07-11-2020, 11:44 PM
mrlynn wrote:
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
The REAL problem is that we are forced to choose between bringing kids back into the schools or continuing on with at-home “learning” that has been shown to be anything but. Think COVID infection rates are climbing now? Wait until kids are back in school — infection rates will SKYROCKET far beyond anything we’ve seen so far. Death rates will closely follow.
I doubt it. Death rates from COVID19 are tiny for people under 45 years old. The biggest threat is to elderly teachers (and parents?) with serious health problems ('co-morbitities'):
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/cor...race-14863
Some European countries are re-opening schools. Let's see how they do.
/Mr Lynn
Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with the news: average age of persons infected is declining, presumably due to massive exposures during the recent protests. More younger people than ever are dying from COVID, too — all during a time when school-aged children have been kept home as part of the effort to flatten the curve.
We’re already seeing what happens when those efforts end too soon; now throw kids going back to school into the mix. What do you think will happen then? The only thing that CAN happen: MASSIVE numbers of infected kids. It’s a mathematical certainty.
You are correct — death rates among younger people are lower that older people. But some young people DO die from this disease — increase the number of infected young people and you increase the number of young people who die from the disease. That is also a mathematical certainty.
Note that my original statement did not specifically claim an increased death rate would be due only to more young people dying. Of course that’s not true. Sick kids at home increases the risk to parents and grandparents of catching and dying from the disease.
Finally, as others have pointed out, you ABSOLUTELY can’t look at what is happening in other countries to predict what will happen in the U.S when it comes to anything COVID-related. With few exceptions, our leadership in this country, from the Oval Office down to the lowest levels of local government, has been woefully (and criminally, IMHO) negligent in its response to this pandemic. A discussion of all the different forms this failure has taken would require more time than I care to give to the topic, but suffice it to say that the way the pandemic continues to unfold in America at this point is unique to us and perhaps a few third-world countries with the merest fraction of resources that are available to the U.S.
Some recent info on the subject: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...wn/613945/