[HN Gopher] No Way to Grow Up ___________________________________________________________________ No Way to Grow Up Author : testingathing Score : 126 points Date : 2022-01-04 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | paxys wrote: | When I was a kid there was a big earthquake where I lived and my | life was disrupted for a few weeks. Many decades later I _still_ | have latent trauma from that incident. | | Children involved in situations like accidents, wars, disasters | and abuse need years and sometimes lifelong therapy to deal with | it. We are kidding ourselves if we think that the long list of | behavioral changes we are starting to see in kids is simply | attributed to keeping them at home, and when school reopens they | will magically get back to normal. They have been exposed to non- | stop disruption, illness, death and uncertainty for two years | now. | | Whether the covid pandemic goes away or not, a mental health one | is upon us soon. | WalterBright wrote: | No doubt some are long term traumatized by this. But a brief | look at history shows that such things happening during | childhood are _normal_ , not exceptional. If most people need | therapy to get back to normal, the human race would have died | out. | | In my grandparents' generation, it was _normal_ for a family to | lose a third of their children before adulthood. | | The US has had devastating epidemics before, like the 1918 flu, | and the polio epidemics. | pavel_lishin wrote: | > _When I was a kid there was a big earthquake where I lived | and my life was disrupted for a few weeks. Many decades later I | still have latent trauma from that incident._ | | From the earthquake, or from the disruption? | | It's an important distinction in the COVID case. Are kids being | traumatized by having to attend school via Zoom, or are they | being traumatized by living through a global pandemic? | xboxnolifes wrote: | I don't think the distinction is important in any scenario. | It's always the disruption. | | Put another way: if an earthquake happens, but nobody notices | except the Richter scale, does it impact anyone? Of course | it's not the _pandemic_ term itself, it 's the first-, | second-, third-order effects of covid and the term | _pandemic_. Zoom school, masks, vaccines, media coverage, | political shifts, fights, worrying about family members | getting sick (possibly dying), seeing your friends less, | fewer /smaller gatherings, longer periods of isolation, etc. | zepto wrote: | > Children involved in situations like accidents, wars, | disasters and abuse need years and sometimes lifelong therapy | to deal with it. | | These situations have been very common throughout history, and | are still prevalent in many developing nations, and yet somehow | those countries generally have _better_ mental health, at least | by metrics of depression and anxiety. | VeninVidiaVicii wrote: | The last half century or so was not as calm as all these rose- | colored articles would have you believe -- at least on a global | scale. Even still, we need to realign our expectations to a world | that's going to be much more turbulent than we'd like. | titanomachy wrote: | This article is about the impact on kids of partially shutting | down schools for two years due to covid. What part of the | article is your comment responding to? | Ergo19 wrote: | Are there places in the US which have had schools partially | shut down for two years? I have not heard of anywhere being | remote for more than 1 year. | [deleted] | oh_sigh wrote: | The article mentions increased suicide rates, especially among | adolescent females, as part of "The Toll", but the study linked | to specifically says: "(6). Finally, this analysis was not | designed to determine whether a causal link existed between these | trends and the COVID-19 pandemic." | stathibus wrote: | I don't think its much of a stretch. Besides, what are you | going to do, ask them why they committed suicide? | oh_sigh wrote: | I also don't think it is _much_ of a stretch, but I think it | is too much of a stretch to include in reporting from the | NYT. I 'm not familiar with "THE MORNING NEWSLETTER", maybe | it is more of an opinion section than actual journalism from | the NYT? | | Why not blame Tik-Tok, which rapidly increased in popularity | among 12-17 year old females at pretty much the same time | COVID was hitting? | raunak wrote: | Yeah, strikes me as one of those things that should be | accepted without that "link" - like really, the suicide rate | just went up that much, and we're gonna assume it was _not_ | related to COVID/quarantine? | | Feels like it should be accepted. | tehjoker wrote: | I wonder how all those kids with long covid will view decisions | to physically disable them potentially for life so the state | could force their parents to work. | | I wonder how kids mental health copes with the idea that adults | will intentionally expose them and others to a deadly disease | with no mitigations to make money. | jdminhbg wrote: | > kids with long covid ... physically disable them potentially | for life | | At what point do we decide that totally evidence-free | hysterical claims like this are as much misinformation as anti- | vaxx posting is? | swayvil wrote: | tomrod wrote: | Typically, reliable authority. Though the organization as a | whole is often targeted by right-wing propaganda outlets much | more critically than right-wing propaganda is denounced by the | rest of society. | | This article is a hashing out of concerns parents or others | have regarding children and how they've experienced COVID-19 as | well as associate non-pharmaceutical interventions. Dynamic | control problems are hard, even more so when agents (people) | are autonomous like public health contexts. Time-consistent | preferences expressed in policy are also hard, as there is | incentive to bend rules in the very moments those policies are | written for. | swayvil wrote: | That was rhetorical. I'm saying that our population is | largely composed of capricious bugbrains. | tomrod wrote: | Rhetorical questions are not default mode on a forum | designed for discussion and Q&A. | | Our population isn't composed of capricious bug brains, for | the record, we are human with typical gray matter and | studies have found that people are generally consistent. | babyblueblanket wrote: | Are there any teachers who can really talk about solutions to the | problems covid presents? Rather seriously, of what I can find | anecdotally online (as I know no teachers IRL) that even trying | to have in-person classes haven't really helped, because parents | pull their kids out of class or a significant chunk misses school | due to being out sick/quarantine and now the entire lesson plan | is screwed up. | runako wrote: | There's a lot of talk about this in parent's groups on FB. | Basically, parents all want their kids in school as daycare. | Schools have logistics problems due to | students/teachers/support staff/bus drivers/etc. being sick. I | think if some parents could enlist the police to drag sick | teachers to school, they would do that. | | In my area, schools are combining classes across grade levels | because teachers are sick but parents are demanding that | schools be open. This accomplishes the daycare aspect of | school, but to pretend it's about enhancing learning is | fanciful. | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | The person you're responding to asked only about teachers | though. | giraffe_lady wrote: | The parents don't create that pressure though. Americans use | school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare. | People don't have leave, paid or otherwise, to take care of | their children at home, but they must go to work anyway. | | This is a labor issue, not an "individuals are mean" problem. | stathibus wrote: | In 30 years these kids will be running the world. I can only hope | they'll understand why this happened to them, so the next | generation will be a bit wiser. | hstan4 wrote: | Yeah I really hope they'll learn to understand the infinite | wisdom our government had during covid. | bpodgursky wrote: | Unfortunately, through advances in medical technology, the 70 | year olds who run the world right now will probably still be | running the world in 30 years. | mhb wrote: | Hope sure. But any optimism should be tempered by observing how | adults who had less coddled childhoods 30 years ago are raising | their kids today. What have they understood? | artursapek wrote: | None of the people worried about "Omicron" could explain what the | hell it is | yupper32 wrote: | Honest question: At what point do we give up? | | I'm in the Bay Area and it'll be coming up on 2 years soon of | what basically amounts to a social shut down. | | -- Many social groups are just not getting together anymore, | including most of mine. | | -- Concerts, sporting events, parties of most sizes, crowded | bars/clubs just seem off the table at this point. | | -- Masks for the majority of it, which makes gym going and | working out, especially cardio, uncomfortable enough to not | bother. | | -- It's been so long that I've now never met, in person, anyone | on my team at work. | | Like yeah, technically we're not shut down. Technically you can | do most things with masks/vaxxes. But for a lot of us things are | still essentially shut down. Especially the social aspects. | | At what point can we give up? If at 4 years in with Variant | #3242, are we still going to be doing what we're doing now? | There's zero sign that this thing is going to stop any time soon. | SavantIdiot wrote: | I read somewhere that a pandemic becomes an endemic when we | agree on how many people we can accept dying each year. | amelius wrote: | If kids have to save the grown ups, then they have a strong | bargaining position to e.g. fix the climate ASAP. | | => Why don't they use it? | xboxnolifes wrote: | In what way do kids have any sort of bargaining position? They | hold no power to use as bargaining. They do no control whether | or how they go to school. | Jtsummers wrote: | Because they have neither power nor authority. First, kids | don't have a vote so they really have no direct influence in a | democratic/representative republic system. Second, they have no | money, so they have limited ability to exert financial/economic | pressure. | | What are they supposed to bargain with? They are (as a | population, individuals may be exceptions to this) | fundamentally dependent upon the adult population for their | existence. Food, shelter, clothing, transportation is all (in | the US) provided by adults for the vast majority of kids, at | least below age 16, and still the majority for most 16/17 year | olds. If we permit 18-20 year olds to still be counted as | "kids", they are still poor and a very small voting bloc that | is notorious for not showing up to vote, even if they are | increasingly independent. | amelius wrote: | The main problem I see is that kids are not (yet) organized. | | There is a pandemic going on. Kids can "vote" with their | behavior. | Jtsummers wrote: | > There is a pandemic going on. Kids can "vote" with their | behavior. | | So, is your suggestion the kids should get organized to | deliberately spread or threaten to spread COVID in order to | control adult behavior? | monkeybutton wrote: | So, is Covid the shock that leads to the education system being | reinvented for the better or do school boards just keep bumbling | along like before? | | Do zero-tolerance policies really work? Why are students falling | behind in mathematics compared to the rest of the world? Does | overloading of take home work produce better test scores, or does | it just consume free time and stress out kids? Are teachers ever | going to be paid more? What about later start times for high | schools? | | There's so many things that can be questioned. | bmitc wrote: | I think COVID is the inflection point that puts the U.S. behind | compared to other countries who have a more collective culture | and less extremism in politics. | | I have seen nearly every aspect of life in the U.S. take a | major hit. Nearly no one cares about anything, and the attitude | of taking care of me myself and I seems rampant. | | I have been worried about children since day one, from social | disorders to education. We have several generations that | basically missed out on two years of schooling from pre-school | through university levels. | xwdv wrote: | It is obvious what will happen. The education system will | crumble, inequality will grow, and to make up for having a | poorly educated work force we will adopt more automation or AI- | assisted tasks with very structured workflows to reduce | cognitive requirements. Only elites will be able to afford | giving their children strong educations and social experiences, | presumably with other elite children. This will allow some | children to pursue high status high skill careers while the | rest must settle for whatever they can grab. | | At the same time, children will increasingly grow to be | emotionally underdeveloped, leading to poor romantic | relationships filled with toxicity, leaving them perpetually | unsatisfied with life and cynical of others. Poor quality | breeding will become rampant and add to the problem. | giraffe_lady wrote: | I was with you until you got to the... breeding... thing. | 29800795 wrote: | Your first paragraph is the set-up to the novel Klara and the | Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. | SavantIdiot wrote: | I'm reading it right now, so sshhhhH! :) | tester756 wrote: | >Only elites will be able to afford giving their children | strong educations and social experiences | | How about learning from the Internet? | xwdv wrote: | Doesn't work very well with young children. | redisman wrote: | Today I learned how to alt-tab into Minecraft all day | while still getting marked as attending! | wizzwizz4 wrote: | It works for 10-year-olds, and I'd say it works for | younger children too. The problem is needing supervision | (curiosity leads to doing some very harmful things, and | that's not even considering bouts of malice...). | | If children want to learn, and they _can_ learn, there 's | no stopping them (except with video games, television, | toys, a field, a garden, a paved area, a woodland, the | fact that books make a loud noise every time you close | them, other children... but apart from the first two, I | see no problem with that). | ianbicking wrote: | "So, is Covid the shock that leads to the education system | being reinvented for the better" | | I don't really see how this would happen, or even how they | connect. Covid is keeping out schools from even being schools. | It's displaying the flaws in our larger system, but it doesn't | really speak at all to what's good or bad in the classroom | itself. EXCEPT that we've had a natural experiment where kids | are removed from the classroom, and it turns out classrooms are | pretty good educational environments compared to remote school | or ad hoc home school! If anything this indicates we don't need | to reinvent our schools, we just need to reinvent our school | HVAC. | | (We also aren't reinventing school HVAC, which is disappointing | because of all the options in front of us that's about the | easiest.) | 29800795 wrote: | >So, is Covid the shock that leads to the education system | being reinvented for the better or do school boards just keep | bumbling along like before? | | The type of conservatives that wield the most power in the US | Senate are skeptical of public education. This is their golden | chance to finally dismantle it, creating a patchwork of | federally funded religious private schools. | Spooky23 wrote: | No. You have 1st world America and 3rd world America. | | The 1st world kids will be fine. Some of them will struggle and | carry some emotional baggage forward. | | The ones who have nothing will have a little less. Society will | hold them in as much regard as they do now, maybe a little less | if helping them requires more taxes. | bsder wrote: | Except that real _solutions_ never seem to be on the table. | | For example, how about atomizing school into pods of smaller | numbers of students with teachers scattered around the district | instead of 30+ students per teacher with 1000+ students crammed | into a building or campus? This would be especially effective for | the youngest students. And a "Covid Outbreak" would shut down | less than a dozen students and a teacher for a week or two and be | done with it. | | But, you see, that would take _money_. And everybody likes to | bitch about education but nobody wants to spend actual cash. | | And, by the way, if you think its been bad on kids, the teachers | have had it bad, too. Unlike the kids, the teachers had a much | higher probability of dying. And they get the joy of being on the | frontlines with the anti-vax idiots. Any teachers I know of who | can exit have been running for the doors. | WalterBright wrote: | The schools are funded with rivers of cash. It's simply | squandered. More money won't help (that's been tried many | times). | | To make schools safe is simple - hold classes outside. It won't | work everywhere everytime, but it can work enough. It'll work | fine in California, Arizona, Seattle most of the time, etc. | joshstrange wrote: | For the first half of your comment I just kept say "that takes | money" in my head over and over and then you said it. Pure and | simple, this comes down to money or rather the lack thereof. | When I was younger I had heavily considered going into teaching | until I learned how little they make and how shitty parents are | to them (not all, but enough to make their jobs hell if they | want). After the last two years I cannot imagine why anyone | would go into teaching (or nursing for that matter). Both | groups bent over backwards (by and large, obviously you are | going to always have a few duds) to continue to provide the | best service they could and were treated terribly (and paid | terribly) in return. | | Plenty of people (including some in these comments) want to wax | poetic about "think of the children" or "the children are our | future" but I have a hard time those same people are willing to | put their money where their mouth is. Why we aren't shoveling | money into education (before the pandemic as well) is | completely beyond me and that's coming from someone who is | childless. I'm more than happy to see my taxes go up if the | money is going towards education. | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | I'm inquiry: do we have enough educators for that plan? | [deleted] | testingathing wrote: | http://web.archive.org/web/20220104193247/https://www.nytime... | | https://archive.is/6F3Fp | sg47 wrote: | Gun violence in schools has increased so we should be sending | children to school? There were school shootings before the | pandemic and there are school shootings now. Nothing has been | done to address either the mental health issues or access to | guns. | zepto wrote: | What has this got to do with covid? Also, guns have been more | easily available in the past than they are now. | | Access to guns isn't causing the uptick in school shootings. If | we knew what was causing it, perhaps we could address the | problem. | giraffe_lady wrote: | We pretty much do know what causes school shootings though? I | mean the causes are complex and there is much disagreement | about which ones contribute what and how much, but the broad | strokes are known. | | The issue is that 1) this information comes from the hn- | accursed social sciences, 2) people don't like the answers | and 3) we aren't willing to solve the problem anyway so why | proselytize it? | zepto wrote: | > but the broad strokes are known. | | I've rarely seen any broad brush stroke other than 'guns' | being blamed. | | 2) people don't like the answers | | Don't they? Or do they simply not agree with the answers. | | Social science results are in fact very weak, as is | constantly being shown. | | That is because it's hard to do social science and the | disciplines are relatively new. The way to improve this is | not to pretend social science is better than it is, nor is | it to ignore social science altogether, but to recognize | its shortcomings and critique it. | | > 3) we aren't willing to solve the problem anyway so why | proselytize it? | | Are we not? So we give up and to do something unrelated, in | the name of solving the problem? That seems even worse. | | It doesn't seem like we're going to get rid of guns, so we | may as well proselytize the real solutions. | runako wrote: | I know healthy people not in the "old" age groups who have | permanent nerve damage from mild cases of unvaccinated (pre- | vaccine) Covid. We have known from the beginning that Covid | sometimes causes nerve and/or brain damage (sensory loss) that | may be permanent. As I am not a virologist any more than the | author of this piece, I am not comfortable making blanket | pronouncements like this from TFA: | | > For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to | children in exchange for less harm to adults. | | There is already precedent for other acute respiratory infections | (Scarlet Fever, influenza) causing cardiac damage that persists | for decades. I don't understand how so many people are willing to | make conclusions about long-term complications from pediatric | Covid in the absence of long-term studies. | | I also don't understand how one could write about tradeoffs for | children without mentioning the growing ranks of Covid orphans, | some of whom will be adrift in our anemic social services system | for the coming decades. Besides that, losing a parent is one of | the most traumatic events a child can experience. Discounting to | zero that trauma given the scale of death in American is not | doing the reader a service. | superfrank wrote: | I'm not sure I like this article. They seems to overstate what | the sources they link to claim. | | For example the article says | | > Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce | Covid cases in most instances. | | But when you go to the study they link, it says | | > Although school closures reduce the number of contacts children | have, and may decrease transmission, a study of 12 million adults | in the UK found no difference in the risk of death from covid-19 | in households with or without children. | | There's a big difference between, "You're just as likely to die | from COVID if you have children" and "Children going to school | doesn't increase the spread of COVID". The study even points out | that closing schools "may decrease transmission", but the article | completely ignores that. | wayoutthere wrote: | This is an attempt at manufacturing consensus by making it seem | like these arguments are coming "from the adults in the room" | because it's in the NYTimes. They're so good at gaslighting | their readers (and I say this coming from the left of the NYT, | not the right). | | You'll start to see liberal politicians using these same | talking points in the coming weeks, guaranteed. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | > _(and I say this coming from the left of the NYT, not the | right)_ | | If politics is one-dimensional, that suggests that there is | only one (main) political issue. History suggests that | there's more to politics than one main issue, so what were | you trying to convey by saying this? | ajmurmann wrote: | "You'll start to see liberal politicians using these same | talking points in the coming weeks, guaranteed." This | article's position seems to be more in line with the | Republican's general stance on the pandemic. So isn't it a | good thing of the left can revise its position? | wayoutthere wrote: | It's not the left; it's the biden administration feeding | meat into the machine. They have absolutely betrayed their | voter base in favor of their corporate donors and they will | pay for it in the next election when that base simply | doesn't show up. | stathibus wrote: | Yes its an argument, yes its in a well known newspaper. | That's not what "manufacturing consensus" means. | boppo1 wrote: | >You'll start to see liberal politicians using these same | talking points in the coming weeks, guaranteed. | | Well, there's no federal solution, so we gotta do something | different, right? | Spooky23 wrote: | Exactly. The NYTimes is the worst, it's like the | paternalistic dad-figure of the media. | | In this case I think they're right; omicron is a super | spreading variant that is less lethal and impossible to | control. Their audience is sick of lockdowns and employers | are tightening the screws. | geenew wrote: | Isn't "may decrease transmission" the operative part of the | citation? | _jal wrote: | There appears to be a weird blind-spot when discussing COVID | outcomes - anything short of death appears to be discounted or | ignored. So hospital issues, long COVID, etc. just don't exist, | so catching it either didn't matter or you're dead. | | On a planet where that was true, that sort of reasoning would | make sense. (As it does if you're trying to encourage other | people to ignore risks.) What I don't understand is why so many | people seem to view it that way. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | And also the abnormally high ratio of people who die within 1 | year of catching Covid from other reasons: https://www.medica | lnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-survivors... | | 233% increase in chance of death for people 65+... | vitro wrote: | The quora answer [1] by Franklin Veaux to question "How can a | disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?" | explains nicely that it is not binary live/die at all. Mind | though that this was written in the beginning of the pandemic | when we didn't have the same information as now, so numbers | may be imprecise, but the explanation still stands. | | https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality- | shu... | heavyset_go wrote: | > _What I don 't understand is why so many people seem to | view it that way._ | | It's classic minimization. You see it all the time when | someone is motivated to ignore reality, or is suffering from | a condition that makes it hard to accept reality. A heroin | addict might say that shooting heroin isn't a big deal | because they haven't died from it yet, even if they have a | history of overdosing. | nsainsbury wrote: | I don't think anyone is ignoring long COVID and hospital | issues. Hospital capacity is discussed front and center daily | and is the primary justification given for lockdowns. | | Also, please see this recent meta-analysis which found that | when you actually add a control group, most "long COVID" | symptoms disappear in children. A higher study quality was | associated with lower prevalence of almost all symptoms. | | Original tweet: | https://twitter.com/ShamezLadhani/status/1472622893154639876 | | Link to study: https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S01 | 63-4453(21)005... | dijonman2 wrote: | How many hospitalizations are due to covid and how many | just happen to test positive? | nsainsbury wrote: | Appears to be very very common (as high as 2/3 'with' | covid vs 'for' covid). See: https://twitter.com/MonicaGan | dhi9/status/1478401273317654528 | wizzwizz4 wrote: | It's the human tendency to optimise the quantifiable and | ignore the unquantified. (The unquantified is often partially | quantifiable, but that would take _effort_ , and the | statistics aren't _currently_ on the dashboard...) | | See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law | | > _When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good | measure._ | zepto wrote: | > It's the human tendency to optimise the quantifiable and | ignore the unquantified. | | Are you sure that isn't just a modern trend now that we are | able to quantify so much stuff? | Talanes wrote: | Modern society is just the result of countless | generations of the human tendency to quantify. We just | have so many things quantified now that our problems tend | to be more "using the wrong quantifications" rather than | "not having the right quantifications." | zepto wrote: | > Modern society is just the result of countless | generations of the human tendency to quantify. | | Is it? I see no evidence to justify this statement at | all. Care to show some? | | The vast majority of how society is organized seems to | eschew quantification in favor of descriptive | qualification. Most laws, and governance, for example are | formed that way. | | The use of metrics in governance has been dramatically | increasing as our methods of quantification have | developed, but that is definitely a modern development. | mhb wrote: | Fine. What also isn't on the dashboard is the lost QALYs | which is pretty much the point of TFA. | CountDrewku wrote: | You can say the opposite about the other side as well... | Anything short of eradication (which is impossible) means | nonstop lockdowns, masking, vaccine mandates and making the | unvaccinated pariahs. | | What I don't understand is why you would shut down schools | and enforce silly unhelpful mask mandates on them when the | science shows children do not spread the disease in any | meaningful way and are not badly affected by it. This is the | "blind" spot I see. | datavirtue wrote: | There is a dangerous level of cognitive dissonance around | school closures that effects nearly everyone. I have to filter | arguments by finding out if the people making them have or do | not have kids in school. People with kids in school just want | schools open. Teachers and administrators want schools open. | ...and therefore politicians want schools open. | | There are a lot of vested interests that bias toward opening | schools. | | Honestly I do not think we are capable of weighing particulars | to make a scientific determination. We need policies around | school closure that are rigidly followed in the course of a | pandemic. | CountDrewku wrote: | >Teachers and administrators want schools open. ...and | therefore politicians want schools open. | | This is just false. The largest teacher unions in the country | have been pushing school closures. This means many teachers, | administrators and politicians also want school closures. | | Until like the last week politicians have been reluctant to | even suggest schools reopen | | https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-teachers-unions-odds- | over-20482... | delecti wrote: | School closures making it so people in those households are no | more likely to die of COVID sounds like school closures are | wildly effective. The most relevant comparison is not | households with vs without children, but among households with | children, outcomes with and without school closures. | animal_spirits wrote: | I think the article does a good job at looking at this as a | trade-off. No where in the article do they state outright that | there is no change to transmission. The main point is to ask | the question "Is avoiding the damage to those that are older | worth the damage to those that are younger?" | boppo1 wrote: | Seconding @wayouthere. I saw this sentence: | | > They seems to overstate what the sources they link to claim. | | And thought, "Right, yeah, it's the NYT." They're not fake news | like Breitbart, but I seem to catch them 'pushing the envelope' | on the truth a lot. And I like/agree with a fair amount of what | they publish. | lelandfe wrote: | Hm, I found David Leonhardt's summary of that article to be | fairly sound - it even opens with "School closures have been | implemented internationally with insufficient evidence for | their role in minimising covid-19 transmission." | | "[A]ccumulating evidence shows that teachers and school staff | are not at higher risk of hospital admission or death from | covid-19 compared with other workers" quote seems most | pertinent. Other quotes that certainly back the paraphrase | include "teacher absence decreased in tier 3 regions during the | November lockdown despite schools remaining open" and "Teacher | absence because of confirmed covid-19 in England was similar in | primary and secondary schools in the autumn term." | | Finally, the "Transmission" section explicitly casts doubt on | studies that _did_ show a reduction in transmission. Overall, | "skeptical," as the linked NYT article states, seems dead on. | | Were there other sources from the article that you took issue | with? | superfrank wrote: | I actually agree with the summary you provided, but I think | the article it self way over steps that and I don't think | their sources back up a lot of the claims they make inside | the article. | | The one I quoted above is the most obvious, but the other two | things I take issue with are: | | 1. They seem to attribute the rising gun violence to covid, | but when you look at the data they provided on school | shootings, it's been rising since 2015. The number we're at | now just looks like a continuation of that trend. | | 2. The fact about a third of their sources are just other NYT | articles written by their colleagues. Chasing down the true | source behind some of their claims is near impossible since | it's often multiple levels of people interpreting the data. | 99_00 wrote: | You're cherry picking from the study. | | >They seems to overstate what the sources they link to claim. | | With a title like this, I think they are understating what the | source claims. | | Closing schools is not evidence based and harms children | https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n521 | ajmurmann wrote: | "For the past two years, large parts of American society have | decided harming children was an unavoidable side effect of | Covid-19." | | This sentence also implied that there had been consensus about | what the trade-off is which I don't think everyone would agree | with. I definitely know some parents who are afraid if their | children returning to badly ventilated classrooms | Taylor_OD wrote: | Welcome to link "citations". Journalists use links as a way to | back up their statements because almost no one will click on a | the link and even less will actually read it. Link "citations" | are used a lot. | joshstrange wrote: | Yep, between that and twitter "citations" which make me want | to scream. I don't care what NateDog2244 said on twitter, | that could be the "reporter" for all I know. You can find | someone defending/attacking ANY position online so you can | cherry-pick like crazy. | | I'll admit I'm much less likely to follow links when my | confirmation bias is kicking up into high gear but I've been | trying to force myself to do it more after I received an | article from a parent that I knew was full of BS and after | following the links (the ones that weren't dead) I found the | studies linked actually refuted the position the original | article took. For way too much of my life I took "Blue text | with underline" (or whatever color the style it to) meant | "fact"/"cited"/"backed up", that couldn't be further from the | truth. | | I encourage everyone to follow links even if you are "sure" | the article is 100% true, it can be very eye opening. At the | very least you will get a better understanding. | rebeccaskinner wrote: | I agree that adults have failed kids during the pandemic, but the | agenda that this article is pushing is deeply, deeply flawed. The | consequences the pandemic is having on kids is not due to schools | being closed, it's due to kids growing up in the middle of a | society collapsing under the weight of a pandemic. | | To argue that we shouldn't have closed schools, or should have | made things more normal for the kids is to say that our half- | assed mealy-mouthed nothing of a response to the pandemic didn't | work, so we should have done even less, tried to spread the virus | even harder, and that would have made things better. No. What | would have made things better is a real, collective, and | effective response to the pandemic. Modeling a real, pro-social, | collaborative, and reasonable response to the pandemic. | | Of course it's not _fair_ that kids are being kept away from | school while hoards of adults are too obsessed with proving they | have freedom to consider how to use their freedom to act | appropriately. It's not fair that they can't get an education, | but hoards of the unmasked, unvaxxed, and unconcerned can huff | and puff their way through bars, restaurants, gyms, clubs, and | every other super spreader event they care to name without a | concern for the costs of their actions to them or anyone else. | | Fair would have been for everyone to do their part, to exercise a | modicum of self control, and work together to actually contain | things, keep them to a reasonable level, and then let things get | back to normal in the ways we can, and have a clear plan for how | to monitor and react to changes in the future. Fair would be | everyone working together to make this thing actually be over, at | least for some periods of time, rather than making the reasonable | people pay the entire burden for the whims of the hoards of pro- | plague cultists. | mithr wrote: | It's amazing to me that this article presents the "hard choices" | as mostly "should we trade off harming _children_ against harming | _adults_? ", rather than "should we trade off _not harming | anyone_ against _people 's freedom to choose to go about their | normal lives while unvaccinated_?" and only mentions the | unvaccinated offhandedly. | | It's less that the US has chosen to prioritize adults over | children and thus children are suffering, and more that the US | has chosen to prioritize the freedom to be selfish and ignorant | over _both_ adults _and_ children, and thus _everyone_ is | suffering. Make vaccination a requirement for (both foreign and) | domestic flights. Make it a requirement for attending any public | event. Make it a requirement for eating at any restaurant. Make | it a requirement for parents who want to send their kids to | school. Make a process whereby those relatively few adults who | legitimately _can 't_ be vaccinated due to e.g. medical reasons | have an exception (other countries have already done so). Make | the willfully unvaccinated have to stay at home because society | is closed to those who care more about making a point about | "freedom" than about harming everyone else in it. | divbzero wrote: | I wonder if this pandemic will change our views on the pace of | vaccine testing in children. There might be a willingness to | begin testing in children sooner though I doubt we would ever | test in children at the same time as adults. | throwawayboise wrote: | I am very thankful that my youngest graduated high school in | 2020. The last couple of months were screwed up, but there wasn't | much real education lost by then; most seniors pretty much check | out after Spring Break anyway. | | I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this | are going to be with us for decades. | [deleted] | cm2187 wrote: | It always surprises that left-leaning politicians and media | were the most fervent advocates of school closures, because it | has disproportionately affected kids from the poorest | backgrounds. What I see around me is that educated couples | invested the time to make up for the lack of school education | (and were typically home working themselves), so those kids | will probably do OK, other kids were left on their own all day. | | I think it is more of a relative problem than an absolute | problem. | swayvil wrote: | I see kids getting off the schoolbus wearing masks. My nephew | got a facial rash. My local food-coop has a sign up front | cheerfully ordering everybody to wear a mask, with big hipster | love and aggressive smile. It's messed up. | throwaway75787 wrote: | Seeing the lower face is important to reading emotion. The | masks muffle speech as well. I wonder if children, especially | in that critical 2-4 year-old period, will have stunted | language and interpersonal skills. It's not right. | buscoquadnary wrote: | So personal anecdote our two year old is behind on speech, | we had someone come in to evaluate him and he mentioned | that he has been seeing it a lot, citing that because so | many people are wearing masks, and the kids weren't | spending more time around other people it had created a | trend he had noticed. | crummy wrote: | what was your nephews mask made out of? that sounds very | unusual | swayvil wrote: | It's actually pretty common. | halostatue wrote: | Highly unlikely. My wife taught children who came out of | Sarajevo in the mid-90s and many of them have gone on to excel | in life. | | Children are resilient. What is _hurting_ them is not the | school closures, but the panic and uncertainty that some people | have put around this. | WalterBright wrote: | Decades? I missed 3 months of 4th grade. The teacher said I | should be stuck back in 3rd because 4th grade had moved along | so quickly. My mom said no, and put me in the 4th grade class | around Christmastime. | | I wasn't a day behind. The class had not advanced at all. | | But I'm sure the pandemic will be _blamed_ for school | unachievement for decades. It 's a godsend to the school | industrial complex. | criddell wrote: | Did your kid go on to college? My two kids did and it's a | pretty lousy experience. Classes are mostly online still, | cafeterias are take out only, socialization opportunities are | mostly gone. | tester756 wrote: | My last year of higher edu was remote and I really loved it | in 80% | | Finally I didn't have to waste time on commute and it was way | easier to ignore doubtful profs/useless courses and focus on | the right things. | | but yea, things may be harder if you don't know people you're | studying with | WalterBright wrote: | Why did you take useless classes? Colleges give students | great leeway in course selection. | tester756 wrote: | (not US) | | I couldn't | | I could only take "specialisation" - a few courses at the | last year or something like that. | | It could be software engineering / cybersecurity / | something else | throwawayboise wrote: | Yes. One was on-campus, and it wasn't ideal but he did OK | with it. The other was all online and it didn't go well. He's | taking time off now (working, not sitting idle) until he can | be fully in-class, on campus. | divbzero wrote: | On campus interactions may not be strictly needed for book | learning but they are such a big part of the college | experience in general. | barry-cotter wrote: | > The effects of this are going to be with us for decades. | | Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a | lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to | be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school | attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to | no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a | grade level behind average children[1]. The last historically | comparable school closures, for the 1918 flu pandemic, had _no | detectable long run effects_ [2]. | | [1] The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence | From Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students | | http://zoleerjemeer.nl/files/1313/9109/4391/The_Impact_of_Sc... | | [2]School Closures During the 1918 Flu Pandemic | https://www.nber.org/papers/w28246 | [deleted] | librarianscott wrote: | You can't have a years-long pandemic without consequences, good | and bad. My state of Texas has had schools open almost all of | this time--and we're not doing better than the other states. | Where are all the folks in the United States who say that parents | are the best teachers of their children, that home-schooling | should rule the day, that the best care comes from families? That | would imply that children would be better than ever, right? They | will never believe that it takes a village. | [deleted] | quickthrower2 wrote: | I'm not in the US, but the home-schooling comparison is not | fair from my Australian experience of it. | | In home schooling a parent teaches the kids, full time, with no | pressure from their day job. | | In pandemic home schooling, the parent probably is trying to do | a job at the same time (or do a shift to suit or something?) is | stressed out, and is not setting the curriculum - instead the | teacher is setting the day's agenda via a zoom call or two, and | the kids have to follow the exercises after. Some of these | exercises may not make sense to the parents. | | The parents don't get any advance "teachers notes" or inkling | of what is coming, the exercises appear and if the kid is stuck | you need to figure out how to help them. | | In summary pandemic remote schooling is not home schooling for | 2 reasons. One is the parents probably have their main job to | do. Two is the parents are not teaching, they are at best a | teachers assistant who is badly prepped. | bmitc wrote: | Why are parents being expected to teach at all during remote | education? Just because someone's kids are home doesn't mean | they need to start contributing to the workplace. Why is it | the other way around? | sanedigital wrote: | You have your groups backwards. Those of us who homeschool (or | whose children attend small, alternative private schools) | understand fully that it takes a village. That's why we went to | great pains to keep that village active, pandemic or no | pandemic. Our specific community has accepted the additional | risk to us adults in order to keep some level of normalcy for | our children. | | This article is about the other kids. The kindergartners who | haven't seen a teacher's face in 24 months. The grade schoolers | forced to eat outside in the cold. The high schoolers who | unofficially "dropped out" when their schools closed and will | never return to receive their diploma. Those kids have suffered | greatly in the name of reducing risk to adults. | ctyc wrote: | So Perfectly said. We are in the exact same situation with | our children. I would happily accept a nasty bout of COVID | (and did so last week in fact!) in exchange for letting my | children experience a proper childhood, complete with | friends, education and experiences. | javagram wrote: | Pandemic homeschooling is definitely not homeschooling at its | best. | | Homeschooling by choice has a great academic record with | students doing well on standardized exams and in college. Kids | who were sent home for "virtual school" on the other hand have | a lot of learning loss on average. | | Especially when parents still had to work and just put their | kid in front of a TV, that's not home schooling. | titanomachy wrote: | Parents aren't home-schooling... they're trying to keep working | full-time while their kids sit on the computer and try to learn | over zoom. There's no comparison. | jgalt212 wrote: | Too little, too late NY Times. I won't forgive you. | Ergo19 wrote: | Were you a subscriber and you cancelled your subscription? Or | are you simply withholding future subscriptions? | artursapek wrote: | For real. Their front page is still fear mongering "Omicron" to | people who never try to learn what "Omicron" even is or why | they should be afraid of it | abdel_nasser wrote: | this is horse shit. the overall well-being of children has been | declining for decades. now it has reached its precipice and | snobby NYT says its because of the virus. its just a way to | deflect from the truth which is that we have created a culture | that enables kids to be shitty. the inmates have been running the | asylum for a decade plus at our public schools. the environment | that kids grow up in now is one where nobody is in control of | what they experience. i remember when facebook first came out and | i saw all my friends invest into it 100%. nobody ever asked, wait | a second, isnt this unhealthy? isnt creating a points system for | socializing a bit unfair to the less popular kids? isnt it sort | of crazy to give facebook all of this information? i did my part | and never made an account but nobody else did their part and | nobody ever asked whether or not it was a good idea to make | facebook a default entity in the lives of our children. something | that everyone uses "because" and you cant choose to opt out | without serious consequences for you social life which is a huge | deal at that age. that was the contribution of the millennials to | the the environment for our children. good job! children need an | environment that is deliberately and thoughtfully controlled. not | micro-managed, but controlled. soon the damage will be so great | that even the dumbest people will realize this finally. | elpakal wrote: | [RANT] | | At this point I've lost faith in my generation, my parents' | generation, and everything in between and outside of that. I | don't care what your degree says or does not say. I don't care | about your credentials. I don't care about your politics. | Everyone has been wrong. MY YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD NOT HAVE TO | CONTINUE WEARING MASKS AT SCHOOL WHEN THEY ARE VACCINATED. That | is no way to grow up indeed. | wayoutthere wrote: | Aaaaand there's the consensus manufacturing the NYT is famous | for. | animal_spirits wrote: | > For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to | children in exchange for less harm to adults. | | At first we didn't know how much harm the virus would cause to | children. But now that we see it is much less dangerous for them | we shouldn't be preventing them from learning because we are | afraid of getting sick. The children are the future, and in order | to secure a positive growth in society it is our obligation to | give them their very important education. | cm2187 wrote: | Chinese deaths stats by age were available from March 2020. It | is just the media decided to ignore them. | stathibus wrote: | Human nature. Harm through inaction is more palatable than | risky action. | ajmurmann wrote: | This cannot be mentioned enough. It's such a weird bias. Just | repeated again with the bizarre delay of the critical Pfizer | medication that statement was unethical to not give to the | control group but ok to delay approval for months. | [deleted] | quadrifoliate wrote: | "Children are our future and you should be prepared to accept | arbitrary Covid consequences for them" _might_ be a compelling | argument on an orange web site, but it is not going to be one | when you present it to over-worked, under-appreciated teachers | who have families of their own and their futures to worry | about. | | Bringing back pensions and free post-retirement healthcare for | teachers will back up grandiose statements like yours with | actions. With the current right-wing thinking in vogue in the | US, I suspect there is vanishingly little chance of that | happening. | Apocryphon wrote: | Hell, increase their current healthcare benefits if they're | to teach during this crisis. | Alex3917 wrote: | > The children are the future, and in order to secure a | positive growth in society it is our obligation to give them | their very important education. | | Great, so just set up a fund to compensate teachers and daycare | workers who get long covid in order to pay their salary and | medical expenses for the rest of their lives if they're unable | to work. | animal_spirits wrote: | Our taxation system is already set up for these kinds of | transactions, and we definitely should be putting more money | into teacher salaries and education. | datavirtue wrote: | No we should not. They all get a pension. Do you know how | much pensions cost? There are people on waiting lists to | fill teacher positions. The benefits make up for the low | bank deposit. | wayoutthere wrote: | The problem isn't the kids getting sick, it's the adults | teaching them getting sick and dying. We've treated teachers | like shit for so long that many are just saying "nope, not | dying for a job" because they can go make more money doing | literally anything else. We were scraping the bottom of the | barrel even before Covid. | | If kids education were really a priority, the right time to | invest was 20 years ago. The system has been broken for a long | time already. | nsxwolf wrote: | This sentiment seems strange in 2022. Vaccines for teachers | have been widely available for almost a year now. | animal_spirits wrote: | > the right time to invest was 20 years ago | | The second best time to plant a tree is today | cardamomo wrote: | I couldn't agree with you more. Teachers and other school | workers were not even mentioned in this article. | FiReaNG3L wrote: | Counterpoint: at first it was extremely obvious that this virus | was affecting you harder the older you are, with 60+ | populations starting to be at risk. Nobody thought it was | harming children. | micromacrofoot wrote: | Before vaccines the major concern was children as a vector | for spreading it (especially because they were more often | asymptomatic), anyone with school age kids know how quickly | they spread illness. | | There was some secondary concern of long-term side-effects | ("long covid") cases in children as well, and I recall some | talk of MIS-C and Kawasaki disease... but even early on those | seemed fairly rare. | woodruffw wrote: | The reasoning here is flawed: we had early _positive_ | evidence that COVID-19 was particularly dangerous for the | elderly and those with a variety of medical preconditions. We | _didn 't_ have positive _or_ negative evidence that children | _weren 't_ an at-risk group (for any number of reasons: lack | of case evidence, the fact that children can't be modeled | medically as adults, etc.). | | Instead, we applied the lessons of the common flu[1]: | children _do_ get more sick from the common flu than young | and middle-aged adults and so, in light of a novel severe | respiratory disease, it doesn 't make sense to take chances. | | [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm | aantix wrote: | >We didn't have positive or negative evidence that children | weren't an at-risk group | | Why aren't the low death rates for the 0-17 cohort enough? | DennisP wrote: | Because people are experiencing long-term effects besides | death. | nsainsbury wrote: | Actually, a recent meta-analysis found that when you | actually add a control group, most of the "long COVID" | symptoms disappear. Higher quality studies were was | associated with lower prevalence of almost all symptoms. | "Long COVID" appears to be almost entirely an artifact of | bad science (and bad science reporting) | | See https://twitter.com/ShamezLadhani/status/147262289315 | 4639876 and https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0 | 163-4453(21)005... | lotsofpulp wrote: | How good is this data? How does it compare to long term | effects of other common viral infections? | throwawayboise wrote: | But how many, and is it more than other respiratory | illness? | woodruffw wrote: | Because, again, children's health is not accurately | reflected in adult models. "Kills adults" can be | correspond to almost anything in children, and telling | people to bet their children's health on an unknown | respiratory disease isn't good politics _or_ good public | health policy. | civilized wrote: | No. As the article explains, this uncertainty might explain | at most a couple months of the initial response. It was | very obvious, very early, that the risk to children was low | and did not fit the age profile of the flu. Nearly all the | debate around closing schools was in regards to their role | as general transmission hubs (many argued that kids didn't | even _transmit_ COVID enough to worry about) and the risk | to teachers. Nobody who was paying attention thought going | to school was going to kill lots of kids relative to | historically normal levels of child mortality. | | If you're having a hard time remembering how things | actually played out in 2020, just ask yourself: did you | hear about pediatric wards filling up with COVID patients? | No, you did not. You heard about an extremely rare | multisystem inflammatory disorder and that's about it. | woodruffw wrote: | You've performed a very subtle conversational pivot here: | I didn't assert that COVID _is_ more deadly to children, | or that public policy was structured around that | hypothesis. I said that we didn 't know how dangerous it | was and that, among other things, treating COVID as | potentially flu-like in young children was a reasonable | policy. | | When it became clear that children weren't dying in large | numbers from COVID, keeping them out of school throughout | 2020 because of the transmission theory was (and may | still be, depending on other circumstances) sufficient | justification. | arrosenberg wrote: | Counterpoint: It was extremely obvious that this virus was | hitting old folks hard because nursing homes were | concentrating them in recirculated air. It wasn't completely | obvious that the same thing wouldn't happen in schools. | | It should be obvious by now, however. | floren wrote: | From the very start children were considered essentially | immune to COVID. I remember in 2020, well into the pandemic, | that there was huge news coverage the first time a kid ended | up hospitalized. | benjaminwootton wrote: | The audacity. The NYT have been constantly supportive of more | restrictions and barely asked a single journalistic question with | regards to if they actually work and the impacts of them. "No Way | To Grow Up"? You don't say! | | Here's a thought with less hot air than the NYT: If Covid doesn't | impact kids and the vaccine barely moves the needle on | transmission, how about let them go to school, remove the masks, | stop jabbing them etc and let them live a normal life. It's | disgusting what we have done to them and the US seems to be one | of the worst offenders. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-04 23:00 UTC)