Yes, people have stated that 'the kids will be fine' quite consistently. Also, all costs other than deaths have been underplayed by people in favour of lockdowns. Memory-holing this is literally insane (where insane = disconnected from reality).
That's not to say that what was done wasn't the best of a suite of bad options. But I saw nothing but fairly extreme downplaying of the consequences of lockdowns from people who wanted long (the only effective) ones.
It might have to do with the media enviroment we're exposed to; I'm from Norway, and I feel like the impact on children has been on the forefront of everyone's mind all the time, in domestic news, in domestic policy, and in my impression of international news. But the view from within the US might be completely different.
One problem I've seemed to notice in the US is that you have the "somewhat reasonable" side and the "batshit insane" side of every discussion, and the "somewhat reasonable" side over-corrects. A clear example of that is the mask discussion; you have the "batshit insane" side which claimed that masks literally deprived you of oxygen, and then the "somewhat reasonable" side would over-correct and downplay any negative sides to having to wear a mask. Whereas outside of the US, I feel like there was a much more reasonable conversation about how masks suck and are really annoying to wear, especially when you're exerting yourself physically or wear glasses, but are overall a good thing.
So it wouldn't surprise me if you had the same effect regarding schools, where the "batshit insane" side wants no response at all and doesn't even think COVID exists/thinks it's manufactured by the illuminati to control citizens/is no worse than a flu/whatever, and the "somewhat reasonable" side overcorrects by downplaying any negative sides to a COVID response.
Let's not mince words: "batshit insane" are the people you disagree with, and "somewhat reasonable" are the people you agree with. You completely mischaracterize the side you disagree with, and then excuse the side you agree with as simply "over-correcting."
In reality, the "batshit insane" people were closer to the truth, which is that the shitty cloth masks that were considered acceptable and worn by the majority of people did little to nothing to stop the spread of Covid.
>you have the "batshit insane" side which claimed that masks literally deprived you of oxygen, and then the "somewhat reasonable" side would over-correct and downplay any negative sides to having to wear a mask
this seems to be a false dichotomy. you can certainly fit all of the opinions into a binary if you'd like, but nowhere near enough people believed what you are calling "batshit insane" to constitute one side.
more reasonably, you could talk about how one side advised not wearing masks at all, proclaiming they were totally useless, and the other "over-corrected" by mandating wearing cloth masks, which we knew all along were practically useless.
You literally had the president suggesting that wearing surgical masks caused increased transmission and that drinking bleach might cure COVID. And the talking point about how it was no worse than a flu was extremely widespread in one part of the spectrum. It's obviously not a strict binary, but the insane ideas were common enough to talk about them as a "side".
Part of it is how we do discourse in the country puts people on the defensive which leads to them being polarized. I sit in the middle of this in a couple of spots and its maddening. For brevity, I'll stick to just vaccines and anti-vaxxers.
My wife had a negative response to a vaccine as well as her brother. My mother-in-law passed before we had children and never thought to ask for more details until we had a kid. When we were touring hospitals for our first, we asked about vaccination policies. We tried to explain that we didn't want our kid vaccinated at the hospital but at the pediatrician's appointment a couple days later so we could first develop a base line so could identify any negative response if one shows up. The nurse talked over us about how important vaccines are, acting like we didn't want them at all. Turns out my daughter did have an unexplainable neurological response after the second dose. Our first pediatrician's office was fully supportive of us not continuing just that series (I suspect their "expert" we saw after the incident was anti-vax). We moved and had to find a pediatrician's office that carried the combo shot without the problematic one. We found an office that had it but the pediatrician they assigned us kept giving us problems until we saw a neurologist and the neurologist told them to back off (they were the one to classify it as unexplainable).
We understand the value of vaccines and encourage them. While our kid isn't completing a series, we understand the importance of everyone around them completing it to keep our kid safe. Pro-vaccine people treat us like we are anti-vaxxers. I could easily see this leading other people into the anti-vax camp because most people don't listen but anti-vax people would. Another social pressure that could push someone in our circumstance to be anti-vax is the laws. Anti-vax people have been abusing the system so pro-vax people have been tightening things down. We've been keeping an eye on this, worried what it'll take to get our kid through these legal requirements if we live in some of those states. The only political group that would protect our kid is the anti-vaxxers.
one reason to close school is not just about kids got covid themselves, but they could carry covid back home and hurt those elders in the house and make the pandemic worse.
it's a trade-off, I think we did what we had to do.
No that's incorrect. We never had to close schools. Sweden kept primary schools open (without masks) and they did fine. Closing schools was a completely irrational overreaction.
They had vastly more covid deaths than their nordic peers. That's a consequence you can argue is justified, I suppose, but you shouldn't try to dismiss it as "did fine."
When the dust has settled and level heads can do actual good studies on the outcomes of the last two years of mitigations... I'm pretty sure the findings will be that closing schools didn't do a damn thing but screw over kids. Same with virtually every other NPI.
> Yes, people have stated that 'the kids will be fine' quite consistently. Also, all costs other than deaths have been underplayed by people in favour of lockdowns. Memory-holing this is literally insane (where insane = disconnected from reality).
Perhaps this hinges on your definition of "fine" - will most of these children become functional well adjusted adults? Sure, people can weather far worse things than this. But will they be set back on their education? Unquestionably.
As a parent of an elementary school child, I can tell you that if "people" were saying schools closures were of no consequence, they were idiots or charlatans. From the beginning it was obvious that a "remote only" learning plan for kids this age was going to be terrible, and it would exacerbate any underlying inequality that was already in place.
"People" can and do state absolute nonsense all the time, so the fact that "people have stated" something dumb is, on its own, a useless data point. The more useful question is whether these people who were making bold claims that there would be no harm successfully manipulated public policy.
> from people who wanted long (the only effective) ones.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think this kind of wording maybe sets up a straw man. Nobody _wanted_ lockdowns. I know hardly anyone who was genuinely excited and happy about quarantine and stay-at-home. Your wording sounds like there are some significant group of people who want everyone isolated in their homes (for what reason?), and when COVID came along, they could finally get their way! There is no mustache-twirling villain gleefully plotting to lock people in their homes just because.
I was in favor of sustained stay-at-home because it seemed like the only way to at least slow the pandemic from causing even more sickness and death, but that doesn't mean I liked or wanted lockdowns.
I think you should clarify your sample. I'm a liberal, was in favor of school closings early, my daughter went to her first year of kindergarten remote, and I was very aware of the tradeoffs. People like Emily Oster have been excellent at raising concerns.
You were aware of the tradeoffs for your daughter.
Were you aware of the tradeoffs for children in less fortunate situations? And while being aware, did you still support schools closing early? Do you stand by your support knowing the trauma it has inflicted now?
The school closings have had catastrophic effects on children with poor home lives. School for me was a place to eat, and in middle school, even just showering when the gas or electricity had been cut at home. Many of these kids were dodging abusive relatives, gangs, and drugs by going to school. The more fortunate kids were lucky to drop high school in exchange for working to support their families.
Yes, I was aware of the tradeoffs up and down the line. And we should not fall prey to outcome bias. Given the massive unknowns of the virus early on and through the first full year of school, it seems to me we made the right choice. We've created many problems for many families and children, but we were avoiding a worst case scenario of a mountain of dead children. We know now that that was never going to be the case, but we didn't then.
It's not about what we did know, it's about what we didn't. Early on, we had no idea how the virus was interacting with children and the school system. Being under-cautious would have been the wrong move, because the worst case scenario was horrifying.
Schools didn't close until late March. There was weeks of data from western society by then.
The basic understanding of the contagion, what drove the pandemic, and mortality numbers across age groups was known. The data has become more specific since, but not dramatically different.
The schools closed before we allowed the virus to course through the school system. We did not have good data. The decisions to close the schools was made to prevent the conditions that would supply that data.
If you can’t evaluate decisions or experiments on outcome, what can you measure them on? And why would you bother to? How would you learn from those decisions?
The worst case scenario is bound to be horrifying, by definition. That’s not an excuse for waffling out of making a tough call.
The evaluation of the quality of the decision should be made by taking into account the constraints and quality of priors that were inputs into the decision. Outcomes are probabilistic. Using results as the evaluation metric is mistake.
We did not know how the pandemic was interacting with children and the school system. But we did know that it had deathly, chaotic, fast moving properties. The worst case outcome was not a fantasy. We had reasons to think that the worst case outcome was not improbable. Because we were dealing with an existential threat to possibly our most precious resource, we acted defensively, even though many of us were aware of the deep, problematic tradeoffs.
Yes, at the very earliest part of the pandemic, we had no data. We had to prepare for the worst.
Very quickly, we started to see the relative impact of different measures taken in different jurisdictions, we learned about the relative impact of the disease on different age groups and populations, and we started having tools and strategies for detecting, tracing, and inhibiting the disease.
These became the priors that informed (or should have informed) the evolving decision-making process for disease response. But instead, in many cases, we saw a ton of inertia on many fronts, due to fear, political face-saving / ass-covering, or willful ignorance.
That’s the part I take issue with. It wasn’t “the” right decision, it was “an” early and uninformed decision, followed by many opportunities for additional, more informed, better decisions.
Sure, I respect that. If it seems like I don’t think you’re a good person, my apologies. I am enjoying having this debate with you and wish you the best.
But I stand by the assertion that your previous comment does not make sense.
That's not to say that what was done wasn't the best of a suite of bad options. But I saw nothing but fairly extreme downplaying of the consequences of lockdowns from people who wanted long (the only effective) ones.