It’s great that the movie’s predictable theme seems to be individual resistance to government oppression because FREEDOM. Very responsible. Exactly the messaging we need to reinforce.
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Students and staff members (two teachers, one principal, and one emergency medical technician) traveled from 21 states and territories and two foreign countries to attend a faith-based educational retreat for boys in grades 9–11. In an effort to prevent introduction of COVID-19, all attendees were required to provide documentation of either a positive serologic test result within the past 3 months or a negative SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR result ≤7 days before travel, to self-quarantine within their households for 7 days before travel, and to wear masks during travel. At the retreat, students and counselors were not required to wear masks or social distance, and students mixed freely.
On July 3, a ninth-grade student (the index patient) who had received a negative RT-PCR result <1 week earlier experienced sore throat, cough, and chills, and received a positive RT-PCR result on July 5. This student later learned that a family member received a positive RT-PCR result approximately 1 week after his departure. At the retreat, he was isolated in a private room, and 11 of his close contacts (including four roommates) were quarantined together in a separate dormitory. The 11 contacts received negative rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen results and were released from quarantine on July 7, but neither the tests that were conducted nor the results could be verified by public health. During July 4–7, six of 11 close contacts of the index patient and 18 additional students with unknown exposure histories reported new onset of mild symptoms.
Among 152 attendees, 116 (76%) were classified as having confirmed (78; 51%) or probable (38; 25%) COVID-19. Thirty-four (89%) attendees with probable COVID-19 received negative RT-PCR test results on specimens obtained 11–22 days (median = 16 days) after symptom onset. Among the 148 attendees who underwent serologic testing at the end of the retreat (four attendees refused testing), 118 (80%) received positive results.
At least one confirmed case occurred in every dormitory room and yurt
I don’t see how this metric could ever be determined. How would you know when a student had a negative test? Schools don’t (apparently can’t) test themselves, and I can’t imagine how they could compel students to report negative tests, so it’s unknowable unless the CDC wants to get off its ass and collect some useful public health data.
For my mental health I’m ignoring a couple of folks for the next week.
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Oh and as a quick aside, generally things that make no sense require very strong evidence to make me believe them.
For you to get me to believe that kids don’t spread covid well, you’d have to do some extremely controlled studies. Kids spread other viruses like freakin wildfire. Kids that go to daycare can expect to get 3-6 fevers from viral illnesses every year. Is it possible covid is magically different? Sure I guess, but no one has come close to hitting the bar I have for believing this.
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Option A - people are suffering and dying with fully conscious thought
Option B - people are suffering and dying while being heavily sedated
Option A is my nightmare
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Yep. They’ve obviously reached the conclusion in the movie that masks don’t work.
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Early searches everywhere spiked when it became news
After that initial spike, the searches are pretty heavily correlated with cases based on those graphs
You don’t assume something based on data. You draw conclusions based on data. You assume based on your priors, without consulting data. That’s the definition of the word.
The irony is that you are assuming that children pose a high risk of COVID transmission, because kids get the sniffles a lot in the absence of any efforts to prevent sniffles transmission. Then you get to claim, Dothraki-style, that sending kids to school is known to cause deaths, and any arguments about how harmful a completely unprecedented shutdown of primary schooling will be get waved away as mere speculation (where’s the data on this thing that’s never happened??). And then when someone tries to create the data, you just set the bar impossibly high so you can never be convinced.
Is there a better data source on COVID transmission in American schools than Prof. Oster’s project? If so, let’s see it. If there isn’t, then quit pretending you worship the data and acknowledge that you’re really a disciple of science-as-an-institution.
But even assuming that Prof. Oster is a completely hacky, bad-faith advocate (shudder) of school reopening, is that actually bad? The actual state of play in the United States today, contrary to your preferences and mine, is that bars and restaurants >> schools. Not sure how public health authorities let that happen, but that’s where we are. If those weaselly economists trick everyone into believing that schools are no-risk, then they’ll reopen the schools and when COVID numbers get completely out of control, they’ll just have to close the bars and restaurants until we get back to the weekly 9/11 that society has decided to tolerate. That’s an improvement, right?
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I can’t do pretty graphs, but this is a little provocative:
New York (first wave state):
Georgia (second wave state):
North Dakota (third wave state):
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Your need to stan this prof has led you to a truly bizarre place.
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Let’s cut to the chase, do think kids do or don’t spread COVID-19?
Quote from Emily Oster.
“I think we’re starting to get a picture of, you know, this being a relatively low-risk activity where the risks are maybe outweighed by the benefits, at least in more places than are doing it. So that’s different from saying all places should reopen or that, like, when you reopen, nobody will ever have COVID. But to - you know, the idea that, like, places in Massachusetts with very, very, very low positivity and case rates are not open at all seems like it probably is not good for kids.”
So its basically moot.
I’ve been skimming most of the school posts in here, and I think the take that I read that is correct was something along the lines of sure, open up schools, but first close bars and restaurants and other stupid gatherings, and when cases drop to some number (less than 25 cases per 100,000), open up schools but keep the other shit closed.
That seems like the right path forward for schools. Opening up everything first, and then trying to open up schools seems like a recipe for disaster.
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Yup. In positive news, we’re only 2nd worst country in Europe regarding covid19
Gist: Belgium is worse because they have a higher 7 day rolling average of daily cases per 100,000 people than we do.
Oh wait…
And…
Turns out you’re gonna have more cases per 100,000 when you run nearly double the tests of another country with a nearly identical population.
Simply put, the CR is trying (again) to make it look like things are getting better by reducing the number of tests as that is a way to reduce the number of cases thus leading to restrictions being removed earlier than they need to be.
Of course because people despise the restrictions they’ll buy anything that makes it look like things are getting better.
EDIT: Also I suggest you guys check out where your country compares because it’ll make all of you feel way better about your situation.
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Certainly one can have reservations about dishonest but effective advocacy, but If the alternative is being a useful idiot for the other side…
I tried to get into this controversy and have an opinion, but I got derailed at “Dothraki”. Hot take: GoT was pretty boring and wildly overrated.
eta: I guess with the title of this thread and all it is a good place to go for clever references. Hat tip I reckon.
eta: “winter is coming” is a GoT thing, right?
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I really agonized over that line tbh. It did feel a bit forced. Hello fellow pop culture afficianados!
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This might be a reasonable take! But you’re leaving out the part where some have suggested that opening the schools won’t lead to a major increase in COVID spread. And when you ask for the evidence behind this counter-intuitive claim, you get called a science institution-worshiping Dothraki.
The rhetoric is pretty thick, even by bobo’s normal standards.
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He is one of the few people for who it makes sense to risk Covid. He could literally be making a billion dollars if his career goes well.