Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Ok, where did I say HS sports have stopped? I said people go out less/stay in more. Your statement that the south and the west haven’t been impacted by weather is an assumption on your part. Last Saturday was a high of about 38 and raining, no grandparents showed up and even some of the kids skipped my sons flag football game. I could also look at the other fields and see that attendance was down for all games. Again, I didn’t say the south was shut down, but people definitely go out less here too. Stop taking everyone that disagrees with you as a personal attack. No need to get so defensive. You claim to only be an ass when provoked, what about my post was provoking and requiring the response you gave?

 

Not personal just think it's rather ignorant to say weather caused the drop in cases. Yes it rained last weekend, so what. The drop has been going on for a while now. It's not just weather related. It's OK to say that cases are dropping without having some excuse that doesn't hold water for the entire country. And how was I being an ass? By saying Come on man? Well, it was a pretty ridiculous statement by you and I called you out on it. If you have data that shows what you said, I'm more than happy to review it.

 

Well, calling my take ignorant is not exactly a friendly interaction. You provided an anecdotal example as did I. Did I call you ignorant? Did I hit you with a “come on man” or “let’s deal with realities not assumptions”? No, I didn’t. I also didn’t put words in your mouth in an attempt to prove you wrong. Why do you insist on going there?

I never said that weather was the sole reason for the drop. Storms have been bad for the past two weeks or so, but it’s absolutely possible that harsher January weather has kept people indoors more than they were over the holidays. You honestly believe that has absolutely nothing to do with cases dropping?

 

The funny thing is I've never once said that schools should be closed. 95 endlessly harps that I've been calling for schools to be closed. I've never once done that. What I have said is that open schools will lead to more cases than there otherwise would be. That's just common sense. But that's the tradeoff. It looks like, as a whole, it might be worth it to have schools open, knowing that it will lead to more cases. But tell that to the teachers who have died from covid. Here's a few of them in Florida alone:

florida teachers died of covid - Google Search

 

It has to do with the areas that were hit by heavy snow yes. I said as much. But I disagree about the southern part of the country for sure.

 

Well here’s a great opportunity for a learning experience, you disagree but that doesn’t make you right. I’ve seen from my own personal experiences that there are fewer people out in metro Atlanta, so that would contradict your statement, so I disagree with you. That also doesn’t make me right, but we can both hold our own takes without insults.

 

So this is a perfect example of you saying "I didn't say schools should be closed, but maybe I did". How hard is it to know your position on schools being open or not. So we are clear, your position is schools should be open?

 

We're not talking about kid health. We're talking overall population health, and the risk to the adults who work at the school. We all agree the risk of COVID for children is small and acceptable. But what about the adults that work in the schools?

As for Tucson, here's the link, again, for the third time, that claims six TUSD employees died of COVID within a few weeks of each other. This is not the only cluster of COVID-19 deaths within a school district either. Here's suburban Atlanta, New York City, and Los Angeles.

The concern, again, is for the health of the teachers and other school employees. They are adults, and are more susceptible to the dangers of COVID-19 than the kids. If schools were run by kids, taught by kids, and didn't have any adult employees, then there would be no reason ever to close a school. But there have been multiple clusters of teacher deaths across the country due to COVID-19. What part of this do you not understand?

Which brings the question back. What kind of risk is acceptable to keep schools open? Can you, or anyone for that matter, say for certain that keeping schools open did not in any way, shape, or form, lead to any of the clusters of COVID deaths linked above? If you cannot prove that keeping schools open did not have a role in these adult, school employee deaths, then there is a risk in keeping schools open. Especially in areas where there is high community spread of COVID.

Now please, if you respond, don't shift the goalposts and talk about COVID not being as deadly to kids as the flu. We're not in disagreement here, and that's not what we're arguing. We're discussing the health risks to the adult teachers, paraprofessionals, support staff, etc., who work at the schools, who face increased risk from COVID. And the fact there is correlation in many areas that keeping schools open does increase COVID spread, and multiple areas across the country have seen COVID-19 clusters and subsequent death among adult, school employees.

 

To echo Oklahoma...REPORT IT. This thread is a make up of several merged threads and multiple topics within a topic. Depending on what is being discussed, I go days without reading it at this point. Frankly I wonder if it even is needed anymore as it is nothing but a battle field.

I skip over most of the back and forth at this point so you need to report specific insults.

I certainly see some after going back, and will remind everyone of the rules. I am not going back and trying to retroactively edit this thing at this point.

Report posts. That is the best way for us to see it.

 

Well, it's actually only 4 people who died(which is still bad).

4 Tucson Unified Staff Members Die Of Coronavirus In 5 Days

I have no idea if they got Covid from school or home or if Covid was actually what caused the deaths. And before you say "you posted the article showing that it was Covid" well I just posted that the original article was wrong. How about we wait until the data comes out before shutting down schools. I've shown the data that kids are trying to kill themselves at high levels during the lockdown. There are risks in everything in life. But the numbers show that anyone under 65 is extremely unlikely to die from Covid.

 

Semantics...I assume that if you think it would be a "disaster" then you likely would want them closed.

 

Decline in COVID-19 Hospitalization Growth Rates ...

So here we have a CDC study saying masks work from Feb 5th. Everything in there looks good. Except one little issue is the end date was interesting. I'm sure ending Oct 17th was just a predetermined date...

So lets look at a chart of the cases in the 10 state that they studied.



Anyone believes the stop date was a random October date?

 

It was 4 in 5 days, but my link confirms it was six over the course of just over a week. My source is the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Arizona, in a quote from the Phoenix ABC news source. Not saying your source is wrong, but my source likely has more accurate, and updated information.

Regardless, the question still remains. What's acceptable risk for teachers and staff during times of COVID? I think we all agree in areas with little community spread, the risk of keeping schools open is minimal, and schools should remain open in these areas. But the risk seems to be significantly greater to school staff in areas where community spread is high. Like in Tucson, in December, when the state of Arizona was leading the nation in COVID-19 spread per capita. In areas with high community spread, is the risk worth keeping schools open? How many school district employee deaths per 1000 workers is acceptable risk? TUSD has about 6,000 staff members, so with just the 4 deaths, that's 1:1500. Is this acceptable? How many teachers/staff deaths is acceptable to keep schools open?

 

Did you read through the list of all the teachers in Florida who died from covid. It was a disaster for them and their families. And can you find post after post over the last 6 months where I said schools should be closed? Because that's what 95 says I did. It's not there. What is there is acknowledgement that there is a trade off. Opening schools will lead to more cases and, yes, some teachers will die because of it.

 

My data is more recent. Read the article. Below is the clarification. And we DON'T know if they died of Covid. That's a pretty important data point, don't you think?

"The Arizona Department of Education initially received information that six Tucson educators died of the virus last week, but later confirmed the correct number is four, department spokesperson Richie Taylor told Patch."

 

Look, you said "never once". I pointed to one time that it sure seemed you were saying that.

 

He knows he said that he wanted schools closed. I was going to go find the proof but you saved me the time. Thanks.

 

Fair enough. I will agree that open schools hasn't been as big an issue as I thought it would be. Though there are certainly people dead because of it who otherwise would be alive if schools had been closed. These are tradeoffs we as a society have to make.

But how about you reply to one of 95's posts where he says something like this: 'But you've been lying about schools for months and don't give a crap.' Why don't you find all those posts where I was 'lying' about schools.

 

Please do. Go find all those lies I said for months. The only one who is lying here is you.

 

Don't need to. Tilly did it already and proved you wrong. Not wasting my time. Any non partisan person knows you are lying. It's ok. If you don't bring it up it will slowly go away.