By the way I am enjoying watching more and more of you eventually come around to the point of view I have held for many, many months.

I think there's a lot of diversity of opinion and more sanity out there than say Twitter would have one believe but the politicization has been deranging some and scaring away others. It also seems like a lot of the institutions and public communicators charged with handling this are not very good, particularly in the US (FDA, Fauci, and so on).

It was hard a year ago to talk about the most basic concepts of QALY, mortality and how around 1% die every year, how $$ can be translated to human health, mitigation costs matter and can be worse than disease burden, a sick 95 year old dying is not the same as that person dying at age 22, etc. These things would probably have been considered "obvious" outside the context of the pandemic. In 2019 all the progressive people were up in arms over how certain disadvantaged groups earned less money or had lower educational attainment and then in 2020 they said it didn't matter if schools were closed down indefinitely and double digit percentages of the population were thrown out of work. If anybody cares to look back at this stuff 5-10 years in the future when it's no longer actively politicized it will look crazy.

Some of them aren't ready for the new normal (in urban areas) but hopefully every flu season there's a lockdown or at least forcing of the masks.

Well, if you have the sniffles, you probably should stay home, even if it's just the common cold. That should be the new normal.

I know you’re just trying to get a rise out of me, but the scary thing is that some people actually feel this way. Fortunately they are a small minority.

Agreed. There really isn't an excuse not to if you can work from home.

^ That depends on the “sniffles”. If you’ve got the flu or might then yeah, stay home. But not seasonal allergies.

Agree with this generally.

The thing is my work involves a lot of time spent with pharma companies and various healthcare providers, and looking at disease mortality, cost of drug development, treatment funding (whether Medicare reimbursement or various national health systems, etc), so I’ve been pretty dispassionate about Covid since the beginning. A lot of old people were going to die and that’s just life. Society was going to need to accept a fairly large number of deaths, ie, the ones where the costs to prevent them would just be too high. I am quite sure I mentioned QALY in explaining the fact that there has always been a consensus that a young person’s life was worth more than an old person’s. That’s just obvious and logical.

Unfortunately we had this mass/social media and political freak out that just took on a life of its own and it’s going to cause damage that lasts decades, rather than just, you know, 5-6% of old people dying a bit prematurely.

^ How will you ever develop immunity to viruses that we don't have vaccines to (which are most of them) if everybody did that?

School is a wonderful cauldron of viruses, a training ground for our young immune systems. We take for granted the immunity we have for so many viruses out there because we were exposed to them over and over again in our youth.

It is lack of prior exposure to viruses that killed off, tragically, millions of Native Americans centuries ago when Europeans brought those viruses over.

It's important to not get caught up in the false idea that infection = bad and lack of infection = good. We did not evolve in that environment. We need exposure to infectious antigens in order to build our immunity--it could save one's life some day.

Yes, I should clarify. If you have something that you reasonably suspect to be, or could reasonably be suspected to be, a contagious virus, then you should stay home. I'm not talking about seasonal allergies. This was true before COVID.

just as it is to not get caught up in thinking anyplace is anywhere near herd immunity to covid.

Agreed but that's not the point. We shouldn't be demanding negative PCR tests every time coughs or sneezes which can be any number of reasons.

Is that actually happening though? I have yet to need any type of vaccine pass/negative test, ect.
I live in California to top it off :haha:

^

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYNhmqmtF...0/paranoid.jpg

yep. agree to all of that. there's a reason why schools are (not so jokingly) referred to as "germ factories".

little kids are supposed to get sick. it is literally how their young immune systems learn to deal with a germ-filled world.

now, i get it, covid is a novel thing, it's brand new and there is much we still don't know about it, so i don't have a big problem with taking some precautions regarding it.

but we need to MANAGE the risk, not eliminate it.



if my 5 year old wakes up one morning with a runny nose and no fever, there's like a 99% chance that it ain't covid. LET ME SEND HIS ASS TO SCHOOL!

99% is good enough.

if he's got a fever too, fine, yes, i'll go get him a PCR test just to be sure.

it's this "no child who isn't in 100% PERFECT health can ever set foot in a school again" zero-tolerance idiocy that is just completely aggravating for any parent with a kid who has symptomatic seasonal allergies (sometimes for weeks/months on end).

I was mostly talking about adults and work. It's different for children. It does you no good as an adult to catch the cold or flu.

Why not? Humans have eliminated other risks to our health so lets try out COVID and other viruses.



What's the deal here? If they have allergies then they aren't sick, so obviously they have to go to class. If they have a flu/cold they stay home.

^ That's debatable. Our immune system, ie memory immune system, develops and learns throughout our lifetimes.

I am now immune to some nasty gastroenteritises that I caught in my 30s. While working in a busy hospital and doing a lot of traveling, every few months I caught a nasty bug giving me diarrhea. I almost never become ill from those now, because my immune system has "seen" these viruses before.

Immunity is the one place where the old saying REALLY holds true: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

continue to blithely deal illness and death all you wish. you won't be working at our company. good riddance. :tup:

^Pedestrian can let us know how it really works, since the pseudoscience is wrong on a lot of stuff. Getting "aligned" won't solve anything.

Did you read my previous comment where my wife had to test negative for Covid is she had cold like symptoms? She is in Texas and works for evil oil and gas.

the school won't accept any child with a sneeze, sniffle, runny nose, cough, etc.

they get turned away until a negative PCR test is produced.


all i'm saying is let parents make some educated calls here.

i know my kids. i know when they're actually sick (ie. with a fever) and when it's just seasonal allergies or a common cold or whatever.

but zero tolerance has become the name of the game because this one time there was this guy and he totally died and, like, we can never ever allow that to happen again people!

Nah, just the one on the last page, since most of the time it seems people are overblowing it. How can your governor allow that to happen? I'm getting mixed messages, since I thought Texas was....Texas. I'm gonna have to tell everybody at the butcher shop that there are more measures against COVID in Texas than here. That means 3 or 4 less people moving away from California!

Seems simple enough, and remember if they do have an outbreak they will shut down the school. So this sacrifice is better than them closing the school and sending everybody back to e-learning. Whether they should close down the school for COVID is a seperate matter, since some think they should and some think they shouldn't.


I'm afraid individual parents can't be trusted anymore, especially now with COVID, so there needs to be unified rules that everybody has to follow. I'm not saying you are doing wrong, but the whole country botched being told what to do so now everybody gets punished.

out here in nyc world everyone in the schools wears a mask and there is random testing, so kids can get away with their sneeze or cough. :shrug:

*grabs popcorn*.........

They shouldn’t need to do either. You want kids to wear masks forever? Talk about fucking up an entire generation’s social development.

my kids have to wear masks at school too, but the CPS covid testing program has been a shambles thus far.

the rules here are clear: if your child is exhibiting any symptom that might possibly be related to covid, you have to produce a negative PCR test or self quarantine for 10 days.

the rules are dumb IMO. if a kid has cold/allergy symptoms, but does not have a fever, then let them go to school.

i'm not expecting the rules to change anytime soon because the world has in fact lost its damn mind.

Yes, let the state act and think for us....

I only wish I could “deal death” to idiots like yourself.

Changed my mind. I'm staying out of this.

If the level of resistance to governmental mandates seen today had existed in the early 40s, we’d all be speaking German now.

People are forgetting about the "plandemic", anti vax segment on the other end. Sad being caught between two sets of morons.

well, in that case, the only safe path forward is to close all schools forever!

the only acceptable level of risk is zero risk!

COVID is dangerous. Now I grab the popcorn.

Just till they get the vaccine. Why do some of you always jump to the conclusion that there will be masks and lockdowns forever?

Well they do fund the schools so, yeah, for the schools. You can still think the rules suck though, they can't stop people from thinking whatever they want.
Government overreach got us the vaccine too...

Public health policy is, by definition and necessity, the purview of "the state."

Looks like I was quoted before I backed out, so:

This isn't about individual risk as so many (who seem to not be able to think of anything beyond their own personal interests) believe. It's about controlling (early on it could have been about ending...too late for that) the spread of the disease.

You are right, of course, but there is also a "degree" of insanity to this.

Hate to say this, but the CTU is WAY more militant about these things than most of the suburban school districts. I follow the news and I hear them bitch and moan all day, and get the sense that they are just weaponizing COVID at this point.

In my district they will of course send a child home who is feeling sick, but not always. My son had a headache the other day and the school nurse didn't bother and sent him back to class. But he came back a again 2 days later with sniffles and a cough and she had to COVID test him.

I would go berserk if my kids were getting tested over and over again, as you are describing.

That's not gonna happen and if it does, well just go to one of those states that don't believe in COVID. Especially with vaccine approval and ect.

it's likely you have.

larping away online as you most likely are or not.

When they get to one of "those states," they will have to make sure they don't pick a school district that does believe in COVID and is willing to defy the edicts of their state government.

i haven't heard of them sending kids home from schools in nyc.

maybe they have, i dk, but you don't hear that. :shrug:

Have fun in Alabama, guys!

yes, kids and everyone will have to wear masks forever.

lol just listen to yourself. :rolleyes:

Try dropping the stereotypes for once.

Alabama governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ as pandemic worsens

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued an impassioned plea for residents of her state to get vaccinated against Covid-19, arguing it was “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the disease’s continued spread.

“I want folks to get vaccinated. That’s the cure. That prevents everything,” Ivey, a Republican, told reporters in Birmingham, Ala., on Thursday.

“Why would we want to mess around with just temporary stuff?” she said. “We don’t need to encourage people to just go halfway with curing this disease. Let’s get it done. And we know what it takes to get it done.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...nations-500638

I wish this forum had a "Like" button.

I'm glad to be wrong, but then what state would be best for those who don't want any COVID rules? Florida? Texas? There is a place for everybody who wants it, since that's the American way. Northern California is good if you don't like COVID rules as well, but...it's CA.
A plea won't work though, Madam Governor, those were for last year.

Ignorance is bliss.

Maybe if you had school age kids....? Nah, somebody else's problem :rolleyes:

there's a GIANT "degree" of insanity to this.

by and large, covid does not kill young children.

the fatally rates for kids are extremely low. how many healthy under-10s has covid killed in the US? isn't in the 100s? out of literally tens of millions of kids who've had it/been exposed to it.

we gotta start rolling the dice again at some point.



we happily roll the dice with every other aspect of our society.

and thousands of kids drown or die in car accidents every year because we all do roll those dice, yet we haven't outlawed driving or closed all of the beaches and swimming pools.

WHY!?!

"won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!"

It’s been basically two years. When will kids not have to wear stupid masks? 5 years? 10? How much longer because this insanity government mandated paranoia ain’t going away anytime soon. And most people are sick of the insanity. Let the 20 percent of weirdos who still wear masks wear them forever. Let kids and everyone else stop wearing masks. These kids are going to be super fucked up socially. It was already bad enough with every kid staring at phone screens all day and not socializing properly.

I don't know about Florida, but in Texas, cities, school districts, and even corporations are flouting our idiot governor's ban on mandates.

ETA: Looks like the "NO POLITICS!" admonition in the thread title isn't working. I'm out of here.

My kid is in a private preschool, very lefty progressive, has the sniffles all the time (seasonal allergies) and has never been sent home.

They've never even mentioned the issue. Of course he's always masked except for outdoor play and lunch/snacks and they have the standard Covid guidelines. They also take student and caregiver temps at drop-off.

So I think there's a pretty broad range of school-level policies re. managing risk.