The fact that I had to look that up for you shows what your ruminations on the subject are worth.
You’re inferring that you were the first person to discover that graphic and show it to me? I’d have expected a little more sharpness than that.
Inferring? You asked me what the flu numbers are. It’s not much inferring to assume you don’t know the answer. Or assume it was Socratic bull. I left both options on the table.
Except in the places where they don’t, right? Or, do those places not get to scream as loud? Or were the restrictions in Southern California just kinda ignored by most if not all?
How is it, exactly, that people don’t comply with school and business closures and curfews and work-from-home orders yet people don’t notice? Are there underground concerts and exhibitions happening? Are there schools with a speakeasy-style hidden entrance? Were California’s restrictions just kind of a facade?
No, I did not ask you what the flu numbers are. If that’s what you thought, then something went right over your head.
I know what the flu numbers are – or at least, what the reports like that one say. What I said was that I didn’t know what to make of it. You’re the one who said first that there was ‘a lack of’ a flu season and then said that a wide variety of infectious diseases are ‘down’. I asked you to make up your mind, not to show me a report. Those are not the same thing.
There shouldn’t have been confusion for the careful reader. I said flu season was absent, many infectious diseases are down. Absent is also a subset of “down”. These are clownish points you’re trying to score.
As a reminder, that was in response to:
It was further explained:
I thought you might be interested in, let’s say, a differing point of view.
Pandemic-related school closures are deepening educational inequality in the United States by severely impairing the academic progress of children from low-income neighborhoods while having no significantly detrimental effects on students from the county’s richest communities, according to a new study co-authored by Yale economist Fabrizio Zilibotti.
Using a quantitative model to examine the consequences of extended school closures for high school students, the researchers determined that children living in the poorest 20% of U.S. neighborhoods will experience the most negative and long-lasting effects of school closures. For example, their model predicts that one year of school closures will cost ninth graders in the poorest communities a 25% decrease in their post-educational earning potential, even if it is followed by three years of normal schooling. By contrast, their model shows no substantial losses for students from the richest 20% of neighborhoods.
That finding is, in a word, damning. The sheer brunt of school closures being borne by low-income and marginalized students and their families is, to me, a crime against humanity. That adults have allowed this sacrifice to be made by our youth is unconscionable. It’s unforgivable. And no, the kids aren’t benefiting on the whole. That is a bizarre point of view.
Here’s a little more grist for the mill.
I’m horrified at the effect lockdown is having, particularly on the poor. A young woman recently sat in my outpatients clinic and asked me to take her children away. She was calm and at first I thought she was joking. ‘Why?’ I asked. She simply couldn’t cope any more. Then, as she began to sob, she confessed she was worried she would end up killing them and then herself. ‘I love them so much,’ she repeated as she begged me to take them into care. You have to be pretty desperate to try to give your children away. She lived in two rooms, and shared a bathroom and kitchen with another family. One child had autism, the other had behavioural problems and developmental delay. She has no family in this country. Day in and day out she sat in the room while her children screamed and wailed. I sat blinking at her, literally speechless. There were no day centres, no drop-ins — all sacrificed in the rush to lock down. She hadn’t seen her social worker for months. In the pandemonium of the pandemic, her community mental health team had effectively shut up shop and left her without any support. Now they just phone her occasionally. How she has lasted this long I have no idea. It’s easy for people in big houses having Zoom cocktails with their family to claim they know what’s best and insist that restrictions are imposed which mean others go stark-staring mad.
Once more, for those in the back:
It’s easy for people in big houses having Zoom cocktails with their family to claim they know what’s best and insist that restrictions are imposed which mean others go stark-staring mad.
…how does that differ from my point of view?
That study says nothing about the affect Covid has on marginalised communities. What does that study say about children losing their mums and dads to Covid? What is going to have a bigger impact: going from a B to a C or not having a mum and dad because they are both dead? How can you ignore that?
You are missing the forest for the trees. That is a bizarre point of view.
…you mean “grist” as in a single second hand anecdote from a doctor published in a conservative magazine that was once edited by Boris Johnson?
Once more for those in the back: the author of that article comes speaks from a position of enormous privilege and doesn’t speak on behalf of marginalized communities. He is entitled to express his opinion. But you can’t look at what is happening with marginalized communities until you examine the barriers in access to healthcare for ethnic minorities and migrant women and the disparities in risks and outcomes to those same communities. This is a much bigger topic than just schools. You can’t look at the issue without the surrounding context.
To build on this: in my community, at least, the working poor are the group least likely to send their kids to school. Schools are generally open in Texas, but most districts are oftering a remote option. At my own school, 92% of students are opting for remote. Overall, it’s the affluent neighborhoods and affluent suburbs that are sending their kids to school and pushing to reduce quarantine restrictions. That’s the group that need the childcare. That’s the group that feels like something ineffable will be forever lost if their kid doesn’t have to Full School Experience.
Saytoo, do you think we should force kids to go to school in person? We do it most of the time, of course, with compulsory education. Should we remove the remote option and start writing truancy citations?
No, I absolutely don’t. I am admittedly quite surprised to hear the report from your district, as it seems to run counter to other things I’ve heard, and it’s something I weigh in my thinking. (I’ve heard you say it before.) I’m assuming they have very good reasons to have those preferences, and I think they should be fully entitled to them. Yes, it’s a good point that we compel school attendance in normal times, so it’s not as though we allow absolute freedom to prevail. But these clearly are not normal times, and I think a remote option for those who fear a return to in-person would be the right and humane thing to do.
There is a whole other road we could go down where we explore why it is that 92% of those families are choosing remote, and how much responsibility others may have for shaping those points of view, given that they do, I imagine, differ dramatically from the norm in normal times. But I think that’s getting to a different topic altogether.
What I believe is that the responsibility, and you might even call it moral obligation, that we have to educate our youth should carry on with minimal interruption unless we can provide very good proof of reason for it not to. I doubt anyone would disagree with that. We disagree on whether there is good proof of reason not to, I recognize. But I think the science is coming around to a consensus that the closures are no longer worth it.
I don’t ignore it. I think it’s exceedingly rare. There are many things that are exceedingly rare that we cannot allow to dominate our risk-reward evaluations.
…why would a report from her district which matches up with citations that have already been provided to you surprise you?
Were the UK wrong to close their schools a few weeks ago? Was Sweden wrong to close some schools in November?
Incorrect.
4101 covid deaths in America yesterday. 4097 deaths the day before. A seven day rolling average of over 3000 deaths per day. Only a few months ago that rolling average was under a thousand.
So I’m not sure we should trust you on issues of risk-reward evaluations. Especially as you ignore specific context. Schools are open here, they have been open since April last year and things are going great. But in other places things aren’t going great and closing schools is a sensible option to help break the chains of transmission. So the question goes to you again: was the UK wrong to close their schools a few weeks ago? Was Sweden wrong to close some schools in November?
How many a day, on average, are parents of school-age kids?
…how about you answer my question about the UK and Sweden (that I’ve asked you several times in this thread and others) first? I’m not here to provide you entertainment. This is a conversation.
I can’t answer it because I can’t find a cite for it. Might you have one I could borrow?
How many are grandparents of school-age kids? I have a 13 year old living with me and every day she goes to middle school, mixes with 1500 other kids and adult staff and then gets into my car in close quarters to share the viruses she met that day. Just before she spends the evening in my house before getting in the car the next day to return to school to gather more contagion. I’m 71, with several other risk factors. Any more questions?
…the question was “was the UK wrong to close their schools a few weeks ago? Was Sweden wrong to close some schools in November?”
What kind of cite do you want? This goes directly to your premise. Surely you hold an opinion on this, do you not?
I do not, no, on those particular situations, as I don’t know enough about the context. But even if I did, I haven’t found you to be very welcoming of other people’s opinions. You usually (if you don’t like them, at least) ask for cites to back them up or otherwise diminish the person’s right to have them.