Were lockdowns, school and business closings the wrong response to Covid?
- Thread starter lawpoke87
- Start date
Rather than waste a lot of time airing out politically driven beliefs on this subject, why not call for a 911 Committee review to thoroughly examine the data and see what worked and what didn't to settle the issue? There is been no exhaustive review of the pandemic, a million people died. Shouldn't it be worth it? OK, may the US has lost its ability to see trust any investigation or even its ability to create a bi-partisan commission, but until something like that happens, this is just a pointless argument.
So you think the story done by the Boston Globe was about airing out political beliefs and talking about this topic is pointless without our politicians appointing a commission? The. Boston. Globe isn’t exactly a bastion of conservatism btw.
Seeing the likelyhood of another pandemic in our lifetime, I cannot think of a better issue to study. Especially given the lives lost as well as the economic and educational damage done to our children. Especially those from minority homes.
Having politicians involved in any study(s) is the wrong approach btw. Politicians are the ones who ordered the lockdowns and business and schools closings. No chance of impartiality there.
I will acknowledge that our political leaders were under a tremendous amount of pressure to do something. People were dying. People were panicked. I do understand the initial response.
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Without articles of this type, apparently nobody with any ability to accomplish it, has really pushed for a study on the issue. It would be nice if several articles of this nature were written and placed in front of the public forum, to push the public demand for a study.
Everybody else's response may have been the wrong response, but we didn't know that until afterwards. Most of the doctors and scientists of the world went with their best advice, and Sweden went in the opposite direction. Studying it in a bipartisan way is absolutely necessary. I wish Europe would get a study of this sort started, considering that bipartisanship doesn't exist in the US at the moment.
I have one problem with the language in one sentence though. "an approach that relied on top-down coercion and sharply curtailed personal freedom" The coercion occurred because people reacted against the policies. Anytime throughout the history of the US in the past century, I'm pretty sure most people would have been very cooperative with and appreciative of the government policies. It's only recently that people have seen those policies as coercive.
I believe the problem is the internet has given us too much freedom to communicate as a society. For everything wonderful that the internet has given us, it has also given us many very negative cultural phenomenon. Conspiracy theories have had little means to populate the minds of the mainstream. That isn't the case any more. Not to mention that the leader of this country pushed the people most susceptible to conspiracy theories towards those ideas and gave them his stamp of credence.
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On the advice of the scientists and doctors. They didn't just decide on their own to do it. But I agree that the politicians shouldn't be involved in the studies.
Not disagreeing there were scientist and doctors in favor of the measures which were taken. They were also consistently wrong in their predictions. Scientist and doctors (especially those who receive government funding or hope to in the r future) aren’t immune from political pressure. Don’t believe we should be finger pointing. What’s done is done. We should however be able to reach some conclusions as to what works and what doesn’t and the costs associated with each of those measure. An analysis which needs to be free of politics. Conclusions which hopefully will help us better combat the next pandemic.
Yeah, finger pointing would get us no where. The majority of scientists believed what we were doing was right. I'm just glad there was a group of scientists in Sweden that were being listened to by the politicians, or we wouldn't have any data to compare in the study.
Our education system is now approaching a crisis situation. Kids not being educated isn’t a problem anyone seems to want to talk about….along with many others. Need some new ideas and leadership.
Why aren't kids going to school? COVID taught them some bad habits.
Chronic absenteeism is part of a larger education crisis that puts students' futures and the nation's economy at risk.
www.usatoday.com
Seems like some kids liked being at home better. Go figure.The ironic thing is that with digital access kids should have very little excuse for missing learning sessions other than being truly, truly ill.Our education system is now approaching a crisis situation. Kids not being educated isn’t a problem anyone seems to want to talk about….along with many others. Need some new ideas and leadership.
Why aren't kids going to school? COVID taught them some bad habits.
Chronic absenteeism is part of a larger education crisis that puts students' futures and the nation's economy at risk.www.usatoday.com
I would wager most of those kids who didn’t return to school are the same ones who failed to do their work remotely. I have a friend who teaches at a low performing TPS school. Less than a third of his students kept up with their school work. Nearly half completed less than 20% and a significant number never accessed the online classes at all. He brought it up with the school admin and was told to keep quiet. No wonder kids who missed a year of school don’t believe it’s important to come back….and yes, the parents or parent (in many cases) are to blame as much as our educational system. Unfortunately, all the blame doesn’t solve the problem of millions of kids who lack even a basic level of education. Millions of kids who lack the basic skills to work in today’s world.
Good luck. Lots of poor single parent households. We aren’t fining those people.
Blaming doesn't fix the problem,(with or without penalty) but so far, neither does anything else.
I have no idea how to change the current education dynamic. Seems to be another one of those issues our politicians don’t want to talk about.
The attitude towards teachers and the violence involved needs to be solved. But solving that is just as much of a conundrum as solving our problem with our difficulty with mass killings. They might even be related, surprise surprise. Might be related to our political problems/Trump problem as well.
Children to adults, don't respect intellect or admire it anymore. Nobody wants to learn from elders & people of high intellect, or take their advice. Back to topic, we have to solve the problem of respect for teachers and stop kids violent bent, to get a start on solving our education problem. The two problems are heavily entwined. Laziness and respect are different sides of the same coin IMO.
It’s not just teachers. There’s a general lack of respect among youth toward all adults as well as toward the laws of society. Youths have always rebelled against authority. Just seems this generation’s approach is more violent than others before. I assume (hope) maturity will solve many of these issues. However, I fear time will not solve the fact many have no career skills/education or desire to work.
Florida has had post-Hurricane remote school options for close to twenty years. The excuse of no resources or teachers not trained to teach online is not viable. Their education losses were amongst the worst in the nation. It’s kids and parents. You can’t hold down a full time job remotely and make sure your kid is doing their class work. Especially if you only have one computer in the house. Or can’t afford WiFi and have to go to a public hot spot.
A lot of adults don't have respect for the laws of society. I'm talking about where it should start and end as well, the constitution. Starts by example.
CPS…
This isn’t really a new problem, it’s just one that had died out decades ago when parents were expected to understand the responsibility placed upon them when having children.
That's the thing. I am all for learning from our response and trying to do better next time. What worked, what didn't, etc.
As long as it doesn't turn into a blame fest. As you say, there was tremendous pressure on political leaders and a ton of unknowns. Nobody had encountered a pandemic like that in 100 years and it was basically out of living memory. People did their best, and the "lockdowns" were more or less a good faith effort to do the best thing for the public health. Nobody was trying to shut down churches just because they could.
There were some things which really ought to never happen again, like not letting direct family in to say goodbye to dying loved ones that didn't even have COVID. There should be protocols and hospitals should definitely have highly restricted access during times like that. By all means make visitors take a rapid test and wear a mask. But it was too much. My wife's hospital often skirted this rule because it was basically inhuman. They even occasionally escorted family in for dying COVID patients, if the family agreed to wear PPE while coming in to say goodbye. As they should, if they at all have the personnel to enable it.
Rant on planes:
I always thought that plane travel, for example, is one area where we could dramatically improve upon. Here's what I mean by that: Planes are relatively safe during flight. That's when the air system is up and running, powered by the turbine engines. It's filtering out 99.9% of anything you don't want to breathe. Of course, there are possible issues with broken filters or just getting unlucky and sitting directly next to someone hacking up a lung, but these are exceptions.
So, what did our leaders do? Require masks to be worn on all flights at all times. A regulation that was unevenly enforced, and often skirted by people wearing useless masks or wearing them incorrectly. And then, everyone was allowed to take them off for simultaneous drink service. People (in general) aren't stupid. It's pretty clearly an asinine regulation. So people just openly flouted it and walked right onto planes with no masks at all. I tend to follow the rules, but I can't say I honestly blame them.
Planes actually are a significant transmission vector because when the engines are not running, the air filtration system is not fully operational either (usually, anyway). So all that time during boarding and taxiing when people are walking around and trying to get seating and squeezing past each other is a prime time to spread virus around to 100+ people and it happens all the time, COVID or not. Getting a cold/flu while traveling has always been a thing.
My thought going forward is that you might get much better acceptance and compliance with the rule if you only required masking during boarding and deplaning, and otherwise let people do what they want. If most people did only that, you'd eliminate a huge part of the risk without forcing everyone to engage in pandemic theater for hours on end during the least risky part of the entire travel experience. And you might not get nearly as much resentment and noncompliance, which also works in your favor.
End rant on planes
Similarly, I could buy the argument that eating out at restaurants was simply too risky from a public health POV to allow for certain windows of time. If hospitals are near a breaking point, you have to do whatever you can to slow the spread and make sure they don't break. But making people wear a mask while being escorted to their table only to be allowed to take it off once they had some drinks/food in front of them was again, useless theater that bred resentment and noncompliance. And worse, that effect further undermined other efforts.
I hope to never see anything like COVID again. But if we do, I hope that both our leaders do a better job coming up with policies that have a better payoff in terms of invasiveness/effectiveness. And also that we get better compliance from the general public.
Schools.... are a whole other thing. The online learning was a clear failure. Maybe better than no school at all, but not by much. And it was insanely stressful for working parents. I don't have any answers here at all, other than to say there are thousands of school districts in this country, and many of them had radically differing responses. It would be interesting to see which school districts had the best outcomes, and what if anything they had or did in common. I've seen a lot of articles on how the COVID cohort of schoolchildren has suffered, but I haven't seen any that tried to find out which kids/districts minimized impact most effecctively.
This sounds like my dad and his friends in the 70's. Almost the exact same speeches. .
Don’t disagree. That said….i don’t recall the number of attacked on teachers by students in the 70s and 80s that we are seeing today. Would be happy to be proven wrong.
Thanks. Great topic for an independent inquiry into what worked and what didn't. Theme so far seems to be that the US over reacted to something new and people's lives were discomfited, without acknowledging that 1) it was new 2) initial Presidential response was to dismiss it as a short passing event 3) millions of people died. Unless we look hard at Covid as round one of a trip down a learning curve so we are better prepared the next time, the next time may not be any better.
As for dissing kids and young adults behavior, there's an argument that it was seniors and people in power, not teens and young adults, who resisted taking actions what would have further limited Covid's damage. That's my observation, but it and the other comments here should are just that. The US needs a serious, independent study.
It's different today. No discipline, constant back talk that teachers have no way of stopping, teachers having to deal w/ violence between students and between teacher and student. The behavior was much different b4 2000.
The extremes that go on, were never around in classrooms last century. I've dated a special ed teacher and an art teacher. The daily stories I heard were unreal in comparison. The violence I saw that compared to the daily stories was ONE incident in high school in my four years. There is at least one incident every month that is equal to one incident in four years.
It's not like my grandpa traveled four miles in the snow, barefoot. Daily occurrences of violence are way beyond what happened in the 70's, 80's, 90's.
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My wife retired from teaching at end of 2022 school year.
The changes she experienced during 37 years of public school teaching in two states and four school districts drove her out a few years earlier than planned.
She planned to substitute teach a couple of days a week. Hasn't done one day of substitute teaching. Probably never will.
She taught kindergarten and first grade.
Misses the kids, doesn't miss all the crap they started requiring etc. She had a wonderful principal the last five or six years. Her principal said she can't wait until she's able to retire.
Many teachers are retiring as soon as they can and teachers are leaving the profession after a few years of teaching.
The changes she experienced during 37 years of public school teaching in two states and four school districts drove her out a few years earlier than planned.
She planned to substitute teach a couple of days a week. Hasn't done one day of substitute teaching. Probably never will.
She taught kindergarten and first grade.
Misses the kids, doesn't miss all the crap they started requiring etc. She had a wonderful principal the last five or six years. Her principal said she can't wait until she's able to retire.
Many teachers are retiring as soon as they can and teachers are leaving the profession after a few years of teaching.
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Catholic schools are desperate for certified substitute teachers. For the most part, and at nearly every school, it’s the same job it was in 1965. It pays a little less usually, but you are showered in praise and thanks. My aunt is 83 and still subs 2nd grade almost daily. She taught until age 70 until she retired under the circumstances you describe.
I attended 12 years of Catholic schools. Even back then was different than my friends who were attending public schools.
I had a few run-ins with some mean old nuns back in the day, lol.
Are you saying there are nun? I slapped myself for saying that.
You just didn’t have mass media to publicize it every time it happened. No 24 hour cable news, no internet, no social media….
The principal at my mom’s middle school in BA had a fun pulled on him by one of the kids in the 90’s. Bet you never heard about that one.
One of my mom’s teacher friends had her car stolen by one of the kids and their delinquent friends / families. TPD found it torched later on. (Her keys were stolen from her classroom)
I would argue that the gang related activity that was rife when i was a kid has definitely started to lessen. (Though some schools do still see it)
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My statement was based on talking to my many friends in the teaching profession not social media and 24 hour news. To a person every one asserts things have gotten worse over the past 20-30 years.
A very small number of teachers were teaching 20-30 years ago. I remember much worse activity in the schools 20-30 years ago, it just wasn’t publicized.
What I will say having grown up around teachers…. Many love to complain about how much the kids suck. Thats not uncommon. And the kids do suck, don’t get me wrong, but it’s mostly because the parents suck.
The worst parents arent even the absent ones, it’s the ones who are told their children have poor habits / behaviors and choose to disregard or outright dismiss what the teacher tells them.
Which makes my experience with multiple teachers with more than 20 years experience that much more persuasive. One of my best friends just left his teaching job this year after 23 years. He biggest complaint was the lack of support from the administration when dealing with the kids than the actual kids. Found that interesting.
Agree regarding the parents. Kids suck in large part due to their parents. Kids who go through life with no consequences for bad acts. Kids whose parents instill no self discipline or work ethic. All leads to an overall lack of respect for teachers.
I used to do a lot of criminal law. I can’t tell you the number of clients I had who were 18-22 who learned how to do and sell drugs from their fathers and uncles around the age of 10 or 11.
I can’t imagine trying to teach those kids.
I can’t imagine trying to teach those kids.
You are talking about cause. We were talking about effect. Just because that is the cause doesn't mean it's not happening. It just means more parents are exhibiting poor parenting habits, thus more children are problematic in school. We all realize that.
Pfizer wants your trust...
thehill.com
Pfizer Super Bowl ad proves just how damaging Biden’s COVID response has been for America
Thanks to Joe Biden, Pfizer’s reputation — and the reputation of America’s medical authorities — needs serious rehabilitation.
thehill.com
Yeah, like Liz Peek is unbiased. I can see her bias in almost every sentence. Part of the pharmaceutical industry's rep problem is 35% of America's distrust of anything scientific. The scientific method corrects itself over time, until politics gets in the way. Let's wonder at Trump's support of ivermectin and bleach, before we wonder at the proposal that supporting the vaccine, 'may have led to preventable deaths.' Cuz that was some of the crap that was out there when voters rights were being trampled on. I don't see any wondrous treatments being created since covid has calmed down. It's main treatment is still the vaccine. And all she can come up with is the unsubstantiated phrase starting with the word may.Pfizer wants your trust...
Pfizer Super Bowl ad proves just how damaging Biden’s COVID response has been for America
Thanks to Joe Biden, Pfizer’s reputation — and the reputation of America’s medical authorities — needs serious rehabilitation.
