gothicdream 39,657 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 18 hours ago, Gagaloo911 said: I was merely pointing out the reality that that point was addressed in the video, not being rude. Also, children just aren't dying from COVID like adults, only in the most extreme cases and when they have significant underlying health conditions if they are. Are we shutting down schools because of the flu or other illnesses, which see far more deaths in children? Also, the hot meals point was literally one example, not the entire argument for why to keep schools open lol It's obviously not all on the teachers, and parents aren't making it so. And the government needs to be doing much more to fund and support educators and school districts. But shutting down schools really isn't helping safety when children just aren't being affected by COVID like it's made out to be, and is in fact hurting them more than anything. The science and data are there to show it. Just Google "children hospitalizations" and you'll find 100 sources talking about how they are currently skyrocketing. To say kids aren't seriously affected by Covid is very misinformed. Some quotes from the links below: "'We have about four times as many children admitted currently as we have had in any other wave,' Dr Elaine Cox, the chief medical officer for Riley Children’s Health in Indiana, told reporters on Tuesday. They are also seeing the severity rise among the children who are admitted to the hospital, Cox said. 'So there are more of them, and they are sicker.'" "More than half the hospitalized children have had to spend time in the intensive care unit, and at least 40% of those kids need to be put on a ventilator, she said." "Hospitals are shooting past the peaks of previous surges, many of them driven by the Omicron variant. In South Africa, children and teens accounted for 17% of hospital admissions during the Omicron wave, compared to 4% during the second wave and 3.5% during the third, which was fueled by the Delta variant." https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/covid-hospitalizations-us-children-omicron-schools-hospitals https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna10741 It doesn't help that so many districts are ending their masking mandates, putting everyone at greater risk and significantly increasing the likelihood of kids not being able to be in school anyway due to infections, and staff being unable to work. Doesn't matter if schools are open if everyone is quarantined. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gagawaffles 165 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 I’m a pediatrician, and most of patients are poor and brown/black, and universally have all suffered from school closures. Not to mention my hospital has so many mental health holds that we need to buy a new hospital wing. Schools offer education, socialization and safety for many kids. Not to mention literal meals Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gothicdream 39,657 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 17 hours ago, HuffsAhoy said: Math and reading proficiency has been plummeting in the US for decades, thanks in part to REPUBLICANS cutting education funds. If anything, this pandemic has shown us the ugly underpinning of our education system. Cuts here and cuts there for the last decade have finally exploded into a fiasco that could have been avoided had our governments been properly funding schools all along. This. Many of these issues have existed for years, and the pandemic is just exacerbating it and making our longtime government failings more obvious. Education has been far too underfunded and underprioritized. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
alsemanche 97,799 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 17 hours ago, PartySick said: I can't watch the video right now (at work) but if the subject matter is what I think it is, I'd rather have kids remote learning and potentially falling behind or feeling social stresses than run the risk of them, their families, or the already underpaid staff at these schools ending up in a hospital choking on blood clots. The response is fragmented, that's why there's an issue. Education is woefully underfunded in this country and the move to remote learning was a haphazard one that's still being figured out in less well off areas of the country. The alternative is parents keeping their kids out of school entirely. Here in Central Florida, schools can't go virtual. They're all in person at the moment. And every school district is reporting THOUSANDS of absences 'cause parents don't want to send their kids to a covid infested school. So the remote learning isn't the problem here, it's the poor planning and scarce resources for education here imo. I dont have time to read the whole thread and have to stop here but that last part is very on point. I live in a country where remote learning has been disastrous (especially for the underfunded and quite honestly tragic public sector but also for some of the more funded and rich private sector). My mother is a school teacher and I've seen the struggle. But at the same time, I cannot go tell students and their parents, as well as teachers and staff who are already going through hell with the education sector, to literally risk their life and their relatives' life and just go to school. Yeah children are suffering, trust me I've seen my mother's students and their agony with the simple tasks of learning the alphabet. But the solution isn't opening schools and let COVID run wild and then force them to shut down a couple of weeks later. Literally no ome benefits from that, and it's putting a HUGE amount of stress on the staff who is most often overlooked in this equation. The solution is to work on better remote learning. Fund schools to provide the technology and material needed for students to work from home. Educate the parents on how to handle their kids at home and how to aid them in learning their lessons and doing their homework. Most public schools here were relying on Whatsapp texts to teach children which is literally a catastrophe for both students and teachers. My mother was working until like 10pm just to make sure that everyone got their work done and submitted what they needed to submit. Whatever the solution is, forcing people to be locked in a room with many others while a virus is spreading like crazy is absolutely not it. We are heading towards a cultural disaster not because students aren't physically in class, but because the educational sector in many places is trash and needs a lot of fixing. I'm a student at the top uni of my country and I wont pretend we've had it horribly bad. I did my whole MA almost online and I'm writing my thesis now, and while the journey was nowhere near as horrible as people who are in public unis and schools, it still was bad. The chaos of the first online semester, the mess of the subsequent ones, the horrible wifi and power, etc. were all obstacles. But since we had the resources being a rich uni and all, it went a lot smoother than other places, which means its possible when effort is put into it. Soft, soothing, and succulent Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
uo111 5,282 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 This seems like some reverse psychology ****. Conservatives never cared about schools and education before liberals wanted to go remote. Hopefully liberals will continue wanting it remote and conservatives will be forced to properly fund schools in red states to stick it to the libs. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpadesToStart 3,808 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 1 hour ago, Gagaloo911 said: Also, you should ptobably look up definitions of words before you go using and throwing them around. You’re a literal and figurative troll Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emvee 8,829 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 16 hours ago, stevana229 said: most liberals want schools open.. the FAR left is who is pushing for lockdowns. as the far right still thinks Covid was created by the US government to make Trump lose the election... You just pulled that out of your ass. The far left has no real political power in the United States. Liberals, however, do. Gavin Newsom, who had been putting us in lockdown here in California, is a liberal... not far left. People aren’t really getting it though. The main reason we have to lockdown is because hospitals get overwhelmed. We shouldn’t have to lockdown in 2022 because WE HAVE A VACCINE. Like 90% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people. So long as our hospitals still get overwhelmed, there will still be lockdowns. If we want to completely open up without mask or vaccine mandates, then we better be ready to pay up for more hospital funds or pay up with more human lives due to triaging. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
high culture 2,362 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 This is not a political issue, it is a public health issue. The thread title does not need to say liberal. There are people on both sides politically who fall on either side of this issue. It is the political polarization that is holding us back from fighting our common enemy - this virus. Even though children don't have as many negative outcomes of Covid, the adults working in the schools deserve a safe working environment and not have to risk death when we are at a million cases a day. Not to mention long haul Covid and we don't know all the long term effects this illness has on our bodies. Children also have adults at home they could go home to and infect. Of course in person learning is superior in most ways, but remote learning for this month until the omicron wave dies down will not kill anyone; but irresponsibly giving everyone Covid will be deadly. Let's leave this argument to the teachers who know what's best for the classroom, if they do not feel safe we need to respect that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emvee 8,829 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 16 minutes ago, High Culture said: This is not a political issue, it is a public health issue. The thread title does not need to say liberal. There are people on both sides politically who fall on either side of this issue. It is the political polarization that is holding us back from fighting our common enemy - this virus. Even though children don't have as many negative outcomes of Covid, the adults working in the schools deserve a safe working environment and not have to risk death when we are at a million cases a day. Not to mention long haul Covid and we don't know all the long term effects this illness has on our bodies. Children also have adults at home they could go home to and infect. Of course in person learning is superior in most ways, but remote learning for this month until the omicron wave dies down will not kill anyone; but irresponsibly giving everyone Covid will be deadly. Let's leave this argument to the teachers who know what's best for the classroom, if they do not feel safe we need to respect that. That’s Krystal Ball’s M.O. People like her love to put the blame on liberals because it gets a bigger audience. (Right-wingers + disaffected leftists) I agree with you that the common enemy should be the virus... not the vaccine, masks, or the government. Although, I admit the CDC has made themselves a very easy target with the blunders surrounding masks or quarantine recommendations. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaxonmonster122 23 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 18 hours ago, rawrimamonster said: Krystal Ball is a right wing hack. Krystal is literally a progressive wtf are you talking about Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagaloo911 12,959 Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 1 hour ago, Healed My Heart said: Just Google "children hospitalizations" and you'll find 100 sources talking about how they are currently skyrocketing. To say kids aren't seriously affected by Covid is very misinformed. Some quotes from the links below: "'We have about four times as many children admitted currently as we have had in any other wave,' Dr Elaine Cox, the chief medical officer for Riley Children’s Health in Indiana, told reporters on Tuesday. They are also seeing the severity rise among the children who are admitted to the hospital, Cox said. 'So there are more of them, and they are sicker.'" "More than half the hospitalized children have had to spend time in the intensive care unit, and at least 40% of those kids need to be put on a ventilator, she said." "Hospitals are shooting past the peaks of previous surges, many of them driven by the Omicron variant. In South Africa, children and teens accounted for 17% of hospital admissions during the Omicron wave, compared to 4% during the second wave and 3.5% during the third, which was fueled by the Delta variant." https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/covid-hospitalizations-us-children-omicron-schools-hospitals https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna10741 It doesn't help that so many districts are ending their masking mandates, putting everyone at greater risk and significantly increasing the likelihood of kids not being able to be in school anyway due to infections, and staff being unable to work. Doesn't matter if schools are open if everyone is quarantined. Thank you for providing these sources and further data on this. I'm not trying to undermine the impact it has had on children, only to demonstrate the available data which even according to the CDC has shown children to be less affected by Covid compared to adults, and that Omicron has proven to be more mild and less severe compared to previous strains in both adults and children. Also, I would be interested in seeing how these data takes into account those being hospitalized with Covid versus from Covid, along with accounting for those children who are in there who also have underlying health conditions which we know makes a difference. Not to mention the fact that children are less likely to be vaccinated due to age restrictions and the like. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gagaloo911 12,959 Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 1 hour ago, SpadesToStart said: You’re a literal and figurative troll Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Economy 52,847 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 Well i will say this... of course when things get critical enough it may be necessairy to close schools during the worst spikes But i will also say a lot of things can make a difference and schools have often been targeted sooner than less critical things in life (example gyms, and i say this as a gym rat myself) To me its not right that schools get prinarily targeted over other things so quickly. Given how critical they are to good learning closing them should be a last resort... Im not saying dont close them when necessairy. But im saying if other less critical things were targeted first then closing schools may not have been as necessairy as often in most jurisdictions Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Economy 52,847 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 19 hours ago, Gagaloo911 said: I don't think that's what anyone who's sensible is suggesting. Keeping schools open doesn't mean do away with protocols and safety practices. Masks and social distancing and such should continue to be practiced all things considered. The point is to do all that can be done to ensure schools stay open. That doesn't mean just allow teachers to get sick and just keep them open when there isn't enough staffing. Obviously there's going to be cases when there's no other option but to shut down. It just shouldn't be the go-to plan or standard is all. Yea, I don't accept that either. It's obviously not for everyone, and I don't think it should be the standard and in-person is always going to be better, but it's also not evil and useless and has its own merit. Replying to @PartySick as well Not sure regular safety protocols will work in schools tho Omicrons is so infectious and potentially airborn that several kids in a classroom for hours is basically garanteed contamination. Mask effectiviness is being seriously put into question when it comes to omicron too I dont putting desks apart and having masks will prevent outbreaks. Sharing the same air all day and the brief moments u walk by eachother is more than enough to infect u Again tho like i said in my previous comment, i do partially agree with OP at least in the sense that during pandemic as a whole schools have been targeted too quickly over other dangers (like gyms) due to short term economic impacts at the cost of long term education. Sometimes schools may still have to close (like now) but maybe they didnt have to be closed as often in the past 2 years in many jurisdictions if we didnt choose gyms and restaurants over education I dont envy the Governments tho. Its so easy to criticize but theres no perfect solution in a situation like this. No matter which direction u take or what u choose to prioritize theres pain and negative consequences. Sometimes theres only wrong answers to choose from and its a matter of figuring out which evil is the least severe Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Economy 52,847 Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 2 hours ago, Eriq said: You just pulled that out of your ass. The far left has no real political power in the United States. Liberals, however, do. Gavin Newsom, who had been putting us in lockdown here in California, is a liberal... not far left. People aren’t really getting it though. The main reason we have to lockdown is because hospitals get overwhelmed. We shouldn’t have to lockdown in 2022 because WE HAVE A VACCINE. Like 90% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people. So long as our hospitals still get overwhelmed, there will still be lockdowns. If we want to completely open up without mask or vaccine mandates, then we better be ready to pay up for more hospital funds or pay up with more human lives due to triaging. Vaccines are a huge tool but im not so sure id assert wed never need a lockdown Whatching the news today in my Country where its surging, in the Province of Quebec where hospitals are totally overwhelmed, the unvaxed are still a disproportionally higher number of patients (about 50% despite beinf 11% of population) However they had to move so many beds from elective surgeries and other departments and the numbers are still rising so quickly that an interesting assertion was made and that was that even counting only the vaccinated they may still have needed the lockdown soon Im not downplaying the urgency to get vaccinated. Im merely saying those who act like with vaccines wed no longer have to have any worries about pandemic is probably not true either Also im doubled dosed and i had some pretty severe respiratory symptoms this week which i wasnt able to get care for because of overwhelmed hospitals Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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