Right on all this. The biggest failure on opening schools is not that they weren’t opened but that they were not properly prioritized. We could have used the lockdowns to knock down spread and to harden schools against the virus via ventilation, distancing, and figuring out how to keep students in pods rather than all mixing, then open schools first. Instead, we prioritized opening bars and restaurants once cases went down, and since that was always and obviously the riskiest stuff, cases shot up again immediately. We probably could have had in person schools if we kept restaurants and bars as takeout only and properly invested in school safety.
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Proper openmindedness when it comes to the safety and efficacy of new drugs is the presumption that they aren’t safe or effective, and it should require considerable evidence to accept that one is both safe and effective. This is a pillar of modern medicine.
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i would probably understand school reopening more if it didn’t come immediately after seeing cases rise with re-opening bars and restaurants. this is entirely backwards, if children in school are important, we can certainly put off dining out and drinking around other people until we are sure that schools can hold it together.
but it’s almost impossible to do anything in this country when half the governors are going to defy orders.
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The safety of hydroxychloroquine is extremely well established, so this was less of a concern. They could (and did if I recall correctly) go straight to phase three trials.
Great post. I never understood why we didn’t discuss school closing/openings with more nuance.
We don’t have unlimited resources but my partner and I both worked from home while our kid was remote learning and we still had a hard time being able to give her the attention and support she needed.
It breaks my heart thinking about all the kids with less support and resources.
You are right we will never be able to measure the net benefit or harm.
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Most of us are, it’s just 1-2 trolls that derail the convo.
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When I said “We” I was referring to the way it was discussed in the real world. I should of been more clear.
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Wasn’t expecting to see hydroxychoriquine dunks from the pro side at this point. The reason here that people said it likely didn’t work is that at no point was there evidence that it worked. The onus is on the people claiming efficacy not the other way around.
HCQ isn’t a good analogy for school closings anyways.
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Oh hey it’s me, a doctor who prescribed HCQ and AZ in combo for weeks early on in the pandemic. It was dismissed when it didn’t work.
Ivermectin doesn’t work either.
Every medical professional desperately wants something that definitely works and there’s a massive bias towards treatments, not against them. You are not informed on this topic.
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Oh, you’re a doctor? Very cool!
Note the effective.
BTW, this pillar of modern medicine was bent SK.
Right, I said it was less of a concern because its safety profile was extremely well established. Pretty simple really.
So instead of taking the opinion of someone who prescribed large amounts of the drug that you said was dismissed when Trump said something about it, you make a snide little comment. Sure thing SK.
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Prove it
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I mean, that is what happened with hydroxychloroquine. Trump mentioned it and it was widely dismissed as quackery, long before the results of any trials came in. That those trials ended up showing it was ineffective have no bearing at all on what I’m saying.
I don’t think people had a problem with trump putting it forward, if he had said something like we have some possible treatments that we should try like hydroxy soon. It wouldn’t have been ridiculed. The problem was him and his followers 1) saying it was a cure essentially from the get go, and 2) that because we had it as a cure we didn’t need to worry about the virus ffs
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You can repeat that all you want, but it’s not true. We were prescribing HCQ/AZ combo throughout March into late April, and Trump’s comments were in March. It was largely stopped after preliminary data came out showing it didn’t work IIRC and some serious questions came out about the initial French paper that was eventually retracted.
Dude, I’m not talking about the medical community. I’m talking about the public perception in the media.
Oh so now it’s some half-remembered untestable position that it took you five posts to figure out. Ok then. Sure.
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