Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

huh? I understand that. I’m saying that if one accepts that schools can be a source of spread, which I do for now until I am convinced otherwise, then opening schools risks increased spread and further death, which happens to be inequitable

like I said there unfortunately is not the easy answer we want

i realize you don't personally want to take a position on it, which is fine i guess. but it's not twitter literally no one is reading this u don't have to be afraid

there is no reason to privilege the position "we just don't have enough information, therefore we should keep schools closed" over "we just don't have enough information, therefore we should keep schools open"

it's not a matter of "wanting" an easy answer, it's making a decision under uncertainty

huh? I understand that. I’m saying that if one accepts that schools can be a source of spread, which I do for now until I am convinced otherwise, then opening schools risks increased spread and further death, which happens to be inequitable

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:09 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

also, having the bar be "schools can be a source of spread" means that any positive amount of spread caused by schools is worth the unequal costs borne by students

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

should be "...will be disproportionately among those who suffer the worst from schools being closed?"

I’ve basically been clear I think — we don’t know the extent to which young children contribute to spread, but it is not negligible, and how that factors into one’s calculus is ultimately a personal judgement call. (I was being a bit coy earlier, man alive is wrong btw about our certainty regarding extent of spread, but he wouldn’t bite when I asked for data.)
my bias is that while closing schools clearly has the potential to be catastrophic, so does the alternative, and it won’t be forever. and in my (in this instance very amateur) opinion most of those harms are probably socioeconomic rather than strictly achievement-based, something that government can at least attempt to mitigate, which it has largely not. also I am in and out of ICUs for work so I am biased in this sense toward fewer people dead tomorrow

anyway this is a good editorial that reflects my feelings pretty well: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30927-0/fulltext

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

― flopson, Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:15 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe I am just not being clear. the same demographics I agree suffer disproportionately from closing schools also suffer disproportionately from more spread. I don’t know how to put it simpler than that

while closing schools clearly has the potential to be catastrophic, so does the alternative, and it won’t be forever. and in my (in this instance very amateur) opinion most of those harms are probably socioeconomic rather than strictly achievement-based, something that government can at least attempt to mitigate, which it has largely not.

imo this is a massive dodge but ok

also thank u for ur service <3

:)

getting my shot tomorrow

maybe I am just not being clear. the same demographics I agree suffer disproportionately from closing schools also suffer disproportionately from more spread. I don’t know how to put it simpler than that

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:28 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

so that's the thing about the marginal vs average risk. increasing unconditional average risk disproportionately affects low-income workers, but the marginal risk from opening schools does not disproportionately affect low-income parents

low-income children who suffer a lot from missing school have parents who work in e.g. retail/services and who have a relatively high exposure risk compared to parents who can wfh and are also on average higher-income and have a lower cost of their kids foregoing school

opening schools will increase spread through schools as a first-order effect

given the pre-existing unequal distribution of risk, this will on average mean those with higher risk spreading to those with lower risk. in other words, the parents of low-income children get covid from work and their kids spread it to other kids at the school and their families

as a second-order effect, that spread will work its way through the population via chains of transmission

opening schools disproportionately increases risk for low-income families if the second-order effect dominates the first-order effect. so chains like: parent gets covid, their kid transmits it to other kid, their parents get it, then they give it to someone who gives it to someone who gives to a low-income parent. about 10% of the population are parents of school-age children, so about every chain of transmission of length 10 includes 1 school-age parent, on average

in a full, raging pandemic (north dakota in september) where R is wayyy above 1 maybe you could get the numbers to work, but i don't think any other scenario will deliver that

:)

getting my shot tomorrow

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:46 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ayyyyy :^)

We do have pretty good data from all around the world that children in school contribute less to the spread. The only study I have seen to the contrary was done in south India in areas where schools are extremely poor and overcrowded and multigenerational families live in tight spaces. It’s pretty clear at this point that in a 25-30 kid class with masking and even a few feet of space and a moderate amount of ventilation the spread is low among kids at school. Staff getting it from each other is more common than getting it from students.

you should at least read the editorial I posted that discusses the data we have, their limitations, and conclusions that can be drawn from them

i'm surprised being opposed to closing schools is a conservative opinion

The reason not to be surprised by this is that teachers' unions generally support closing physical schools, and diminishing the already much-attenuated power of teachers' unions is a first-order goal for movement conservatives that supersedes anything having to do with public health. They do not so much want public schools to be open as they want public schools to be closed and for the resulting costs to be blamed on the unions.

you should at least read the editorial I posted that discusses the data we have, their limitations, and conclusions that can be drawn from them

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 2:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmark flag link

i read it. it didn't say anything about the marginal spread from opening schools or its socioeconomic impact. it argued was that secondary schools might be sources of spreading despite there being only 55 cases of within-school transmission of 928000 kids are under-tested, because kids are under-tested

one cost (effect on kids of not attending school) is known. the cost on the other side, increased spread, is unknown. if 55/928000 is really the number, i think most people would agree the latter cost outweighs the former. however, if the authors are right and it's actually (55+x)/928000, how large does x have to be to reverse the calculus?

Climate is also a factor due to the importance of proper ventilation, so ideally we should specify which region(s) we're talking about. Anyway, here's some recent data from Quebec:

https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec/#c75434

As you can see, educational environments account for a non negligible percentage of active outbreaks.

gonna have some good data on this soon. the week of jan 11th everybody in my son’s 1500-student secondary school is getting tested! they’ve already had about 10 cases this term (that showed symptoms).

It's plausible that we'd see more spread if more schools were operating at full capacity, but masks, even minimal ventilation improvements, and measures such as avoiding eating close to one another seem to go a long way. In the US, schools that have seen outbreaks tend most often to be the ones taking no precautions whatsoever, e.g. not enforcing masks. But it's hard to find examples of school districts operating at full capacity but with masks and ventilation and other precautions, because there seems to be a polarization between areas where people have an abundance and possibly even excess of caution and places where they just think the whole thing is dumb.

In my county there are I think four school districts doing exactly what I said -- operating at full capacity but taking other precautions, but three of the four are wealthy districts that have a lot of extra space in their schools and the other one is moderately affluent and I don't know as much about it. So, again, trying to be as fair-minded as possible, it's harder to find examples of schools doing exactly what I advocate (at least at the elementary school level), which is masking and other precautions but full time in person for all who want it.

My district has kindergarten in full time and is planning to phase in first grade, fwiw. So far no outbreaks in kindergarten. Around 15-20 cases (more staff than students) in the district so far but none of them have been contracted within a school.

Also, perhaps ironically, the school district's attitude tends to mirror the region's attitude. So the places where they take no precaution at school also tend to have unchecked community spread, and the places where they take (I think) excessive precautions in the schools tend to be the places where they also have low community spread, which would actually make it easier to open safely.

do you think there might be a correlation between precautions taken and the level of community spread?

Of course there is, that's exactly my point. But what I'm saying is that there's a polarization where you either have places where both the school and the community are taking no precautions, or places where the community is taking precautions but also the school is not as open as it could be (in part because community spread is lower).

But I don't believe there's a causative link between *having school closed or partially closed* and lower community spread. That's the point.

surely if community spread was lower then the school would be more open

You would think so but no!

people who claim to observe / celebrate "solstice" or archaic winter solstice holidays like Saturnalia or Yule are 100% fronting

I get more aggravated when people get the basic facts wrong about "lol ur Christian holiday = really a pagan one." because they read a meme and now they want to impress people with obscure knowledge.

like the people every year who smugly ask "did u know Easter comes from Ishtar", which is completely wrong

xp sorry you don’t have an indigenous culture anymore i guess

I celebrate it because I'm sick of it being dark and am happy that we made it around the sun again

also, astronomy is cool

I appreciate crut's salty take here, though

^^^

Right. Paganism was completely gone from Europe everywhere but St. Kilda and parts of the Baltics by 1000CE. Also, "Pagan," in anything written by Protestants before the 20th Century, is an euphemism for "Catholic."

In Ireland we at least acknowledge the winter solstice every year, purely because the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange is designed specifically to allow the sun to enter the inner chamber on the solstice days. It’s nice to watch and feel that connection with the ancestors. They televise it and it’s wonderful to watch.

related: i never get how the white ppl i know who have the most ultra sensitive antennae for calling out cultural appropriation are the same ones who are always into doing solemn sage burning smudge rituals when they move into a new apt

interest in paganism is cool, as is the recognition that vestiges of that culture persisted through the pagan centuries.

I associate a strong interest in paganism as a red flag for fascist/racist/alt right shit, probably unfair but still

there is that but then there are all also lots of "witchy" people in major cities -- mostly women -- who are definitely on the left if anything

now that you mention it i went to a viking wedding once. didn't know the couple very much or why they identified with the norse gods. didn't ask but maybe i should have.

Anything to do with Odin and Nordic/Germanic gods seems well dodgy to me.

For sure. To my knowledge, the Witches vs. the Patriarchy crowd treesh is referring to doesn't dabble in that stuff much.

no, they don't. i'll bet they like freya though.

Tbf, Freyja's pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBZNK_CEVZw

I wonder how Varg reacted to this bit of news:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dna-analysis-reveals-vikings-surprising-genetic-diversity-180975865/

gyac that tomb looks amazing

to me it's like, some people do feel a strong need for ritual as part of the rhythms of life - i certainly recognize it myself for things like funerals and birthday parties, we must mark the important things in recurring ways or else we fail to mark them (or feel stressed trying to come up with unsatisfying substitutes). and if the traditions you were raised in now ring hollow --- let's say a version of christianity that just doesn't work for your present values and beliefs --- then a lot of the practices that have cultural legitimacy around you just aren't going to feel right. so you find something else, even if it risks being mocked for lacking that perceived legitimacy. and maybe bits and pieces of paganism, witchcraft, astrological tradition fill that void and in particular help overcome other modern anxieties by being rooted in observable natural phenomena like the changing of the seasons and the positions of the stars. for the overwhelming majority of human history these were some of the fundamental things we could see, and by seeing them, begin to mark the passage of time and the meaning of a life.

idk it doesn't seem too crazy to me that people would adopt that stuff, there were waves of renewed interest in pagan practices and "mysticism" at least as early as Victorian times (see T.J. Jackson Lears in /No Place of Grace/). maybe it looks silly or mishmashy from the outside, esp if someone has newly gotten into it and all the stuff they're saying doesn't seem to quite add up --- doesn't mean they're insincere!

anyway *all* ritual practices are sort of arbitrary and silly really, at the same time as they're deeply meaningful. imagine trying to explain to Martians why it's really important that on the anniversary of your birth, a sweet pastry must be topped with candles that you blow out while silently making a wish, surrounded by singing friends, and how it just doesn't feel like a birthday otherwise. or why even lapsed christians really want a christmas tree in the home during december, and to have some days out of the 365 in the calendar that are special, which separate out the endless stream of days into meaningful units and journeys through life. the winter solstice doesn't do that for me, but if it does for someone else, they've arguably got a more rational basis for where they've put their seasonal rituals - it's undeniably true that the days start getting longer again at that point!

I used to walk past three megalithic sites, signposted in a language a couple thousand odd years old, to check on the cows every day, in a landscape that would knock you flat with awe every time you looked up at it with the power and majesty of nature.

As always, youve to mentally insert "in america/american" for context when and where p much anything comes up about culture or we're all just talking past each other sher

Not that we dont have a load of artists/nutters down around bathing in ley line energy poking at farmers for their ancient celtic wisdom, crut otm about most of these types but they keep the local fences mended and the few euro coming in so yknow

ogham the money

Hah

I’ve definitely seen pushback against smudging/using white sage or palo santo in more uh witchy circles. Around here, it’s the live laugh love type of stores that are all over it.

speaking as someone living in witchy hippie land USA, it's also important to remember that there's a lot of overlap with anti-vax and #S@ve0urCH1ld3n types