Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

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

ah the kate steinle argument

tlg I gave you a hard time about the car and whatever else thing because it’s a conservative talking point, your first mistake, the implication that because people die of other things we should be less concerned about this thing that a lot of people are currently dying from that no one ever died from a year ago is not terribly sound

ah the kate steinle argument

― the late great, Thursday, December 17, 2020 4:02 PM (forty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

haven’t the slightest clue what this means tbh

"who cares if the vast majority of illegal immigrants don't break the law, even one preventable murder is too many"

We should definitely ban cars btw

― is right unfortunately (silby), Thursday, December 17, 2020 3:49 PM bookmarkflaglink

tbh i agree with this

xpost uh wow is that really the analogy you wanted to make there

that's not my implication though

yes that is the correct analogy, why?

xpost wasn't k3v's either

you have this tendency when you feel strongly about something to immediately and disingenuously insinuate that your opponent is saying this thing that you know they are actually not saying or implying

has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read on ilx recently lol. take a nap or something

Thread title delivers, I guess.

Doesn't deliver pizza though

my implication is that we aacept a certain amount of risk and death in allowing ppl to do daily life activites and whether you think it's acceptable to close schools (or ban guns, or drugs, or fossil fuels) etc etc in order to reduce risk and death is not an objective question, and there's tradeoffs involved

yeah the kinetics of viral spread complicate that a bit

great counterarguments, guys! you really engaged with the substance of what i was saying, and i feel so ashamed to have disappointed you now

Some local councils in London have been trying to shut schools only to be told, "Don't you dare!" by the government.

did i misunderstand what he meant by numerator and denominator?

i figured he meant when the outcome is so gruesome?

I hadn’t seen his posts when I posted mine but I was essentially stating what neanderthal was a different way. the percentage of people who die does not really matter when the absolute number is so high

oh, okay. well, i misunderstood. but that's not in the realm of what i'd call a fact, that's more like your opinion maaaaan

It's currently the third leading cause of death in the US, no? Right behind heart disease and cancer, neither of which is a virus iirc. And the overwhelming majority of Americans haven't had it (yet), so… things could obv. get much, much worse, and we don't really want that, do we?

What would an acceptable death toll look like iyo?