Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

for sure kids are not the best maskers. around here though schools are now requiring kn95s+ which should in theory at least be one measure against that wildfire spread. at my kids' school they also have masks on at all times indoors - eating snack and lunch outside even though it's been 20 degrees all week.

xp Those are good points, Lily Dale. I would say the social-emotional piece of being in person is the most important anyway, so even with all of that just getting to be around and be socialized by other kids has tremendous value. But unpredictability and trusted adults dropping out of your life for unannounced periods all the time also has negative social-emotional impact, so there's obv no good answer.

nb I live in a fairly privileged community

KN95 requirements definitely would go a long way to quell that spread for sure. are the schools supplying them, or just requiring parents to supply them for their children?

party line is def the latter. if people respond by saying they can't get them, not sure the degree to which schools are stepping up and providing

gotcha, thanks!

I think our school is asking people to wear KN95s but only providing surgical masks.

Anyway it sucks for kids to get caught in the crossfire of the politicization of this. People arguing on their behalf in bad faith or for political reasons should not affect the merits of the arguments.

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, January 6, 2022 9:25 AM

it doesn't, that's why i do not wish to read any more concern trolling articles in the nyt (could stop here lol) unless these same writers want to demonstrate they give a shit about the mental health of children generally and not just when they can use their poor circumstances as a cudgel. as i said, i acknowledge that may be whataboutism but i don't care. at least the CDC had the courage to admit they changed the rules so companies could compel more people to work.

Do you really think Leana Wen is concern trolling?

she didn't write the article referencing the the suicide stats but her problem is more that she seems to be accusing teachers of "waiting for perfect" when they are definitely not. teachers are reacting to the circumstances in their communities, not waiting for zero covid or something.

this is also a weird thing to say because it would seem to be a good precaution to close the other things to make up for our failure to provide better ventilation for poor schools, give N95s to everyone, make testing more available, and impose vaccine mandates, and she isn't saying that.

Do bars? Do restaurants? Do sports stadiums with tens of thousands of fans? If we are not shutting down the rest of society, we shouldn’t shut down schools. They should be first to open and LAST to close.

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) January 6, 2022

i didn't see her whole appearance, obviously, but i don't believe they asked her to address the actual conditions teachers are facing (like lily dale said above) or the hospitalization problem, in response to her claim that they are waiting for some perfect time to have permanent in-person school.

But I don't see anyone advocating to close schools focusing on closing those things first either. It's only the politics and power structures of our society that make schools more likely to close than bars and restaurants, not any kind of objective public health standard.

yes

My wife teaches in a very crowded NYC school, likely had COVID over christmas break, and I likely had it from her. Also, I know I made this point a while back, but any parent who advocates kids being in school is necessarily exposing themselves to whatever COVID risk comes from that school, so it's not like they have no skin in the game.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, January 6, 2022 7:50 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

'im ok with it therefore everyone else should be too'

man alive more like child dead, boom roasted

― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 4:25 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, August 24, 2021 7:09 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

― class project pat (m bison), Sunday, November 14, 2021 12:19 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

coming up on one year of you making the same bad points, keep going!!!

'im ok with it therefore everyone else should be too'

― class project pat (m bison), Thursday, January 6, 2022 10:51 AM (three minutes ago)

ok but isn't this like almost everyone's covid POV

'im ok with it therefore everyone else should be too'

― class project pat (m bison), Thursday, January 6, 2022 10:51 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really don't give a shit if "everyone" is "ok with it." People advocate their positions and policy decisions get made, it's never the case that everyone is "ok with it" and your personal level of ok-ness is no more valid than mine.

my position is actually much more valid than yours, ive already attended a funeral for one of my former students and seen one of my current students become an orphan this year bc of covid, eat shit

I dunno. It used to be that kids had to go to school, and would get in trouble if they didn't. Further, parents had to send their kids to school, and would get in trouble if they didn't. Were there reasons for that? It's so long ago that I don't remember.

We're currently four weeks into a two-week break, and we're managing somehow. Yet I still think it's strange the way school has just kinda become optional, or even come to be considered a frivolous luxury product that only weirdos insist on.

what

Sorry to sound flippant there - I mean I totally understand that saving lives is more important.

What I'm trying to express is a sense of whiplash. Like, for more than a century it was "go to school and learn things or else," now it's "meh, everyone will catch up somehow."

yeah, all the teachers are just going "meh" because they want to stay home in their jam jams

is anyone saying the latter?

What I hear: "Kids will miss classrooms and have gaps in their learning, everything sucks right now."

harbl, did I say that? I did not.

sorry you're right i'm just frustrated but you did say "kinda become optional, or even come to be considered a frivolous luxury product that only weirdos insist on." which no one is doing and no one is saying meh

This thread might be somewhat improved by not characterizing anyone's attitude to covid/restrictions as "meh." Honestly I'd almost love to see someone be genuinely nonchalant about the pandemic rather than using a transparent veneer of nonchalance to cover seething intensity

Lord Alfred's formulation is the right one, sorry, didn't mean to stir shit, everything sucks and everyone's frustrated

i know! that's all i'm looking for at this point! xpost

couple of observations based on talking to family back home:

the stakes for schools and teachers are incredibly high in the US because of the lack of a social safety net, difficulty of accessing good healthcare, lack of competent national and local public health, how widespread child poverty is, etc.

additionally there's a complete lack of social trust (USA!), and local and regional variation that i think is pretty unimaginable to people outside the US (did you know schools are funded with local property taxes?!?!?! and there's literal corruption and incompetence and ideology that has lead to the majority of federal covid money for schools being unspent!).

and one specific issue is rapid tests could have helped, and have been largely ignored for the past two years, until like 3 weeks ago, and now you can't get them anywhere.

these have combined to give us 1) schools that are forced to close regularly with little or no notice (which *does not happen* in any european country as far as i can tell) and 2) a debate about schools that is completely and utterly unhinged.

i realise a lot of the people posting here and on twitter and in comment sections about this are incredibly unsympathetic, but honestly, it's a shitshow to an extent that may not be obvious to people in other countries (or even people in the US who aren't parents or teachers). it's driven a lot of people crazy.

a big problem here is that omicron is so infectious that hunkering down and waiting for it to pass just isn't a real option. you can sort of try to spread out infections so that fewer happen at once, but then you deal with this for longer. that takes a small amount of pressure off hospitals, but doesn't help much beyond that. when it comes to schools, you are just faced with a few different equally bad options.

I mean, ILX alone, most of us are living pretty responsibly and look how many of us have gone down with it. it's just an insane level of spread, and it's easy to forget how bad Delta already was in that regard and how much beyond that this is.

throughout this pandemic, I think the problem is we've been expecting a general public that in the US is incapable of collective critical thinking to do critical thinking.

at the beginning of the pandemic, the messaging was simpler, because we knew less about the virus, and so everybody kind of just echoed each other. resistance was high but from a more predictable sect - conservatives, anti-vax loons, etc.

The general public does a poor job of understanding evolving science and views changes in guidance as "flip-flopping", but....also, the goalposts have moved a ton in two years. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but the general public includes millions of people who have done what has been asked of them (or more) only to find out it's still not enough, and due to things beyond their control (like vaccine inequity, other irresponsible people, unpredictability of the virus, etc). Even the best folk can get burnt out by that.

but it doesn't help now when we're being failed by the CDC and in many ways also the WHO, to where the slogan has changed from "trust the science" to "trust the science, but WHOSE, exactly, is the right science?". some people just fracture under the stress of it all and give up and just do whatever. not defending that behavior, but I understand why it happens.

that said, I haven't minded a quieter existence the last few weeks as it has been well-timed with my dad's return to the house as well as just me needing calm for the sake of mental peace. but I don't expect I'll feel that way in several weeks.

I haven't minded a quieter existence the last few weeks

?!

off-line, jfc

message received all.....

Neanderthal i appreciated your formulation. Lots otm in what you wrote. We can have compassion for people who are struggling to make decisions, making bad ones, and freezing under the information overload and the hardship.

I don't get the swipes at Neanderthal at all, gotta be honest. He posts a lot, but the vast majority of it is clear-headed, reasonable or informative and often with some appreciated levity. But tbf, I still don't think I've grokked what is supposed to be the "right" way to use this thread, just lots of pointing out of what is "wrong".

?!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek)

dude shut up

No other poster since March 2020 has avoided doomposting + Panglossian bullshit like Neanderthal.

it's just an insane level of spread

One million new US cases reported in a single day! Johns Hopkins reports that the total number of US cases since March 2020 is only 57 million. No matter how many contingent factors may have contributed to inflating that one-day number, it's clear that omicron is (to quote Dr. Fauci from a recent interview) "like nothing we've ever seen before".

Yet, I am optimistic I can get through January without becoming infected. My optimism may be misplaced, but it helps me stay afloat in this sea of troubles.

I mean, if you're going to the store masked and not lingering, staying home, or confining activity outdoors, you may beat it!

But who fucking knows.

We've really hunkered down again, but I still have to go to the office every day and sit in an open plan office and my son (as of right now, anyway) starts back up at school next Tuesday, so there are two potential sources of infection right there that I just have to accept.

I mean we're all fully vaxxed and boosted as can be and wear KN95s when we're in public places, beyond that it all kind of gets out of our hands.

I forgot who I read last week who said, don't underestimate the power of good masks even at this stage. If you and most everyone around you indoors masks in an enclosed space, you may yet escape.

But tbf, I still don't think I've grokked what is supposed to be the "right" way to use this thread, just lots of pointing out of what is "wrong".

Hey m bison, I'm sorry for your losses, that sounds really terrible. I don't really want to keep arguing about this with you man, it's not good for me either. I really don't want to compare suffering either, but I do want to say that my wife has had students for whom being stuck at home was deeply, extremely bad, and I'd rather not get into that further esp since they're her students not mine but let's not dismiss the fact that there has been very real suffering from school closures that has dwarfed anything my own comfortable kids experienced.

i will agree to disagree if u stop posting in these threads

No one has denied that fact, though, and, as a college instructor, let's say I speak for millions of colleagues for whom this state of affairs has not been delightful either; but no one is suggesting going remotely permanently. At worst it's something like a two-week period until the holiday cases work themselves out of the daily case/hospitalization numbers.

But tbf, I still don't think I've grokked what is supposed to be the "right" way to use this thread, just lots of pointing out of what is "wrong".

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, January 6, 2022 10:20 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this thread is mostly the dialogue between space marines in Aliens, and the "right" way is to try and approximate Ripley.