outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

xpost sadly some people taking that to mean masks should come off for kids, as if "lower risk of death" means "no risk of death".

child pediatric death rate doubled in the past week in FL.

child pediatric, ugh. i need sleep

man alive I think it's an incredibly callous thing to say that protecting teachers, their families, the families of all the kids in the school isn't 'worth' your personal hassle of a 20-second lateral flow test. wtf man. Are you listening to yourself? Are you really that selfish? Is your own personal comfort worth more than their health??

it's not an issue of being worth a lateral flow test, it's an issue of how much school kids miss for non-contagious cases and/or false positives compared to how little protection is actually afforded

that is the issue

I think these protocols are already changing. There was a kid with COVID in my kid's class last week. THAT kid can't come back to school, neither can kids deemed "close contacts" of that kid by the principal, but they didn't shut the whole class down. They're PCR testing all the kids in the classroom this morning. (Our kid wasn't particularly close to the kid who tested positive and we gave her two rapid tests over the weekend, both negative, but I can't guarantee other parents did the same, obviously.)

I think if the whole class stays home for a week every time a kid tests positive, there's not gonna be much school, and I would say that there are going to be unknowingly positive kids in the classroom throughout the school year whether or not they have symptoms or get a positive test. (This school is fully masked, all teachers vaccinated, upgraded ventilation, for what it's worth.)

what is the equilibrium, there? if there are 50 unnecessary "false-positive / go home / hire a babysitter / lose 0.00000001% of your career earnings" cases in a month and 1 correct, "true-positive / go home / you saved someone's dad from having to die of covid this year", is that worth it to you? and by that i mean would you be willing to hire a babysitter to save someone's life, even though you'll never be able to prove that it saved anyone's life

xp

there is no correct answer to that, btw. no one gives a shit about the lives they saved, if they can't prove that they did it themselves and get some sort of fucking trophy

xpost - That sounds about right, but I'm curious to know how they determine "close contacts". I have a lot of sympathy for the school officials who have to try and figure all of this out.

child pediatric death rate doubled in the past week in FL.

― you had me at "giallo" (Neanderthal), Monday, September 13, 2021 10:04 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

TBC, the case fatality rate did not double, the total number of deaths increased, but we are still talking about 17 child deaths in 18 months. Would likely not even put it in the top ten causes of child deaths in Florida.

I mean, tbf though, Florida

Good morning!

there is no correct answer to that, btw.

actually, as usual, i'm wrong. there is a correct answer to stuff like that. they calculate it.

for example, speed limits. raising them leads to more deaths. it's a number. the number fluctuates, but it is correlated. it's a public safety trade-off - we want to go faster, we want goods to arrive more quickly, we want to live our incredibly selfish lives even more incredibly selfishly. the trade-off is about 30-40,000 more deaths, over 25 years. 1200-1600 per year.

same with EPA. the "cost of a human life", very useful to know for environmental litigation.

so i'm sorry, it's very much a normal human thing to consider, to trade off the deaths of some for the convenience of others

what is the equilibrium, there? if there are 50 unnecessary "false-positive / go home / hire a babysitter / lose 0.00000001% of your career earnings" cases in a month and 1 correct, "true-positive / go home / you saved someone's dad from having to die of covid this year", is that worth it to you? and by that i mean would you be willing to hire a babysitter to save someone's life, even though you'll never be able to prove that it saved anyone's life

xp

― "HYYOOOOOOONK!" is the sound I make (Karl Malone), Monday, September 13, 2021 10:49 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, there's no easy answer to this, but you could also ask the same question about flu, or letting kids swim, or driving.

in general i'd say i'd be fine with about 400K more deaths in the united states from coronavirus, though, if it meant that i get to walk around as a free man. looking at it cold and hard, it's not likely that it's going to kill someone else i know

by 400K i mean topping off around a million. But I could 1.5M if that's what it takes to make me feel better

honestly maybe everyone could just die

Also, it's not really just about "hire a babysitter" (although if you find a babysitter who stays home with quarantined kids please give them my info!), but about the fact that you have a generation of kids who have missed multiple years of school now. Some of them have been out of school more of their school-aged years than they've been in school. And to keep disrupting their school is, you know, disruptive.

so is this the "everybody else vs man alive" thread now?

i am generally just against the world

xp TBH, I would be a lot more fine with restrictions if I felt that they actually were saving lives here. We're a very high-vax area, and quarantining low-risk elementary school kids here is not protecting the people likely to get very sick or die.

so is this the "everybody else vs man alive" thread now?

I mean I'm the guy who sent my own kid to school today in a classroom where I know at least one kid was COVID-positive last week so I wouldn't say I'm actually vs man alive here

We're in a very high-vax area where the numbers have remained consistently low and I am perfectly fine with the restrictions we have in place continuing until we're well in the clear because we don't live in a bubble.

Maybe some people do live in a bubble. Is that a thing? Towns and principalities surrounded by some kind of impermeable dome such that everyone inside the dome can rest assured that current conditions will maintain because outsiders can't get into the bubble with their germs? That sounds nice.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W0ac_Ju8vHw/VOJN_2-2x4I/AAAAAAAAFHI/W3KHKFemOc8/s1600/bubbleboy1a.jpg

what restrictions are in place where you live?

xp

Sex is banned

Indoor mask mandate at the moment. And sex.

ok, hot

iirc, masks mandated for indoor sex only, outdoor sex masks are only recommended.

Are restaurants and bars open?

only for masked indoor sex with your man date

i get the feeling some people in this thread think the false positive test rate is large. it's not!

I agree it's terrible to have to put a "price on the human life" but I definitely sympathize with man alive's point here, this stretching out from one year of remote learning and lockdown to 2 or 3 or possibly more has its own consequences which I don't think should be dismissed. having to do remote learning kindergarten with a 3 year old in the house while also working a full-time job was really difficult! They want to go to school. I want them to go to school. I have come to terms with the fact that even if vaxxed we will probably wind up getting it at some point. And as much as I hate to think about it, everything poses some form of risk. At their ages (6 & 4) isn't pneumonia a bigger threat?

The thing is I'm a lot less of a jerk about this stuff IRL than I am on the internet. I wear a mask whenever I go into a store even if not required, we mostly keep any social stuff outdoors, no indoor dining etc. I generally limit my IRL complaints to stuff that really impacts my kids (e.g. can they please have more than 10 minutes from the moment they have to get their lunches out to the moment they have to be put away, they're coming home hungry). But I kind of feel the need to push back a little just to have some understanding of how safe we are trying to or expect to make things (or possibly even can) / what the metrics could/would be for easing up, etc. I live in NY which is at least "pretty good," at dealing with the pandemic right now, not Florida level, and maybe if every state was even "pretty good" we'd be on our way out of this. At the same time I wonder if NY is just going to get hit by the same thing Florida has now in the Winter. IDK. I might be wrong about everything. It's pretty hard to know.

I will wear a mask whenever I need to and whenever I am asked to. (#batman) But there are definitely people out there taking things to extremes of caution I am uncomfortable with. For example, on a Facebook group for parents of high school students here, someone posted that their kid had a headache so they kept him home, and another parent self-righteously amplified, good, headaches are a symptom of covid. Well, headaches are also a symptom of every fucking thing!

it’s actually not that hard at all, you are wrong and you enjoy the mild humiliation of ppl w more sense telling you over and over that you are wrong

xp

i get the feeling some people in this thread think the false positive test rate is large. it's not!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, September 13, 2021 1:11 PM bookmarkflaglink

isn't it like .2% or something ridiculously small?

it's false negatives that are much higher

lol xp

yeah, PCR FPR is a lot less than 1%

LF FPR is like 2% or something.

i guess the problem is when you have 30 kids without covid taking a LF test with a FPR of 2%. the probability that at least one of them gets a false positive is 1 - (1-0.02)^30 = 55%.

if the rule is "if just one kid tests positive the entire class must isolate" then yeah that's de facto "schools are closed now" and i can see the concern.

but would that be the rule if the US actually started testing people routinely? it's not how it's done in the UK, which i generally assume is more aggressive about this.

mbison otm.

So my son's district is starting salvia based testing next week, I honestly haven't yet had a chance to dig in too deeply wrt how that compares to FPR with other methods.

It's what we used at my university until July, after which we switched to the nasal PCRs.

very jealous that I wasn't given salvia when I was in school, would've made it so much more entertaining

lol

We saw a big printed sign in front of a testing facility the other day announcing that they were now doing salvia testing. Kinda wanted to pop in and give them a hand.

Yeah my work still uses the saliva testing (sadly not salvia), but I haven't had to have it done since I've been back.

just reading the word "salvia" sends a chill down my spine