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.
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.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/omicron-...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That type of thinking is completely wrong.
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.
"Have immunity" turns out to be a flexible thing. If they're unboosted, they're more likely to be re-infected by Omicron.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evade...
"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.
Who'd be doing a wide variety of nurse/doctor tasks?
Vented ICU patients are complicated. They need more than a babysitter.
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.)