherings of people are large gatherings of people. I’ve yet to see any research that shows that all of the measures forbidding large crowds aren’t valid precautions against spreading the virus.
That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
RiTides wrote: That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
it also sucks for the nations as a whole, considering dead and livelong scarred people are less / not productive and a burden in many ways. And even against such an adversary that doesn't care about any politics these same people not realising their folly and still screeching at each other, branding them as the devil in person will only make it worse.
RiTides wrote: That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
RiTides wrote: That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
This.
Is a strawman.
Nobody on the left is saying that protest gatherings could not be vectors for spreading the virus, just that the BLM protests on the whole do not seem to have initiated a spike as a lot of the cities which saw widespread BLM protests have not seen a corresponding uptick in virus cases in the numbers you would expect. There are multiple possible reasons for this, such as the protests being outside, many of the protesters wearing masks etc.
Compare that to Trump's rally in Tulsa where multiple event organisers, secret service staff and Trump allies tested positive before or following the event. And at that rally Trump campaign staff were removing the stickers on seats which were meant to set up social distancing. Masks were not worn, it was an indoor event, social distancing was not observed.
Then we have locations which are driving headlong into re-opening, for purely political reasons, and seeing a huge surge in cases. Florida is seeing worse numbers now than any state since the beginning of the pandemic, for example. It is still re-opening Disney World.
My daughter did middle school via Online through an accredited online school. I will say that the workload is pretty heavy and it takes discipline and effort to keep up with the load.
In addition, the teachers are responsive when they are asked for help, so use them! Do not try to re-train yourself on subjects you are no longer familiar with and act as a tutor. Just reach out to the online teacher for help.
My daughter was on the A honor roll, but all that being said she pretty much shrugged off most of the work until the final month and did a whole semesters worth of work in one month. She had been the one who asked to go back online. It is east to fall behind and hard to catch up.
When she then transitioned back to normal school in High School, she did not seem to be behind her fellows. She actually finds High School so far to be much easier and with far less workload. She would prefer not to go back to Online school due to this AND social reasons.
Easy E - Thanks for sharing that. If all kids had parents like you, we'd be in great shape
A Town Called Malus - You just can't have it both ways with this argument. If this is true:
A Town Called Malus wrote: BLM protests on the whole do not seem to have initiated a spike as a lot of the cities which saw widespread BLM protests have not seen a corresponding uptick in virus cases in the numbers you would expect.
There are multiple possible reasons for this, such as the protests being outside, many of the protesters wearing masks etc.
Then we should further investigate the reasons no spike was caused, and try to apply it to schools.
If it's Not true, then we likely should abandon school reopening ideas altogether.
Either extreme is a logical fallacy. I intentionally said "extreme", to avoid painting everyone with the same brush. But if you strongly defend one on the basis of science, and turn around and strongly oppose the other, you are not being intellectually honest.
I was hoping to have a conversation about tradeoffs - for reasonable people who assume both can be risky, the question is how much mitigation can allow us to consider proceeding for the societal benefit (systemic change in policing for one, avoiding learning loss and not widening the education gap between socioeconomic groups for the other). But people are too entrenched to have that discussion and default to political tribalism...
As a parent, I'm just sick of it. I want to talk about how to proceed... not rehash the same damn fight over and over trying to score political points for the election. It's too late in the year to effect what schools, teachers and parents need to figure out now.
gorgon wrote: Um...don't think it's really a secret at this point that being outside is less risk than being indoors without especially good ventilation.
And that holding classes outside with all the students and staff wearing masks and practising social distancing is not viable.
Lets say you have a class of 20 kids. Teacher is at the front, 2 metres away from the front row. Each kid is 2 metres apart from their neighbours. So we end up with a 10m x 8m square of the kids (actually a bit larger as the kids have dimensions of their own). So the kids at the back are 10m away from the teacher and whiteboard etc. The teacher is having to try and clearly project their voice, through a mask and outside, to kids 10m away. And that is assuming that the weather permits them being outside in the first place.
So look into outdoor classrooms. Set up tents on the football field. I'm willing to get creative to consider options for not losing 1 1/2 years of school... For many kids, this will be way more detrimental in the long run, especially for at-risk communities.
Edit: Ninja'ed. Obviously it is viable in some places, and likely not in others. But the default is going to have a real negative outcome for many communities. We should be turning over every rock to try to solve this... and likely have a range of options ready to go depending on the viral caseload in the community, and be ready to adapt if things change.
RiTides wrote: So look into outdoor classrooms. Set up tents on the football field. I'm willing to get creative to consider options for not losing 1 1/2 years of school... For many kids, this will be way more detrimental in the long run, especially for at-risk communities.
A tent is an enclosed space. Unless you have the sides open in which case you are still vulnerable to weather conditions such as wind, cold etc.
Rain on the roof of a tent, for example, is very loud.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Outdoor instructions might work in summer but once winter starts...Studying under snow sure is fun.
tneva82 - You're right, of course, but we're in summer now and it's a start. Where I live, it's actually easier to do this in the cooler months.
A Town Called Malus - So because of that, are you just ignoring the achievement gap issue? We know disadvantaged students are going to suffer from online only. What if you make online an option, and offer in-person instruction to a reduced class size as a result?
Just going with the default is ignoring a host of issues and going to be terrible for kids already at risk...
Sadly, this issue has no great answers. Only a choice between which bad answer you are going to go with.
My local community did discuss using the Football and track area for classrooms as well. However, we soon found that even our small High School ran out of outdoor space really fast.
I have a strong feeling there will be limited grades, and rotational "on" days, and online off-days. Students with the right attitude, at-home structures, and parental involvement will be fine. Everyone else will be at a major disadvantage..... just like now only worse.
If schools can’t contain cold, flu and head lice outbreaks, how in the feth are they going to contain this?
The only reason that fat bastard is pushing for schools to return is to try and pretend that this whole pandemic isn’t happening and to boost his election chances. Don’t pretend it’s anything else.
RiTides wrote: tneva82 - You're right, of course, but we're in summer now and it's a start. Where I live, it's actually easier to do this in the cooler months.
A Town Called Malus - So because of that, are you just ignoring the achievement gap issue? We know disadvantaged students are going to suffer from online only. What if you make online an option, and offer in-person instruction to a reduced class size as a result?
Just going with the default is ignoring a host of issues and going to be terrible for kids already at risk...
We may need to face up to the possibility that there's no good answer to this problem, sadly. In Scotland, for example, we've been taking a very cautious approach tot he virus and re-opening (some might say too cautious since we're currently sitting at 2 confirmed CV deaths in the last 7 days and about 700 confirmed infected in the population as a whole). Yet in schools the approach is basically ignore any CV problems, hope they've gone away by mid-August and go back to teaching as normal. That's after the initial plans for hybrid teaching or socially distanced attendance were criticised as being unworkable.
The problem is, even with a mix of in-person and online learning, you still need a teacher to be on hand at some point to teach the kids online. So, assuming you can adequately identify the disadvantaged kids, get them to the school and not annoy the parents of the kids who aren't going to be getting face-to-face teaching, you're still looking at needing a lot of extra time from teachers and I'm not sure that's really going to be the best thing for the quality of their teaching. The whole reason the UK seems to have changed its approach and gone with regular teaching from next academic year is because the logistics of doing anything else simply don't work and the prospect of doing hybrid/online teaching for a long period of time once the kids return was seen as a non-starter.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Outdoor instructions might work in summer but once winter starts...Studying under snow sure is fun.
And that all depends on where you are. Here in Texas, trying to hold classes outside is a definite NO until at least October, if not November, due to the heat.
My wife's a teacher, and she and her school are still trying to figure out what to do as guidelines and directives change weekly. How do you handle science class and any sort of hands-on labwork? How do you spread kids out in classrooms that were already at capacity? How do you even handle all of the changes to how the school even functions with moving kids in and out of the school and the classrooms? All of the things that were routine are now thrown out the window and have to be rethought, without any extra space or additional personnel to work with.
Easy E and Slipspace - You're probably right, there's no good answer
FWC - I honestly do not care what you-know-who is on about. I care about my kids and the kids in my community. And I'm looking for solutions... but maybe there just aren't any that address all the needs. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though...
Honestly the only safe way I could see running schools would be to spend a vast amount of money and have them all boarding. Students and staff.
Students are removed from the home and thus are not a threat to industry; teachers and students are kept isolated thus if an outbreak does occur they are already lock down capable and if outbreaks happen at work or homes then it doesn't affect the school. You reduce the number of spikes to either once a term (3 times a year) once every half term (6 times a year) or once every year (one full school year).
This isn't even alien to us, there were many boarding schools that used to do just that. Of course the problem today is many are in inner urban areas without room to even put up tents let alone the rest of the required infrastructure. Even if we cracked on with it at the start of the pandemic it would be hard to rebuild the school system en-mass like that. China might be able to do it; I don't think the UK could afford it nor have the right building infrastructure in place. One thing we have to remember is that China is good with insane emergancy building because they are currently insane with building in general - they've got the whole infrastructure there to build fast and on a large scale. It just needs funding and redirection.
Anyway that would be one suggestion - boarding schools.
RiTides wrote: tneva82 - You're right, of course, but we're in summer now and it's a start. Where I live, it's actually easier to do this in the cooler months.
A Town Called Malus - So because of that, are you just ignoring the achievement gap issue? We know disadvantaged students are going to suffer from online only. What if you make online an option, and offer in-person instruction to a reduced class size as a result?
Just going with the default is ignoring a host of issues and going to be terrible for kids already at risk...
Forget snow. What happens when it rains?-) books and water do not mix well.
RiTides wrote: tneva82 - You're right, of course, but we're in summer now and it's a start. Where I live, it's actually easier to do this in the cooler months.
A Town Called Malus - So because of that, are you just ignoring the achievement gap issue? We know disadvantaged students are going to suffer from online only. What if you make online an option, and offer in-person instruction to a reduced class size as a result?
Just going with the default is ignoring a host of issues and going to be terrible for kids already at risk...
Forget snow. What happens when it rains?-) books and water do not mix well.
RiTides wrote: That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
What I don't get and you see it on full display here, is the desire to make this a left/right issue.
It's not a left/right issue. It's a common sense/morons issue, and it's still not partisan. There are people on both sides of the political line who don't want schools to reopen because they're afraid it'll be a disaster and there are people on both sides of the political line who can probably figure out the very obvious reasons the Anti-Lockdown and BLM protests didn't cause infection to spread. Left and right are not the problem. The problem is populist leadership in a particular subset of executive officials who are at this point undeniably detached from reality and completely incapable of viewing the world through anything but an electoral lens.
And the sad part is how this entire disaster (at least in the US) has done nothing but highlight long standing societal grievances and point to how they're real problems and rather than talking about how tackle those problems for the present and the future, we mostly have to deal with the mind boggling reality that there are people like the governor of Georgia who has been watching the virus resurge in a few states and decided to shackle others and ban any requiring of wearing masks. But no, 'both sides are bad'. That's the lesson some people are apparently concerned with and I find nothing intellectual about it and personally feel rather shackled myself that it's still the banner standard people are hiding behind because they're afraid of taking sides and pointing at the obvious problem that's plain for all to see.
RiTides wrote: That's what I don't get, and you see it on full display in this thread:
Folks on the extreme "left" argue that protest gatherings DO NOT spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WILL.
Folks on the extreme "right" argue that protest gatherings DO spread the virus, but that things like opening schools definitely WON'T.
The truth is likely, imo, in the middle - that both are events that could spread the virus. But if we learn that protests don't very much, maybe we can apply that to schools (like outdoor instruction!). And if we learn that they do in a substantial way, of course schools are going to be problematic, no matter what mitigation we take.
Everyone is so entrenched in their ideological foxhole that they cherry pick evidence, to blame what they oppose for the virus and exonerate what they support. It just sucks for any kind of intellectual discussion
This.
Is a strawman.
Nobody on the left is saying that protest gatherings could not be vectors for spreading the virus, just that the BLM protests on the whole do not seem to have initiated a spike as a lot of the cities which saw widespread BLM protests have not seen a corresponding uptick in virus cases in the numbers you would expect. There are multiple possible reasons for this, such as the protests being outside, many of the protesters wearing masks etc.
Compare that to Trump's rally in Tulsa where multiple event organisers, secret service staff and Trump allies tested positive before or following the event. And at that rally Trump campaign staff were removing the stickers on seats which were meant to set up social distancing. Masks were not worn, it was an indoor event, social distancing was not observed.
Then we have locations which are driving headlong into re-opening, for purely political reasons, and seeing a huge surge in cases. Florida is seeing worse numbers now than any state since the beginning of the pandemic, for example. It is still re-opening Disney World.
So the following videos showing protests in which not everyone is wearing a mask or exercising social distancing aren't causing spikes in the spread of covid19? Because if these behaviors aren't triggering meaningful spikes then mask wearing is effective enough for us to reopen businesses and schools. The most plausible explanation I can come up with is that increase in cases in CA and GA are fueled more by all the people not participating in the protests being extremely lax in taking any preventative measures. Maybe that's true, maybe people are being more conscientious about protecting themselves when they decide to go to protests but they're much more relaxed and lazy about maintaining those measures during normal routines.
Even if that's the case I still don't understand having the mayor of our largest city going on CNN and explaining that parades, concerts and other mass gatherings are cancelled/forbidden at least until September but political protests will be allowed because we live in historic times. I don't see how medical science could support that policy. If there is no way to make parades and outdoor concerts safe enough to go on without creating a public health hazard how can it be possible for large political protests to not cause a public health hazard? This is exactly the type of inconsistent messaging that makes it easy for people to get confused and to rationalize not taking preventative measures seriously.
We aren't getting enough clarity on the situation from officials and not enough people seem to be taking the pandemic seriously. It's either literally life or death or just a nuisance. Earlier this month I went up to VA to visit my parents because I haven't seen them since the pandemic started and VA is now on phase 3 so I went up to check on them. They live near the beach and I saw cars from Ohio, PA, GA, and NC going to the beach. Since it's phase 3 few people were wearing masks, pretty much only in stores and plenty of people wore them incorrectly. The beach was packed and people were generally acting as if there wasn't a pandemic at all. I'm thankful my parents are healthy and taking precautions but it was also crazy seeing people ignoring the pandemic.
Here in NC we're becoming more stringent as cases tick up but today I got a FEDEX delivery and the driver wasn't wearing gloves or a mask. I also received an Amazon delivery and there were 2 guys with the truck, both wore gloves but only one wore a mask. We're trying to teach our kids to continue to maintain social distancing when they're outside with other neighborhood kids but so many people that we end up interacting with seem to be oblivious to the pandemic.
Overread wrote: Anyway that would be one suggestion - boarding schools.
I could see it working in a place that already has them. Less son in any country where it's far from the norm. The US doesn't have lots of boarding schools.
Realistically, I wonder if the answer is the same as the one we're likely to get from workplaces. How much of education actually required kids to be in a classroom? It's the digital age and over here we're still operating on an education system predominantly designed for the needs of rural America 100 years ago.
Especially in the US there's too much of a habit of treating school like daycare rather than education. Kids going to school is integral to how the labor force is organized in subtle ways (no need for a sitter or anything with the kids off at class). But especially with the absolutely refusal of the electorate to make education an issue of significance in practice, I wonder if there's simply a need to redesign how education works. Having class outside is... Well that's kind of not happening given the logistical issues like those mentioned above. The education system for K-12 has been flimsy for a long time now, both in terms of meeting the needs of students and achieving the goals we supposedly want from the system. Maybe parents should finally stop expecting teachers to be a full service job* and let them be educators. Is there a more holistic model for education that is less reliant on sitting kids in front of a board for hours and generally punting their needs to someone else from all sides? Do we really need kids to be in physical schools?
*I would argue teachers are a lot like police. Everyone expects them to handle fething everything and it is kind of unfair how "everything" has become their job description.
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We aren't getting enough clarity on the situation from officials and not enough people seem to be taking the pandemic seriously. It's either literally life or death or just a nuisance. Earlier this month I went up to VA to visit my parents because I haven't seen them since the pandemic started and VA is now on phase 3 so I went up to check on them. They live near the beach and I saw cars from Ohio, PA, GA, and NC going to the beach. Since it's phase 3 few people were wearing masks, pretty much only in stores and plenty of people wore them incorrectly. The beach was packed and people were generally acting as if there wasn't a pandemic at all. I'm thankful my parents are healthy and taking precautions but it was also crazy seeing people ignoring the pandemic.
Living in VA myself, I've been kind of mind blown by how many people are wearing masks, especially because I live in the heart of what we could call 'Trump country'. The implementation of basic safety and sense has definitely been scatter shot across states and regions and I suspect resurgences in some states hinged a lot on particular mixes of behaviors. Bars have been heavily linked not just in the US but in Europe to resurgences in infection. I find it kind of bizarre that even as the news was talking about concerns that the virus was airborne last week, outside isn't really where infections are spreading. They've been spreading at parties, bars, and other mass gatherings in enclosed spaces. EDIT: Maybe. The failure to test shadow lingers over all of this, and we might soon have no data at all with how tracking infections is being hijacked by political appointees.
New York I suspect has a distinct aversion. Remember when the morgues were overflowing and they were just burning bodies to fight back the virus? Texas might be heading that way now. I think places that have already endured mass outbreaks have a very different attitude on things than the places that were just hearing about it on the news.
I suspect your right, and we're past the point of needing anything like a full lockdown. Or at least we would be, if we didn't have all the yahoos going to 'Covid parties' and people running around being general donkey-caves with their own health and the health of others. Suppose if nothing else, it'll be a great example the next time I have to explain the HIV epidemic to someone cause it's basically the same tragedy.
RiTides wrote: tneva82 - You're right, of course, but we're in summer now and it's a start. Where I live, it's actually easier to do this in the cooler months.
A Town Called Malus - So because of that, are you just ignoring the achievement gap issue? We know disadvantaged students are going to suffer from online only. What if you make online an option, and offer in-person instruction to a reduced class size as a result?
Just going with the default is ignoring a host of issues and going to be terrible for kids already at risk...
Forget snow. What happens when it rains?-) books and water do not mix well.
Forget rain, what about Terrain.
Well if we're doing in person instruction we'd have to use TLOS and obviously elementary age children would only be height 1 and we'd have to work out mixed height groups in middle school but could probably upgrade all High School students to height 2. If all students have laptops teachers would be able use indirect fire via Zoom or Google Classroom. Of course if every student has a laptop they'd have to make their internet connectivity saving throw at the beginning of each lesson. Each school will have an Internet Strength value that would degrade over time if over 50% of the students were logged in each turn. The negative moral modifiers of wearing masks and social distancing would impact the students' Engagement rolls so unless your teacher has a very high Instructional Skill you'll need to spend CP on Research Based Strategems. Hopefully you make all of your infection saving throws because failing even one will trigger the Inquisition to declare Exterminatus and end the game.
The school issue is a pretty big disaster waiting to happen, even if the younger children are fairly unlikely to suffer badly from or pass on the virus getting them into schools sets up loads of parents to gather in groups while delivering them
(and I don't believe they'll behave well while doing so, after all despite all the requests far too many rock up in cars, clog up roads, keep their engines running etc despite many, many requests not to do so)
and by the time you get to older teenagers they pretty much do seem to get and transmit it at the same rate as 'adults', although their symptoms do seem to be on the milder end
but I guess in the same way that we're asking people to go back to work (or to remain at work if they're in health/food production etc) people are just going to have to take their chances and hope a vaccine shows up fast
Englands school reopening plan for September isn't even going to ask a class/teacher to lock down if somebody tests positive, only if wo different positive tests come back in a week? (not sure of the time frame) which says to me they know there are going to be a bunch of positive tests
I really don't see how much can be done to make it much safer, other than having loads of hand wash stations (foot operated), tons of extra cleaning (if they get some extra money, nothings been said so far)
social distancing just isn't practical in most schools in the UK and once you distance you need 2-3 times the number of teachers at minimum as the class will need to split into 2-3 rooms, although if you go for old fashioned lecture style teaching a video screen might work with an less well trained live assistant to maintain discipline
If a family has a high risk member or members and kids I wonder if one or the other shouldn't move out to friends/family to give a high risk mixed household and a lower risk mixed household? but that's fraught with all sorts of difficulties
LordofHats - I actually agree with you, and sorry if my post came off too polarizing in itself, in an effort to point out things that were too polarizing! Lol
I just want to leave the partisan bickering at the door, and focus on the school problem and solutions to it. Not what you-know-who said. Not what protestors should or shouldn't have done. Just what we can learn from the data we have, and how we can most effectively move forward in teaching our kids.
On balance, for me that does not result in online only instruction. I understand those who feel that way... but as a parent, I just don't. We're fortunate enough that our kids are small, and even if they weren't, we could effectively pull off distance learning. But many families are not in our situation, and the callous dismissing of this need got my ire up.
My apologies for contributing to the bickering problem myself here. Hopefully, we can find solutions!!
Overread wrote: Anyway that would be one suggestion - boarding schools.
I could see it working in a place that already has them. Less son in any country where it's far from the norm. The US doesn't have lots of boarding schools.
Realistically, I wonder if the answer is the same as the one we're likely to get from workplaces. How much of education actually required kids to be in a classroom? It's the digital age and over here we're still operating on an education system predominantly designed for the needs of rural America 100 years ago.
Especially in the US there's too much of a habit of treating school like daycare rather than education. Kids going to school is integral to how the labor force is organized in subtle ways (no need for a sitter or anything with the kids off at class). But especially with the absolutely refusal of the electorate to make education an issue of significance in practice, I wonder if there's simply a need to redesign how education works. Having class outside is... Well that's kind of not happening given the logistical issues like those mentioned above. The education system for K-12 has been flimsy for a long time now, both in terms of meeting the needs of students and achieving the goals we supposedly want from the system. Maybe parents should finally stop expecting teachers to be a full service job* and let them be educators. Is there a more holistic model for education that is less reliant on sitting kids in front of a board for hours and generally punting their needs to someone else from all sides? Do we really need kids to be in physical schools?
*I would argue teachers are a lot like police. Everyone expects them to handle fething everything and it is kind of unfair how "everything" has become their job description.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
We aren't getting enough clarity on the situation from officials and not enough people seem to be taking the pandemic seriously. It's either literally life or death or just a nuisance. Earlier this month I went up to VA to visit my parents because I haven't seen them since the pandemic started and VA is now on phase 3 so I went up to check on them. They live near the beach and I saw cars from Ohio, PA, GA, and NC going to the beach. Since it's phase 3 few people were wearing masks, pretty much only in stores and plenty of people wore them incorrectly. The beach was packed and people were generally acting as if there wasn't a pandemic at all. I'm thankful my parents are healthy and taking precautions but it was also crazy seeing people ignoring the pandemic.
Living in VA myself, I've been kind of mind blown by how many people are wearing masks, especially because I live in the heart of what we could call 'Trump country'. The implementation of basic safety and sense has definitely been scatter shot across states and regions and I suspect resurgences in some states hinged a lot on particular mixes of behaviors. Bars have been heavily linked not just in the US but in Europe to resurgences in infection. I find it kind of bizarre that even as the news was talking about concerns that the virus was airborne last week, outside isn't really where infections are spreading. They've been spreading at parties, bars, and other mass gatherings in enclosed spaces.
New York I suspect has a distinct aversion. Remember when the morgues were overflowing and they were just burning bodies to fight back the virus? Texas might be heading that way now. I think places that have already endured mass outbreaks have a very different attitude on things than the places that were just hearing about it on the news.
I suspect your right, and we're past the point of needing anything like a full lockdown. Or at least we would be, if we didn't have all the yahoos going to 'Covid parties' and people running around being general donkey-caves with their own health and the health of others. Suppose if nothing else, it'll be a great example the next time I have to explain the HIV epidemic to someone cause it's basically the same tragedy.
The most troubling aspect to me (which I suppose is inevitable given human nature) is that as states ease restrictions on reopening businesses people treat that as an excuse to stop taking precautions instead of maintaining or increasing their focus on preventative measures. It's like people don't understand that the virus isn't going away, some states/municipalities are just doing better at restricting it's spread but as soon as populations get lax on restrictions cases go up. It's like we're in the loop of reducing infections with lockdowns, then easing lockdowns that increase the infections the lockdowns were preventing, then reinstate lockdown measures to reduce infections again, then ease those restrictions once we establish a downward trend which of course reverses the trend back to an increase. It looks like we'll just continue on this pendulum for the next 12-18 months until we hopefully have a vaccine.
Meanwhile we suffer horrific financial consequences as the reality sets in that no help is coming. A third of people struggle with rent/mortgage payments, small businesses fail, over a million people file for unemployment every week, states and municipalities struggle with budget shortfalls from dwindling tax revenue and Congress and the administration do nothing. Governors and mayors keep instituting lockdown restrictions and hoping that things magically get better in a few weeks or months but there's not plan to mitigate the problems that stem from the restrictions.
You're 100% right on the teachers and police analogy. We have underfunded and understaffed schools and ask teachers to do more to make up for it and we have underfunded or nonexistent social, health and education programs and send in the police to deal with the fallout.
Online instruction is the best choice for schools to battle the pandemic but there are real negative consequences to that choice. The achievement gap will widen, struggling and at risk students will fall further behind. Learning gaps are like compound interest they increase over time. We already have too many students that don't have a stable home environment conducive for learning and that don't reach grade level proficiency each year. Most districts dont have resources to help kids back or provide additional instruction to get every student on grade level so kids just get passed on each year ready or not. There's not time built into the schedule to close those gaps. The pandemic is going to cause a lot of students to fall behind and if that's the sacrifice we have to make to keep them alive and healthy then we need a plan to address the fallout.
RiTides wrote: LordofHats - I actually agree with you, and sorry if my post came off too polarizing in itself, in an effort to point out these arguments that were too polarizing! Lol
Meh, I doubt I have to explain that I can be an donkey-cave when I think people are being donkey-caves. Not the first time I've misjudged someone's intent. Won't be the last.
Just what we can learn from the data we have, and how we can most effectively more forward in teaching our kids.
Part of me does wonder if the data is useful (and that is sad). We've had testing problems across the world since this started and when it comes to viruses and infections, it's easy for things to slip notice. It's possible we're all missing something important stemming from testing failures. To which the only practical response is to use the data we have but damn if the circumstances don't cast a long shadow.
On balance, for me that does not result in online only instruction.
I don't know if that's a long term answer either. I'm not sure how a teacher can ensure engagement when kids are miles away at all times. I'm kind of trying to imagine a mixed model in my head. Less time in class, but the time in class is more targeted. Maybe I liked college too much though cause the concept basically reflects the way colleges handle student work loads (you do the work at home and class time is really for more targeted instruction and Q&A). Socialization is important in schooling too and I'm not sure good results can be achieved there without getting kids and teachers together in one place. As an advantage though, it would let teachers more selectively target struggling students who need help and facilitate high achievers with more advanced work that can challenge them. The system would have more flexibility and could switch to 'online only' in crisis situations before switching back to normality in the aftermath.
There might simply be the easier solution of hire more damn teachers, reduce class size, and stop defunding education but I'm skeptical such common sense solutions will suddenly excite people now when they've failed to do so for fifty years. Everyone wants solutions to problems to be 'inventive' these days, or they don't seem to throw any support behind them.
I definitely like a lot of things about the mixed model, and it lends itself well to older students for just the reason you mention - it prepares them for the college model. It also has the benefit, like you say, of letting you quickly switch gears to more in-person or online instruction depending on conditions.
Unfortunately, all of this results in more work for teachers... hiring more and reducing class sizes would be a wonder (and I say that as a former teacher - class size was, by far, the number one factor in how effectively I could teach). But since we're in mid-July, hiring is probably past... the staff schools have already hired is probably all they will have for this next semester at least.
RiTides wrote: LordofHats - I actually agree with you, and sorry if my post came off too polarizing in itself, in an effort to point out these arguments that were too polarizing! Lol
Meh, I doubt I have to explain that I can be an donkey-cave when I think people are being donkey-caves. Not the first time I've misjudged someone's intent. Won't be the last.
Just what we can learn from the data we have, and how we can most effectively more forward in teaching our kids.
Part of me does wonder if the data is useful (and that is sad). We've had testing problems across the world since this started and when it comes to viruses and infections, it's easy for things to slip notice. It's possible we're all missing something important stemming from testing failures. To which the only practical response is to use the data we have but damn if the circumstances don't cast a long shadow.
On balance, for me that does not result in online only instruction.
I don't know if that's a long term answer either. I'm not sure how a teacher can ensure engagement when kids are miles away at all times. I'm kind of trying to imagine a mixed model in my head. Less time in class, but the time in class is more targeted. Maybe I liked college too much though cause the concept basically reflects the way colleges handle student work loads (you do the work at home and class time is really for more targeted instruction and Q&A). Socialization is important in schooling too and I'm not sure good results can be achieved there without getting kids and teachers together in one place. As an advantage though, it would let teachers more selectively target struggling students who need help and facilitate high achievers with more advanced work that can challenge them. The system would have more flexibility and could switch to 'online only' in crisis situations before switching back to normality in the aftermath.
There might simply be the easier solution of hire more damn teachers, reduce class size, and stop defunding education but I'm skeptical such common sense solutions will suddenly excite people now when they've failed to do so for fifty years. Everyone wants solutions to problems to be 'inventive' these days, or they don't seem to throw any support behind them.
Online education can be effective it's just very difficult to make it effective for everyone or those who need it the most. To have successful outcomes for students via online education we need students to have 3 core things, devices, connectivity and good home environment. School districts should be able to make sure every student has devices and connectivity but that can still be difficult in some places but schools really fix poor home environments for students. If students don't have stability, encouragement and accountability at home it's practically impossible for teachers to create a good environment for them the way that teachers can in physical classrooms. Similar problems are faced with students who need accommodations at school, it's very difficult for teachers to provide those accommodations through a computer screen and not all parents/guardians are capable or willing to provide it. We need two plans, one for students that can and will participate in online learning and one for students that can't or won't. Unfortunately it will likely be difficult to make up that ground with the latter students until the pandemic is over and at that point there'll also be issues of social stigma of students who age wise should be 1 or 2 grades ahead of where they are in terms of proficiency.
The guidelines were non-binding and school districts have all responded by saying they won't be following them. It seems to be nothing but an attempt to score political points. A disgusting attempt, but still. Another example of how shoddy responses to the pandemic have been across different levels of government and in different places. At least these nuts had the sense to leave their stunt a stunt, even if it's now backfiring on them.
The opposite actually happened around here, I think. When the pandemic first started no one wore masks or did social distancing. It's a rural area and you can't park a car without seeing a dozen pick ups with Trump/Pence stickers on the bumpers, so I expecting total disaster. Something happened though cause a bunch of businesses put up signs saying "we are responding to local leadership and requesting that all customers wear masks inside and maintain social distancing." And people freaking did it.
Local leadership around here has flabbergasted me in the past. The politics my county can be well described as 'Good ol'boy' politics. We even have our own county Republican party, distinct from the national Republican party because the area is super insular and it's basically the people who've lived here for generations vs everyone else. Development spreading into the area from Charlottesville, VA is the #1 political drama in county elections. I leave it to the imagination how dumb all that gets. But someone manned the feth up around here, used their brain, and managed to get everyone on board with trying to not die, so kudos to them for that.
I think there is also a big reason why no one is banning prostests.
Can you imagine how, if during this time. someone would ban a protest? That would be one of the worst things in the world and just prove their points.
Local leadership around here has flabbergasted me in the past. The politics my county can be well described as 'Good ol'boy' politics. We even have our own county Republican party, distinct from the national Republican party because the area is super insular and it's basically the people who've lived here for generations vs everyone else. Development spreading into the area from Charlottesville, VA is the #1 political drama in county elections. I leave it to the imagination how dumb all that gets. But someone manned the feth up around here, used their brain, and managed to get everyone on board with trying to not die, so kudos to them for that.
And America likes to pretend it doesnt have royalty.....
LordofHats wrote: The opposite actually happened around here, I think. When the pandemic first started no one wore masks or did social distancing. It's a rural area and you can't park a car without seeing a dozen pick ups with Trump/Pence stickers on the bumpers, so I expecting total disaster. Something happened though cause a bunch of businesses put up signs saying "we are responding to local leadership and requesting that all customers wear masks inside and maintain social distancing." And people freaking did it.
Given the current climate, reaching out to folks at the local level is the way to go, imo.
My parents live in a rural area too, and the strategy there was to say "Look guys, if we don't all mask it up and get our caseload under control, there will be NO FOOTBALL!"
hotsauceman1 wrote: I think there is also a big reason why no one is banning prostests.
Can you imagine how, if during this time. someone would ban a protest? That would be one of the worst things in the world and just prove their points.
Oh boy I shudder at the response THAT would have had...Say something about sitting on a powder keg!
Timing for protests was rather inconvenient but what you are going to do? Tell them to wait 2+ years before protesting? That is going be taken well!
hotsauceman1 wrote: I think there is also a big reason why no one is banning prostests.
Can you imagine how, if during this time. someone would ban a protest? That would be one of the worst things in the world and just prove their points.
Local leadership around here has flabbergasted me in the past. The politics my county can be well described as 'Good ol'boy' politics. We even have our own county Republican party, distinct from the national Republican party because the area is super insular and it's basically the people who've lived here for generations vs everyone else. Development spreading into the area from Charlottesville, VA is the #1 political drama in county elections. I leave it to the imagination how dumb all that gets. But someone manned the feth up around here, used their brain, and managed to get everyone on board with trying to not die, so kudos to them for that.
And America likes to pretend it doesnt have royalty.....
You should look into the UK. They banned protests, except for those of a certain group...
from what i understand (i don't have children myself, but many friends do), the local school system is hoping to reopen depending on conditions, but still give people the option of doing distance learning.
looking at this, i can't help but think, would it be possible to perhaps draw on some of the pool of substitute teachers to help with monitoring the distance learning aspect
on certain days, or parts of the day, then have the regular teacher go over things, and then switch out with the subs who could monitor, and cover general questions while being able to check in with the a teacher as needed
Dunno about you guys, but I'd prefer waiting for safer conditions than a "whipsaw" of opening and closing again. In California, certain businesses were allowed to reopen -- only to be closed two days later. That situation is certainly worse for business owners than staying closed. Obviously, school systems don't have to worry about staying in business, but all the preparations schools have to do to reopen, as well as parents rescheduling their daily lives, goes to waste if schools close down again. Following safety guidelines, including keeping children at home, obviously has an effect on "normal" school behavior, namely learning and socializing. I guess, however, it could be seen as a way for children to learn firsthand the effects of an epidemic, and raise a generation of kids to take one more seriously.
Your own source explains the police did that because there'd been violence in Newcastle between BLM and counter protests earlier in the month. (Which for non UK people is near enough to be comfortably within travel distance of many of the same people.)
So this was enacted based on incredibly recent evidence that allowing gatherings could risk public safety.
It wasn't "no protests for thee" it was "no protests for thee there and then. I'm sure counter protestors would have been free to make their point at another time or place, which I'm sure if they were ideologically sincere they'd have been just as passionate to do.
All gatherings of 6 or more people are 'banned' under Corona regulations. The same ones most of you clamoured for. So what Northumberland police did, was allow BLM people have a gathering, whilst using those same laws to prevent anyone else doing so in counter. Hence, for thee(those with a 'morally just' cause) but not for me. (Those who disagree)
Not only are the police selectively applying the regulations, they're doing it on a political basis.
If the second group couldn't be bothered to find another date to have a protest, that is on them. It paints a pretty clear picture as to what was intended.
QAR is apparently struggling to differentiate law and guidelines also.
It is not illegal to gather outside, it is against the guidelines. As was the case in Bristol, the police have often chosen to remain hands off in the thinking that trying to break up the protest would actually be more disruptive than allowing it to continue.
"Selectively" applying their discretionary powers to prevent another gathering that's likely to promote violence and public order offences, as well as disrupt any attempt at sensible social distancing as a consequence, just reads like common sense.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Show me an instance where these so-called protestors were banned from assembling when there wasn't a BLM protest happening in the immediate vicinity at the same time, which I'm guessing will be tough as they're pretty much exclusively a thinly veiled attempt to solicit a fight or an excuse to vandalise property by the National Front or one of their offspring, and I'll concede you might have a point. (Although banning extremist political groups from assembling is still something I'd endorse, police bias or no.)
See I'd be inclined to agree there, if it weren't for the fact that the group in question could unarguably be presumed of engaging in violence at their own behest...unless of course you believe that vandalising monuments, attempting to burn flags on the cenotaph, assaulting police officers, and actually pulling down a statue and dumping it in a dock, are not acts of violence... All of which took place without the presence any antagonistic groups.
If the second group couldn't be bothered to find another date to have a protest, that is on them. It paints a pretty clear picture as to what was intended.
Regardless, the point still stands. One groups freedoms are curtailed, and another's aren't
queen_annes_revenge wrote: See I'd be inclined to agree there, if it weren't for the fact that the group in question could unarguably be presumed of engaging in violence at their own behest...unless of course you believe that vandalising monuments, attempting to burn flags on the cenotaph, assaulting police officers, and actually pulling down a statue and dumping it in a dock, are not acts of violence...
Did any of that happen in Newcastle? (Aside from clashes with the "counter protestors" which instigated the whole thing.) Or Sunderland? Or have you just cherry picked a few instances where violence (against property in the main, which I don't condone but rank much lower than violence against a person) did occur? We had BLM protests here, I don't think as much as a paving slab got knocked out of true.
What you're trying to do is paint a situation where police likely had intelligence that known bad actors were intending on committing criminal acts using the presence of the BLM protest as an excuse, and used their existing powers to head the whole thing off at the pass as some sort of fascist act of state authority.
Nothing as grandiose as that I'm afraid, simply that the police bowed to political pressure and acted in a discriminatory fashion, in that instance, aswell as others. None of which surprises me, as our police have become something of a joke as of late, and all of this nonsense over the past few weeks has just gone to show it even more.
If it was a case of intelligence on 'a few bad actors' that still does not excuse them banning everyone not involved in the protagonist group.
And it being 'only violence against property' does not excuse the behaviour in any way. Protest peacefully all you want, as soon as you start breaking laws, you've lost my support.
Go and find your own sources, but you'll find the Newcastle BLM protest more or less went off without incident until the "counter protestors" got involved, and it was those who targeted the police.
Unless you're trying to twist it to fit an agenda, the clear cause and effect of Sunderland Police's behaviour seems fairly clear and legitimate.
But it's well established ITT that you present a weird idea of what personal liberty looks like, so I think we'll leave it there and let anyone else reading make their own mind up
Quick mod note - Let's try to get back on topic. While it's fine to talk about how protests might affect coronavirus transmission "in general", obviously, the specifics of any one protest is pretty far afield from what we're trying to discuss here...
On regards to allowing schools to go back perhaps if you strip back the curriculum to the essentials, pretty much streamline it, you could reduce the amount of time needed and then stagger portions of the class? Teacher/s is/are there with a 3rd of the class, doing the same lesson in cycles. Yeah the kids will get a much less diverse set of schooling, things like arts and maybe portions of history would suffer but it's possible individual students would receive a better education in things that will more directly affect their ability to work (more one to one due to the reduced kid count)
Less than a week after reopening our office building all employees were sent home early because there was a confirmed Covid case and they needed to close and clean everything.
RiTides wrote: Easy E and Slipspace - You're probably right, there's no good answer
IF there is no right answer, then we need to do the one with the least amount of immediate and observable detrimental effects
We have no idea how not having school in classes for 1 1/2 years could effect this generation, we could be raising a new generation of serial killers, or a new generation of hippies who knows.
But we DO know what will happen if schools open up and there is more of a chance people can infect others.
RiTides wrote: Easy E and Slipspace - You're probably right, there's no good answer
IF there is no right answer, then we need to do the one with the least amount of immediate and observable detrimental effects.
In principle I agree. Part of the problem is we can't agree on the extent of the detrimental effects of the virus when it comes to children. Initial research suggested kids were largely unaffected by CV but now there are suggestions that isn't the case and the extent to which kids could be asymptomatic but still just as infectious as an adult in the same situation is also still not well understood. Then there's the problem that at a certain point there comes a crossover where the risk from CV is outweighed by social or economic risk factors. The question is are we at that stage yet? Early on, this sort risk assessment was easy: the threat from the virus was undeniable; numbers of infections and deaths were high and rising. The problem now is we're at the stage where the virus is still a real risk but not nearly as high a risk as it was and we need to start returning to something approaching normality and thinking about how we live with the virus long-term if a vaccine isn't found fairly soon.
I don't envy anyone having to make those sorts of decisions. What I hate is seeing those decisions politicised.
Future War Cultist wrote: We’re seeing what happens when you politicise a virus playing out in front of us.
In this very thread.
By a mod no less. Which is... worrying for the website overall.
I used to worry about the people running this site...now I don’t give a feth anymore, except to say that it’s amazing that it’s survived this long without ripping itself to pieces.
As for the virus that’s rampaging through the states, when it’s still killing them left right and centre over Christmas they should really ask themselves, was the bitching about freedumbs like haircuts and masks really worth it?
RiTides wrote: Easy E and Slipspace - You're probably right, there's no good answer
IF there is no right answer, then we need to do the one with the least amount of immediate and observable detrimental effects.
In principle I agree. Part of the problem is we can't agree on the extent of the detrimental effects of the virus when it comes to children. Initial research suggested kids were largely unaffected by CV but now there are suggestions that isn't the case and the extent to which kids could be asymptomatic but still just as infectious as an adult in the same situation is also still not well understood. Then there's the problem that at a certain point there comes a crossover where the risk from CV is outweighed by social or economic risk factors. The question is are we at that stage yet? Early on, this sort risk assessment was easy: the threat from the virus was undeniable; numbers of infections and deaths were high and rising. The problem now is we're at the stage where the virus is still a real risk but not nearly as high a risk as it was and we need to start returning to something approaching normality and thinking about how we live with the virus long-term if a vaccine isn't found fairly soon.
I don't envy anyone having to make those sorts of decisions. What I hate is seeing those decisions politicised.
such persons are allways making political decisions, the only difference is that countries like brazil or the US or even israel seem to be more divided and not willing to close the ranks so to speak predominatnly fighting over political power instead of actually using the through cooperation gained power to resolve the issues.
Mods doing their jobs in curtailing clearly off-topic discussion is about as unreasonable as asking people to wear masks. So it makes sense some people would have a problem with it.
Future War Cultist wrote: ...when it’s still killing them left right and centre over Christmas they should really ask themselves, was the bitching about freedumbs like haircuts and masks really worth it?
They'll just claim it is a hoax as part of the ongoing WAR ON CHRISTMAS.
Future War Cultist wrote: ...when it’s still killing them left right and centre over Christmas they should really ask themselves, was the bitching about freedumbs like haircuts and masks really worth it?
They'll just claim it is a hoax as part of the ongoing WAR ON CHRISTMAS.
Wait, war on the pagan sun festival that got taken over by christianity, that then took over the pagan practice of cutting down trees and pulling them into your own home`?
"Hopes for return to normality, possibly by Christmas"
This is hot on the heels of a report estimating between an additional 70k-120k covid-related deaths over the colder winter period, depending on what measures are enacted.
There was a report written about the circumstances regarding a 2nd wave. Nicole Sturgeon had read it, Boris Johsnon hadn't. What kind of figures are there for Covid again?
Then after saying last week that home working staff should return to work if possible and things should go back to normal, this has now been replaced by a more cautious tone and really sounds like being left to employers to create a safe environment and decide for themselves.
Fine for me and most of my colleagues who work for companies with a very strong H&S priority, crap if you work for someone like Dyson who tried to get everyone back into the office when we were hitting 1000+ deaths a day and only backed down because of a planned staff walkout.
I think if you are working for any companies that are dismissive of H&S or employment law, now is a good time to look up joining a union.
You can see from the thoughtful posts of Slipspace, Easy E, etc that this isn't an easy decision, or a political one, for parents. We're used to putting our kids future before our own... and while in many ways it helps them to lessen the effect of the pandemic, it's also in many ways less direct since they themselves are at such low risk.
I'd love to continue the discussion of details of other country's school models that have worked well and that have failed, and what we can learn and implement regarding hybrid options, etc. But I do recognize, as pointed out by posters above, that this has become politically fraught so it will probably be very difficult to do so.
Parents are just looking for ways to help their kids... not everything needs to be so partisan (as Slipspace much more eloquently said).
RiTides wrote: You can see from the thoughtful posts of Slipspace, Easy E, etc that this isn't an easy decision, or a political one, for parents. We're used to putting our kids future before our own... and while in many ways it helps them to lessen the effect of the pandemic, it's also in many ways less direct since they themselves are at such low risk.
I'd love to continue the discussion of details of other country's school models that have worked well and that have failed, and what we can learn and implement regarding hybrid options, etc. But I do recognize, as pointed out by posters above, that this has become politically fraught so it will probably be very difficult to do so.
Parents are just looking for ways to help their kids... not everything needs to be so partisan (as Slipspace much more eloquently said).
I reiterate, how are they insightfull if they are wrong, or is the work for the government, a political institution, and beeing called upon as expert- technocrats to form decisions, not political.
I was referring to parents decisions and thought processes regarding their children... Obviously the political ineptitude has helped get us into this mess, but we're just looking for solutions for our kids.
That’s completely understandable. And the issue with schools is just like with businesses. It’s not really life versus death; it’s life versus life. Just as businesses were caught between trying to fight the virus and not go under, schools are caught between fighting and teaching. They need to find that middle ground which is where the difficult decisions have to be made.
My main issue is with that fat fething wotsit (Cheeto to you guys) potentially threatening the safety of kids and staff in an effort to pretend that the virus is dealt with just to increase his election chances, the contemptible piece of gak.
Future War Cultist wrote: That’s completely understandable. And the issue with schools is just like with businesses. It’s not really life versus death; it’s life versus life. Just as businesses were caught between trying to fight the virus and not go under, schools are caught between fighting and teaching. They need to find that middle ground which is where the difficult decisions have to be made.
My main issue is with that fat fething wotsit (Cheeto to you guys) potentially threatening the safety of kids and staff in an effort to pretend that the virus is dealt with just to increase his election chances, the contemptible piece of gak.
people would do well, if they learnt that there is a difference between : "You donkey-cave", (informal unpolite form,) and You donkey-cave (formal polite form)
I'd love to continue the discussion of other country's school models that have worked well and that have failed, and what we can learn and implement... probably not going to happen in this thread to be honest, but feel free to PM me anybody if you'd like to chat about it further!
Man, if it's worth anything at all, I'll dip my toe in this hellthread, just once more...
So - despite my tender years, I've taught in 3 countries, S. Korea, Japan, and the U.K. - I've taught everything from kindergarten all the way up to post-grad, in classes from 40 kids, to just one sweet old Korean lady, some of the brightest teens I've ever met, and also budding tearaways, not yet out of their tweens, but already getting into drugs and violent crime.
So like, not the most experienced, but I like to think that I know what the ropes at least look like, if nothing else.
Spent this whole thing - from January, when the Virus arrived here - all the way to present, in Japan, and working in a school. The only time I did any working from home, was in april (ish?), and it was 3 days a week, tops. The students came back a few months ago, and since then it has been absolutely ALL HANDS ON DECK. I've never had a workload as full on as this. To make up for the lost time, the kids are losing 4 weeks of their summer vacation. The number of colleagues I have who are barely in their 30s, yet have graying hairs coming through because of the stress would shock you. The government here has decided it has fallen to the teachers, and the kids to pick up the slack.
Now, in some ways, we're very fortunate. This is a really critical time, and Japanese institutions, such as universities, allow for very little flexibility. But, we can give our students a fighting chance, because they're back. Because since the getgo, Japan has been very cautious. As a government worker, I have to wear a mask at all times at work. If I don't bring one, I have to buy one, from the school, from government supplies intended for the students I am meant to be educating.
The rest of the country mostly reacted really fast, too. Logging where you've been, de-marked areas in shops, cellophane protection zones for workers. Things are still far from perfect. Of our mostly stable rate of 300 new infections per day, Tokyo leads with about 200 of these. The rest are spread through hotspots around the country.
Thanks to these efforts, largely, we've dodged the bullet. Life here is, while extremely altered, more normal than in the west.
That's not to say that Japan was perfect. There have been cock-ups, and missed opportunities. There has been time-wasting and inaction. Yet, mercifully, it never reached the extremes and polarity of the Anglophone world. It really does make me scratch my head, seeing some of the posts in this thread.
But there are two real points I want to press home, if you'll all permit me.
The first is this - my experience of teaching in the UK, of talking to people who've taught in the US, Canada, and even Japan? There is a growing, chronic shortage of teachers. Qualifying to become a teacher in the UK is arduous, expensive, and at the end of it, you're often flung into a placement in a school that staff don't want to stay in - predominantly for behavioural reasons. Few people in the UK make it out of their first few years after qualifying. This isn't anecdotal, it's statistical. A mix of constant fund-cutting and the growing pressures to perfectly adhere to the criteria of exam boards which are prone to adjusting the grade boundries after results are in because too many top grades looks bad or some nonsense. Staff are constantly asked to take on additional roles, or bullied into teaching subjects they never signed up for, then to have their original subject specialism pulled out from under their feet. I know several English teachers who have spent years only teaching psychology for this very reason.
Luckily, in the UK, the teaching labor union is still a political force to be reckoned with. The unions will act pretty decisively over even small staffroom disputes if need be, and it's a real godsend.
Here in Japan, there isn't that same unionized system.
Talking to older colleagues, it's genuinely heartbreaking to see old codgers getting misty eyed about how they used to only come in once a week during the summer holidays, to moniter the school clubs. Now, during designated vacation time they still have to come in. Not for clubs, but to teach actual classes. During their vacations. We've got a 4 day weekend coming up, as part of Japan's national holidays. Nearly all of my colleagues, due to the virus, are coming in, to teach the kids preparing for uni. These are teachers who start work well before 8am, and usually leave work after 7pm on an ordinary day.
At my school, there are about 1000 students. There are nearly 100 members of staff. Each student goes home to at least one parent, usually a grandparent, and very very often, a sibling, who, due to the school testing system, will go to a different school, usually also with around 1000 students.
I'd like to say social distancing happens, but it just isn't practical. Certainly, for my subject, I have to listen carefully to kids, get up close to check their worksheets. Other members of staff are doing this, more hands on, for longer hours, with more kids. Japanese teenagers being Japanese teenagers... like, when they see their mates in the corridor? Like, the just bounce over and hug and say hi. Even kids this old don't stop being kids. We can't police them all.
For now, the virus in Japan is under control. However, I'm sure you can all imagine that all it takes is a kid from the next town over to catch it and...
...we're all fethed. In like, 2 weeks.
Please, I urge you. Consider the concerns of the people teaching your kids. Teachers in the UK and the US have a hard time normally. Digital learning isn't a good solution for anyone, but it's the best that can be achieved now. If your teachers are worried - as I am - for their safety, and the safety of the kids they teach, please, please listen.
We're not in this job for no reason. I'd say confidently that even the meanest, most crabby stuck-in-their-ways, kids-these-days.... type teachers are really only in this job because educating kids is important to them. When I was working from home, I was pulling my hair out. It's so frustrating to do classes like that, knowing kids aren't paying attention, trying your best and having utterly no clue as to how much is working.
If they're advocating keeping the kids out of school, it's for a good reason. Nothing would break my heart more than a kid in one of my classes getting this gak. I think I couldn't live with myself if I thought they got it from me.
Your local teachers would LOVE to have the funding, the resources, the time, the manpower, to be able to do reduced-size classes, outdoor classes, crazy extensive interactive virtual classes, whatever. But I don't think I've been to a single school where this would be even slightly practical.
I know this is a frustrating time, and I know how worrying about the future, especially if you feel a bit powerless, can really get under your skin. It's great that, as a dad, you have so much concern for your kids. It really is. I've dealt with emotionally absent bougie parents who spoil their kids rotten, but barely talk to them, and then on the flip junkie parents who lurch between drug-dealing boyfriends, with their kids as excess baggage on their heroin-chasing adventures. Seeing people this worried, though of course, is upsetting, it's also re-affirming to see that concern, to see that love. That's the stuff good dads are made of.
Feeling that your kids are missing out of key parts of their early developmental learning must be tough. But I think first of all, after all this is over, there'll be no shortage of efforts to remedy this gap. It's a concern prevalent all over the world right now, and, perhaps somewhat fortunately, this period is exposing the most egregious failings of contemporary society, meaning that with luck, we'll be able to bounce back much stronger.
I know it isn't easy, but I think you probably already are trying to help your kids in this time. Where you can, maybe try to work in some 'educational' stuff of your own devising with little RiTides Jr. and RiTidesette. It could be as simple as getting them to read a bit more (did ya know there have been a bunch of studies in Japan on the positive education impact of reading silly comic books? 'cause that's a big thing!), or give them a bit of money on the shopping list to budget. Get them to make and illustrate their own storybooks. If you're worried about socialization (bear with me on this one, I feel like all parents with young kids are groaning at the thought of this) have them and their pals play some computer game with their pals online, like minecraft. Set them maybe some kind of weekly challenge, and make it focused on co-operation. I know it isn't exactly long division, but honestly this is probably the best time to try to embrace wishy-washy Scandinavian development-driven, guided independent learning. Take the kids out for a walk in the woods, and see if you can find any signs of animals, watch some nature or history documentaries together, and see if they start pinging off questions about what they're seeing. (IDK if this is any help, it's been a long week and I am drinking)
My second point is much less meandering.
I'm reasonably happy to be working through all this because...
...we have this, broadly, outside of the Tokyo Metropolitan area, under control. I feel this is a simple thing, but, if you do not have the virus under control now? You won't be able to control it in a school. You won't be able to control who catches it, who spreads it, who dies from it. Education is super important, and it's really critical that we do what we can now. But if you cannot control how the virus in the rest of society, don't put your kids back in a classroom, unless truly RADICAL changes have been made.
Edit: Ninja'ed by posermcbogus! Thanks for sharing your experience as a teacher in Japan (and also really appreciate the "good dads" comment ).
As a former teacher, I can relate to some things... but not to what it would be like to balance that job right now . It is awesome to hear how it was handled there in Japan, and unfortunate that we're not in as good of a spot here
You're right about parents groaning at some of those suggestions, though! There is zero percent chance I'm going to have my kids play Minecraft to learn to socialize at a young age... that's what college is for
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FWC, thanks for the nice post. I do agree the issues are similar, but obviously for parents the question of "Will my child miss a full year and a half of school at a critical development age?" is way more important than the possibility of losing my job or my business. To me, at least! So I got a little wound up
I do get that people are rightfully upset at the government, but for myself and many others I'd like to turn the page: Given that, what's the best thing I can figure out for my child right now?
I still do think a hybrid solution might be the best approach... but it looks like we're running out of time to implement anything like that with most schools starting in just a month's time...
Cant development and social skills be done with parents in a more safer enviroments, with parents setting up playdates and such with people they trust/know?
And cants parents set up supplemental work that helps goes with what they are teaching?
Im no parent, so i am going to get alot of gak for this.
But the question shouldnt be "What is best for my child" and more "What is best for my child and for the children they will be interacting with and society at large"
You've mentioned playdates a number of times, and yeah I do think it's kinda clear you're not a parent on that front
I'm not really sure why that seems like a good solution to you... it just shifts the problem, right? So families interact outside of school, and spread the virus anyway. That kind of behavior is actually the very first thing that all families I know Stopped doing when the pandemic hit.
And I see your point about what is best for society, but as a parent that too is a balancing act. We're all trying to be responsible while also, you know, raising small humans that don't really get what's going on
RiTides wrote: You've mentioned playdates a number of times, and yeah I do think it's kinda clear you're not a parent on that front
I'm not really sure why that seems like a good solution to you... it just shifts the problem, right? So families interact outside of school, and spread the virus anyway. That kind of behavior is actually the very first thing that all families I know Stopped doing when the pandemic hit.
And I see your point about what is best for society, but as a parent that too is a balancing act. We're all trying to be responsible while also, you know, raising small humans that don't really get what's going on
It's really a question of exposure and degrees there. Let's say you go to your kid's karate class, or whatever sport they're into. You're undoubtedly exposed to the other children in the class and their parents- but that might put you in contact with 20 circles for an hour or two a week.
In an average elementary school you have 30 or so kids they're exposed to, so 30 circles from the classroom itself, and their pair classroom. Some of those kids rode the bus to school- so add another 15 or so circles for their busmates (and I think that's pretty conservative). Each of those 15 circles is attached to another class with a further 30 circles. That's before cafeterias. So school, for an elementary school student, might bring them into contact with 500 or so social circles for 7 hours a day, indoors, in shared air conditioning.
At middle and high school it's not uncommon to rotate through 6 teachers throughout the day, dramatically increasing their exposure.
I definitely noticed the effects of isolation with my 10 year old, which is why we went back to his jiujitsu friends. That increased our circle of exposure by 20 families or so, but seems to have fulfilled his social requirements.
TLDR, you've heard the comparison of walmart and home depot are open so schools can be open? It's the same thing with a club or social activity for your kid. They aren't the same as school.
And it turns out the OC BOE push for full reopening was tied to a scheme to open a new charter school in August. They we’re literally willing to sacrifice some innocent lives for profit.
Also note the section on how the BoE cherrypicked their scientific data points. Our current understanding of coronavirus is very different from that nonsense spread by the “kids are safe” crowd.
Gitzbitah - I get that, but you can also have kids (at least younger ones with single teachers) in "pods" of classes similar in size to your jiujitsu example. Obviously, they have a lot more exposure to each other than in jiujitsu, though.
By the way, that is a fantastic idea to do for your child, especially since many of the exercises for it are already socially distanced (at least, from my understanding, I'm no martial artist ). So good work there
Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
And if it spreads it doesn't help the work sector because now instead of parents having to juggle work and home time and doing alternate shifts the like - which isn't ideal but can at least give you staff who can plan when they will and won't be working; you instead take up a system where staff might end up isolated and locked down. If the outbreak is big enough even your own workplace will be locked down as well. Suddenly instead of containing it you've got an outbreak and instead of employees being haphazard you've got a full shut down where nothing gets done.
The whole school issue is honestly a madness I think. I get why certain segments want it done, but at the end of the day schools and universities are well known to spread viruses. We've generations of proof of that and even if you limit it to just Corona we've multiple examples.
Overread wrote: And if it spreads it doesn't help the work sector because now instead of parents having to juggle work and home time and doing alternate shifts the like - which isn't ideal but can at least give you staff who can plan when they will and won't be working; you instead take up a system where staff might end up isolated and locked down. If the outbreak is big enough even your own workplace will be locked down as well. Suddenly instead of containing it you've got an outbreak and instead of employees being haphazard you've got a full shut down where nothing gets done.
The whole school issue is honestly a madness I think. I get why certain segments want it done, but at the end of the day schools and universities are well known to spread viruses. We've generations of proof of that and even if you limit it to just Corona we've multiple examples.
Absolutely, i think personally digital learning for a year or two could be palpable. Could be. It is not however a permanent solution. It is also not temorary maintainable enough for such a long stretch we are looking at.
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
Which sounds to me like a good reason to explore options for a limited reopening, perhaps with a few very small classes for children who need school to survive or whose parents are willing to take the risk and sign the waiver, with full use of masks, social distancing as possible, deep cleaning as possible, and teachers who volunteer for the position and receive hazard pay, all while keeping the majority of staff and students on a distance learning plan.
It does not sound like a reason to throw all children together regardless of their situation or their families’ risk, and force all teachers into the Petri dish regardless of risk, at the threat of defunding or expulsion from the district.
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
How will it kill them?
I'm assuming he's referring to those children who rely on state provided meals because their parents are unable/willing to feed them properly at home
In our district, the schools have been providing meals to children through the pandemic. They even give a weekend’s worth on Fridays. It’s handled like an outdoors drive-thru where’re everyone wears masks and gloves. I’ve even heard of some schools delivering food to isolated households. There is no need to fully reopen in order to feed children.
For what's it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree about not "requiring" schools to open. Each school district should be able to decide what's best for them based on conditions in the community, what mitigation they can put in place, etc.
But I think it's also well worth considering every option, to make sure we give each kid the best chance to learn possible given the circumstances. To call going to school "nebulous gain" (to the other poster above) kind of blows my mind. Can you imagine anyone saying this at any other time - that in-person education is only a nebulous improvement over remote?
That is obviously false. For many kids, school is their lifeline. Lots of families are going to have an incredibly difficult time this year, and writing it off like that is pretty infuriating. I sat on my typing hands, though, and managed to only write this note pointing that out (okay, I admit it, I wrote more but then hit "delete" )
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
How will it kill them?
I'm assuming he's referring to those children who rely on state provided meals because their parents are unable/willing to feed them properly at home
Kids not getting meals sounds to me like a way bigger problem that should not tackled by only schools.
People say that Quarantine and SIP are resulting in higher amounts of Domestic abuse and child abuse so it must be ended.
But it seems like those are problems that need to be tackled in totally different ways. They are not caused my quarantine but exacerbated by it. So we need to tackle those issues not realtged to quarantine.
What this Pandemic did is show us just how reliant the US is on small stop gap measures to stop a horrid tide os social problems from overwhelming us and how those stop gaps are failing horribly(Like Free school lunches used to feed children) its a measure that ignores so many other problems such as food desserts, lack on transportation for many poor/rural communities.
I taught in a high need school, and there are a lot of terrible things kids have to deal with. And almost all of them are mitigated (in whatever way they can be) almost solely through school mechanisms.
You can't change that system overnight, or with school set to start in a month or even less...
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
How will it kill them?
I'm assuming he's referring to those children who rely on state provided meals because their parents are unable/willing to feed them properly at home
Kids not getting meals sounds to me like a way bigger problem that should not tackled by only schools.
People say that Quarantine and SIP are resulting in higher amounts of Domestic abuse and child abuse so it must be ended.
But it seems like those are problems that need to be tackled in totally different ways. They are not caused my quarantine but exacerbated by it. So we need to tackle those issues not realtged to quarantine.
What this Pandemic did is show us just how reliant the US is on small stop gap measures to stop a horrid tide os social problems from overwhelming us and how those stop gaps are failing horribly(Like Free school lunches used to feed children) its a measure that ignores so many other problems such as food desserts, lack on transportation for many poor/rural communities.
Oh absolutely, but considering how adamant the US pop is to promote big monolithic buisness, go at each others throat and don't implement some meassures for welfare, not to mention actually invests in these areas, breaks up monopol towns (towns dominated by one workprovider) so long the stopgap is necessary.
Now consider even poorer states, like india etc.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: In our district, the schools have been providing meals to children through the pandemic. They even give a weekend’s worth on Fridays. It’s handled like an outdoors drive-thru where’re everyone wears masks and gloves. I’ve even heard of some schools delivering food to isolated households. There is no need to fully reopen in order to feed children.
Which is crazy that this has become the school's job! We expect schools and cops to do all the heavy lifting in our society, and businesses to do nothing. Weird.
I taught in a high need school, and there are a lot of terrible things kids have to deal with. And almost all of them are mitigated (in whatever way they can be) almost solely through school mechanisms.
You can't change that system overnight, or with school set to start in a month or even less...
this.
the ammount that would need to be done also would require significant political ressources.
not to say that the dividends wouldn't pay off, you can see that in history quite well in switzerland which from 1848 -1871 did attempt to modernise and improve along these ways, but you need the will and the consent of the corresponding communities, and that is quite frankly extremely difficult to achieve due to other issues, like voting laws, decentralisation etc.
RiTides wrote: For what's it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree about not "requiring" schools to open. Each school district should be able to decide what's best for them based on conditions in the community, what mitigation they can put in place, etc.
But I think it's also well worth considering every option, to make sure we give each kid the best chance to learn possible given the circumstances. To call going to school "nebulous gain" (to the other poster above) kind of blows my mind. Can you imagine anyone saying this at any other time - that in-person education is only a nebulous improvement over remote?
That is obviously false. For many kids, school is their lifeline. Lots of families are going to have an incredibly difficult time this year, and writing it off like that is pretty infuriating. I sat on my typing hands, though, and managed to only write this note pointing that out (okay, I admit it, I wrote more but then hit "delete" )
No one was arguing against considering reasonable options. What set me off was an attempt at requiring schools to fully reopen with a threat of consequences, and justified by science so bad that even the experts named on the document argued against it. Each school district making its own decisions based on an objective weighing of risks and harms was the side we were on.
There are many different children and families, and for some the risk is very real and very concrete. For my family, and others with high risk members, we have to weigh the benefits of school and negatives that might take a while to correct if they ever can be versus the likelihood that the child may experience permanent disability due to lung or neurological damage, and have to face it while grieving for a dead parent. The freedom for parents to weigh the risks and choose the best action for their families without pressure or coercion was what we were arguing for.
Well then we are arguing for the same thing! I definitely don't think anyone should be forced to do anything, and ideally want as many options as possible to meet everyone's needs as well as can be done...
In other news, the UK, US and Canada say Russia hacked vaccine research:
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
It is way easier to provide a program to feed children staying at home than it is to somehow prevent a virus from spreading via close contact in confined spaces. We just, you know, need the political will.
But it seems that cruelty is the point sometimes. The poor must be sacrificed to the virus so that the rich don't have to worry about the economy or something.
stratigo wrote: Again, sending kids to school, will, with no legitimate question, spread the virus.
And people advocating for it, in the country and in this thread, are advocating for something that will, without question, kill people. For nebulous gain continuously equivocated over.
Sending children however not, may also kill especially rural / poor children aswell.
It is by FAR not as black and white as you insinuate.
It is way easier to provide a program to feed children staying at home than it is to somehow prevent a virus from spreading via close contact in confined spaces. We just, you know, need the political will.
But it seems that cruelty is the point sometimes. The poor must be sacrificed to the virus so that the rich don't have to worry about the economy or something.
Or as stated in my other Post , the Rich bring up the will and earn the benefit of vastly lower crimerates, security, educated workpool, General Living improvement etc...
It's fethed regardless though , because School shouldn't be needed to feed children .....
RiTides wrote: For what's it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree about not "requiring" schools to open. Each school district should be able to decide what's best for them based on conditions in the community, what mitigation they can put in place, etc.
But I think it's also well worth considering every option, to make sure we give each kid the best chance to learn possible given the circumstances. To call going to school "nebulous gain" (to the other poster above) kind of blows my mind. Can you imagine anyone saying this at any other time - that in-person education is only a nebulous improvement over remote?
That is obviously false. For many kids, school is their lifeline. Lots of families are going to have an incredibly difficult time this year, and writing it off like that is pretty infuriating. I sat on my typing hands, though, and managed to only write this note pointing that out (okay, I admit it, I wrote more but then hit "delete" )
For the most vulnerable demos in America, schools aren't particularly useful at all in education considering how poorly funded they are, and mostly exist as a place to put children while parents work. American education system is fethed, and the utility of children going to it is about the same as just letting them hang out and play in a neighborhood.
So the children of families that have statistically been the most vulnerable (because they have the worst access to health care), also benefit the least from schools that barely function in the best circumstances, and much of this push to reopen in America is driven by Betsy Devos, who is heavily monetarily invested in charter schools, and is ideologically hostile to public schools.
But, yes, in places where the virus is successfully contained to an appreciable level, we could try limited reopening. Too bad the states doing the most aggressive reopenings are all slammed with ever spiking infections. Florida's started running out of ICU beds in some counties
And your position of "I'm just asking questions" Rings super hollow to my American ears because no where in America are the people most aggressively reopening schools doing it the right way, or in areas that have a handle on the coronavirus. There is NO QUESTION that Florida and Texas (to give the two top examples) should not be reopening schools, and you being super duper vague about where and when exactly schools should reopen is a bit smoke screeny.
So, let's pin it down, do you thing florida and texas should fully open schools? No more hypotheticals. Where, specifically, do you think schools should try reopening?
Knock schools all you want, I've actually worked in an inner city school (Baltimore) and it was absolutely vital for those kids. Saying it's the same as telling the kids to just hang out in their neighborhood......... This is, again, obviously false.
Every single school is different. I don't think any entire state should mandate that schools must open. But I think if any school can incorporate some in-person instruction, they should try - and be ready to revert to online if conditions cause it to.
This is what the American pediatric society stated in their original recommendation. If you don't agree with them, that's fine, but the whole point of their recommendation was this isn't black or white - there's a lot of things short of full reopening that could have a huge benefit for kids, and we have to consider them.
In my state today a lady led a high speed chase after she physically fought store employees over her refusal to wear a mask, and then rode over a police officers's foot as she hightailed it away.
RiTides wrote: Knock schools all you want, I've actually worked in an inner city school (Baltimore) and it was absolutely vital for those kids. Saying it's the same as telling the kids to just hang out in their neighborhood......... This is, again, obviously false.
Every single school is different. I don't think any entire state should mandate that schools must open. But I think if any school can incorporate some in-person instruction, they should try - and be ready to revert to online if conditions cause it to.
This is what the American pediatric society stated in their original recommendation. If you don't agree with them, that's fine, but the whole point of their recommendation was this isn't black or white - there's a lot of things short of full reopening that could have a huge benefit for kids, and we have to consider them.
I note you refuse to engage with any specific schools or communities to continue to be very vague. Why? Why to you keep equivocating here when there are concrete and real examples of schools being opened in areas with a large amount of CV cases, and you are unable to provide anywhere where this is not true? Have you stopped to actually think about this? Do you support schools opening in Florida and Texas? Are you going to actually answer these questions?
And was your inner city school in a poor district and critically underfunded? Not literally every city district in Baltimore is poor as gak. If so, how many students graduated and improved their social position in life? How many ended up in the school to prison pipeline? Do you know?
What's your opinion of how this country funds schooling? Do you think segregated and poor communities are deliberately underfunded and their education seen as less valuable by the state and society at large?
EDIT: I want to be 100 percent clear. THIS is where we are talking about:
NOT a hypothetical school district in a hypothetical part of the country or the world.
We are talking REAL places that have real issues, that really should NOT be reopening. I don't give a flying feth about hypothetical schools. They aren't real, they're a logic game drained of all real world consequences. I care about the places that are pushing reopening the hardest in the face of ever growing rates of infection for a deadly virus. I care that the people pushing this are invested, politically and financially, in reopening these schools.
I'm not engaging with you because you're not being intellectually honest.
You can easily click "filter thread" and see your earlier posts. They're all about how protests didn't spread the virus because of mask wearing and social distancing. You just cannot have it both ways, as I stated earlier.
As for my school, yes, it was in a critically high need area. It was through the Baltimore City Teaching Residency (basically Teach For America for Baltimore, you can look it up). Only a tiny fraction of the students in my school would go on to college, but that didn't make it less important for them... if anything, it was moreso.
Your complete ignoring of the fact that remote schooling will disproportionately affect communities just like this, again, means it's not worth engaging with you. You can't demand responses, and yet ignore the most basic flaw in your own argument.
To repeat, schools do NOT provide "nebulous gain" for students, and unless you can acknowledge that, we're not even having the same discussion.
I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
RiTides wrote: I'm not engaging with you because you're not being intellectually honest.
You can easily click "filter thread" and see your earlier posts. They're all about how protests didn't spread the virus because of mask wearing and social distancing. You just cannot have it both ways, as I stated earlier.
As for my school, yes, it was in a critically high need area. It was through the Baltimore City Teaching Residency (basically Teach For America for Baltimore, you can look it up). Only a tiny fraction of the students in my school would go on to college, but that didn't make it less important for them... if anything, it was moreso.
Your complete ignoring of the fact that remote schooling will disproportionately affect communities just like this, again, means it's not worth engaging with you. You can't demand responses, and yet ignore the most basic flaw in your own argument.
To repeat, schools do NOT provide "nebulous gain" for students, and unless you can acknowledge that, we're not even having the same discussion.
"I am going to refuse to engage and answer the questions and instead try to deflect to other arguments because I don't actually have one of my own"
Okay dude, cool. Always play offense right? That's what the concept's called.
But, anyways, do you think florida and Texas should open schools or not? This is the actual situation in reality. Not a hypothetical school opening under hypothetical conditions. Real schools looking to be opened under real conditions.
Stratigo, you clearly view it as binary “Open, Yes/No?”. If I did, too, the answer would be “No.” But there are about a thousand options between those binary poles, and I’m much more interested in talking to people who can at least acknowledge that (and consider the cost to kids across the range of options).
CptJake wrote: I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
Exactly...
Each school has to decide based on their student population, facilities, viral caseload, etc and be ready to adapt quickly if their first attempt results in either increased viral transmission, lack of educational progress, or both.
CptJake wrote: I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
Exactly...
Each school has to decide based on their student population, facilities, viral caseload, etc and be ready to adapt quickly if their first attempt results in either increased viral transmission, lack of educational progress, or both.
This is the same argument that keeps cropping up with regards to something political, but frankly?
Distance learning isn't just broadband internet. It's exactly what it says on the tin: distance learning. I took correspondence courses in high school, and it was literally a bundle of packets that got mailed to me every unit and a textbook that I had to return at the end of it. There is no way, shape, or form where schools can reliably open in the fall unless we're talking about just the teachers' children being present in the classrooms for the case of distance learning. You can't have the buses running(and in rural areas, you're looking at buses being another big limiting factor...moreso than lack of broadband internet if we're being honest), you can't have the afterschool care programs, etc.
Remember in any regards that the reason broadband internet isn't really available in rural areas is that companies are cheap with infrastructure. I live ten minutes from a major tech hub on the East Coast and my broadband ain't great because I'm out in the 'rural suburbia' of where I live.
EXACTLY
tons of schools around me did packets by teacher/school year and parents would pick up/drop off.
Distance learning will SUCK,
But its not like it isnt a problem worth overcoming and putting all are efforts towards.
CptJake wrote: I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
Its pretty much a suburban (and middle class suburban) solution. Both rural and urban struggle with it pretty hard, usually for similar reasons.
As much as people like to pretend, internet isn't ubiquitous, at least not in a way that's convenient for things other than cat videos (and less savory things, like twitter)
I'm watching Contagion, a 2011 film about a pandemic and the people who fight it.
There's a character in the movie who is a conspiracy nut job desperate for attention who concots a bs story about curing himself with forsynthia as part of a scam to make money.
stratigo wrote: For the most vulnerable demos in America, schools aren't particularly useful at all in education considering how poorly funded they are, and mostly exist as a place to put children while parents work. American education system is fethed, and the utility of children going to it is about the same as just letting them hang out and play in a neighborhood.
Despite stress of closures, most parents wary of rush to return to school buildings, polls show
"Black and Hispanic parents appear particularly concerned about the idea of reopening school buildings, which may reflect the way the coronavirus has disproportionately affected those groups.In one recent California poll, just 17% of parents of color and 30% of white parents believed that students should attend in-person classes daily this fall. ... The racial disparities are likely due to a number of factors: higher rates of infection and death from COVID-19 among people of color, distrust of institutions that have not historically prioritized their safety, and the politics of reopening, in which Democrats have expressed more skepticism.
Rush to reopen schools worries a majority of voters : A combined 54 percent of Americans said they are somewhat uncomfortable or very uncomfortable with reopening K-12 schools this fall. (June)
"A combined 73 percent of surveyed Black voters said they were somewhat or very uncomfortable with reopening day care centers. Forty percent of surveyed Black voters said they were very uncomfortable with reopening K-12 schools, while 27 percent said they were somewhat uncomfortable with the idea. Thirty-five percent of surveyed Black voters said they were very uncomfortable with reopening colleges and universities this fall."
RiTides wrote: To repeat, schools do NOT provide "nebulous gain" for students, and unless you can acknowledge that, we're not even having the same discussion.
For as long as I can remember, public school being useless has been the hip viewpoint for people to express if they want to seem smart. I think it is an implied statement about how one is 'smarter' than the system, but phrasing it that way reveals how nonsensical the statement is. The nature of the public school system and its varying factors is of such complexity that reducing it down to "nebulous gain" is essentially a non-statement. It would be like saying "cardboard packaging offers nebulous gain" or "starting work at 9 am offers nebulous gain" the statement technically works but in a realistic sense does not. All of this is to say; sometimes it is better to ignore and move on.
CptJake wrote: I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
Exactly...
Each school has to decide based on their student population, facilities, viral caseload, etc and be ready to adapt quickly if their first attempt results in either increased viral transmission, lack of educational progress, or both.
This is the same argument that keeps cropping up with regards to something political, but frankly?
Distance learning isn't just broadband internet. It's exactly what it says on the tin: distance learning. I took correspondence courses in high school, and it was literally a bundle of packets that got mailed to me every unit and a textbook that I had to return at the end of it..
I agree. My mom took distance learning classes in the 80s for college. The internet didn't exist yet. While it's not a perfect solution, the lack of broadband is really just deflecting.
CptJake wrote: I live in a pretty rural area (Aiken county, SC), and broadband internet is not available everywhere. Add in some families with multiple school aged kids do not have multiple computers and 'online' or 'distant learning' just doesn't work well. In the suburban/urban parts of the county it may work better, but definitely not in all areas. Surrounding counties are more rural. The 'distant learning' just isn't a one size fits all solution.
Exactly...
Each school has to decide based on their student population, facilities, viral caseload, etc and be ready to adapt quickly if their first attempt results in either increased viral transmission, lack of educational progress, or both.
This is the same argument that keeps cropping up with regards to something political, but frankly?
Distance learning isn't just broadband internet. It's exactly what it says on the tin: distance learning. I took correspondence courses in high school, and it was literally a bundle of packets that got mailed to me every unit and a textbook that I had to return at the end of it..
I agree. My mom took distance learning classes in the 80s for college. The internet didn't exist yet. While it's not a perfect solution, the lack of broadband is really just deflecting.
Huge difference between college classes and elementary, middle and even high school. Younger kids need more than a 'packet' of work to do. They need to be taught. That requires back-and-forth interactions with teachers. I guess you could want the parents to fill that role instead. May work in some cases. I suspect in many rural and urban areas you'll have trouble finding parents qualified to teach much past 6-7th grade.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And my daughter (just finished her junior year of HS) was in the 'pick up packets and drop them back off' category for most of her classes. It was fething awful. Several of her teachers made NO effort to help her when she had questions. She had to get her AP Bio teacher to help her with chemistry because her chemistry teacher was worthless. Other would take back the packets and she would get no feedback for 2-3 weeks. And yes, the wife and I tried to get the school to make the teachers do their jobs. Not much success. She was spending 10-12 hours a day because some teachers thought 'quantity' of work in the packets made up for interaction with the student.
Yep, let her go to school until the county can put in the infrastructure required to make distant learning effective (broadband access, teach the teachers how to do it effectively, ensure kids have the tech they need and so on).
My wife is also in the same boat of having a rural school that not only has crap internet access, but also a poor family base where not all families even have a computer. Lots of kids this spring were having to park in the parking lot of the school and use their wifi, with phones. How is that going to work if they are still having to do that in a Michigan winter?
Also the problem of distancing. Sure, in some way classrooms can have distancing imposed. But what about the 30 minute plus bus rides to and from school for rural kids? There were kids on my bus in school that had 45 minute rides either in the morning or the night, depending on where they were picked up. Mine was nearly that both ways as I was right in the middle of the loop. What....just buy more buses?
Yep, let her go to school until the county can put in the infrastructure required to make distant learning effective (broadband access, teach the teachers how to do it effectively, ensure kids have the tech they need and so on).
So....basically ignore everything and make them go to school through the entire rest of this pandemic and just get sick. Because those things aren't coming soon, in any way, shape, or form, to the majority of schools.
America needs to stop trying to address this pandemic as "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes". Sacrifices have to be made, and the choice has to be made between lots of little ones, or a few great, big ones. Usually the refusal of the former leads to the latter.
Yep, let her go to school until the county can put in the infrastructure required to make distant learning effective (broadband access, teach the teachers how to do it effectively, ensure kids have the tech they need and so on).
So you pretty much want to ignore all safety concerns for your own benefit/comfort.
This is why the entire thing is blowing up as it is. People are not willing to make sacrifices or work to make things work. Its just "well X is a problem, ERGO we should not adress or work towards it, just send everyone back to work/school or the death pits.
Not only this, but this is a perfect time to teach kids basic time management skills for when they have work and all the time to complete.
RiTides wrote: To repeat, schools do NOT provide "nebulous gain" for students, and unless you can acknowledge that, we're not even having the same discussion.
For as long as I can remember, public school being useless has been the hip viewpoint for people to express if they want to seem smart. I think it is an implied statement about how one is 'smarter' than the system, but phrasing it that way reveals how nonsensical the statement is. The nature of the public school system and its varying factors is of such complexity that reducing it down to "nebulous gain" is essentially a non-statement. It would be like saying "cardboard packaging offers nebulous gain" or "starting work at 9 am offers nebulous gain" the statement technically works but in a realistic sense does not. All of this is to say; sometimes it is better to ignore and move on.
Sound advice, NinthMusketeer - thanks for that! I thought so a bit too, but it's much easier to see when another person points it out lol.
Im not saying schools are useless at all. Infact I think they do offer benifits that cannot be qualified easily.
My argument is that are we willing to gain those benifits at the risk of exposing more and more to the virus when we should be doing the opposite
Sorry hotsauceman, that wasn't to you. I've found your posts in this thread really reasonable and it's obvious you were thinking about the consequences, which is honestly all I want. It's going to be really tough no matter what
You know what would have helped immensely in this situation? More funding for Education to deal with this sort of thing. Actually dealing with infrastructure needs and treating the internet as basic utilities.
Hindsight is 20/20 though! So here we go! Sure hope none of those big colleges or universities go out of business. *eats chips* I would feel terrible if those loans got forgiven.
Dreadwinter wrote: You know what would have helped immensely in this situation? More funding for Education to deal with this sort of thing. Actually dealing with infrastructure needs and treating the internet as basic utilities.
Hindsight is 20/20 though! So here we go! Sure hope none of those big colleges or universities go out of business. *eats chips* I would feel terrible if those loans got forgiven.
Why would they be? Most student loans aren't with the universities. Even if they did go out of business, people will still have the loans.
Its also a bit of a tangent from the K-12 education people have been talking about.
Dreadwinter wrote: You know what would have helped immensely in this situation? More funding for Education to deal with this sort of thing. Actually dealing with infrastructure needs and treating the internet as basic utilities.
Hindsight is 20/20 though! So here we go! Sure hope none of those big colleges or universities go out of business. *eats chips* I would feel terrible if those loans got forgiven.
I mean, my problem is that schools are this vector for these horrible stop gap policies of addressing social ills(Lack of food for children, Reporting abuse and much more) rather than independent systems that are free to address it
Also, the schoiols dont hold the loans in almost all cases.
. It is awesome to hear how it was handled there in Japan, and unfortunate that we're not in as good of a spot here 