You're arguing for data examining something that has happened, while all decisions regarding a new virus act on data only available prior.
Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one.
I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.
I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.
There was data from many flu pandemics. It led to the standard public health recommendation being against school closures. One more thing that just got tossed out without a moments thought for COVID. And no, COVID is not so novel that all prior knowledge of viruses and respiratory disease became irrelevant.
Calling it "novel" gave a lot of these "experts" a hell of a lot of artistic liberty to make up crap. "There is just so much we don't know about covid" they'd say even a year and a half into this. Like fuck that is true. You telling me that covid is so unique that everything we've learned about viruses and respiratory disease needed to be tossed right out the window?
Calling covid "novel" is only true in some pedantic, insider-talk sense.
The irony being that many kids then spent a lot of time with their grandparents, so that their parents could continue to hold down their jobs while schools were closed.
It is not possible to have all the data in time to make decisions. We didn't know how covid spread in the early days, just that it was spreading fast in China, killing a lot of people (we didn't know what a lot was), and popping up all over the world. 3 Months after the decisions needed to be made we had a lot more data.
Rereading the thread, perhaps we’re both agreeing with each other? The data wasn’t there at the start, was there three months later, and that’s when updated decision making could occur?
I think I mistook you as agreeing with the GP that we had no chance to improve the outcome with the info at hand.
I would change “doesn’t” to “didn’t”. Hopefully, going forward, acting from such an assumption would be seen as exactly that - uninformed by past events.
You’re also talking like we only get one chance to make the decision, rather than update that decision as facts roll in and more is known; as assumptions become proven unfounded and wrong.
Pre-delta, Covid was massively disproportionately causing major complications and death for elderly and the chronically unhealthy.
We know very few kids in school have parents or guardians that are "elderly" and that not many have parents or guardians that are "chronically unhealthy", and we knew that Covid (pre-delta) had a very low complication and death rate on school-aged children (not too dissimilar from the flu).
It seems like the smarter thing to do would've been to let parents have their kids stay home if they wanted, and let teachers stay home if they had an excuse, and make efforts to make the environment as safe as possible.
Instead - it became entirely political. One side wanted to go to the extreme for safety. The other side wanted to pretend like it was a hoax.
Once Delta came around - all adults had access to vaccines. Once fully vaccinated - Covid again is not materially worse than the flu (unvaccinated). Again - at this point - the decision for students could've been left up to the parents, rather than just forcing everyone to stay home.
> We know very few kids in school have parents or guardians that are "elderly" and that not many have parents or guardians that are "chronically unhealthy"
Obesity had a 1.42x multiple on severe complications and death.
The IFR for people under 50 (the vast majority of parents and guardians of school-aged children) is 0.427% [1]. If you assume the median age is 45, it drops down to 0.286%. at 35, it's 0.104%. When you factor in vaccines, these rates are reduced by >90%.
90% of these deaths come from people with co-morbidities. So you wouldn't multiply these numbers by 1.42 to get the IFR for obese people. It would be less than that. But I'll do that any way - for a worst case scenario.
Some 35 year olds might have their kids stay home because they'd have an extra 0.042% chance of dying (assuming their kid going to school means they definitely get Covid and their kid not going to school means they definitely wouldn't get Covid - which is a strange assumption). At 45, with those assumptions AND you being obese, it's about an extra 1 in 1000 chance of dying. Some people might not be willing to take that risk. A lot would gladly. If you're vaccinated - the rate is close to 1 in 90,000.
If you're 80, unvaccinated, and a 400 pound chain smoker - yeah, you definitely want to minimize your exposure as much as possible.
The reality is that you have about a 40% chance of getting Covid unless you live in a bubble. Sending your kids to school isn't even going to give you a 100% chance. So the risks of sending your kid to school are about cut in half (or less).
It’s not, though. “Dilemma” implies only two possibilities, but “varying degrees” implies many. This argument is incoherent.
There were lots of alternate futures, ranging from “the whole world, everywhere, utterly locked down schools for the past 2+ years” to “the whole world, everywhere, utterly refused to lock down schools for the past 2+ years”, and everywhere in between in terms of which schools, which policies, when, and for how long.
We can definitely talk about what sets of choices would have had better outcomes.
Merriam Webster [0] disagrees with your limiting definition (while etymologically correct). And even if it hadn't, it doesn't affect the coherence of the argument.
> We can definitely talk about what sets of choices would have had better outcomes.
> Handwringing cowardice and whimpering inaction got people killed in this pandemic.
That I have no idea if you would have wanted more lockdown or less lockdown or more masks or less masks, etc, etc, should indicate the difficulty in decision making.
But for the record, I'm not defending any decisions made by any government, I'm merely defending the difficulty of the process, and they will be dragged for any decision they make regardless because, again, there is no win scenario in a pandemic.
Fair. The concern, however, is when the state forces everyone to reason one particular way. The other concern is that arguing from a who has 'all the data' position is seriously fraught ... but the state and its mandates get underwritten when enough people embrace this fraught & simplistic mentality.
Acting from an assumption that an infectious disease spreads more if children from every family gather daily in crowded classrooms doesn't seem like an unreasonable one.
I would also love more data on this, preferably before the next pandemic.