I think I'm getting something different from this than what the author intended.
* They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall.
* The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me.
* Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school.
* Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home.
It just seems like there is a whole realm of paranoia that this kid is trying to fit on top of their life, and I don't think this sort of paranoia is in any way reasonable.
I think that teaching kids to think about their world with this framing, and at a formative age, is and already has done major damage to their development.
Yes, because for schoolkids, Omicron is literally a cold, if that. The other variants, call it a bad cold. The only reason to stop them catching it is to stop them spreading it. Had someone three years ago been that concerned about someone with a cold, yes, that would be minutiae.
There are many cultures that strongly value parents, elders and extended family, and Covid is 'a cold' that could kill random loved ones in their extended family, such as their favorite grandmother or their aunt's best friend. For a teenager, being the vector of infection that leads to such a death would result in critical emotional trauma and lead to a much higher risk of suicide — a fact they are well aware of, given the significant uptick in suicides within their age group since Covid began.
They may be teenagers, but they're not wrong to attend to the minutiae; whether for selfish or for social reasons, that awareness may be all that is keeping them and their loved ones alive. It is cruel and unjust and wrong that they alone are attending to the minutiae of masking, but here in the United States our social support systems often require them to bear that responsibility, as the adults responsible for them often do not.
School kids live with their parents/guardians, and if they get it it will most likely mean that those guardians also will. That can be very serious for a kid who literally depends on them for everything including food, clothing, housing, essentials to life, etc. This is especially so if those guardians are older and at higher risk of death. A child is absolutely right to be more worried about it than they would be about a cold, because if it spreads to their family (and it likely will), that could well be a life ruining event.
If you're in a school: you're catching omicron, and unless all of the students are wearing at least PAPR hoods all the time, everybody is catching it. Allowing yourself to get worked up about seeing a kid with his mask down in the bathroom is insane.
> * They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall.
The kids were packed into an overcrowded auditorium so much that they completely ran out of seats and had cram even more people into the auditorium than it had seating. They did this for 3 hours, far longer than it takes to acquire COVID from someone sitting next to you. Kids were literally testing positive inside of the auditorium during this time.
> * The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me.
That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae". It's baffling that you think the problem in this scenario is that he's concerned about a COVID-positive person in close quarters having a mask down, as opposed to the fact that a COVID-positive person has their mask down. You must be harboring some major biases.
> * Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school.
Did you miss the part where so many of the faculty and staff were out sick that they were struggling to coordinate everything? I agree it's uncoordinated and wasteful, but the point is that they're being forced to try to run a school when a huge number of the faculty are too sick to do so.
> That kid with the mask down had literally just tested positive for COVID. That's not "minutiae".
You just said, a paragraph up, that they had all been in the auditorium for 3 hours, which (again, according to you) is "far longer than it takes" to get sick. Let's assume you're right -- we have an auditorium overcrowded with kids, many of whom are spewing aerosolized, highly transmissible virus into an enclosed space. For hours.
So yes, worrying about a silly mask on one kid, in that context, is more than a little hysterical. I'm going to wager that most of these kids weren't wearing rigorously fitted respirators anyway.
Even if you don't believe that (why wouldn't you?), the idea that a moment of "mask down" is going to present any sort of exceptional additional risk is clearly nonsense.
Infection isn't a binary yes/no switch that occurs after a specific interval. This should be obvious.
The more viral load you're exposed to, the higher the infection risk. Someone speaking directly to you in close quarters with an active infection is, indeed, a significant risk factor for acquiring the virus.
It doesn't make sense to argue that it doesn't matter because they were also possibly exposed to other students for 3 hours earlier.
> The more viral load you're exposed to, the higher the infection risk. Someone speaking directly to you in close quarters with an active infection is, indeed, a significant risk factor for acquiring the virus.
No. Infectious dose may matter for severity of disease (this is a hypothesis; it has never been demonstrated). Concluding that it matters in this situation is clearly silly. You're talking about hours in a room, with hundreds of kids. You think they're all wearing perfectly fitted respirators? Come now. You honestly want to suggest that one kid pulling his mask down makes a big difference in the overall aerosol rave being described here?
Remember, we don't even know what kind of mask is being discussed. If the kid in question is wearing a cloth mask, it probably didn't matter either way, based on all current evidence.
Also remember: SARS-CoV2 shows a clear pattern of overdispersion. Most people don't spread to anyone. The chances that any particular encounter will lead to your infection are very low, regardless of masks. Put a hundred kids in a room, though, and those tiny probabilities start to multiply. Sitting for hours in a room full of hundreds of other people is dramatically higher risk than some guy pulling his mask down for a second (but the former doesn't let you blame your outcome on specific person, so it isn't nearly as satisfying, is it?)
This is the problem with Covid discussions on the internet. People get one fact half-right ("viral load matters"), and use that to generate the scariest possible hot-takes.
Indeed, it's truly sad. It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses. From his comments, I wonder if he actually thinks he will be dead from standing next to someone who just tested positive. The preliminary results from UK and SA indicate that this recent wave could be a blessing in that it serves as an innoculation rather than severe illness. And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with.
> It's an inability to deal with risk out of all proportion to the reality it actually poses.
Are we reading the same post?
The kids are going to school. The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school.
> And children his age are not at a great risk to begin with.
Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation? They have older parents at home. They have older teachers in the classroom. Many of them see even older grandparents and relatives frequently, perhaps also at home.
Where do kids go if they get sick? Home, where they are cared for by older parents.
Kids don't just live in isolated bubbles with other kids. It's dishonest to ignore the second-order effects of kids getting sick.
> The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school.
This depends on how you define "so sick". Tested positive? Yes. Hospitalized? I bet not all (or > 1.8% [1]) of them. I notice when verbiage sensationalizes COVID. The OP, I believe, is also sensitive to this.
> Honestly, do people think children just exist in isolation?
This is the primary argument. Your two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. He can believe that the kids are overly scared based on the statistics because, well, they are not at that much risk while at the same time recognizing that individuals not at risk put other people who are at risk in danger.
This is why we fail to have beneficial conversation, we talk around each other.
I am 25 years old, vaccinated two times (we are only eligible to 2 vaccines in Québec, Canada), had contact with a COVID positive case on sunday last week (January 2th) and I got sick enough to not be able to work from January 4th to January 9th.
I was not hospitalized and I was not able to work due to some quite heavy symptoms that prevent me to talk or focus more than a few minutes on a task.
You and the commenter above you miss the point. If you change "Hospitalized" to "unable to work" the point is still valid. I just do not have statistics on "unable to work" and I do not like to state things without evidence. However, it is very likely that 100% of those cases are not "unable to work" and that some percentage >0 is asymptomatic. The point stands.
Either way, you focused on the minor point rather than the main purpose which is a "both and" scenario rather than a "either or" where the two arguments are debating different issues which are not mutually exclusive but for some reason are used to argue against each other as if it's an either/or scenario (risk to ones self vs risk to others - It can be low risk to the individual and high risk to others at the same time).
> The faculty is so sick that they don't have enough people to run the school.
Bullshit.
Assuming that 20% of the teachers are sick (=coughing or not feeling well), which is a ridiculous overestimation, schools can still work perfectly well.
That just means that 20% of the lessons will not happen. And if the schools' administration is not completely useless (I admit that may be a long shot), some of these lessons could be replaced by other lessons.
“Just” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does. Schools have very little margin for soaking up absence at that scale. If one out of five teachers are out, the kids will not be doing the learning which is the stated justification for not keeping them safe at home. Teaching is hard work, not hitting play on a video, and it requires time to prepare in addition to classroom time – teachers don’t call in sick for fun, it actually creates more work for them since they still need to create the lessons and deal with the impact on their work when they’re back, and in many districts a decline in test scores will cost them money (in some, so does taking a sick day).
School administrators are extremely busy with all of the extra work they’ve been given, and if they’re babysitting students that work (often required by law) will not happen.
But, at this point, they are pretty much babysitting them, at least according to the account from the reddit poster. Everyone's talking more about the testing than anything else with little added benefit.
Yes, note the large number of absences — that was basically the point: schools which have been resource-starved for many years don’t have anywhere near that much slack capacity, especially since one of the sources of substitutes are retired teachers who are at higher risk.
When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless - other than to flatten the curve and relieve the burden on services. But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now?
> When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it
No, it means that it tends to be maintained at some (whether very high or very low or other) stable baseline level in a region in the absence of external inputs or interventions.
> Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless
No, it doesn't, and wouldn't even if “endemic” did mean everyone would get it, since the control measures are not intended to prevent people from eventually getting COVID in the absence of a fundamental change in available countermeasures, but to reduce the speed of particular outbreaks and mitigate acute impacts to health systems (which affects ability to treat anyone needing the system) from caseload and to other essential social services from temporary incapacitation of key staff.
> But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now
Rarely for more than a couple weeks in a row, on a local basis, in response to particular sharp outbreaks, and invariably with much weaker measures than were taken for the same purpose earlier on in the pandemic, despite outbreaks that are much worse by every measure (in part, because the ultimate goal is much more limited and temporary, and in part because the political faction that deliberately avoided fighting the pandemic in the hopes of blaming the effects on political opponents has turned avoiding control measures into a quasi-religious doctrine to avoid accountability for their earlier malfeasance.)
> When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it.
There's a substantial difference between "everyone will get it in a year or two" and "everyone will get it all within a couple of weeks", especially where hospital capacity is concerned. My city has one ICU bed available and hospitals have been diverting ambulances.
> But oh, how long have we been "flattening the curve" now?
We've done it several times. After each spike flattens and then comes down, restrictions get progressively lifted. I'm in a blue state that took things quite seriously, and this summer still largely felt if the pandemic didn't exist.
We sort of expected that when you spend a trillion or two of our federal tax dollars, the hospitals might get better at dealing with it. This does not appear to have been the case.
Nursing's a 2-4 year degree. Doctors take substantially more, and training both requires docs/nurses as professors and clinical instructors. I'm quite dubious that chucking money at the problem would've solved the staffing issue effectively.
Why would we require either a nursing or a doctor degree? I do not understand why we didn't just train a crop of "covid specialists" who could handle caring for covid positive people and recognizing when they needed help from the real medical staff. Doing something like this I feel we could have easily and quickly increased medical capacity as much as needed for covid.
Most COVID patients even in hospitals aren't vented ICU ones, are they? While I get that you can't just throw money and catch doctors, is a fully credentialed doctor or nurse really necessary for every single task that could save a life in this kind of emergency situation?
It'd buy you an extra percent or two; the numbers have been vanishingly small. Mayo Clinic lost about a percent. Factor in the fact they're more likely to get sick and it's even closer to a net zero.
I'm not inclined to treat antivax beliefs as "professional", especially in the healthcare field.
Hospitals are already working at or over capacity, they don't have 1 or 2 % to loose.
If the workers have made it this far, either they have had it and have immunity or they are very good at keeping themselves safe. In either case we should want them working.
"The new report (Report 49) from the Imperial College London COVID-19 response team estimates that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19%."
"Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Similar estimates were obtained using genotype data, albeit with greater uncertainty."
> Hospitals are already working at or over capacity, they don't have 1 or 2 % to loose.
All the more reason to have a vaccination mandate.
This is fair in that there's a lot we'll need to learn about how our system works and fails under pressure from this all. Maximizing efficiency in peacetime leaves you ill-prepared for war, as it were.
> When a virus is endemic, it means everyone will get it. Which means most of these precautions are ultimately worthless -
This couldn't be more wrong.
Even if everyone eventually gets it, you'd much rather get it as late as possible and outside of an infection spike like this one where rescue medications are depleted and hospitals are overburdened.
The medical knowledge and treatment options available today are far, far better than what we had at the beginning of the pandemic. And they continue to improve. Availability of the best treatments is also scarce, but continues to improve. The virus itself also appears to be slowly mutating to less fatal versions.
Even if you think it's inevitable, you want to delay it as long as possible.
That was true at the beginning of the pandemic, but we're long past that now. The recent variant is literally popping up all over the place. Despite the masks and the testing. And this latest variant seems to be extremely mild as in a three day cold - just like you said. So why are we making scaring the kids like this? Protect the kids with existing conditions, we know which ones are at the most risk, which are very few in that age group.
Hospitals tend to be most burdened in the winter anyway, which is unfortunate given transmission patterns, but I definitely think we're moving to a world of "only base policy on hospitalizations, not on raw case numbers" - and believe public health officials are largely moving in this direction too. In this world, once this surge is on the downswing, a lot more things look reasonable to relax.
One major change there, I think, is that we need to change the messaging on masks to get a mask to protect yourself if you are vulnerable or will be near those who are. Cloth masks have shown themselves to be better at a population level than nothing in some studies, but that's hardly the same thing as a medical-grade mask, which are now much more widely available than they were a year ago.
Where I live that has been the policy from the beginning. Keep the hospital system running.
That said, because hospitalizations lag case numbers, I assume they are trying to extrapolate from case numbers to future hospitalizations. Of course that changes depending upon the individual variant that is currently spreading.
> Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school.
> Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home.
You've misunderstood - he's not blaming the students but the administration in these points.
* They mention their study hall as a "super spreader event". This feels...hysterical to me. Not just because it worries me that this kid is thinking about this in the way they are, but also because it's wrong. The risk this person faces is much more likely from the HVAC system in the school, not the study hall.
* The way they talk about the other kid asking questions "with their mask down". To be obsessed with this sort of minutiae as a kid is scary to me.
* Kids thinking about test...and apparently being given something like 5 tests in a single day? This seems wasteful and hysterical on behalf of the school.
* Begin upset at kids for taking these tests in the bathroom instead of at home.
It just seems like there is a whole realm of paranoia that this kid is trying to fit on top of their life, and I don't think this sort of paranoia is in any way reasonable.
I think that teaching kids to think about their world with this framing, and at a formative age, is and already has done major damage to their development.