Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
I found this education article interesting; it's about how most parents actually support the tenets of social-emotional learning, even though many parents (especially Republicans) prefer the synonymous phrase "life skills" over the taboo phrase "social-emotional learning".
Here are some highlights I thought were particularly interesting:
“America’s hard-nosed focus on academic achievement in recent decades has not improved schools nearly enough. Part of the recent move to incorporate other educational goals, such as perseverance and self-discipline—often under the banner of “social-emotional learning” (SEL)—is a response to our schools and students still being off-track two decades after passage of No Child Left Behind and almost four decades after A Nation at Risk. Some of the fervor around SEL also stems from longstanding beliefs about teaching the “whole child” and the obligation of schools to develop well-rounded individuals and good citizens. Indeed, much of SEL—such as the expectation that students learn to practice self-control, navigate social situations, and empathize with others—is as old as education itself.”
“The mental-health challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic have also deepened the need to better support students’ social and emotional needs as they acquire cognitive skills and knowledge. Yet some worry that a focus on SEL will take precious time and attention away from academics, which also took a hit from the pandemic. And the SEL terminology itself is nebulous, jargony, and off-putting to parents who want schools to focus on the three R’s or who worry that it might be code for liberal indoctrination.”
“Here are our five key findings: 1. There is broad support among parents for teaching SEL-related skills in schools, although the term “social and emotional learning” is relatively unpopular. 2. Democratic parents favor schools allocating additional resources to SEL more than Republican parents do. They’re also more comfortable with the terminology. 3. Across the political spectrum, parents regard families as the most important entities for cultivating SEL, yet there are partisan differences regarding how and where to emphasize SEL instruction. 4. Republicans are somewhat more wary than Democrats that SEL might divert schools away from academics or conflict with their own values. 5. Differences by parents’ race, class, and religion are rarely as pronounced as differences by political affiliation.”
“But here’s a cautionary flag: Republican parents especially hate the term “social and emotional learning.” The preferred term for parents of both parties? “Life skills.””
“Large majorities of parents support schools teaching all nine SEL-related skills that the survey asked about”: setting and achieving goals, approaching challenges in an optimistic way, believing in yourself, navigating social situations, responding ethically, becoming an informed citizen, understanding and expressing your emotions, standing up for others, empathizing with others.”
There are also a variety of surveys and graphs that go into more detail about the particulars of SEL, as well as Republican vs. Democratic sentiment.
It's one of many examples showing how important the marketing, optics, and communication of a policy or idea is.
On March 20 2024 12:26 Sermokala wrote: Bj I'm not going to respond to your nonsense posting in response to a few words out of a whole post you clearly just skimmed. You're not pleasant enough of a person to justify me reading all that shit.
Hilarious. My post (which takes about 30 seconds to read) was comprised overwhelmingly with statistics, quotes and data from extremely reputable sources is "nonsense." Which data point was nonsense? The one from the National Institute of Health, or the American College of Emergency Physicians or NPR or AP News? I'll forward your complaint to them.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen you post any link to any reputable source for any of your claims... like ever... Your posts are comprised almost entirely of bad opinions and insults. I'll tell you what, let's take... say.. your last 100 posts chronologically, if you show me any of them that contains a single hyperlink to anything, a news article, a study, anything, I'll self-ban for a week.
Decent sourcing but employed in response to a throwaway line, rather than the central crux of his point, that Trump’s personal handling and conduct around Covid was let’s generously say, less than ideal.
Trump’s specific role being bloody shite, and worst case scenarios predicted and warned by relevant bodies ultimately not coming to pass can both be true simultaneously.
Like if I went around barebacking every broad in Belfast I can still be an idiot even if I somehow avoid contracting an STI or creating a legion of nascent Minibats
Disagree. Whether that is his central point or not, that is precisely the crux of the issue. A discussion of the handling of the COVID pandemic is absolutely pointless if one half has irrationally catastrophized the virus in a way that doesn't conform with reality. You should actually come to some consensus of how bad the problem is before discussing how the problem should be solved, otherwise you're just wasting your breath. The fact that I challenged Serm's irrational beliefs with a slew of citations from reputable sources and his response was basically to stick his fingers in his ears and call it nonsense pretty much shows why the COVID thread was a shit show for 3 years straight.
Did Trump exercise this kind of approach at the time? Or did he frequently go with his gut and what was politically expedient to him in navigating it?
It wasn’t all bad, the vaccine development being a success on his watch if we’re being fair.
Indeed I also have some misgivings over the polarisation and how it became as much a cultural and political signifier as did it become one of sound, evidence-based policy. Although personally I’m much more forgiving of error in the nascent stages than some others are.
Discussion of the handling of the pandemic is equally as pointless if it’s through hindsight than what was actually known at particular junctures
Hey I’ll let Serm speak for himself and correct me, his phrasing to me indicates that the ‘nonsense posting’ is in reference to your choice to choose to respond to that one specific line, not that what you brought to the table was nonsense.
There’s a famous instance of an Australian ice skater who won his nation’s first Winter Olympics gold in speed skating after being dead last and a crash wiping out the entire field right at the final stretch. Sure he’s got an Olympic gold but sometimes the result isn’t really merited by the effort.
It’s a pure hypothetical, although I think it also applies to people praising him for not escalating conflicts. If he employed the same approach to COVID as a COVID-XTREME that’s actually as bad as the more apocalyptic predictions, what does that actually look like? Based on how he used his influence in actuality, I don’t think that looks remotely
Now it’s a pure hypothetical thought experiment and perhaps he changes tack, although personally I doubt that.
To build off my previous point Trump’s personal conduct over COVID can still have been greatly sub-optimal, even if the experts may have made errors, and indeed a lot of (generally I must confess) left-leaning people have been insufferable doom merchants in that period.
It’s like you’re holding a bunch of posters on a StarCraft forum to a higher standard than a man who was the Leader of the Free WorldTM at the time.
I don't expect anyone to be optimal, nobody bats 1.000. It's obvious that we could have done a whole heck of a lot worse if we had other people in charge at the time. Look at my home area of San Francisco and how they handled COVID. It's perhaps the largest single reason of the many reasons the city is in shambles. If that needs some elaboration - consider what happens when you tell an entire city to work from home because it's too dangerous to go into the office. What happens to the cafe that sells the office workers their coffee? what happens to the sandwich shop that sells the office workers their lunch? Now that the cafe is closed there's less foot traffic for the adjacent businesses because nobody is going to the cafe. So they have to close down too. Then it just snowballs and shop and after shop has to shut down. San Francisco is still talking about it's COVID recovery plans. Florida stopped talking about that years ago. It's obvious that the COVID doomsayer rhetoric was 10x more harmful to this city than any of Trump's rhetoric.
Edit: Forgot to point out - San Francisco has among the lowest death rates per capita for COVID so according to some people they handled the pandemic better than anyone I guess. Sure, this once vibrant city considered among the greatest in the world is now downtrodden and full of poverty and despair, and the number of fentanyl deaths is probably at 4x the number of COVID deaths, but who's keeping count...
What does that have to do with Donald Trump’s handling of Covid?
The 2nd sentence of the post. If we applied the anti-Trump model to handling COVID on a national level it would be a disaster. Trump encouraged places to reopen as quickly as they could. The places that did that like Texas and Florida have had booming economies and the places that didn’t like California and New York have seen a huge influx of people leaving their states. These are the kind of big impact metrics we should be looking at but I understand if people prefer to judge his performance by stringing together some one off sentences while speaking off the cuff at press conferences instead.
As far as I’m aware there isn’t a huge correlation between COVID policy and subsequent economic performance internationally, perhaps you are correct. I’d wager it’s a multitude of factors with that being contributory, but hey I’m burned out on COVID chat after those years and threads so I’ll skip that for now!
Specifically on Trump’s role my point is merely that even if we both concede his rough thrust was correct for a second, the process via which he arrived at that was not some rigorous, considered policy formulated by consultation. And the less said of the messaging the better
It’s like that Simpsons episode where Homer averts a meltdown by going eenie meenie…
Sure he saved the day but it’s not exactly a process one wants to rely on, nor one you’d give too much credit to the bloke for employing.
One could equally argue that the influx of people into the states that recklessly reopened was to take advantage of all the vacant houses. But in any case I don’t see much advantage in arguing over whether Trump handled COVID well. If I wanted to argue with an idiot over things that are factually established I’d find a flat earth forum.
On March 21 2024 00:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I found this education article interesting; it's about how most parents actually support the tenets of social-emotional learning, even though many parents (especially Republicans) prefer the synonymous phrase "life skills" over the taboo phrase "social-emotional learning".
Here are some highlights I thought were particularly interesting:
“America’s hard-nosed focus on academic achievement in recent decades has not improved schools nearly enough. Part of the recent move to incorporate other educational goals, such as perseverance and self-discipline—often under the banner of “social-emotional learning” (SEL)—is a response to our schools and students still being off-track two decades after passage of No Child Left Behind and almost four decades after A Nation at Risk. Some of the fervor around SEL also stems from longstanding beliefs about teaching the “whole child” and the obligation of schools to develop well-rounded individuals and good citizens. Indeed, much of SEL—such as the expectation that students learn to practice self-control, navigate social situations, and empathize with others—is as old as education itself.”
“The mental-health challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic have also deepened the need to better support students’ social and emotional needs as they acquire cognitive skills and knowledge. Yet some worry that a focus on SEL will take precious time and attention away from academics, which also took a hit from the pandemic. And the SEL terminology itself is nebulous, jargony, and off-putting to parents who want schools to focus on the three R’s or who worry that it might be code for liberal indoctrination.”
“Here are our five key findings: 1. There is broad support among parents for teaching SEL-related skills in schools, although the term “social and emotional learning” is relatively unpopular. 2. Democratic parents favor schools allocating additional resources to SEL more than Republican parents do. They’re also more comfortable with the terminology. 3. Across the political spectrum, parents regard families as the most important entities for cultivating SEL, yet there are partisan differences regarding how and where to emphasize SEL instruction. 4. Republicans are somewhat more wary than Democrats that SEL might divert schools away from academics or conflict with their own values. 5. Differences by parents’ race, class, and religion are rarely as pronounced as differences by political affiliation.”
“But here’s a cautionary flag: Republican parents especially hate the term “social and emotional learning.” The preferred term for parents of both parties? “Life skills.””
“Large majorities of parents support schools teaching all nine SEL-related skills that the survey asked about”: setting and achieving goals, approaching challenges in an optimistic way, believing in yourself, navigating social situations, responding ethically, becoming an informed citizen, understanding and expressing your emotions, standing up for others, empathizing with others.”
There are also a variety of surveys and graphs that go into more detail about the particulars of SEL, as well as Republican vs. Democratic sentiment.
It's one of many examples showing how important the marketing, optics, and communication of a policy or idea is.
Interesting reading thus far!
Yeah it alludes to this very problem with the ‘Common Core wars’ which I always found somewhat perplexing as an outsider looking in.
At least with these findings it appears there is actually some bipartisan common ground and branding and communication is the sticking point. Rather than big divergence on desired policy along rough political leanings, at least this is more workable.
On March 21 2024 00:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I found this education article interesting; it's about how most parents actually support the tenets of social-emotional learning, even though many parents (especially Republicans) prefer the synonymous phrase "life skills" over the taboo phrase "social-emotional learning".
Here are some highlights I thought were particularly interesting:
“America’s hard-nosed focus on academic achievement in recent decades has not improved schools nearly enough. Part of the recent move to incorporate other educational goals, such as perseverance and self-discipline—often under the banner of “social-emotional learning” (SEL)—is a response to our schools and students still being off-track two decades after passage of No Child Left Behind and almost four decades after A Nation at Risk. Some of the fervor around SEL also stems from longstanding beliefs about teaching the “whole child” and the obligation of schools to develop well-rounded individuals and good citizens. Indeed, much of SEL—such as the expectation that students learn to practice self-control, navigate social situations, and empathize with others—is as old as education itself.”
“The mental-health challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic have also deepened the need to better support students’ social and emotional needs as they acquire cognitive skills and knowledge. Yet some worry that a focus on SEL will take precious time and attention away from academics, which also took a hit from the pandemic. And the SEL terminology itself is nebulous, jargony, and off-putting to parents who want schools to focus on the three R’s or who worry that it might be code for liberal indoctrination.”
“Here are our five key findings: 1. There is broad support among parents for teaching SEL-related skills in schools, although the term “social and emotional learning” is relatively unpopular. 2. Democratic parents favor schools allocating additional resources to SEL more than Republican parents do. They’re also more comfortable with the terminology. 3. Across the political spectrum, parents regard families as the most important entities for cultivating SEL, yet there are partisan differences regarding how and where to emphasize SEL instruction. 4. Republicans are somewhat more wary than Democrats that SEL might divert schools away from academics or conflict with their own values. 5. Differences by parents’ race, class, and religion are rarely as pronounced as differences by political affiliation.”
“But here’s a cautionary flag: Republican parents especially hate the term “social and emotional learning.” The preferred term for parents of both parties? “Life skills.””
“Large majorities of parents support schools teaching all nine SEL-related skills that the survey asked about”: setting and achieving goals, approaching challenges in an optimistic way, believing in yourself, navigating social situations, responding ethically, becoming an informed citizen, understanding and expressing your emotions, standing up for others, empathizing with others.”
There are also a variety of surveys and graphs that go into more detail about the particulars of SEL, as well as Republican vs. Democratic sentiment.
It's one of many examples showing how important the marketing, optics, and communication of a policy or idea is.
Interesting reading thus far!
Yeah it alludes to this very problem with the ‘Common Core wars’ which I always found somewhat perplexing as an outsider looking in.
At least with these findings it appears there is actually some bipartisan common ground and branding and communication is the sticking point. Rather than big divergence on desired policy along rough political leanings, at least this is more workable.
Definitely. The most viral hatred of Common Core tends to be elementary school math problems that parents believe are overly complicated and/or too difficult. From what I've seen, there tends to be a few reasons why the parents believe this: 1. The parents may only be able to solve the problem using a different strategy than the one currently being practiced; 2. The parents may not understand the importance of learning multiple problem-solving strategies or representing a math problem in a variety of different ways; 3. The parents may not know or remember how to solve certain math problems at all.
Unfortunately, parental confusion (or embarrassment) often leads those parents to be dismissive of these math problems, and of math education in general. If the parents were present for instruction - literally learning the material from the math teacher, sitting alongside their children, in the classroom - then the parents would be better equipped. That's not a realistic expectation, but the parents don't even spend the necessary time communicating their issues with the teachers. It takes five minutes for a parent to e-mail a teacher.
And so, the term "Common Core Math" becomes taboo. But if you ask parents "Do you think it's important to make sure that students are learning fundamental math topics like arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, as well as how to become a strong problem-solver", they'll agree. And if you ask them to read the actual standards for each grade level in Common Core Math ( https://www.thecorestandards.org/Math/ ), they'll realize it's basically the same innocuous things they learned back in school.
On March 19 2024 23:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Great take. Vote Biden.
Still no.
What I hear when Democrat voters talk about the threat Trump poses and accepting Biden's complicity in genocide is that they will follow whatever fascist laws/rules Trump puts in place no matter the consequences or how depraved they might be.
Their 'fight against fascism' basically starts and ends at the ballot box (even if their vote doesn't really matter), nevermind they are 'voting against fascism' by voting for someone that's openly (and not so openly) aiding and abetting a genocide by an authoritarian apartheid regime.
May I ask what your thoughts are on Biden's recent "red line" comment regarding the Israel-Gaza war? Does it affect your view of him?
By the way Reuters calls Biden's comment contradictory (I disagree with them, I think with the full context of the quote it's completely coherent).
Asked whether an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be a red line for him with Netanyahu, Biden said: "It is a red line but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there's no red line (in which) I'm going to cut off all weapons so they don't have the Iron Dome to protect them."
Cutting off offensive weapons at the ostensible end of their offensive is obviously too little too late. But I have no confidence Biden would even do that.
Biden won't leave Israel and most of his voters won't leave him even if they killed/removed every Palestinian in Gaza. That's a deeper problem than just stopping Trump in the next election.
What I hear when Democrat voters talk about the threat Trump poses and accepting Biden's complicity in genocide is that they will follow whatever fascist laws/rules Trump puts in place no matter the consequences or how depraved they might be.
Their 'fight against fascism' basically starts and ends at the ballot box (even if their vote doesn't really matter), nevermind they are 'voting against fascism' by voting for someone that's openly (and not so openly) aiding and abetting a genocide by an authoritarian apartheid regime.
May I ask what your thoughts are on Biden's recent "red line" comment regarding the Israel-Gaza war? Does it affect your view of him?
By the way Reuters calls Biden's comment contradictory (I disagree with them, I think with the full context of the quote it's completely coherent).
Asked whether an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be a red line for him with Netanyahu, Biden said: "It is a red line but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there's no red line (in which) I'm going to cut off all weapons so they don't have the Iron Dome to protect them."
Cutting off offensive weapons at the ostensible end of their offensive is obviously too little too late. But I have no confidence Biden would even do that.
Biden won't leave Israel and most of his voters won't leave him even if they killed/removed every Palestinian in Gaza. That's a deeper problem than just stopping Trump in the next election.
If I understand correctly, in your view Biden should immediately block military aid, otherwise his "red line" comment is effectively pointless? If that's your view, then I understand your position and I think I can agree.
Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
On March 21 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
Who was using the plague as an unironic synonym for COVID? The plague killed anywhere from a third to half of the population of Europe. COVID was threatening to kill 1% of the population of infected people. That's nowhere near the rate of lethality of the plague, but the problem is that 1% of a population the size of the United States is still 3.3 million people.
What the people were saying who wanted NO COVID restrictions was that they were totally fine with 3.3 million Americans dying from a disease that could be easily prevented and treatable within a year because they didn't want to wear masks or temporarily work from home.
You don't need to over sensationalize how dangerous the disease is to warrant a response to it. 1% lethality isn't that bad as far as diseases go, but that was never the real danger of COVID. The danger of it was how infectous it was. 1% lethality isn't so bad if it only affects 25-30% of your population, but when your entire population gets it because of how insanely contagious it is, then all of a sudden 1% lethality becomes a big number.
Serm has used 'the plague' something like 20 times.
I'm not saying there shouldn't have been any restrictions or any response to it, obviously. I just think that in retrospect some of the anti-covid policies caused more damage than covid did. Specifically I think some of the policies that targeted children had huge negative consequences and that there's been a tendency to just shrug these off. At least in Norway, schools were digital for way too long, same with children's sports, having restrictions on how many kids could be together made the loner kids significantly lonelier, that sort of thing. Placing a large amount of extra measures for elderly homes however is obviously reasonable, and I was a huge fan of encouraging vaccines. Some of the anti bar/restaurant measures were reasonable too- but should've been coupled with far better subsidy systems.
We didn't close down schools to keep the kids from getting sick. We kept schools closed because schools are disease factories and kids get each other sick CONSTANTLY, seriously ask any parent with a kid in a school how often they get sick because of something their kid brings home.
It's not a danger to the kid, it's a danger to grandma who gives their grandchild a kiss during a visit because she can't be told not to.
I have a kid in kindergarten and I work as a teacher and I was quarantined on like 4-5 different occasions because I had been exposed to covid because a student in my class tested positive. I know all of this. I still think the damage was much too big (and that grandma actually could not give the kid a kiss).
Sweden didn't do particularly well when compared to other Nordic countries, whether we're talking about deaths per capita or the economic damage suffered as a result of the pandemic. When you look at Google's COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, the reduction in people's mingling in Sweden was comparable to countries which imposed lockdowns. They achieved that with government-issued recommendations and self-imposed social distancing. They also had a number of advantages going for them, such as a very high share of single person households (most infections happened at home, IIRC), a high trust society in which recommendations were sufficient, an advanced economy in which businesses didn't balk at the idea of people working from home, and people generally keeping a certain distance when compared to, e.g., Southern Europeans.
On March 21 2024 06:16 Liquid`Drone wrote: I have a kid in kindergarten and I work as a teacher and I was quarantined on like 4-5 different occasions because I had been exposed to covid because a student in my class tested positive. I know all of this. I still think the damage was much too big (and that grandma actually could not give the kid a kiss).
Maybe it's different in Norway, but here in the US we have a lot of kids living in poverty, who share a home with mom, dad, grandma and auntie and cousin because they can't afford rent without all of those adult incomes. So if kid goes to school and gets sick that kid WILL bring it home to grandma.
Keep in mind that the entire umbrella reason for all of these restrictions was to SLOW the rate of infection so that everyone wasn't getting sick at the same time and overwhelming the hospitals. That was a serious problem in several major cities at the start of the pandemic, and when the restrictions started going in, those hospital problems DID slow down, not all at once and not that quickly but they did.
On March 21 2024 06:22 maybenexttime wrote: @Drone
Sweden didn't do particularly well when compared to other Nordic countries, whether we're talking about deaths per capita or the economic damage suffered as a result of the pandemic. When you look at Google's COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, the reduction in people's mingling in Sweden was comparable to countries which imposed lockdowns. They achieved that with government-issued recommendations and self-imposed social distancing. They also had a number of advantages going for them, such as a very high share of single person households (most infections happened at home, IIRC), a high trust society in which recommendations were sufficient, an advanced economy in which businesses didn't balk at the idea of people working from home, and people generally keeping a certain distance when compared to, e.g., Southern Europeans.
And this - along with significantly worse educational output for the kids that were already disadvantaged (which, as a teacher, I genuinely feel like I am observing on a daily basis), is why I am specifically opposed to the restrictions that were placed on children/think those restrictions lasted for much too long (at least in Norway but I have the impression also in many american states). Again, no issue with an immediate response of 'oh shit this is serious gotta do all we can do', but the 'okay, this is serious, but school is too important, children are too affected by closing schools and they're not sufficiently at risk to justify keeping schools digital' followup was too late. I don't think that should, in retrospect, be a controversial opinion, but I feel like there is some degree of a 'can't give the anti covid crowd a finger because then they'll eat my face' type of reasoning going on.
On March 21 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
Who was using the plague as an unironic synonym for COVID? The plague killed anywhere from a third to half of the population of Europe. COVID was threatening to kill 1% of the population of infected people. That's nowhere near the rate of lethality of the plague, but the problem is that 1% of a population the size of the United States is still 3.3 million people.
What the people were saying who wanted NO COVID restrictions was that they were totally fine with 3.3 million Americans dying from a disease that could be easily prevented and treatable within a year because they didn't want to wear masks or temporarily work from home.
You don't need to over sensationalize how dangerous the disease is to warrant a response to it. 1% lethality isn't that bad as far as diseases go, but that was never the real danger of COVID. The danger of it was how infectous it was. 1% lethality isn't so bad if it only affects 25-30% of your population, but when your entire population gets it because of how insanely contagious it is, then all of a sudden 1% lethality becomes a big number.
COVID being treatable within a year is a hindsight argument. There was no way to know we would have vaccines that quickly. Phrasing the resistance to COVID measures as “because they didn’t want to wear masks or work from home” is tone deaf. Not everyone has a job that can be easily transitioned to work from home. It’s not as easy as “learn to code or you’re a selfish asshole.”
On March 21 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
Who was using the plague as an unironic synonym for COVID? The plague killed anywhere from a third to half of the population of Europe. COVID was threatening to kill 1% of the population of infected people. That's nowhere near the rate of lethality of the plague, but the problem is that 1% of a population the size of the United States is still 3.3 million people.
What the people were saying who wanted NO COVID restrictions was that they were totally fine with 3.3 million Americans dying from a disease that could be easily prevented and treatable within a year because they didn't want to wear masks or temporarily work from home.
You don't need to over sensationalize how dangerous the disease is to warrant a response to it. 1% lethality isn't that bad as far as diseases go, but that was never the real danger of COVID. The danger of it was how infectous it was. 1% lethality isn't so bad if it only affects 25-30% of your population, but when your entire population gets it because of how insanely contagious it is, then all of a sudden 1% lethality becomes a big number.
COVID being treatable within a year is a hindsight argument. There was no way to know we would have vaccines that quickly. Phrasing the resistance to COVID measures as “because they didn’t want to wear masks or work from home” is tone deaf. Not everyone has a job that can be easily transitioned to work from home. It’s not as easy as “learn to code or you’re a selfish asshole.”
It isn't a hindsight argument. The CDC was telling us during the pandemic that it would take that long to develop a vaccine. The timeline I heard quoted multiple times at the start of the lockdowns for vaccine development was 1.5 years to 2 years conservatively. We beat the estimate by 6 months, which BTW is one of the talking points the anti-vaxxers use for not trusting the vaccine.
As far as being "tone-deaf" you're missing the point. The point was that if Americans COULD work from home, then they HAD to because there were so many people that NEEDED to keep working outside. It made no sense for Americans to keep getting sick because they just HAD to be able to eat out, or go to the gym. We didn't shut down the entire economy, we shut down the service sector of the economy and if you think I'm not deeply aware of how impactful that was, keep in mind that I'm a Bartender, so I know EXACTLY how impactful that was.
Some economic sacrifice HAD to be made, because the price of doing nothing was again... 3.3 million dead Americans. Whatever the cost in terms of living conditions for the people most affected by those lockdowns are things that CAN be addressed through policy after the fact, they SHOULD be addressed. But the pressing need to slow the infection rate of COVID took priority because it SHOULD have taken priority.
On March 21 2024 06:22 maybenexttime wrote: @Drone
Sweden didn't do particularly well when compared to other Nordic countries, whether we're talking about deaths per capita or the economic damage suffered as a result of the pandemic. When you look at Google's COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, the reduction in people's mingling in Sweden was comparable to countries which imposed lockdowns. They achieved that with government-issued recommendations and self-imposed social distancing. They also had a number of advantages going for them, such as a very high share of single person households (most infections happened at home, IIRC), a high trust society in which recommendations were sufficient, an advanced economy in which businesses didn't balk at the idea of people working from home, and people generally keeping a certain distance when compared to, e.g., Southern Europeans.
And this - along with significantly worse educational output for the kids that were already disadvantaged (which, as a teacher, I genuinely feel like I am observing on a daily basis), is why I am specifically opposed to the restrictions that were placed on children/think those restrictions lasted for much too long (at least in Norway but I have the impression also in many american states). Again, no issue with an immediate response of 'oh shit this is serious gotta do all we can do', but the 'okay, this is serious, but school is too important, children are too affected by closing schools and they're not sufficiently at risk to justify keeping schools digital' followup was too late. I don't think that should, in retrospect, be a controversial opinion, but I feel like there is some degree of a 'can't give the anti covid crowd a finger because then they'll eat my face' type of reasoning going on.
That's a fair point, I guess. The governments were operating based on limited information and in a crisis situation. Certainly, mistakes were made and it's important to learn from them. :-)
On March 21 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
Who was using the plague as an unironic synonym for COVID? The plague killed anywhere from a third to half of the population of Europe. COVID was threatening to kill 1% of the population of infected people. That's nowhere near the rate of lethality of the plague, but the problem is that 1% of a population the size of the United States is still 3.3 million people.
What the people were saying who wanted NO COVID restrictions was that they were totally fine with 3.3 million Americans dying from a disease that could be easily prevented and treatable within a year because they didn't want to wear masks or temporarily work from home.
You don't need to over sensationalize how dangerous the disease is to warrant a response to it. 1% lethality isn't that bad as far as diseases go, but that was never the real danger of COVID. The danger of it was how infectous it was. 1% lethality isn't so bad if it only affects 25-30% of your population, but when your entire population gets it because of how insanely contagious it is, then all of a sudden 1% lethality becomes a big number.
COVID being treatable within a year is a hindsight argument. There was no way to know we would have vaccines that quickly. Phrasing the resistance to COVID measures as “because they didn’t want to wear masks or work from home” is tone deaf. Not everyone has a job that can be easily transitioned to work from home. It’s not as easy as “learn to code or you’re a selfish asshole.”
It isn't a hindsight argument. The CDC was telling us during the pandemic that it would take that long to develop a vaccine. The timeline I heard quoted multiple times at the start of the lockdowns for vaccine development was 1.5 years to 2 years conservatively. We beat the estimate by 6 months, which BTW is one of the talking points the anti-vaxxers use for not trusting the vaccine.
As far as being "tone-deaf" you're missing the point. The point was that if Americans COULD work from home, then they HAD to because there were so many people that NEEDED to keep working outside. It made no sense for Americans to keep getting sick because they just HAD to be able to eat out, or go to the gym. We didn't shut down the entire economy, we shut down the service sector of the economy and if you think I'm not deeply aware of how impactful that was, keep in mind that I'm a Bartender, so I know EXACTLY how impactful that was.
Some economic sacrifice HAD to be made, because the price of doing nothing was again... 3.3 million dead Americans. Whatever the cost in terms of living conditions for the people most affected by those lockdowns are things that CAN be addressed through policy after the fact, they SHOULD be addressed. But the pressing need to slow the infection rate of COVID took priority because it SHOULD have taken priority.
Can you kindly provide a source that there was a high level of confidence we would have a working vaccine within 1.5 years? I remember ruminations that such a timeline was possible but far from certain. I’m not sure how certain anyone can be on the creation and rollout of a novel vaccine for a novel virus.
There’s also no evidence that if we let children go to school it would have been a bloodbath and therefore our hand was forced. We know this because Florida did let children attend school beginning August 2020, 2 years before some in California would reopen. Despite that, when adjusted for age, Floridas COVID deaths per capita was very similar to California’s. In fact, one analysis published in the Lancet found California had a 34% worse death rate when adjusting for age and comorbidities.
Also, contrary to your belief that we kept schools closed to protect Grandma, one of the main reasons we kept schools closed and why they were closed a lot longer in California than Florida is because of pushback from teachers unions. The American Academy of Pediatrics was pushing for schools to be reopened in Summer of 2020. UNICEF was calling for schools to be reopened. The experts were the one preaching the importance of keeping schools open, it was the bureaucrats doing the opposite. Drone, to his credit, was saying the same in real time during the pandemic and said the risk to his personal safety was worth taking to fulfill his duties.
On March 21 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote: Honestly I think 'Trump's handling of Covid was atrocious' and 'in retrospect there were a lot of overreactions to covid' are both correct statements. Sweden is a good example of a country which managed to not overreact but also where the government leaders did not make claims like 'Covid will miraculously go away in April when the weather warms up' or 'this is the flu' (in late february when the cases in Italy genuinely looked scary and before any vaccine or less dangerous mutations spread) or saying that 'it's something we have tremendous control over' or bleach or whatever.
But yeah unironically using 'the plague' as a synonym for covid is totally ridiculous, and many mistakes were made. Honestly I think in a similar vein to how the right wing politicized covid and started believing all sorts of anti vaxx bullshit because that would validate their beliefs, there are people on the left who (in a less personally stupid and irresponsible manner) became personally invested in believing the virus was worse than it really was because that would validate their belief that Trump's handling was atrocious. Which it still was - but there were still overreactions. I think that's mostly a 'in retrospect' - thing; back in 2020 I thought Sweden made the wrong choice and Norway made the right choice but today, I think we'd overall have been slightly better off following their path. I still think doing what we did in 2020 seemed like the right thing to do at that point, but in hindsight there were many unecessary restrictions that hurt more than they helped.
Bubonic plague kills far fewer people than COVID. The reason the plague killed so many people in the time before hospitals is that there weren’t hospitals and medicine. Not because COVID isn’t serious but because we can put people on respirators, give them oxygen, and suppress their immune system overreaction. If you want to do an apples to apples comparison between COVID and bubonic plague you’re free to do so, bubonic plague is still around, it was around in 2020. COVID is way worse. Plague can be cured with simple over the counter antibiotics, no need for horse deworming pills or anything.
EPT
Sure, this once vibrant city considered among the greatest in the world is now downtrodden and full of poverty and despair, and the number of fentanyl deaths is probably at 4x the number of COVID deaths, but who's keeping count...
