Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

yes, this is related to the fact that online asynchronous grad school is very common and online asynchronous preschool is not

adults (especially ones who already know a lot about what they're studying) have the executive function and intellectual skills they need to get a lot out of a loosely structured learning environment. kids, not so much

xp

DC has it right. It sucks but we have to seal things up and muscle through this. Knowing that vaccine help is on the way should make this a little bit easier.

― early-Woolf semantic prosody (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, December 17, 2020 10:45 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is not a reasonable ask for small children. I can muscle through it, I'm 41. For a kid "muscling through" means missing kindergarten and first grade. Also, I would not get too excited about the vaccine -- it's going to take a long time for sufficient vaccination to fully reopen schools unless we rethink the standards for reopening schools.

anyway my feeling is you can make whatever case you want for schools being open or not. obviously the more sectors of society we shut down the slower the pandemic spreads. whether you think it's worth saving the lives of x number of olds by endangering the welfare and stunting the social / emotional development of y number of youngs is a subjective judgment that comes down to your personal values and how much weight you put on different things. i mean i'm not thrilled about excess death, but we haven't outlawed driving on freeways, alcohol and tobacco, being obese etc etc and those are ultimately going to kill a lot more ppl than covid-19 is

i'm fine w/ teaching remotely even though it's having a terrible negative effect on my students. i work at a public charter school on a university campus that is coadministered by both the university (which also runs the largest local hospital system) and the public school district and i'm not protesting either the university or the school district's decisions to stay shut. i get it. but it doesn't make sense to me when people act like shutting schools is an easy or obvious decision to be making.

pom, all lowercase is fine for shitposting in any language. should've started with lowercase "it's" tho, my bad there.

Agreed, I'm just teasing. :)

whether you think it's worth saving the lives of x number of olds by endangering the welfare and stunting the social / emotional development of y number of youngs is a subjective judgment

I wish Harold Budd were still around.

personally i don't really care about harold budd because i didn't know him personally and he was 84. i definitely knew a coiple people much younger than him (one in 40s, one in 50s) that recently died of coronavirus and i wish they were around too!

"knew" = met a couple times, i was not close to these people

It is a fucking travesty that the national discourse around this is "should schools be open" as a yes or no question and not "should elementary schools be open" (although I will say that at the actual local school board and county health department decision-making level, there seems to be a lot more openness to doing this correctly, with younger kids going back to physical school first and in many places already there.)

As for college students, there is very little evidence they or their teachers are spreading COVID in class, but unfortunately a decent amount of evidence that lots of people feel "if it's safe to go to class it's safe to go to the bar" and then you get spread.

otm. I read a NYT story last week showing that the problem isn't classrooms -- there's little evidence students and faculty contract it on campus. The problem is travel and bars.

obviously the more sectors of society we shut down the slower the pandemic spreads.

This is not necessarily true. Just for example, with schools shut down, a certain percentage of kids are going to be in daycares, at their relatives' and friends' houses, playing on the playground, etc., and even a certain percentage of teachers and staff will not be isolating themselves. So it's not certain that having schools closed even slows the spread.

i get what you're saying but you could make that exact same argument about shutting down anything so i'm not sure it's that meaningful beyond "not certain that having [any isolated part of society] closed even slows the spread."

. Just for example, with [applebee's] shut down, a certain percentage of [applebee's employees] are going to be at their relatives' and friends' houses, playing on the playground, etc., and even a certain percentage of [applebee's employees] will not be isolating themselves. So it's not certain that having [applebee's] closed even slows the spread.

whether you think it's worth saving the lives of x number of olds by endangering the welfare and stunting the social / emotional development of y number of youngs is a subjective judgment that comes down to your personal values and how much weight you put on different things

it is not merely "olds" who are dying. and some people who aren't dying are being left with long term respiratory effects, and even neurological disorders....and that's just what we know so far.

i mean i'm not thrilled about excess death, but we haven't outlawed driving on freeways, alcohol and tobacco, being obese etc etc and those are ultimately going to kill a lot more ppl than covid-19 is

uhh, maybe long-term, but emerging evidence is suggesting that COVID may be the leading cause of death in the US this year. and even if it's not, it's in the top 3, so no, these things do not kill "way more people" than COVID at the moment.

If I want to avoid dying on the highway, I can avoid driving in a car. I can still leave my house and do things. If I don't want to die of alcohol related causes, I can abstain from drinking. If I don't want to die of smoking-related cancer, I can not smoke. No, we don't have absolute control over these decisions. But from a technical sense, we can avoid these things to a greater degree than we can COVID. Someone else drinking in the same room isn't directly going to give me cirrhosis of the liver, someone else smoking in the room, I can probably move away from them and I'm not going to develop lung cancer from a single contact with this person. another driver isn't likely to ram into me with their car if I'm taking a bus, subway, or walking on a sidewalk. I can manage my own risk and still go about my daily business and be around other people.

With COVID, just leaving my house is a risk. I can get severe COVID from as little as being sneezed or or having 15 minutes of contact with someone who is infected and may not know it. Literally my only way to reduce risk close to zero is to never leave my house.

in some cases, I can die even if I've had no previous health complications or how old I am. or I might survive, but now I might have trouble breathing for months. Or concentrating. and I don't know how long it will last.

https://abc11.com/covid-deaths-coronavirus-leading-cause-of-american-death-heart-disease-cancer/8845819/

the main reason 'other businesses are open, but not schools' = it's a helluva lot harder to shut businesses down without severe blowback from rich corporate monsters, and they file lawsuits against you in court to challenge your executive orders

I realize the decision to open schools or not isn't merely a black and white discussion, buuuuuut....I would hope the decision-making isn't based on "well we can sacrifice a few old people for this".

. Just for example, with [applebee's] shut down, a certain percentage of [applebee's employees] are going to be at their relatives' and friends' houses, playing on the playground, etc., and even a certain percentage of [applebee's employees] will not be isolating themselves. So it's not certain that having [applebee's] closed even slows the spread.

― the late great, Thursday, December 17, 2020 11:43 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You could make that argument! And if you had evidence, I'd listen and consider whether it's worth shutting down applebee's. There does happen to be evidence that teachers and students are getting COVID at the same rate whether in school in person or remote.

in one of my friends' districts where she teaches, cases are on the rise, finding new students each day reported as testing positive. yeah, their infections are probably being acquired somewhere other than teh class room, but these students have been in the classrooms with COVID. not all classrooms are ventilated well, or allow for distancing.

one of my teacher friends is asthmatic and has other health risks is a bit worried about coming into contact with one of these students. so far she's been lucky.

i mean i'm not thrilled about excess death, but we haven't outlawed driving on freeways, alcohol and tobacco, being obese etc etc and those are ultimately going to kill a lot more ppl than covid-19 is

pro tip: don’t say these things

ty k3v, I was waiting for your reaction

Elementary & middle schools have been open here (France) since the start of September. We've made it to the end of the year break without any major breakouts from those schools. Some high schools have been on half-time (one week you go in the morning, next week in the afternoon) to ease crowding, but most have been full-time for everyone, and also, no major breakouts there. Universities went full distance after six weeks, because there was evidence of spread there.

I was skeptical that schools could stay open without problems, but I was wrong. We still have terribly many infected & I think we'll have a third wave in early January because of holiday travel & gatherings, but schools aren't the key to that here.

Applebees closing has gotta save a few lives irrespective of pandemic

one of my teacher friends is asthmatic and has other health risks is a bit worried about coming into contact with one of these students. so far she's been lucky.

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, December 17, 2020 11:57 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know this is unlikely to be comfort to her, but asthma has been determined not to be a risk factor for severe COVID.

my conservative belief is that boys should go to jupiter and get more stupider and girls should go to mars and become rock stars

xpost CDC (as shaky as they've been) indicates they have not ruled this out:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html

fwiw published yesterday:

BY AND LARGE, coronavirus infections among children in Mississippi are not linked to schools and daycares unless the use of masks was not strictly enforced, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – yet another data point for school and public health officials to consider as they make complicated and often controversial decisions to reopen or close schools.

"Promoting behaviors to reduce exposures to [the coronavirus] among children and adolescents in the household and community, as well as in schools and child care programs, is needed to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks at schools and child care programs and slow the spread of COVID-19," the CDC researchers who authored the report wrote.

The investigation included 397 children during September through November at health care facilities associated with one large academic medical center in Mississippi.

The researchers found that children and adolescents 18 years old and younger who received positive test results were more likely than were similarly aged children who had negative test results to have reported close contact with a person with confirmed COVID-19, as well as less likely to have had reported consistent mask use by students and staff members inside school facilities.

Among children and adolescents who reported close contact with a person with COVID-19, those close contacts were more likely to be family members – seen at weddings, parties, play dates and funerals, for example – and less likely to be school or child care classmates.

Meanwhile, attending in-person school or child care during the two weeks before being tested for the coronavirus was not associated with increased likelihood of a positive test result. Notably, the majority of the children's and adolescents' parents reported universal mask use inside school and child care facilities.

https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2020-12-16/cdc-most-coronavirus-infections-in-kids-not-linked-to-school

pro tip: don’t say these things

― k3vin k.

lmao i say what i want

map, you are so wrong! Girls go to Mars to become movie stars!

School being open probably does more to increase flu deaths than it does to increase COVID deaths tbh, never stopped us in the past.

With COVID, just leaving my house is a risk. I can get severe COVID from as little as being sneezed or or having 15 minutes of contact with someone who is infected and may not know it. Literally my only way to reduce risk close to zero is to never leave my house.

sounds like ... maybe you shouldn't leave the house, if you're not up for that risk?

or maybe you could leave the house, and everyone else in the world can stay home?

the main reason 'other businesses are open, but not schools' = it's a helluva lot harder to shut businesses down without severe blowback from rich corporate monsters

also i'll be sure to let my friend who is a black hairdresser who is deep into qanon now because he's lost 90% of his income this year that he's a rich corporate monster

With COVID, just leaving my house is a risk

also this is total nonsense! if you leave your house at 2 am and go somewhere where there's no people and come straight home, there's literally zero risk! you get it from other people, it's not radioactive fallout

Yeah I think the blowback is just as much from wage workers in industries that can't be done from home and small business owners who can't operate from home, especially people who don't have much savings or safety net. People in the US are unfortunately more dependent on their work to survive than in any other western country. I think that has a lot to do with the pushback on closures.

i mean jeez i get it you guys don't like uncool conservative opinions, why are you even here?

it's not like i come onto the outbreak thread and poo poo your doomposting, recommend you save your righteous meltdown for someone on a different thread who cares

I read a NYT story last week showing that the problem isn't classrooms -- there's little evidence students and faculty contract it on campus. The problem is travel and bars.

oh shit this story has a photo of benches my son and I have sat on while playing pokemon go

students DNGAF about masks or distancing but a lot of them seem to have not returned after thanksgiving so that's good at least

xp yes there are people who just seem to have remained stuck in March mindset, when we didn't know anywhere near as much about spread, risk, treatment, etc. Death rates are lower now, "long covid" is still a question but probably overreported (and any virus can have longer lasting effects), and if you're under 75 and healthy your risk of death even if you get it is very low, getting lower as you go down in age. Of course I still minimize my contact and take all precautions, because I can, because the cost for me is low so why not help slow the spread, because I don't want my post-cancer FIL to get it, and because who wants this thing even if it doesn't kill or debilitate you. But we are making some wrongheaded choices, and the most notable one is closing schools.

Death rates are lower but 3k people are dying per day. Death rate also means dick if hospitals are overcrowded (which they are) and have to ration care (some do), and if the rate of transmission and number of cases are going through the roof (which they are).

We're seeing recordsetting levels of transmission in the US. We can't act the exact same as we were in times of year when the pandemic is receding.

I am not saying nobody leave their house, and with schools, idk what the "right" answer is, but some big-assed downplaying of the pandemic itt rn

Like it's great that the mortality rate is shrinking because we've been better at treating this, but hyperfocusing on death rate is the type of thinking that got us here to begin with.

I'm glad it's lower cos I can't imagine how many would be dead otherwise

it's not like i come onto the outbreak thread and poo poo your doomposting, recommend you save your righteous meltdown for someone on a different thread who cares

― the late great, Thursday, December 17, 2020 1:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

It's not me who is "melting down" itt rn

Hell, you sent me four replies before i came to respond to one

nobody's downplaying the pandemic, also i'm well aware of the basic facts you keep helpfully repeating

You literally dropped the "lol people die in accidents, we aren't banning cars" line

so?

We should definitely ban cars btw

maybe, or at least tax gasoline more

No we shouldn’t raise consumption taxes

disagree, but ok

death “rates” are a nonsensical way to frame the problem. the denominator doesn’t matter when the numerator is as gruesome as this

I do agree that there have been some wrongheaded policies from people who ought to know better. elementary schools should be among the last things to close but when community transmission is as high as it is, the effect of any additional infections are amplified further. man alive, can you link to some of the research you’re citing about risk to teachers? I’d be interested to read it