Re-opening Schools in the era of COVID

Discussion in 'Politics' started by gwb-trading, Jul 13, 2020.

  1. WeToddDid2

    WeToddDid2

    I am pointing out the extreme bias with respect to the articles and that there is clearly a political narrative agenda.

    Inference in Trump article: OMG Trump wants to reopen schools ASAP. Trump is an idiot and going to kill us all. He doesn't even listen to science.

    Inference in Biden article: Biden wants to reopen schools ASAP. It is a great idea and totally achievable.

    As President Donald Trump aims to have students back in school by Fall

    Full Reopening of Schools Would Be ‘Highest Risk’ For Spreading Coronavirus

    as President Biden makes a return to in-person learning one of his top pandemic-related priorities.

    CDC finds scant spread of coronavirus in schools with precautions in place
     
    #511     Jan 30, 2021
  2. wildchild

    wildchild

    Why would that even be considered, the chances of death for people 24 years of age and below is virtually zero?

    We have been down this road before.
     
    #512     Jan 30, 2021
  3. wildchild

    wildchild

    “It's less likely for a child to get infected in the school setting than if they were just in the community,” Fauci said.
     
    #513     Jan 30, 2021
    Tsing Tao likes this.
  4. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    How is it any more dangerous than going to Walmart or Home Depot or the Grocery Store, or ...

    I'm open to considering otherwise if you have an empirical study showing how adults got it from schools in some statistical overwhelmingly high amount vs. previously mentioned outlets.
     
    #514     Feb 1, 2021
  5. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    What an outstanding editorial.

    Democrats Are Playing with Fire on School Closings, and the Media is Containing the Blaze

    Early last March, as the panic over the coming pandemic was just beginning, and it was obvious that California was about to close our schools, I had a telling conversation with the principal of my then seven-year-old daughter’s grade-school. I told them that they and their fellow administrators really needed to understand that, when they close, if there is not a very specific date for reopening, or at the very least an extremely manageable data standard for doing so, our schools would be shuttered for at least a full year, and maybe much longer.

    They listened carefully to what I had to say, but were obviously thinking that I was nuts; after all, this unprecedented measure was only supposed to be in effect for a few weeks. After those few weeks had indeed transformed into schools being closed well into the next school year, our principal confessed to me that they had thought about our discussion almost every day since then.

    As we approach nearly a full calendar year with most public schools in America being closed for in-person learning, let’s make a few points very clear.

    1. Online “learning” is a total disaster, especially for younger grades, and this generation of school kids will never fully recover academically from this sadistically sick social experiment.
    2. Enormous permanent damage (including far too many suicides), much of which has been ignored or downplayed by the news media because it disrupts their pro-lockdown narrative, has been done to our children due to schools, and many sports, being closed this long.
    3. As even the CDC first indicated last summer, and then, despite there being FAR more virus spread now, just reiterated, because kids are largely un-impacted by COVID, opening schools is not an overly dangerous endeavor, especially now that older teachers can be vaccinated.
    4. The primary reason that most public schools are not currently open, and will not open any time soon, is that the teachers’ unions have made it purposely impossible for that to happen (partly because some of their teachers actually really like this new setup), and no Democrat in a “blue” state or an urban area dares to cross one of their most powerful voting blocs.
    5. The secondary reason why schools cannot currently feasibly reopen is that far too many teachers, parents, and kids have had the living crap scared out of them by almost a year’s worth of ratings-driven news media coverage of the pandemic, which has often looked far more like politically-motivated panic porn, than objective journalism.
    The most underrated reason that most schools haven’t opened, and will not anytime soon, comes in the realm of pure politics. Doing so right after Biden calls for it to happen immediately after taking office, when Trump did the same last summer causing the liberal establishment to flip their position against doing so even though the data was far less scary then, would too overtly expose that they took our kids hostage. Ultimately subjecting them to very real abuse, primarily because they saw the alternative as helping Trump politically, and that prospect caused them to lose their damn minds.

    Consequently, allowing the public, especially the very same suburban moms who helped them defeat Trump, to see what this was really all about would be far too politically scandalous and dangerous. Therefore, several key elements must pretend, against the “science” which liberals always claim to be so in favor of, that we must wait until the virus is somehow totally eradicated (which even California Governor/King Gavin Newsom now thinks is absurd). After all, if we open now and nothing really awful happens, this nefarious scam will be left so bare that even morons could see it, no matter how much the news media predictably tries to block for their liberal allies.

    There is also an interesting quirk in human nature at work here. Counterintuitively, the more damage which is done by a mistake, the LESS likely that error is to be admitted to, or corrected, because coming to grips with the magnitude of the destruction which has been wrought is simply too emotionally challenging. It is much easier to just make-believe that there really was a scary monster outside your house all that time you needlessly forced your kids to suffer in isolation (and why, when schools do reopen, liberals will force further abuse on our kids by way overdoing the restrictions, so that they can claim THOSE were the reasons that hardly anyone got very sick).

    All of this leaves the Democratic Party in a theoretically very vulnerable position. This is the rare circumstance where most Americans have their lives directly and dramatically impacted by a political decision and, given the extremely liberal nature of academia, and the fact that Biden is now president, there is zero ambiguity about which party is responsible for most schools remaining closed, now LONG after it was VERY apparent that they should have been reopened.

    While still very handicapped by being unwilling to make a break from Trump, the GOP is correctly trying to seize on this incredibly combustible issue. By being unwilling to stand up to the teachers’ unions, Democrats (as are the teachers, a group to which my wife and all her siblings belong) are clearly playing with fire, though they are currently relying on their friends in the news media to make sure that this potentially destructive blaze is at least contained by never allowing the majority of the public to fully understand what has really happened.

    The continued closing of our schools has been by far the most catastrophic and outrageous error of the pandemic reaction, but fully fixing it is going to be nearly impossible. If Republicans play their cards right, even the news media may not be able to save Democrats from eventually being held accountable for this abuse of our children which they have championed, all out of the most evil of motivations.

    Much as was the case when it came to reacting to Trump himself, years from now, when the full devastation created by this fiasco can no longer hidden, people should be judged by which position they took on this controversy. This time, it is the Democratic Party and the news media who are currently very much on the wrong side of history.

    This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
     
    #515     Feb 1, 2021
  6. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    The Unions are the problem. Pure and simple.

     
    #516     Feb 1, 2021
  7. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    #517     Feb 1, 2021
    Ricter likes this.
  8. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    In most states including North Carolina -- teachers are not being vaccinated yet. Several other groups including the over 65 are prioritized before teachers.

    After they vaccinate teachers & staff and make them feel safe then they have a case to require them back into the classrooms.
     
    #518     Feb 1, 2021
    Ricter likes this.
  9. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    Florida has been in school since last August. Thank God.

    If you are able to show me where Floridian teachers have a higher death rate (or even contagion rate) than other adults, I'd admit you have a case against returning to school.

    You can't.
     
    #519     Feb 1, 2021
  10. gwb-trading

    gwb-trading

    Seeing that Florida is not tracking staff hospitalizations and deaths from schools -- and not following Federal guidelines to do so -- it is impossible to make any statistics statement about teacher COVID deaths in Florida schools.

    There are, of course, endless news stories in Florida every week about COVID deaths of staff and teachers in Florida. A simple google search will demonstrate this.

    Neptune Beach Elementary teacher’s assistant dies due to COVID-19 complications, board member says
    https://www.news4jax.com/news/local...-to-covid-19-complications-board-member-says/

    Brevard middle school teacher dies from COVID-19 complications
    Elizabeth Toro was a reading teacher at Lyndon B. Johnson Middle School in Melbourne
    https://www.clickorlando.com/news/l...ool-teacher-dies-from-covid-19-complications/

    Clay County teacher dies from COVID-19
    https://www.jacksonville.com/story/...clay-county-teacher-dies-covid-19/6315334002/

    Naturally this is where you parrot the talking point of "prove they got it at school", etc. etc. etc.
     
    #520     Feb 1, 2021