The dire consequences of COVID school closings

Or the families of the hundreds of thousands who died from the effects of panic and despair ?

Those complainers ?

 

It is kind of like the tiresome sports board posts after gators lose a game. Lots of criticism about the “play calling”. As if there was a magical set of play calls that can lead to one team beating a much better team. Or ignoring the fact that success is also dependent on the execution of the play call.

Trickster is not one who has an agenda here. This is an issue that needs to be understood for next time it happens. However using it for political gain isn’t helpful, and ignores all the nuances and tradeoffs involved. Lots of people talking about how lock downs are terrible but no discussion of what happens when you leave things wide open, like NYC early on. Also people take as a given now that masks did nothing. While they aren’t wildly effective they probably made a marginal difference early on with the original strain which was not as transmissible as omicron.

Also no discussion that kids at schools transmit the disease to older and more compromised at home.

 

They are worthy of discussion but only if the arguments are framed in terms of the alternatives and tradeoffs.

Keep school open advocates are basically saying more schools should have stayed open, and the costs in terms of more teachers and administrators getting sick and dying, as well as extended family members at home, is worth it.

 

I like the analogy. Is it the play-calling, the coaching, talent/recruiting, chemistry, growth, some combination? People don't generally take issue with the ideas themselves, it's how the ideas are presented. I think when it comes to COVID (at least as it has typically been discussed on this board), people tend to attach an idea with a necessary form of presentation. It's a weird phenomenon, but most people, I imagine, would prefer to discuss things without the emotional attachment. Hard to do that with football on a fan board; probably similarly hard to do that with COVID on a political board.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

This isn't an honest or fair framing of the opposing view; to my point in the post above.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Spring breakers--,young, healthy college kids frolicking in the sun.

Vs


Hundreds of thousands of teachers with multiple comorbidities spending hours enclosed in close proximity with walking coughing sneezing petry dishes...

Look, I'm not the guy to argue for the lock downs, but... I understood the considerations at play.

Fyi--one of the most compelling factors that keep many teachers in the classroom working our precious little petry dishes, is the health care benefits that teaching offers.

We're already facing dire shortages of teachers. Lose the HC Benny's, and we're manning our classrooms with folks in orange jammies as 'trustees' for shear lack of willing vics.

 

I am saying what I typed is the correct framework. There are costs to having open schools during a pandemic. More teachers will die. More extended family members will die. Those are facts. With everything there are tradeoffs. But we should be honest about those tradeoffs.

 

This study looks at the effect of school openings in community COVID cases in the Fall of 2020. With mitigation measures, the increase was minimal. Without, it was as much as a 5% increase in cases.

I know the usual subjects will laugh at this because? Who knows? Why laugh at data gathered by professionals with advanced degrees who get paid a lot of money to do with like this? I guess if you wish to stay ignorant, you laugh?

 

No one is going to die from a fictitious pathogen.

 

I think this is an oversimplification and a narrow view of the options that are available. For instance, if you close restaurants and bars but keep schools open, will that have a better effect on teachers than if you close schools and keep restaurants and bars open? There are so many ways to approach this, and how many more teachers are going to die, 1 in 10,000 schools per year, 1 in 1000 schools per year, 1 in 100 schools per year? Will they die because they caught COVID in schools? Will they die because they caught COVID outside of schools participating in activities that are available to them while they are not teaching?

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

There are lots of considerations and factors. But all else equal open schools will cause more deaths in school and out of school. That’s not debateable. The debate is how much and how much we are willing to accept.

Comparisons to child care workers and other essential workers are relevant. I think we tended to view teachers as administrative workers with an option to teach from home. They are probably better classified as essential workers because at home teaching just doesn’t work, at least until school districts adopt a more robust at home learning model (which they most likely won’t )

 

My job was essential to me. I know, that’s just me being a “complainer”, me putting my livelihood over someone else’s germaphobia.

 

Nobody is debating that; which is another reason why it's a useless comment and not productive to an honest discussion. The language is presented to incite because discussing the actual metrics doesn't sound as juicy.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Those aren't facts. That is what is called an opinion. Teachers didn't die at a higher rate during in person learning than when schools were closed. Feel free to show me the "study" showing this.

 

Congrats but you are the exception not the rule. Most these home school parents I come in contact with are not particularly smart folks who just want to have an open schedule.

 

I didn't suggest otherwise.

 

Again. You are factually incorrect. Many studies have shown this. That or you just have an anomaly of dumb contacts.

Your pov is not the norm.

 

I know. I just think these conversations get shut down prematurely and the OP's history gives some merit to the discussion.

 

Very few are acknowledging it, though.

 

I’ve known teachers who weren’t the brightest bulbs and candidly did what they were doing for the benefits and three months off a year.