Comment by xxxxxyyg1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xxxxxyyg1 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If we're going to be super sensitive about the almost non-existent threat of children wrt sars-cov-2 why aren't we also super sensitive about destroying any semblance of normality in children's lives?

Surely this damages children in their crucial developmental stages when they're deprived of social signalling, and effective teaching methods (sorry, Zoom doesn't cut it).

As science would inform us - humans have millions of years of evolution searing social interaction into our biology. Cutting this out will have profound effects.

If we're going to be super sensitive about the almost non-existent threat of children wrt sars-cov-2

According to the studies I linked above, closing schools during outbreaks saved many, many thousands of (mostly adult) lives. If those studies are correct, the threat is absolutely not "almost non-existent." If you have particular issues with those studies, please share them.

I think it's good to remember that the following can both be simultaneously true:

1. There can be significant mental (and maybe physical!) health risks to keeping your kids home from school.

2. There can be significant physical (and maybe mental!) health risks to sending your kids to school.[0]

Neither point makes the other any less valid.

Every family is different, so everyone's going to weigh those two risks differently, and we need to be generous, patient, and understanding in figuring out how to accommodate each other.

[0] I'm seeing more studies saying mental illness rates are ticking up in Covid survivors relative to other cohorts, so there seems to be a mental health risk that rides the coattails of risk of infection.

> According to the studies I linked above, closing schools during outbreaks saved many, many thousands of (mostly adult) lives.

How many millions of children have had a profound impact on their lives, essentially sacrificing crucial years that determine the rest of their lives?

Some people seem ok with sacrificing children to save (primarily) the elderly.

This whole thing has transcended any kind of logic, and there does not seem to be a rational way to discuss the tradeoffs with people. I think this is just the first "crisis" - actually the mildest thing that could happen and still be considered a global pandemic - to land in the milieu of social media and polarization that the world had become already, and this is the result. The pandemic is really just a fashion accessory for a lot of people, a way to talk about how they're doing their part, look down on others they perceive to be the cause, and add as a hashtag to their posts.

In an earlier, less connected world, there would be other more sensible jurisdictions to go to, and people to speak out and debate rationally about why the ridiculous overreaction we've seen is in nobody's interest. But these days, I think we're all fucked. I think we lost a war a long time ago without noticing, and this is what we're stuck with.

I personally know that the hospitals are empty no covid-19 patients I was there for many surgerys pass few years in and out weeks staying over night. The news claims it's full of virus patients I walked down that wing to find the lights off and no one around.

Boy, I didn't exactly mean to inspire quite this level of skepticism. There is like pretty solid evidence of some wards being awfully full of covid patients some of the time. You're one trip down one wing of a hospital and finding it empty doesn't change the fact that lots more people died in 2020 than the year before

Reply on news.ycombinator.com