Yep, raised two kids to happy adulthoods. And yep, when they were little, they absolutely were virus spreaders! I had way more colds and flus in those years.
Yep, raised two kids to happy adulthoods. And yep, when they were little, they absolutely were virus spreaders! I had way more colds and flus in those years.
Alright well I'm glad they made it to adulthood without killing you. I don't wanna be a prick about it but I do want people to contemplate what it must've been like to be a kid during this madness, the kind of messages you might have internalized during this important period of identity formation with adults all around you expressing fear at your existence in their presence. I know my kid is not psychologically the same after it.
I was talking solely about ordering teachers back into closed stuffy classrooms filled with kids who are (how shall I put this without upsetting you?) *not the very best at following directions for best cleanliness practices* during an epidemic of an airborne pathogen whose longterm effects were (and still are, though to a lesser extent) unknown. I don't think that would have been remotely just or fair. Fix the classrooms (ventilation, CO monitoring, UV light), or double their pay, or SOMETHING. Don't just send them back in.
I don't think all teachers should have been "ordered" back into classrooms. If you are elderly, or have a medical condition that puts you at significant risk, fine, teach from home. But a healthy 25-50 year old teacher was at very low risk, especially once vaccines were available. They were actually safer than service industry workers because, as any public health researcher worth their salt knew pretty early on, transmission rates in children were extremely low. The statistics just don't bear out the idea that children posed some special risk, historical anecdotes about snot nosed kids aside. Health authorities in Europe weighed these numbers against the huge social cost of extended periods out of school and made the right decision, while the US, gripped by the madness of political signaling, dragged out the suffering for another year or more, long past the availability of vaccines and effective treatments.
A significant explanatory variable of the US situation is the political affiliations of teachers. It is well known that teachers vote Democratic at a very high rate relative to other professions [1]. It is also now known from polling data that Democratic voters were systematically misinformed about the risk that COVID-19 posed to them - with a full *41%* of them estimating their risk of hospitalization from COVID at *50% or higher*, at least a 50x overestimate even in in the time of the original strain circulating [2].
Politics and unreason explain the whole thing. A well-cited analysis by Vinay Prasad reaching this conclusion and also indciting the uniquely American pastime of masking little kids against WHO recommendation can be found at [3].
Yep, raised two kids to happy adulthoods. And yep, when they were little, they absolutely were virus spreaders! I had way more colds and flus in those years.
Alright well I'm glad they made it to adulthood without killing you. I don't wanna be a prick about it but I do want people to contemplate what it must've been like to be a kid during this madness, the kind of messages you might have internalized during this important period of identity formation with adults all around you expressing fear at your existence in their presence. I know my kid is not psychologically the same after it.
I was talking solely about ordering teachers back into closed stuffy classrooms filled with kids who are (how shall I put this without upsetting you?) *not the very best at following directions for best cleanliness practices* during an epidemic of an airborne pathogen whose longterm effects were (and still are, though to a lesser extent) unknown. I don't think that would have been remotely just or fair. Fix the classrooms (ventilation, CO monitoring, UV light), or double their pay, or SOMETHING. Don't just send them back in.
I don't think all teachers should have been "ordered" back into classrooms. If you are elderly, or have a medical condition that puts you at significant risk, fine, teach from home. But a healthy 25-50 year old teacher was at very low risk, especially once vaccines were available. They were actually safer than service industry workers because, as any public health researcher worth their salt knew pretty early on, transmission rates in children were extremely low. The statistics just don't bear out the idea that children posed some special risk, historical anecdotes about snot nosed kids aside. Health authorities in Europe weighed these numbers against the huge social cost of extended periods out of school and made the right decision, while the US, gripped by the madness of political signaling, dragged out the suffering for another year or more, long past the availability of vaccines and effective treatments.
A significant explanatory variable of the US situation is the political affiliations of teachers. It is well known that teachers vote Democratic at a very high rate relative to other professions [1]. It is also now known from polling data that Democratic voters were systematically misinformed about the risk that COVID-19 posed to them - with a full *41%* of them estimating their risk of hospitalization from COVID at *50% or higher*, at least a 50x overestimate even in in the time of the original strain circulating [2].
Politics and unreason explain the whole thing. A well-cited analysis by Vinay Prasad reaching this conclusion and also indciting the uniquely American pastime of masking little kids against WHO recommendation can be found at [3].
[1] https://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/index.html
[2] https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx
[3] https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/the-pandemic-policies-that-hurt-children
TL;DR kids were kept out of school for over a year in the US purely on the basis of a religious superstition unsupported by science.