I mentioned upthread that I fully support every family’s right to choose for themselves whether to keep their children home from school during the pandemic. Your situation sounds like one where it seems more than reasonable. No, I have no questions for you.
…and this is entirely the point.
You can’t make a blanket argument against school closures because each closure is different, and specific context is required. Schools are open here. They are closed in the UK. We all agree that educational outcomes will probably be better if students were back in school. But whether or not those schools are safe to open are dependent on specific context that a school or a district find themselves in.
The opinions that you hold and express here are dangerous. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am unwelcoming of your opinion.
That’s kinda how it works around here. Welcome to the Straight Dope.
Is it the context that closes and opens the schools, or is it the leaders? It’s the leaders. Do the leaders always correctly, or appropriately, interpret the context? I don’t think they always do. Do you?
…the decisions made by leadership are part of the context. Its all part of the context.
Was Boris Johnson right to close the schools in the UK a few weeks ago? Did he correctly and appropriately interpret the context? I think he did on this occasion even though he has been wrong on many other things. What do you think?
Notice I said grandparents and that the child lives with me, not that I had any legal decision making power re: her education. Her mother shares my home. Her other parent (biological father under a custody sharing family court plan demands that the child goes to school in person. Barring an expensive and likely futile legal battle or turning them out on the street, I’m at risk just as I described.
I already told you that I do not have an informed opinion on that. I still don’t.
…so do you want to have a discussion here or not? What exactly is the goal? You want to talk about school closures but don’t want to look deeply into specific school closures. You then pivoted to leadership but you don’t want to talk about a specific example of leadership.
Its not as if the UK isn’t a good example to examine for its size, its population, and for its overall handling of the pandemic. And it isn’t as if you haven’t cited Sweden several times in this thread as an example of how you think they handled the pandemic well in the early months. Why was it easy for you to find out that information, but its too hard to investigate them now?
As we have discussed here on the board, it is common practice for schools to be closed short-term during viral outbreaks. It is long-term school closures, particularly in places without rampant or fast-growing spread, that are – in my opinion, which I hope you’ll allow me to have! – more harmful than helpful.
I assume you are asking about such short-term closures, in the cases of the UK and Sweden.
…which specific closures are you talking about?
I’m addressing the comments you have made in this thread. You’ve made zero distinction between short and long term closures up till now. If you want to specifically talk about long term closures, then be specific about where exactly you are talking about.
I’m talking about all of them. There are no long-term school closures that appear to be worth the devastation they are causing.
…name one.
Then you shouldn’t have any problem telling me which one in particular you find problematic. You cited a doctor talking about school closures in the UK before. Was that one of the long term closures you were talking about?
I don’t recall if it was. Again: I am against all long-term school closures during this pandemic. I don’t think they are worth the devastation they cause.
Cites please.
284,372 on average.
That can’t be the right daily average of American parents dying of COVID-19.
~Max
Apologies, I can see the error in my post. Fixing it now:
I think 284,372 on average, but I’ve also heard is was eleventy million, so I’m confused.
Per day??? You’ve got to be off by an order of magnitude.
Banquet_Bear wrote that the seven day rolling average of American COVID deaths is “over 3,000” per day. 284,372 > 3,000, and not all deaths are parents of school-age children.
~Max
Sure, but in my informed opinion, Banquet Bear was leaving out whether this included people wearing orange masks, which I think is important, and might be the reason we come up with different numbers.
I don’t think we have the data to answer the question. I mean, it’s not like we have rapid testing and detailed contact tracing showing exposure connections, times, and environments. Nor do we have genetic sequencing on vast numbers of those tests to identify which exposures caused which transfers.
I just heard on TV that the NFL actually did study this shit, and published the study through the CDC. Oh look, here it is.
Some excerpts:
So as not to blanket quote the whole article and bore the uninterested with the numbers and details, I’ll give a summary.
The NFL instituted a detailed study to understand transmission and how to limit it. They gave members tracking devices to be worn at all times and instituted daily rapid covid testing, and performed genomic sequencing on the viruses detected. They measured people’s interactions, and after exposures they quarantined the exposed and performed detailed contact tracing, not just through the device data but through personal interviews. They also instituted strong cleaning protocols for facilities.
They then evaluated the data for a number of factors. I’ll just quote here.
This is the kind of study the government should have been pushing back in March, the kind of activity that would have given the guidelines for shut downs and closures and reopenings and curfews some sort of a data-based merit that you are going on about. But our government didn’t do any of it. They whined about government interference and the need to keep the economy going and that the pandemic would just go away. They didn’t do the mass surveillance testing that was recommended, nor even attempt contact tracing because the delays between exposure and testing and test results were so long. And so we fell back on some general principles that had some basis of merit for infectious disease control, but have been shown to not be limiting for covid.
I can’t tell you what occurred in California, or the impacts of population density, and what kind of behaviors and interactions were actually performed despite any mandates. I don’t have data. I don’t have data on restriction dates and the corresponding data on cases and death statistics to correlate. Plus, that kind of assessment is (a) a research-grant level of study, and (b) outside my field of expertise.
What I can say is that America has botched this from the beginning, largely because of one party’s obstruction of meaningful control measures and implementation of the kind of data collection that would have been beneficial to understand how to improve controls. Plus, resistance to masking.
You keep going on and on about California’s controls not working, but you are not providing any suggestions on how to improve control of disease spread and limiting of cases and deaths. You just keep advocating opening things up, without giving any suggestion to how to protect American lives and health. Do you have anything to offer, other than we have vaccines rolling out? Are we just to let everyone die until the vaccine distribution can finally get spread far enough to have an effect?
What are your recommendations? Be specific. I’ve given mine. What are yours?
Hasn’t he made it quite clear that he doesn’t believe in mitigation at all?
But also, go sportsball!