Coronavirus Outbreak

[Ken]

I'm not aware of anything that prevents you or anyone else from doing the same thing on a national scale.

You think the NPS would allow it on the Mall, or anywhere else on federal property for that matter? I have serious doubts.

I have no idea. But this country is full of empty space so I doubt that is much of an obstacle. But whether or not anyone ever does anything similar for abortion doesn’t diminish the impact of visually seeing what 660,000 deaths looks like.

[Josh]

I'm not aware of anything that prevents you or anyone else from doing the same thing on a national scale.

You think the NPS would allow it on the Mall, or anywhere else on federal property for that matter? I have serious doubts.

I have no idea. But this country is full of empty space so I doubt that is much of an obstacle. But whether or not anyone ever does anything similar for abortion doesn’t diminish the impact of visually seeing what 660,000 deaths looks like.

Perhaps it would be good to set up on the National Mall a visualisation of 60 million deaths to compare the impact of that to 600,000 deaths (if those can even all be attributed to COVID; most of those deaths have comorbidities, and all of the flu deaths in the last year got counted as covid instead).

Think I could get away with going to the National Mall and doing that?

600,000 deaths out of a country of 300 million is, as Bootstrap would stay, "statistically insignificant". 0.19% of the population. And if we dug into the data a little deeper, we'd find out almost all of those deaths were of people over the age of 65.

[Szdfan]

My school is doing remote learning today and tomorrow because seven students were tested positive last week. One of the teachers (who has an immune deficiency) was tested positive this morning. It's a difficult situation.

[nett]

An artist and hundreds of volunteers are currently planting 660,000 white flags on the Capitol Mall to represent all of the Covid deaths in the US to date. Apparently the installation will run until early October and visitors are encouraged to personalize individual flags to memorialize their own lost loved ones. One easily gets numb to the numbers, but to see it visually is sobering.

Ah year, more fearmongering over death.

Seriously though, this is extremely unhealthy. Death is a normal part of life, and always will be.

One of my earliest posts here was pointing that by attempting to extend lives as long as possible, we're creating a social malady of being unable to cope with death. In contrast to abortion, where the vast majority would have gone on to to live long lives if not murdered by a doctors, almost all of these COVID deaths were folks who had already lived a long life, and were coming to their natural end regardless of COVID.

[nett]

My school is doing remote learning today and tomorrow because seven students were tested positive last week. One of the teachers (who has an immune deficiency) was tested positive this morning. It's a difficult situation.

To say remote learning is difficult is an understatement. It's an absolute disaster for children. Children are at no risk of COVID, the right solution is for the healthy teachers to get back to work (like they have at our church school).

[Ken]

600,000 deaths out of a country of 300 million is, as Bootstrap would stay, "statistically insignificant". 0.19% of the population. And if we dug into the data a little deeper, we'd find out almost all of those deaths were of people over the age of 65.

So Josh. How many deaths would it take to be a significant and meaningful number to you?

I noticed that over on the Portland thread today you were making a big deal out of 65 murders to date in Portland in 2021. Is 65 a significant number of deaths but not 660,000? For the sake of comparison, during that same time period Portland experienced 662 Covid deaths, or 10x the number of gun deaths. And Portland’s Covid death rate was far lower than the national average. What about the 13 deaths in Afghanistan that were mistakenly taken out by a US drone strike? Were those significant? You made a big deal about those last week.

This is a Christian forum where one would expect to find a reverence for life. I find it jarring that so many of you are willing to brush off 660,000 deaths as “statistically insignificant” or not meaningful. I would expect to find that sort of callous rationalization in authoritarian dictatorships like Stalinist Russia or Communist China. But not here.

[Josh]

My school is doing remote learning today and tomorrow because seven students were tested positive last week. One of the teachers (who has an immune deficiency) was tested positive this morning. It's a difficult situation.

That seems rather paranoid, since children aren't affected by COVID (or at least not to a "statistically significant" degree); let's review the breakdown of deaths by age bracket:



School-age children die at a rate of 0.00013% from COVID. In other words, not a problem.

If we include teachers age 18-29, that goes up to 0.001%. Still not a problem. (Flu deaths are worse.)

If your school has people in the high-risk age brackets of 65+, then you need to hire younger teachers and staff. Young people are in need of jobs, so maybe it's time for the older generation to step aside, especially as the older generation has hoarded almost all of America's wealth:



Cancelling school is absolutely ruinous to the futures of young people. It's time to step aside and let children learn again.

[Josh]

This is a Christian forum where one would expect to find a reverence for life. I find it jarring that so many of you are willing to brush off 660,000 deaths as “statistically insignificant” or not meaningful. I would expect to find that sort of callous rationalization in authoritarian dictatorships like Stalinist Russia or Communist China. But not here.

Almost all of these deaths occurred in elderly people. Elderly people die. It's the way life has always been. There is nothing we can do about it or to stop about it. We don't have eternal life on earth.

COVID doesn't affect young people. Death from COVID amongst people under 40 is "statistically insignificant".

[Szdfan]

My school is doing remote learning today and tomorrow because seven students were tested positive last week. One of the teachers (who has an immune deficiency) was tested positive this morning. It's a difficult situation.

To say remote learning is difficult is an understatement. It's an absolute disaster for children. Children are at no risk of COVID, the right solution is for the healthy teachers to get back to work (like they have at our church school).

That's not an accurate statement. While the risk for children is much lower, there is still risk.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... c-hcp.html

While children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are less likely to develop severe illness compared with adults, children are still at risk of developing severe illness and complications from COVID-19. Weekly COVID-19 hospitalization surveillance data show that the rate of hospitalization among children is low compared with that of adults, but hospitalization rates among children are increasing.18 About 1 in 3 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States were admitted to the intensive care unit, similar to the rate among adults.19,20

Current evidence suggests that children with certain underlying medical conditions and infants (age <1 year) might be at increased risk for severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 infection.11,14 Of the children who have developed severe illness from COVID-19, most have had underlying medical conditions.19

Similar to adults, children with severe COVID-19 may develop respiratory failure, myocarditis, shock, acute renal failure, coagulopathy, and multi-organ system failure. Some children with COVID-19 have developed other serious problems like intussusception or diabetic ketoacidosis.14,2,23 Children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are also at risk for developing Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C).24

Children are at LOWER risk, but the statement that there is no risk is not true. Children can also spread Covid to people who are more at risk and vulnerable.

[Josh]

My school is doing remote learning today and tomorrow because seven students were tested positive last week. One of the teachers (who has an immune deficiency) was tested positive this morning. It's a difficult situation.

To say remote learning is difficult is an understatement. It's an absolute disaster for children. Children are at no risk of COVID, the right solution is for the healthy teachers to get back to work (like they have at our church school).

That's not an accurate statement. While the risk for children is much lower, there is still risk.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... c-hcp.html

While children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are less likely to develop severe illness compared with adults, children are still at risk of developing severe illness and complications from COVID-19. Weekly COVID-19 hospitalization surveillance data show that the rate of hospitalization among children is low compared with that of adults, but hospitalization rates among children are increasing.18 About 1 in 3 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States were admitted to the intensive care unit, similar to the rate among adults.19,20

Current evidence suggests that children with certain underlying medical conditions and infants (age <1 year) might be at increased risk for severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 infection.11,14 Of the children who have developed severe illness from COVID-19, most have had underlying medical conditions.19

Similar to adults, children with severe COVID-19 may develop respiratory failure, myocarditis, shock, acute renal failure, coagulopathy, and multi-organ system failure. Some children with COVID-19 have developed other serious problems like intussusception or diabetic ketoacidosis.14,2,23 Children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are also at risk for developing Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C).24

Children are at LOWER risk, but the statement that there is no risk is not true. Children can also spread Covid to people who are more at risk and vulnerable.

Szd, as I posted above, the total number of children according to official statistics who've died from COVID is 439. That's statistically insignificant. Drug overdose is higher (982); drowning is higher (995); homicide is much higher (1,865).

Children don't transmit COVID; to quote this article, "the child is not to blame":

These data all suggest that children are not significant drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unclear why documented SARS-CoV-2 transmission from children to other children or adults is so infrequent.

Almost 6 months into the pandemic, accumulating evidence and collective experience argue that children, particularly school-aged children, are far less important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission than adults. Therefore, serious consideration should be paid toward strategies that allow schools to remain open, even during periods of COVID-19 spread. In doing so, we could minimize the potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our children will continue to suffer until an effective treatment or vaccine can be developed and distributed or, failing that, until we reach herd immunity.

The science and research are against closing schools because of a panic of a handful of cases. If you really are concerned about COVID, the best thing to do is keep older staff and teachers out of schools.