Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[The AD]

Yes, but go look at the graph I posted (from NYTimes). Hospitalizations are already well past peak in DC and NY areas. Deaths peaking right now. Hell, we're even past peak hospitalizations for the entire US today. We are on the decline and the news is things go down just as fast as they go up.

While this is correct you'll see that pretty much every state shown still has new case numbers greater than last winter's peak. I'd let this downward trend continue for a few more weeks before I'd start loosening any current restrictions.

[altasnob]

But I thought hospitalizations and deaths are really the only numbers that matter? Hospitalizations in NY today, across the entire state, are already lower than the peak in Spring 2020 and Winter 2021. And unlike those previous peaks, where almost no one was vaccinated, today we have a large percentage of society that has been vaccinated, and over 40% of the population just got natural immunity from contracting Omicron. Giving it a few more weeks before we start to relax restrictions seems prudent. But you know it won't be weeks, more like months, before anything gets loosened.

[The AD]

But I thought hospitalizations and deaths are really the only numbers that matter?

They are, but we've seen time and time again that hospitalizations and then deaths increase after new cases do, so it seems like you'd probably want to wait until new cases decrease a bit more before declaring victory. I have a feeling you're wrong about months rather than weeks. I predict we'll start seeing restrictions ease toward the end of February if the current trends continue.

[::: :::]

Last June we started relaxing restrictions before establishing that we had in fact reached and settled into a lull
And what happened?

The gorilla hasn’t given up yet

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I don't think you are assessing our current situation correctly - local to me, our health care is stretched beyond functional. Further, I don't think the 'segment' you speak of is meaningful or representative... I don't even know anyone with the talking point of 'indefinitely'. Feel free to cite.

Does altaslob ever give objective assessments?


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[MagnificentUnicorn]

Again, just because some areas have pushed through their absolute peak (still high mind you), it's premature to wave the all clear flag. A little patience.

Didn't NYC relax their rules at least once already? Pretty sure there's been changes from lockdown to quarantine to mask to distancing as the situation has changed; the past summer for example.

So - who are the ring leaders of this 'indefinitely' movement you speak to? Where can I find their policy positions and talking points?

I can picture altaslob throwing himself on the ground “I want my freedom now!”


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[rideit]

I’ll give this dude a kindergarten gold star for commitment!
https://nypost.com/2022/01/30/unvacc...ey-transplant/

Still not sure how getting a life saving vaccine impinges on one’s ‘freedom’, besides the freedom to be a vector, and/or die.

[riser4]

I can picture altaslob throwing himself on the ground “I want my freedom now!”


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It's my freedom and I want it now!

[Benny Profane]

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educa...ment-violence/

Test scores are down, and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.
For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.
Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.
Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, their curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity and even the contents of their libraries. Republicans — who see education as a winning political issue — are pressing their case for more “parental control,” or the right to second-guess educators’ choices. Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.
“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”
Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.
Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.
Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.
Teresa Rennie, an eighth-grade math and science teacher in Philadelphia, said in 11 years of teaching, she has never referred this many children to counseling.
“So many students are needy. They have deficits academically. They have deficits socially,” she said. Rennie said that she’s drained, too. “I get 45 minutes of a prep most days, and a lot of times during that time I’m helping a student with an assignment, or a child is crying and I need to comfort them and get them the help they need. Or there’s a problem between two students that I need to work with. There’s just not enough time.”

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educa...ment-violence/

Test scores are down, and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.
For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.
Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.
Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, their curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity and even the contents of their libraries. Republicans — who see education as a winning political issue — are pressing their case for more “parental control,” or the right to second-guess educators’ choices. Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.
“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”
Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.
Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.
Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.
Teresa Rennie, an eighth-grade math and science teacher in Philadelphia, said in 11 years of teaching, she has never referred this many children to counseling.
“So many students are needy. They have deficits academically. They have deficits socially,” she said. Rennie said that she’s drained, too. “I get 45 minutes of a prep most days, and a lot of times during that time I’m helping a student with an assignment, or a child is crying and I need to comfort them and get them the help they need. Or there’s a problem between two students that I need to work with. There’s just not enough time.”

These problems predate the pandemic. You would know that if you were a parent or weren’t part of the lamest generation.


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[rideit]

The only solution to our failing schools and ‘murica’s infatuation with ignorance is four more years of Trump, amirite?

I mean, his uncle went to MIT.

[Benny Profane]

These problems predate the pandemic. You would know that if you were a parent or weren’t part of the lamest generation.


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Sure they did, sure they did. Try harder. Daddy.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Sure they did, sure they did. Try harder. Daddy.

Did I hurt your feelings? Poor Benny


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[Benny Profane]

Nope. But KC just broke my heart.

Heh, not really.

[LongShortLong]

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco will ease its COVID-19 mask order for vaccinated gym members and office workers, and will relax rules requiring proof of vaccination when entering large indoor sports arenas, restaurants, bars and gyms, allowing unvaccinated people to enter if they show proof of a recent negative test.

^ Takes effect Tuesday. Keep your head in the sand though

[Adolf Allerbush]

...

High schoolers are walking out over this stuff. Teachers are leaving. We are losing healthcare workers.

Teachers are leaving because they don't want to deal with the anit-mask/anti-vax contingent. I have yet to see any kids give a shit about wearing a mask when asked to. It's the parents of some kids that have the issue.

Point is you can't say that kids need to got to school without masks and then also gripe about teachers leaving.

[oldnew_guy]

Teachers are leaving because they don't want to deal with the anit-mask/anti-vax contingent. I have yet to see any kids give a shit about wearing a mask when asked to. It's the parents of some kids that have the issue.

Point is you can't say that kids need to got to school without masks and then also gripe about teachers leaving.

I realize people are trying to put me in the antivax, anti mask camp and that’s very firmly not where I am at. The opposite. Triple vaxx’d, N95 wearing, social distancing family here who has successfully avoided getting ourselves or our kids sick (who can’t get vaccinated yet.)

I don’t agree with the simplification that teachers are leaving over anti mask protesters. The problems are deeper and longer running than that and that simplification I think tends to exclude a bunch of options we have to address it.

https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2021/11/portland-school-teachers-burnout-worker-shortage


I can however recognize that the harm CoVID via sickness and death is doing is not the only harm being caused. People very much are being effected by social isolation, ever changing school closures, work closures, etc. Teachers are routinely making statements when interviewed like “we basically lost the first few months to teaching social skills we normally teach in kindergarten”.

I’m looking at this through the lens of equity largely. I see a group of people who are making out quite nicely (WFH, PPP, flexible work schedules, etc) and are making more money and have the flexibility and resources to make it work. I see another group of people who were already struggling getting shit on even harder.

Kids in NYC walked walked out last week because they wanted better remote options, more CoVID testing, more social distancing, more cleaning, adequate soap in restrooms. The student they interviewed was very frustrated that an exposure or sickness quarantine meant essentially no school for the quarantine period because a remote option wasn’t available and they were losing out in their education. In my mind that’s completely fucked up that two years into this that is even possible.

From my perspective we have an obligation to figure out a better, more equitable way to navigate through this. That doesn’t mean, “no masks and send them back to school”.

Frankly it’s embarrassing that as a country we have basically given up. What a lost opportunity to change some of the trends we have.

[::: :::]

To be fair
PPS had troubles pre-pandemic for serving its constituency
Pandemic school isn’t going to be better

[old goat]

Response to ONG--this pandemic is a war. The US has lost more people to the virus than we lost in WWII and we have a decent chance of losing more than in all our wars put together, combat and noncombat combined. Major wars disrupt society in many ways. The disruption and emotional damage some schoolchildren, the economic damage many adults have suffered are real but so are the damage from the loss of a parent, or both parents, or the loss of a family breadwinner, . Fortunately, children for the most part are resilient and most will recover well from the disruptions of the pandemic. Not so the dead.

The fallacy is in believing that if authorities had made different decisions there would have been no disruption, no pain, no death, or at least much less. In fact, the poor performance of the US in the pandemic is primarily the fault of the actions and inaction of the American public, who are only too happy to blame "government" when things go south. For much of the pandemic there have been no good decisions authorities could have made, only a choice of bad options. For the last year authorities have offered a very good option--vaccination. The fact that decisions are having to be made regarding school closures, and quarantines, and masking, and mandates is purely the fault of those who have refused to get vaccinated. So don't direct your anger at say a school board that decides to go back to remote learning. Direct your anger at those unvaccinated who have held the rest of society hostage and demand that your leaders take punitive action against them, because the rest of us are getting fucked over.

[SumJongGuy]

The fact that decisions are having to be made regarding school closures, and quarantines, and masking, and mandates is purely the fault of those who have refused to get vaccinated. So don't direct your anger at say a school board that decides to go back to remote learning. Direct your anger at those unvaccinated who have held the rest of society hostage and demand that your leaders take punitive action against them, because the rest of us are getting fucked over.

+100000000000000000000000000000000

[oldnew_guy]

To be fair
PPS had troubles pre-pandemic for serving its constituency
Pandemic school isn’t going to be better

Maybe not, but we could have done better.

[oldnew_guy]

Response to ONG--this pandemic is a war. The US has lost more people to the virus than we lost in WWII and we have a decent chance of losing more than in all our wars put together, combat and noncombat combined. Major wars disrupt society in many ways. The disruption and emotional damage some schoolchildren, the economic damage many adults have suffered are real but so are the damage from the loss of a parent, or both parents, or the loss of a family breadwinner, . Fortunately, children for the most part are resilient and most will recover well from the disruptions of the pandemic. Not so the dead.

The fallacy is in believing that if authorities had made different decisions there would have been no disruption, no pain, no death, or at least much less. In fact, the poor performance of the US in the pandemic is primarily the fault of the actions and inaction of the American public, who are only too happy to blame "government" when things go south. For much of the pandemic there have been no good decisions authorities could have made, only a choice of bad options. For the last year authorities have offered a very good option--vaccination. The fact that decisions are having to be made regarding school closures, and quarantines, and masking, and mandates is purely the fault of those who have refused to get vaccinated. So don't direct your anger at say a school board that decides to go back to remote learning. Direct your anger at those unvaccinated who have held the rest of society hostage and demand that your leaders take punitive action against them, because the rest of us are getting fucked over.

A couple of things:

1- sure be angry at the unvaccinated. At this point, being angry does nothing to address any issue we currently face on the ground. The current reality on the ground is that a certain percentage of people will not be vaccinated. It appears unlikely that vaccine mandates will be upheld by the courts, so what are we going to do? Sit around and whine that they won’t get vaccinated or use our monkey brains to figure out a way around?



2- I’m quite aware of the array of bad choices in front of decision makers. I was sitting in an EOC in the early months of the pandemic making some of them. We could have and can make better choices if we make the hard decisions. Unfortunately we often make the politically expedient ones.

Here is an easy, but hard one. Schools, workplaces, etc will need to close for outbreaks and surges. Ok, that’s a given. Now how do we reduce the harm of that closure? Spend the money to replace lost income for parents of kids who have closed schools and put in job protection measures. Means test it, whatever. (That’s just an idea, which is probably better than the current “oh well, figure that lost income out yourself.)

I think rolling over and saying “oh yeah, things will just get worse by default during the pandemic” is not a good place to start. And I’d say that for lots of people some things are worse, but some things are certainly better (see the WFH crowd).

I get it, this stuff is hard. We could do better.

[altasnob]

I don't understand why you guys still have anger towards unvaccinated. They all just got vaccinated, by Omicron (I've repeated ad nauseum that over 40% will have contracted Omicron by mid February). Sure, had they gotten Omicron and been vaccinated they would have a little stronger immunity. But you can no longer claim that the unvaccinated are preventing us from ___________.

[old goat]

A couple of things:

1- sure be angry at the unvaccinated. At this point, being angry does nothing to address any issue we currently face on the ground. The current reality on the ground is that a certain percentage of people will not be vaccinated. It appears unlikely that vaccine mandates will be upheld by the courts, so what are we going to do? Sit around and whine that they won’t get vaccinated or use our monkey brains to figure out a way around?



2- I’m quite aware of the array of bad choices in front of decision makers. I was sitting in an EOC in the early months of the pandemic making some of them. We could have and can make better choices if we make the hard decisions. Unfortunately we often make the politically expedient ones.

Here is an easy, but hard one. Schools, workplaces, etc will need to close for outbreaks and surges. Ok, that’s a given. Now how do we reduce the harm of that closure? Spend the money to replace lost income for parents of kids who have closed schools and put in job protection measures. Means test it, whatever. (That’s just an idea, which is probably better than the current “oh well, figure that lost income out yourself.)

I think rolling over and saying “oh yeah, things will just get worse by default during the pandemic” is not a good place to start. And I’d say that for lots of people some things are worse, but some things are certainly better (see the WFH crowd).

I get it, this stuff is hard. We could do better.

You don't get it. Without near universal vaccination there is no end to this pandemic. Sure, one day we can decide to call it "endemic" but that will still mean unconscionable numbers of people dying, an overwhelmed health care system, and a failing economy. I'm not advocating sitting around and whining--what a condescending thing for you to say. I am advocating that the angry majority act.

1) demand--by way of organized protests and by voting--that states require vaccination to go to school. I believe every state does this already for a multitude of vaccinations. California does it with no religious or personal belief exemptions and goes after doctors who give fake medical exemptions. No court has invalidated these mandates.

2) demand that federal and state governments impose vaccine mandates to use public transportation and to enter businesses and public buildings.

3) organize protests and boycott businesses that don't enforce the rules. Organize boycotts of states that don't impose or enforce the rules. If necessary states can ban travel or require quarantine of travelers from states without vaccine mandates. Boycott businesses that don't require their employees to be vaccinated.

It's time for the majority of us who are vaccinated make our voices heard and drown out the antivaxers, who up until now have been the only loud voice on the subject. Now all that would actually be hard.

What is easy and politically expedient is to do what you suggest--keep shutting down schools and pay parents to stay home with their kids. We've done that and the pandemic just got worse. As a taxpayer I don't want to keep paying people for the damage being done by those who refuse to be vaccinated and I don't want to see the poor kids without the resources to do remote school fall farther and farther behind (not that their schools were doing such a great job before.)

[The AD]

I don't understand why you guys still have anger towards unvaccinated. They all just got vaccinated, by Omicron (I've repeated ad nauseum that over 40% will have contracted Omicron by mid February).

40% isn't "all," for one thing.