Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

it's a dumb question so you can ask but you're not going to get an answer because i don't have one

it's a dumb question

lol ok, I guess that settles it then.

i don't see how that settles anything but ok

i mean do YOU have a number in mind that's ok? or do only i have to answer that question?

time to weigh up QALYs on both sides of this debate

I tend to think approximately ten times the seasonal flu's average fatality rate even after the implementation of exceedingly rare preventive measures across much of the known world is kind of a big deal, certainly a bigger deal than kids not going to school for a few months (which btw would have been a blessing for me and done wonders for my mental health back when I was still in high school, if you'll allow this bit of anecdotal evidence). My hunch is that the main reason schools stayed open almost everywhere is so parents could continue working as they normally do to ensure the survival of our God-given economy. YMMV, etc.

so basically what you're saying is you don't have an answer for your own rhetorical questions, let alone my serious ones, and are instead content to fall back on sarcastically attempting to shame me. ok!

How is that not an answer to my own rhetorical question? I'm basically stating that 300k *is* too much imo. And I did engage with your arguments beyond the surface snark, even though you deem my responses unsatisfactory. Are you ok? Because this is such a bizarre hill to die on, and in *this* manner.

This is hardly, tbf, a novel approach around here

― spruce springclean (darraghmac), Thursday, December 17, 2020 4:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

Lol well yes, yr right there

Im all for tlg going in on this thread tbf pom, seems the place for it like

lmao who's dying?

oh no a bunch of internet strangers with bad opinions might in turn think my opinions are bad, the horror, how will i ever be able to rely on the msg board strangers for emotional support / ego stroking ever again (oh wait i don't)

anyway, it's not a bizarre hill for me at all, because i'm a high school teacher, and my students are suffering because of school closures, and that's not ok with me. believe me, i'm fine

anyway your question was not "how much is too much" your question was literally "how much you deem acceptable" and you didn't answer that question, so that is why your response is not an answer to your rhetorical question

I tend to think approximately ten times the seasonal flu's average fatality rate even after the implementation of exceedingly rare preventive measures across much of the known world is kind of a big deal

i never said it wasn't a big deal. school closures and business closures are a big deal too.

certainly a bigger deal than kids not going to school for a few months (which btw would have been a blessing for me and done wonders for my mental health back when I was still in high school, if you'll allow this bit of anecdotal evidence)

great argument! seem to recall someone getting accused of "downplaying" somewhere on this thread ...

honestly though, you might be able to convince yourself i'm some kind of cryptofascist but do you think the good ppl at unicef are right-wingers?

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/covid-19-unicef-warns-continued-damage-learning-and-well-being-number-children

shit sucks

I just mean everything, all around.

brimstone otm

sulfur to say, yes otm

:(

The covidiots on this thread can go fuck themselves. Maybe someone close to you can die and then you can get some fucking perspective.

Sorry, sorry, I'm going to go analyze all the data to decide how much risk is acceptable.

yes perhaps if someone close to me died of COVID I'd want to harm children in order not to help stop the spread of COVID

look, yo, I don't think it's gonna help anything if we all just keep talkin' past each other in this thread. I wasn't posting specifically in service of demanding kids not be allowed to go to school, just taking severe umbrage at some of the dismissiveness in tlg's post (and the death rate focus of your posts, though less so your posts than tlg's).

the data doesn't say spread doesn't happen in schools - it says schools aren't superspreaders. that's great, and during calmer times of year, a good time of year for keeping schools open. but right now, pretty much the entire USA is a COVID hotspot, with record-breaking numbers. most of our data regarding school transmission came during times of year with much lower transmission/active cases - prior to November, we had just cracked 80,000 cases a day, which at the time, was our peak. we're at three times that right now. even if schools aren't superspreaders, they still pose a risk, so I don't believe in pooh-poohing the concerns of educators who are afraid to go to school right now.

that doesn't mean I think all schools should be closed, necessarily as forcing parents to find alternate arrangements for their kids for 7+ months is non-realistic, not to mention they're not going to be invested in their education. i don't know what the right answer is. seems more like two poison pills.

In the most recent NY contact-tracing data, 74% of spread resulted from household and social gatherings. About 1.5% originated with school employees and about 1% with k-12 students. It's certainly true that some spread happens in schools, it's just not a major driver. Plus there's evidence that students and teachers in remote learning get COVID around the same rate as students and teachers in person.

I have seen smart people mention that young children are systematically undertested and therefore underrepresented in contact tracing data. since they're already closed the question of opening schools is not something that really has a huge impact on my day to day so I haven't gotten too deep into the evidence myself, but like I said if you post the sources I will give them a look

Def not undertested in NYC, schools are a big source of testing.

We probably should just start a new thread for the original thread topic

That is certainly an uncool conservative belief.

can people please try to see their interlocutors' POV on the question of schools? it is a very hard question. we have two children. my youngest has now had his entire first semester of kindergarten on Zoom. he is a social child who thrives in classrooms, a leader among his peers and a good friend. the loss he is experiencing is heartbreaking. do I favor opening his school? no, I don't. I worked in health care for years, I believe in the most austere measures to contain the spread of infection. but I also have a job that allows me to give of my time to my kids, if I can manage to stay sane basically be "on" from 4 a.m. until I collapse at around 10. Most people don't have my job and they're suffering. Teachers who worked their whole lives to take an underpaid job shaping the future by teaching our kids are talking into a screen all day and wishing they could actually teach, wishing they could do what they take shitty pay for year-round. It's hard. When people hold opinions that are informed by their suffering, it would be nice if we could at least meet those people in a mood of compassion and understanding.

My hunch is that the main reason schools stayed open almost everywhere

One of the big ways that people are talking past each other on this is that advocates of open schools think schools are closed almost everywhere and advocates of keeping schools closed think they're open almost everywhere! And in fact it's bizarrely hard to get clean data about this -- I know what the story is for my kids' school district but I don't even know how to figure out what's happening elsewhere in the state except by going to individual county school board websites. Do YOU feel like you know what proportion of US K-12 schoolkids are attending class in person this week? I sure don't and I don't know how to find out. (Now somebody will show me up by Googling a reliable number but I promise, I have tried and failed.)

JCLC otm.
I've got a kid at school who also experienced the school closing before the summer and I was so anxious about just that relatively short break.
I've also had a friend die of Covid and really don't want to risk catching it as much as I can. Kid at school is my main risk and tbh I'm quite worried about January after the holiday free-for-all that we're not even participating in.
Schools in our area have generally had a few cases, but not ours. Yet. Other areas have had loads.

I'm sorry for your loss kinder

Thanks. I'm still shocked when I remember.

I MAY have mentioned a few times that I have a high special-needs kid who needs almost constant supervision. Two adults with full-time day jobs could not shepherd him through virtual school without something breaking, and breaking badly. Not just because of those day jobs, but because we have a whole other kid, a household, our own self-care needs, and, um, (gestures vaguely at the state of the universe).

My son being in some physical school (on an extremely limited and precaution-rich basis) has saved us from ruin.

At the same time, my teenage daughter is thriving in virtual 8th grade, with straight A's and decent coping skills. She just got into the school (likely virtual) play, while singing in chorus and doing online dance for musical theater.

Further, I am the grandson, son, and brother of many kick-ass educators, about whom I care a lot as well. So I *think* I am seeing multiple POVs.

My own personal POV is that this shit is a colossal mess that is hitting a lot of people very hard, and I empathize with pretty much all of them. Most of us are coping (albeit barely). Of course I reserve a special flavor of empathy for those whose losses are catastrophic and irreplaceable.

Pretty much every full remote day for my k and 3 kids ends in some kind of meltdown, and also leads to lots of work interruptions even with a babysitter there (and that help is expensive even though we are managing). The difference in the kids' mental and emotional well being between in person days and remote days is massive and persistent.

sorry for your inconvenience

Ye Mad Puffin do we know each other offline at all, are you FB mutuals w/Ned R or something? would love to talk.

Jclc, I don't think so, but my profile email is good

JCLC said it very well. I'm trying to find a solution to this that isn't painful for someone. Idk what it is

roger waters rules

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

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30084-0/fulltext

First, school closures will exacerbate food insecurity. For many students living in poverty, schools are not only a place for learning but also for eating healthily. Research shows that school lunch is associated with improvements in academic performance, whereas food insecurity (including irregular or unhealthy diets) is associated with low educational attainment and substantial risks to the physical health and mental wellbeing of children. The number of children facing food insecurity is substantial. According to Eurostat, 6.6% of households with children in the European Union—5.5% in the UK—cannot afford a meal with meat, fish, or a vegetarian equivalent every second day. Comparable estimates in the USA suggest that 14% of households with children had food insecurity in 2018.

Second, research suggests that non-school factors are a primary source of inequalities in educational outcomes. The gap in mathematical and literacy skills between children from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds often widens during school holiday periods. The summer holiday in most American schools is estimated to contribute to a loss in academic achievement equivalent to one month of education for children with low socioeconomic status; however, this effect is not observed for children with higher socioeconomic status.

Summer holidays are also associated with a setback in mental health and wellbeing for children and adolescents. Although the current school closures differ from summer holidays in that learning is expected to continue digitally, the closures are likely to widen the learning gap between children from lower-income and higher-income families. Children from low-income households live in conditions that make home schooling difficult. Online learning environments usually require computers and a reliable internet connection. In Europe, a substantial number of children live in homes in which they have no suitable place to do homework (5%) or have no access to the internet (6.9%). Furthermore, 10.2% of children live in homes that cannot be heated adequately, 7.2% have no access to outdoor leisure facilities, and 5% do not have access to books at the appropriate reading level. In the USA, an estimated 2.5% of students in public schools do not live in a stable residence. In New York city, where a large proportion of COVID-19 cases in the USA have been observed, one in ten students were homeless or experienced severe housing instability during the previous school year. While learning might continue unimpeded for children from higher income households, children from lower income households are likely to struggle to complete homework and online courses because of their precarious housing situations. Beyond the educational challenges, however, low-income families face an additional threat: the ongoing pandemic is expected to lead to a severe economic recession. Previous recessions have exacerbated levels of child poverty with long-lasting consequences for children's health, wellbeing, and learning outcomes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/coronavirus-education-lost-learning.html

The average student could begin the next school year having lost as much as a third of the expected progress from the previous year in reading and half of the expected progress in math, according to a working paper from NWEA, a nonprofit organization, and scholars at Brown University and the University of Virginia.

A separate analysis of 800,000 students from researchers at Brown and Harvard looked at how Zearn, an online math program, was used both before and after schools closed in March. It found that through late April, student progress in math decreased by about half in classrooms located in low-income ZIP codes, by a third in classrooms in middle-income ZIP codes and not at all in classrooms in high-income ZIP codes.

When all of the impacts are taken into account, the average student could fall seven months behind academically, while black and Hispanic students could experience even greater learning losses, equivalent to 10 months for black children and nine months for Latinos, according to an analysis from McKinsey & Company, the consulting group.

There are several reasons low-income, black and Hispanic students appear to be suffering the most through the crisis. The Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank, will release an analysis next week of the pandemic learning policies of 477 school districts. It found that only a fifth have required live teaching over video, and that wealthy school districts were twice as likely to provide such teaching as low-income districts.

that lancet article is from may, and I noticed you left out the first paragraph that said that the scientific merits of school closures are being debated.
there’s no question closing schools can hurt kids. it’s a harrowing choice and I don’t think there’s a good answer, but from what I have seen it is simply not true that we know children do not spread the virus significantly. they are more likely to have mild and asymptomatic illness and are systematically under-tested. the data are incomplete. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that despite what we don’t know, kids (particularly elementary school kids) should still be in school. just isn’t where I fall
school provides essential non-educational services for kids, which they obviously can’t get if they’re closed, but children suffer when family members die too. if our government would pay working class people to stay home, to ensure they can buy food, pay rent, etc, that would also be a nice step

that lancet article is from may, and I noticed you left out the first paragraph that said that the scientific merits of school closures are being debated.

it was just the first google result; there's a million things written about this since may, and there will be for years.

i was highlighting the stuff about unequal impact of closure on children from low-income families, not taking a stand on covid spreading. although the numbers hurting quoted above from nyc are very similar to those where i live, where schools have been open since september (with some short-term targeted closures) with no major spread

it's interesting to me (strokes chin) that nothing in your post acknowledges the unequal impact... ilxors are typically obsessed with socio-economic inequality, and yet on this topic it's like "children suffer when family members die too". but the marginal risk from opening schools is equally distributed among all families, whereas the costs of keeping them closed fall disproportionately on poor families. actually if anything, opening schools exposes higher-income families more, since they're the ones wfh

the impact of the virus itself is inequitable.
like I said there unfortunately is not the easy answer we want, even before we bring things like teachers unions into the equation

the impact of the virus itself is inequitable.

the total impact of the virus is inequitable; i'm arguing that the marginal impact from closing schools is inequitable

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