If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it.
Conscription has historically not been a great idea. Women aged between 20 and 35 might feel they have been profiled based upon their sex and age. They might also have other things to do, what with generally being part of the workforce otherwise. Being a woman aged between 20 and 35 does not involve having been trained for managing classrooms of children. It also puts these women at risk - and again we have no idea about personal circumstances; some might be shielding for parents or others at home - which, if you're conscripting them, is quite high on the unethical scale. I could go on...
I can guarantee you that as a woman who hates children, if I was conscripted and forced to 'teach' them, then I would teach them only things that no parent wants their children learning.
What would they do, fire me?
Come on kids, we're gonna learn how to say 'eat shit and die' in English, Spanish, and ASL! Then, we're watching a movie called 'Hellraiser'.
Also WTF why just women? Men are incapable of teaching children apparently?
tbloxham has some hierarchy of viral risk demographics sourced from unknown places and holds that women, 20-35, are the least at-risk for either contracting covid-19 or possibly for dying from it I'm not sure which.
What baffles me about the whole schools-closed thing is that even states who are pushing for sending everybody back to work and out to eat at restaurants and shit again aren't opening schools. People having to WFH with a house full of kids all day is bad enough; how are you supposed to go back to work at a restaurant or barber shop or whatever with your kids home all day because school is still closed?
I'm not saying schools should re-open, note. I just find it baffling that everything except schools is re-opening to "fix the economy" or whatever with no apparent thought for how people are going to go out and fix the economy with schools closed.
We've tied childcare to school as much as we've tied school to education because a minimum of two full time incomes are required to survive.
Which puts private childcare in the favorable position of charging as much as possible while still making working a full time job only slightly more economically viable than being stay at home with one caregiver. They even price it in such a way that two kids with daycare often works out because of reduced rates.
It's not exactly a scam but it's part of the exploitive nature of our economic model constantly demanding more while slimming the margins.
I wouldn't even characterize this as an example of an "exploitive" facet of our economy so much as the reality that it has formed around the the assumption that the majority of school age children are eligible for public child care six hours a day. The most worker-oriented society imaginable is still going to stumble when that rug gets pulled and people simply can't show up for their shift at the hover-train manufacturing co-op.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
All of this doesn't matter though if we don't have a vaccine or some vast, durable herd immunity.
You can't simply can't re-open schools because of the threat to the staff.
As a substitute teacher, the high school I primarily work at has at least two dozen teachers over fifty (and that's with us just replacing almost a dozen staff who retired in the last four years). The other substitutes I work with, who would fill in those positions when a teacher gets sick? At least 75% are retired teachers over fifty.
During a good year staff will joke that they hope they catch a weaker disease like the common cold over something like the flu or a stomach flu, because schools are just constantly flooded in diseases.
Unless you are going to have every adult wear an isolation suit with their own oxygen supply, you just can't re-open schools because it will kill the staff.
Why is this argument valid for teachers and not for water treatment plant workers, electrical line maintenance workers or farmers? School is an essential need for children and for the parents of those children. It’s not negotiable. A whole generation is being thrown onto the trash pile.
The question is not and cannot be “will schools open” is is and can only be “how will schools open”
If every teacher needs to be tested every 3 days, then do it. If every parent needs to be tested. Do it. If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it. If we need to commandeer private facilities to use as extra classrooms then do it. Even if all we can do is kids going to school 2 or 3 days a week in two groups then DO IT.
Parents set up secret schools to teach their daughters under the threat of death from the Taliban in Afghanistan. They will do the same here if there is no school.
I'm guessing line maintenance workers aren't trapped in an enclosed space with 30 germ spreadin' machines for several hours a day every day.
I am not an epidemiologist or an HVAC expert, but there was a page linked here recently that indicated, at least based on investigations of spreading events in restaurants, that being in proximity to infected people, and especially being downwind of them (via AC or other ventilation) was particularly hazardous. I wonder how hard it would be to set up rooms that pulled air away from the teacher. It would very pointedly not be *safe*, but it might be *safer*?
"But Forar, what about the kids?!"
I dunno. Look, this is under the working assumption that for a variety of reasons opening schools (on some level at least) is viewed as the lesser evil. Whether it's to protect parents who are not holding up well (much love and respect for those who are sharing of their experiences), or to provide childcare for front line staff (because a single parent nurse can't just leave their children at home unsupervised) or whatever.
The government should be doing more to provide for people in ways that makes this sustainable. They are not. Without a new federal administration, I don't see that changing, and we're still a long ways away from that happening (if it happens).
Maybe this is impossible for a whole host of reasons like 'hvac doesn't work that way', but Ceres' comments ties back to something I talked about forever ago (this thread? The previous one? They're blurring together); this virus and situation will take a toll on people beyond the actual infections themselves.
It feels like we have hundreds of competing priorities. "Save lives!" Okay, then let's do X! "But that will kill off ______'s" Okay fuck, let's do Y! "That will kill the ____________'s." Double fuck. Z? "That will kill everybody!"
The way this topic is discussed, it's hard not to start getting to the point of 'okay, fine, fuck it, there is no perfect solution, so what group of people are we willing to sacrifice? Because someone's going to bear the brunt of this, and there is no perfect solution, so then we pick. And not acting/picking is totally a choice, it just lets nature take its course and the hard choice isn't made but some group becomes the default/status quo option.
So, we do something, and some people are put at risk. Or we do nothing, and some people are put at risk. People are being put at risk regardless. "But it will put X at risk" is losing its value as a counterpoint, imo, because the existing situation is already there.
Will it put MORE people at risk? Or at greater risk? But are those risks balanced out against the possible good being done?
This is the exact numbers game people keep weighing out with the schools. Children can be a vector! There are unknown repercussions! Sure. But them being at home for the next year or two isn't going to be sustainable all over.
It feels like a never ending circle, and I don't think we're going to rules lawyer our way out of it.
Furthermore is the balance between not simply placating people with false hope, versus the real damage that can be done by taking it away. I don't have an answer to that, and it's going to be specific to individuals. We can't just Drop Hard Truths because some need or want to hear that, without recognizing that providing that straight up is going to harm some. We have a mass messaging problem where the same thing shared one way is going to help some and harm others, but we can't just restrict messaging to those who need to hear it in a particular manner.
I think I'm just going in circles here, but I'm trying to point out the pushing/pulling forces in play, and the cycle I've seen play out repeatedly across hundreds of pages of discussion now (and will surely come up again).
It's like a wave. Someone posts something good; it has to be pointed out how shitty X and Y factors are. Someone posts something shitty, a silver lining must be found. The snake continues to eat its tail, and then someone posts about needing to eat at Arby's.
vOv
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
With a funding increase you could bring in substitute teachers to manage classes and keep the class sizes smaller with training from a full time teacher and their lesson plans, but funding for education is hard to come by.
Most problems with all of this are funding(or timing) issues. Even with subs for smaller class sizes, you then need classrooms. Which basically means trailers, which means more janitorial staff. This is before how do you stop the cafeteria problems? You split the 3 lunch hours into 6 and you have some kids eating right as they get to school, and some right before they leave. Then you have to sanitize between each lunch period. Were not going to pay for hazmat suits for teachers.
This all ignores how long you think it will take before a kid brings an entire wing of a facility to its knees when he fake sneezes late in the day?
Realistically you could telepresence a teacher into multiple rooms to cut down on subs. But with subs I've never had any (short or long term) that gave an ounce of a shit. They range from the good end of not giving a shit, to the bad end of 'I can finally live out my authoritarian dream by giving suspensions to kids in homeroom for talking ohnowhyisariotstarting'
This. The school that my son was at before we moved last summer already had to drop 5th grade (and have the middle school take it on) because there weren't enough classrooms and they had gotten to the point of having to conduct specials like music in places like the library. The school my kids are at now is massive compared to what I'm used to (most grades have 4 separate classes of 23-25 students each). There are at most 2 empty classrooms - 1 each for the grades that aren't quite as full and get away with three sections. There is no space to make the class sizes smaller, and especially not if you want to try to work in distancing too.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
There is no doubt that we are choosing. We are choosing right now and we will be choosing later, and I'm sure there are numbers that make one group overwhelmingly larger to the degree that it makes no sense not to choose them, but someone is going to meet the underside of a bus and I do think that's worth acknowledging. I do think schools need to stay closed, I just don't know what I'm going to do and no one has an answer for me, and that's scary.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
We've tied childcare to school as much as we've tied school to education because a minimum of two full time incomes are required to survive.
Which puts private childcare in the favorable position of charging as much as possible while still making working a full time job only slightly more economically viable than being stay at home with one caregiver. They even price it in such a way that two kids with daycare often works out because of reduced rates.
It's not exactly a scam but it's part of the exploitive nature of our economic model constantly demanding more while slimming the margins.
There are no efficiencies, technological or scale, to reduce the costs of childcare (or teaching)
Childcare taking up an entire salary’s worth in expense makes perfect sense since you’re paying someone to be you
Expanding the ratio of kids to workers is the only way to reduce the cost, by spreading it out, but that adds additional overhead so the discount is really small
Like my sister-in-law constantly complains about how much more she pays in childcare than my wife and I, and I’m like “yeah cause your childcare workers have to live in NYC and mine live in Columbus Ohio”
We can’t really reduce the cost, we need to do better helping people cover it
We've tied childcare to school as much as we've tied school to education because a minimum of two full time incomes are required to survive.
Which puts private childcare in the favorable position of charging as much as possible while still making working a full time job only slightly more economically viable than being stay at home with one caregiver. They even price it in such a way that two kids with daycare often works out because of reduced rates.
It's not exactly a scam but it's part of the exploitive nature of our economic model constantly demanding more while slimming the margins.
There are no efficiencies, technological or scale, to reduce the costs of childcare (or teaching)
Childcare taking up an entire salary’s worth in expense makes perfect sense since you’re paying someone to be you
Expanding the ratio of kids to workers is the only way to reduce the cost, by spreading it out, but that adds additional overhead so the discount is really small
Like my sister-in-law constantly complains about how much more she pays in childcare than my wife and I, and I’m like “yeah cause your childcare workers have to live in NYC and mine live in Columbus Ohio”
We can’t really reduce the cost, we need to do better helping people cover it
Or it could be subsidized by the federal government, or covered by health insurance
Realistically speaking this is one issue in a whole myriad raft of issues that will be encountered by all of our societies because we are just not set up, economically, socially, whatever -ally you want, to have extended lockdowns like this. We haven't built society that way.
The only way to scale child care at all is group childcare, but like with classrooms people can only take so many kids at once and more kids = more risk of viral spread.
I wonder if extended family homes would fare better or worse in this?
Like, you'd have more ability to rotate in and out of watching the kids, but larger family units increase the overall risk to the unit of someone contracting COVID, and probably everyone in the household gets it then.
If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it.
Conscription has historically not been a great idea. Women aged between 20 and 35 might feel they have been profiled based upon their sex and age. They might also have other things to do, what with generally being part of the workforce otherwise. Being a woman aged between 20 and 35 does not involve having been trained for managing classrooms of children. It also puts these women at risk - and again we have no idea about personal circumstances; some might be shielding for parents or others at home - which, if you're conscripting them, is quite high on the unethical scale. I could go on...
I can guarantee you that as a woman who hates children, if I was conscripted and forced to 'teach' them, then I would teach them only things that no parent wants their children learning.
What would they do, fire me?
Come on kids, we're gonna learn how to say 'eat shit and die' in English, Spanish, and ASL! Then, we're watching a movie called 'Hellraiser'.
Also WTF why just women? Men are incapable of teaching children apparently?
tbloxham has some hierarchy of viral risk demographics sourced from unknown places and holds that women, 20-35, are the least at-risk for either contracting covid-19 or possibly for dying from it I'm not sure which.
What baffles me about the whole schools-closed thing is that even states who are pushing for sending everybody back to work and out to eat at restaurants and shit again aren't opening schools. People having to WFH with a house full of kids all day is bad enough; how are you supposed to go back to work at a restaurant or barber shop or whatever with your kids home all day because school is still closed?
I'm not saying schools should re-open, note. I just find it baffling that everything except schools is re-opening to "fix the economy" or whatever with no apparent thought for how people are going to go out and fix the economy with schools closed.
If you understand what shitheads the wealthy are, it actually makes a ton of sense. Those fuckers want their peasants to toil away making their profits bigger and they've always had an issue with the idea that the children of the peasants could get an education and possible threaten their position or that of their precious snowflake children/grandchildren.
I wonder if extended family homes would fare better or worse in this?
Like, you'd have more ability to rotate in and out of watching the kids, but larger family units increase the overall risk to the unit of someone contracting COVID, and probably everyone in the household gets it then.
If you mean extended to include grandma and grandpa, then it'd be pretty bad.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I wonder if extended family homes would fare better or worse in this?
Like, you'd have more ability to rotate in and out of watching the kids, but larger family units increase the overall risk to the unit of someone contracting COVID, and probably everyone in the household gets it then.
A lot of the ways this could work require 1000x the structure and discipline than families have.
Work has started lying to us about COVID deaths, so that's fun.
(we're large enough that getting a death notice isn't TOO uncommon. Before, they always mentioned why. Now they don't citing "medical privacy laws" that mysteriously never stopped them before..)
I mean we could just treat caring for a child as a skill and role of value and not constantly provide incentive for the rich to fuck people raw for every penny by ever increasing cost of living disproportionate to earning potential.
Someone who stays minimally employed while raising a child is doing work. To our society it's not work reflected in short term dollars and a paycheck though.
I don't have kids. I don't like kids. I definitely acknowledge the importance of giving them an opportunity though and recognize it's a lot of work.
COVID-19 has our entire economic model willing to throw our elders and children into the wood chipper because stock market. It might be a good time to reflect on our priorities.
dispatch.o on
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it.
Conscription has historically not been a great idea. Women aged between 20 and 35 might feel they have been profiled based upon their sex and age. They might also have other things to do, what with generally being part of the workforce otherwise. Being a woman aged between 20 and 35 does not involve having been trained for managing classrooms of children. It also puts these women at risk - and again we have no idea about personal circumstances; some might be shielding for parents or others at home - which, if you're conscripting them, is quite high on the unethical scale. I could go on...
I can guarantee you that as a woman who hates children, if I was conscripted and forced to 'teach' them, then I would teach them only things that no parent wants their children learning.
What would they do, fire me?
Come on kids, we're gonna learn how to say 'eat shit and die' in English, Spanish, and ASL! Then, we're watching a movie called 'Hellraiser'.
"Today, were gonna teach your parents a lesson!"
"This is how you operate a lighter! Have some matches!"
Also the real answer to that question is essential is not essential for society it's essential right now. Food is. Water is. Electricity is. School isn't.
Until someone comes up with a better solution, you should expect parents to continue agitating for school to begin, because they can't keep putting food on the table if they can't work because they're now unpaid child care workers during normal business hours.
All the discussion about "well, should teachers be made to bear that risk" and "kids can survive without school" and "gee that Kawasaki analogue looks kind of bad" is just running into that fucking wall
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
The cynic in me seems to notice that the people that would be harder/more expensive to replace are being told to keep on WFH and everyone else is getting tossed into the gears of industry.
I am not an epidemiologist or an HVAC expert, but there was a page linked here recently that indicated, at least based on investigations of spreading events in restaurants, that being in proximity to infected people, and especially being downwind of them (via AC or other ventilation) was particularly hazardous. I wonder how hard it would be to set up rooms that pulled air away from the teacher. It would very pointedly not be *safe*, but it might be *safer*?
"But Forar, what about the kids?!"
I dunno. Look, this is under the working assumption that for a variety of reasons opening schools (on some level at least) is viewed as the lesser evil. Whether it's to protect parents who are not holding up well (much love and respect for those who are sharing of their experiences), or to provide childcare for front line staff (because a single parent nurse can't just leave their children at home unsupervised) or whatever.
The government should be doing more to provide for people in ways that makes this sustainable. They are not. Without a new federal administration, I don't see that changing, and we're still a long ways away from that happening (if it happens).
Maybe this is impossible for a whole host of reasons like 'hvac doesn't work that way', but Ceres' comments ties back to something I talked about forever ago (this thread? The previous one? They're blurring together); this virus and situation will take a toll on people beyond the actual infections themselves.
It feels like we have hundreds of competing priorities. "Save lives!" Okay, then let's do X! "But that will kill off ______'s" Okay fuck, let's do Y! "That will kill the ____________'s." Double fuck. Z? "That will kill everybody!"
The way this topic is discussed, it's hard not to start getting to the point of 'okay, fine, fuck it, there is no perfect solution, so what group of people are we willing to sacrifice? Because someone's going to bear the brunt of this, and there is no perfect solution, so then we pick. And not acting/picking is totally a choice, it just lets nature take its course and the hard choice isn't made but some group becomes the default/status quo option.
So, we do something, and some people are put at risk. Or we do nothing, and some people are put at risk. People are being put at risk regardless. "But it will put X at risk" is losing its value as a counterpoint, imo, because the existing situation is already there.
Will it put MORE people at risk? Or at greater risk? But are those risks balanced out against the possible good being done?
This is the exact numbers game people keep weighing out with the schools. Children can be a vector! There are unknown repercussions! Sure. But them being at home for the next year or two isn't going to be sustainable all over.
It feels like a never ending circle, and I don't think we're going to rules lawyer our way out of it.
Furthermore is the balance between not simply placating people with false hope, versus the real damage that can be done by taking it away. I don't have an answer to that, and it's going to be specific to individuals. We can't just Drop Hard Truths because some need or want to hear that, without recognizing that providing that straight up is going to harm some. We have a mass messaging problem where the same thing shared one way is going to help some and harm others, but we can't just restrict messaging to those who need to hear it in a particular manner.
I think I'm just going in circles here, but I'm trying to point out the pushing/pulling forces in play, and the cycle I've seen play out repeatedly across hundreds of pages of discussion now (and will surely come up again).
It's like a wave. Someone posts something good; it has to be pointed out how shitty X and Y factors are. Someone posts something shitty, a silver lining must be found. The snake continues to eat its tail, and then someone posts about needing to eat at Arby's.
vOv
Labs are made to provide 'safe' airflows, but you can't really retrofit a school this way and it is very expensive because you're constantly bringing in fresh air, dehumidifying it, chilling or heating it, pumping it into the rooms, and then pulling it back out into HEPA filters. Think of your home with an aggressive thermostat setting while leaving all the doors and windows open. An old school building with radiant heat and a wallmount AC unit is not capable of this and can't really be made so. You'd be better off buying the teachers PAPRs in terms of cost and effectiveness. Since we're still at the "decontaminating N95s so they can be used again" stage of PPE preparedness, I'm going to guess there aren't enough PAPRs in the United States for all the teachers, if the nurses and doctors can't get them. We're keeping ones we would've thrown out for spare parts for the labs. Plus side if the US can make/buy them in time for fall and/or a second wave: the hoods and hoses are pretty easy to decontaminate for reuse.
If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it.
Conscription has historically not been a great idea. Women aged between 20 and 35 might feel they have been profiled based upon their sex and age. They might also have other things to do, what with generally being part of the workforce otherwise. Being a woman aged between 20 and 35 does not involve having been trained for managing classrooms of children. It also puts these women at risk - and again we have no idea about personal circumstances; some might be shielding for parents or others at home - which, if you're conscripting them, is quite high on the unethical scale. I could go on...
I can guarantee you that as a woman who hates children, if I was conscripted and forced to 'teach' them, then I would teach them only things that no parent wants their children learning.
What would they do, fire me?
Come on kids, we're gonna learn how to say 'eat shit and die' in English, Spanish, and ASL! Then, we're watching a movie called 'Hellraiser'.
Also WTF why just women? Men are incapable of teaching children apparently?
tbloxham has some hierarchy of viral risk demographics sourced from unknown places and holds that women, 20-35, are the least at-risk for either contracting covid-19 or possibly for dying from it I'm not sure which.
What baffles me about the whole schools-closed thing is that even states who are pushing for sending everybody back to work and out to eat at restaurants and shit again aren't opening schools. People having to WFH with a house full of kids all day is bad enough; how are you supposed to go back to work at a restaurant or barber shop or whatever with your kids home all day because school is still closed?
I'm not saying schools should re-open, note. I just find it baffling that everything except schools is re-opening to "fix the economy" or whatever with no apparent thought for how people are going to go out and fix the economy with schools closed.
Err, this is like a basic fact about the virus which has shown up in every data table, study and research paper for months. Women are at lower risk in every way of analyzing this virus.
People under 40 are hospitalized in 2.5% of known cases (which is an unknown fraction of true cases), with women being hospitalized 10% less frequently than men (55% of hospitalizations are men)
We can see more data here where we find that those between 18-44 had a small increase in hospitalizations vs baseline, and a much lower number for their number of hospital visits. You can also sort by gender again for cases, hospitalizations and deaths and see that women have about the same number of cases, but then do better again on hospitalizations, and better again on deaths.
Everything we know about the risks from this virus points with absolute precision at one fact. If something needs to be done in society right now, a healthy woman between the age of 18 and 35 should do it. If you care about peoples lives, then it's as simple as that.
Wasn’t it the commonly known thing that it didn’t hit kids all that hard, and then we’re finding out about this secondary thing that can strike them?
Maybe proclaiming women aged 20-35 as being at lesser risk than others should carry massive asterisks about “as far as we know”, and that any plan that suggests them leading the charge might be ignoring those asterisks?
A 55/45 split isn’t (to me) so overwhelming as to just foist that on women, let alone with “if you care about people’s lives” rhetoric.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
All of this doesn't matter though if we don't have a vaccine or some vast, durable herd immunity.
You can't simply can't re-open schools because of the threat to the staff.
As a substitute teacher, the high school I primarily work at has at least two dozen teachers over fifty (and that's with us just replacing almost a dozen staff who retired in the last four years). The other substitutes I work with, who would fill in those positions when a teacher gets sick? At least 75% are retired teachers over fifty.
During a good year staff will joke that they hope they catch a weaker disease like the common cold over something like the flu or a stomach flu, because schools are just constantly flooded in diseases.
Unless you are going to have every adult wear an isolation suit with their own oxygen supply, you just can't re-open schools because it will kill the staff.
Why is this argument valid for teachers and not for water treatment plant workers, electrical line maintenance workers or farmers? School is an essential need for children and for the parents of those children. It’s not negotiable. A whole generation is being thrown onto the trash pile.
The question is not and cannot be “will schools open” is is and can only be “how will schools open”
If every teacher needs to be tested every 3 days, then do it. If every parent needs to be tested. Do it. If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it. If we need to commandeer private facilities to use as extra classrooms then do it. Even if all we can do is kids going to school 2 or 3 days a week in two groups then DO IT.
Parents set up secret schools to teach their daughters under the threat of death from the Taliban in Afghanistan. They will do the same here if there is no school.
I'm guessing line maintenance workers aren't trapped in an enclosed space with 30 germ spreadin' machines for several hours a day every day.
Nope, but cable technicians are going into peoples homes multiple times a day to repair damaged equipment, plumbers are in peoples homes fixing toilets, farmers (espescially pickers) are working side by side gathering fruit and packing it. Grocery store clerks are interacting with hundreds of people every day.
Responsible organizations are taking steps to minimize exposure and minimize risk, but, if the cable is broken to someones house, the cable guy is still going and fixing it. People fixing electrical wires are still working in teams to get the job done safely without electrocuting themselves and so on. Because all this stuff needs to still be done to facilitate public safety and continuation.
And we know that children are not 'germ spreadin' machines for this virus. They are at worst equally infectious as adults, but from investigation it seems far more likely they are less infectious.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
You do realize those statistics aren't just numbers on a webpage, right? They're people. Human beings distilled down far enough that you can apparently disregard their humanity, and then use that to disregard the humanity of others who haven't yet become ill.
I wonder if extended family homes would fare better or worse in this?
Like, you'd have more ability to rotate in and out of watching the kids, but larger family units increase the overall risk to the unit of someone contracting COVID, and probably everyone in the household gets it then.
A lot of the ways this could work require 1000x the structure and discipline than families have.
I don't know about that, you'd just need to coordinate everyone's job.
Our house has two kids under 10, two full time adults. I'm having a super shitty time because my partner's work schedule doesn't let them help with the home-schooling. Mine doesn't exactly support it, but at least it doesn't actively prevent it. If we had similar jobs, it would be a massive load off of me, no super discipline required.
Now let's say a close relation also has two or three kids. I could absolutely wrangle all five of them if that was my only job to worry about that day, as could any of the other three parents, we'd just need our four separate jobs to sign off on it.
The optimal solution is for everyone to have a spare room and an unemployed college student in the family, then pay them room and board to be a live-in sitter; unfortunately for us the only qualifying individuals in our family tree are less trustworthy than the kids they'd be watching.
If I ever run across a time machine, I may have a go at convincing my younger self that having a kid in highschool is actually a good idea, long term. For science.
It would be dumb to start going back to the gym, right?
In January-ish, I joined a gym that's 5 minutes from my house, and in February-ish I started getting personal training. I'm overweight and have borderline blood pressure, and am nearing 40, so it seemed like a good idea. And I enjoyed going; I'd go once a week for an hour of PT and once a week to do a customized workout in between PT sessions. It was a little pricey but it felt good, like developing a good habit for once. And then the coronavirus hit and the state started shutting down.
I borrowed some dumbbells and a kettle bell and some resistance bands, and got texted a couple home-compatible workouts, but part of the reason I joined a gym in the first place is it's too easy to ignore that sort of thing at home. So I haven't really had any success keeping up a routine here.
Now everything is starting to open back up of course, though I think it's way too premature. My work is still fully WFH. My wife works for Costco and so she's been going to work for all these months. And I just got a text from my trainer that the gym is opening back up, extra sanitizing, limited persons inside at any time, yada yada. And it feels wrong as hell. I sympathize with the owner and the trainers (it's a small gym, not a big chain) who have probably been struggling to make ends meet while they have been shut down, but this still feels way too early.
It is ironic that going to the gym and working out might help lower my comorbidities but going to a communal place where people by definition have elevated respiratory rates seems like a dumb fuckin' idea. It's probably only smart for, like, healthy people to do that.
This is the first thing in three months that I've wanted to do that I know I shouldn't do. We have a good protocol for getting takeout, I help my wife wipe down her keys and phone and stuff when she gets home from work, we sanitize or quarantine stuff that gets delivered. We're mitigating our risk pretty well. But I want to go to the goddamn gym =/
Everything we know about the risks from this virus points with absolute precision at one fact. If something needs to be done in society right now, a healthy woman between the age of 18 and 35 should do it. If you care about peoples lives, then it's as simple as that.
What the fuck
Can you please stop and think about what you’re suggesting
The likelihood is, if one adult group is being infected less than others, it's because they're taking care of themselves and quarantining properly. If we make them the worker caste, that goes out the window and a lot of people die.
Everything we know about the risks from this virus points with absolute precision at one fact. If something needs to be done in society right now, a healthy woman between the age of 18 and 35 should do it. If you care about peoples lives, then it's as simple as that.
What the fuck
Can you please stop and think about what you’re suggesting
Actually, just stop
Especially if the "offer" is conscription. Cause that reeks eerily of some dark shit.
Now, if you want to offer people in certain low risk groups substantially more to do certain "at risk" jobs, and they're properly informed, insured, and protected, that's a different issue.
But requiring people to do said jobs, under threat of punishment, Potentially including imprisonment (else your conscription has no teeth)? Yeah, screw that noise.
If every teacher needs to be tested every 3 days, then do it. If every parent needs to be tested. Do it.
Okay, let's look at this proposal.
I'm going to pick the largest school district in my state, the Seattle school district.
They have 3,745 teachers.
So you're already doing almost 7,500 tests per week for just that district.
But hey, we can't just limit ourselves to one district, so let's look at Washington state at large.
Washington employs 67,362 teachers.
So, with a test every three days, we are looking at 134,724 tests per week.
That seems super reasonable and attainable!
That is completely reasonable and 100% attainable by the time schools should restart. By combining group testing (mix 10 samples, if positive, retest 5 mixed samples, repeat till individual case found) with follow up testing you can probably cut the actual number of tests by about 5x, but, even the "should do 134,724 tests a week" is completely doable. Thats 20k or so tests a day for Washington state, 874k for the country. About double our current capacity, even without group testing, even with more tests than you really need (testing every 7 days would almost certainly prevent spread through teachers in the schools).
This number takes us to the 'impossible and unatainable' level of testing reached in the imaginary and futuristic nation of Ireland. If we can reach the impossible heights of "Testing as much as Denmark" then we can have 875k tests for schools and 400k tests left over for other activities. And, as I said, you probably need 1/5 the number of tests you suggest in order to test every teacher every 3 days because its been clearly shown that PCR is more than sensitive enough to pick up very low levels of signal RNA even when mixed.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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TetraNitroCubaneThe DjinneratorAt the bottom of a bottleRegistered Userregular
Work has started lying to us about COVID deaths, so that's fun.
(we're large enough that getting a death notice isn't TOO uncommon. Before, they always mentioned why. Now they don't citing "medical privacy laws" that mysteriously never stopped them before..)
I specifically asked my management about whether or not we would be notified if anyone on site was diagnosed with COVID. It makes sense, because if someone with it was walking around, it's absolutely a certainty that it was spread, and the people in proximity would deserve to know.
The answer I got was basically, "No, we won't tell you."
We've tied childcare to school as much as we've tied school to education because a minimum of two full time incomes are required to survive.
Which puts private childcare in the favorable position of charging as much as possible while still making working a full time job only slightly more economically viable than being stay at home with one caregiver. They even price it in such a way that two kids with daycare often works out because of reduced rates.
It's not exactly a scam but it's part of the exploitive nature of our economic model constantly demanding more while slimming the margins.
Not really no. We have two-income families because women also wanted to work. (This also incurs a bunch of extra costs. Read The Two-Income Trap for a lot more on this.)
And childcare costs as much as it does because it's fucking expensive, not because they have leverage. Shit, childcare often works the opposite and competition drives prices down because of how price-sensitive most parents are about it. Childcare costs are fairly easy to understand honestly. Take whatever you think the salary of a daycare worker should be. Add fixed costs on top of that. Divide by the number of the children they can watch. That's why it costs so goddamn much. eg - Toddlers here in Ontario require a 1:5 caregiver:child ratio. That means a childcare costs minimum 20% of the salary of a caregiver.
It just costs a fuck-ton of money to raise children and we have historically just not done a lot to mitigate that cost to parents.
+6
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
We can't even get enough tests going to test people who are already visibly sick. We are not going to test a hundred thousand people every four days that is ridiculous. And because the federal and many state government don't want to and there is no meaningful incentive for them to do so because we can't do anything about it, they don't need to try.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
It would be dumb to start going back to the gym, right?
In January-ish, I joined a gym that's 5 minutes from my house, and in February-ish I started getting personal training. I'm overweight and have borderline blood pressure, and am nearing 40, so it seemed like a good idea. And I enjoyed going; I'd go once a week for an hour of PT and once a week to do a customized workout in between PT sessions. It was a little pricey but it felt good, like developing a good habit for once. And then the coronavirus hit and the state started shutting down.
I borrowed some dumbbells and a kettle bell and some resistance bands, and got texted a couple home-compatible workouts, but part of the reason I joined a gym in the first place is it's too easy to ignore that sort of thing at home. So I haven't really had any success keeping up a routine here.
Now everything is starting to open back up of course, though I think it's way too premature. My work is still fully WFH. My wife works for Costco and so she's been going to work for all these months. And I just got a text from my trainer that the gym is opening back up, extra sanitizing, limited persons inside at any time, yada yada. And it feels wrong as hell. I sympathize with the owner and the trainers (it's a small gym, not a big chain) who have probably been struggling to make ends meet while they have been shut down, but this still feels way too early.
It is ironic that going to the gym and working out might help lower my comorbidities but going to a communal place where people by definition have elevated respiratory rates seems like a dumb fuckin' idea. It's probably only smart for, like, healthy people to do that.
This is the first thing in three months that I've wanted to do that I know I shouldn't do. We have a good protocol for getting takeout, I help my wife wipe down her keys and phone and stuff when she gets home from work, we sanitize or quarantine stuff that gets delivered. We're mitigating our risk pretty well. But I want to go to the goddamn gym =/
Yes, it would be stupid, reckless and selfish to go a gym during this outbreak
+23
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
All of this doesn't matter though if we don't have a vaccine or some vast, durable herd immunity.
You can't simply can't re-open schools because of the threat to the staff.
As a substitute teacher, the high school I primarily work at has at least two dozen teachers over fifty (and that's with us just replacing almost a dozen staff who retired in the last four years). The other substitutes I work with, who would fill in those positions when a teacher gets sick? At least 75% are retired teachers over fifty.
During a good year staff will joke that they hope they catch a weaker disease like the common cold over something like the flu or a stomach flu, because schools are just constantly flooded in diseases.
Unless you are going to have every adult wear an isolation suit with their own oxygen supply, you just can't re-open schools because it will kill the staff.
Why is this argument valid for teachers and not for water treatment plant workers, electrical line maintenance workers or farmers? School is an essential need for children and for the parents of those children. It’s not negotiable. A whole generation is being thrown onto the trash pile.
The question is not and cannot be “will schools open” is is and can only be “how will schools open”
If every teacher needs to be tested every 3 days, then do it. If every parent needs to be tested. Do it. If we need to have conscription where women between 20 and 35 (lowest viral risk) are enlisted as classroom helpers with the kids while the older teachers call in via zoom to big video walls then do it. If we need to commandeer private facilities to use as extra classrooms then do it. Even if all we can do is kids going to school 2 or 3 days a week in two groups then DO IT.
Parents set up secret schools to teach their daughters under the threat of death from the Taliban in Afghanistan. They will do the same here if there is no school.
I'm guessing line maintenance workers aren't trapped in an enclosed space with 30 germ spreadin' machines for several hours a day every day.
Nope, but cable technicians are going into peoples homes multiple times a day to repair damaged equipment, plumbers are in peoples homes fixing toilets, farmers (espescially pickers) are working side by side gathering fruit and packing it. Grocery store clerks are interacting with hundreds of people every day.
Responsible organizations are taking steps to minimize exposure and minimize risk, but, if the cable is broken to someones house, the cable guy is still going and fixing it. People fixing electrical wires are still working in teams to get the job done safely without electrocuting themselves and so on. Because all this stuff needs to still be done to facilitate public safety and continuation.
And we know that children are not 'germ spreadin' machines for this virus. They are at worst equally infectious as adults, but from investigation it seems far more likely they are less infectious.
Have you met a human child? Do you think they are capable of practicing social distancing and proper hygiene required to prevent the spread of a highly contagious disease? In the time it took you to read that I guarantee at least 1 million kids ate a booger.
It would be dumb to start going back to the gym, right?
In January-ish, I joined a gym that's 5 minutes from my house, and in February-ish I started getting personal training. I'm overweight and have borderline blood pressure, and am nearing 40, so it seemed like a good idea. And I enjoyed going; I'd go once a week for an hour of PT and once a week to do a customized workout in between PT sessions. It was a little pricey but it felt good, like developing a good habit for once. And then the coronavirus hit and the state started shutting down.
I borrowed some dumbbells and a kettle bell and some resistance bands, and got texted a couple home-compatible workouts, but part of the reason I joined a gym in the first place is it's too easy to ignore that sort of thing at home. So I haven't really had any success keeping up a routine here.
Now everything is starting to open back up of course, though I think it's way too premature. My work is still fully WFH. My wife works for Costco and so she's been going to work for all these months. And I just got a text from my trainer that the gym is opening back up, extra sanitizing, limited persons inside at any time, yada yada. And it feels wrong as hell. I sympathize with the owner and the trainers (it's a small gym, not a big chain) who have probably been struggling to make ends meet while they have been shut down, but this still feels way too early.
It is ironic that going to the gym and working out might help lower my comorbidities but going to a communal place where people by definition have elevated respiratory rates seems like a dumb fuckin' idea. It's probably only smart for, like, healthy people to do that.
This is the first thing in three months that I've wanted to do that I know I shouldn't do. We have a good protocol for getting takeout, I help my wife wipe down her keys and phone and stuff when she gets home from work, we sanitize or quarantine stuff that gets delivered. We're mitigating our risk pretty well. But I want to go to the goddamn gym =/
The only places you could go that would possibly be a worse idea are hospitals and doctors' offices where sick people go on purpose.
It's not a good idea for sick people to go to the gym regardless of global pandemic but it's currently not a good idea for healthy people to go either. You can go weeks with covid-19 without noticing any symptoms, then end up in the ICU. Being healthy today doesn't mean shit about your infection status.
Set an alarm on your phone. When it goes off, go get changed into your workout clothes, and work out. Go jogging. Do bodyweight exercises. Use the equipment you've got. If necessary, walk outside, get in your car, then get back out and go do your exercise not at the gym.
I want to go do a lot of things but there's a pandemic going on.
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tbloxham has some hierarchy of viral risk demographics sourced from unknown places and holds that women, 20-35, are the least at-risk for either contracting covid-19 or possibly for dying from it I'm not sure which.
What baffles me about the whole schools-closed thing is that even states who are pushing for sending everybody back to work and out to eat at restaurants and shit again aren't opening schools. People having to WFH with a house full of kids all day is bad enough; how are you supposed to go back to work at a restaurant or barber shop or whatever with your kids home all day because school is still closed?
I'm not saying schools should re-open, note. I just find it baffling that everything except schools is re-opening to "fix the economy" or whatever with no apparent thought for how people are going to go out and fix the economy with schools closed.
I wouldn't even characterize this as an example of an "exploitive" facet of our economy so much as the reality that it has formed around the the assumption that the majority of school age children are eligible for public child care six hours a day. The most worker-oriented society imaginable is still going to stumble when that rug gets pulled and people simply can't show up for their shift at the hover-train manufacturing co-op.
I'm guessing line maintenance workers aren't trapped in an enclosed space with 30 germ spreadin' machines for several hours a day every day.
"But Forar, what about the kids?!"
I dunno. Look, this is under the working assumption that for a variety of reasons opening schools (on some level at least) is viewed as the lesser evil. Whether it's to protect parents who are not holding up well (much love and respect for those who are sharing of their experiences), or to provide childcare for front line staff (because a single parent nurse can't just leave their children at home unsupervised) or whatever.
The government should be doing more to provide for people in ways that makes this sustainable. They are not. Without a new federal administration, I don't see that changing, and we're still a long ways away from that happening (if it happens).
Maybe this is impossible for a whole host of reasons like 'hvac doesn't work that way', but Ceres' comments ties back to something I talked about forever ago (this thread? The previous one? They're blurring together); this virus and situation will take a toll on people beyond the actual infections themselves.
It feels like we have hundreds of competing priorities. "Save lives!" Okay, then let's do X! "But that will kill off ______'s" Okay fuck, let's do Y! "That will kill the ____________'s." Double fuck. Z? "That will kill everybody!"
The way this topic is discussed, it's hard not to start getting to the point of 'okay, fine, fuck it, there is no perfect solution, so what group of people are we willing to sacrifice? Because someone's going to bear the brunt of this, and there is no perfect solution, so then we pick. And not acting/picking is totally a choice, it just lets nature take its course and the hard choice isn't made but some group becomes the default/status quo option.
So, we do something, and some people are put at risk. Or we do nothing, and some people are put at risk. People are being put at risk regardless. "But it will put X at risk" is losing its value as a counterpoint, imo, because the existing situation is already there.
Will it put MORE people at risk? Or at greater risk? But are those risks balanced out against the possible good being done?
This is the exact numbers game people keep weighing out with the schools. Children can be a vector! There are unknown repercussions! Sure. But them being at home for the next year or two isn't going to be sustainable all over.
It feels like a never ending circle, and I don't think we're going to rules lawyer our way out of it.
Furthermore is the balance between not simply placating people with false hope, versus the real damage that can be done by taking it away. I don't have an answer to that, and it's going to be specific to individuals. We can't just Drop Hard Truths because some need or want to hear that, without recognizing that providing that straight up is going to harm some. We have a mass messaging problem where the same thing shared one way is going to help some and harm others, but we can't just restrict messaging to those who need to hear it in a particular manner.
I think I'm just going in circles here, but I'm trying to point out the pushing/pulling forces in play, and the cycle I've seen play out repeatedly across hundreds of pages of discussion now (and will surely come up again).
It's like a wave. Someone posts something good; it has to be pointed out how shitty X and Y factors are. Someone posts something shitty, a silver lining must be found. The snake continues to eat its tail, and then someone posts about needing to eat at Arby's.
vOv
This. The school that my son was at before we moved last summer already had to drop 5th grade (and have the middle school take it on) because there weren't enough classrooms and they had gotten to the point of having to conduct specials like music in places like the library. The school my kids are at now is massive compared to what I'm used to (most grades have 4 separate classes of 23-25 students each). There are at most 2 empty classrooms - 1 each for the grades that aren't quite as full and get away with three sections. There is no space to make the class sizes smaller, and especially not if you want to try to work in distancing too.
There are no efficiencies, technological or scale, to reduce the costs of childcare (or teaching)
Childcare taking up an entire salary’s worth in expense makes perfect sense since you’re paying someone to be you
Expanding the ratio of kids to workers is the only way to reduce the cost, by spreading it out, but that adds additional overhead so the discount is really small
Like my sister-in-law constantly complains about how much more she pays in childcare than my wife and I, and I’m like “yeah cause your childcare workers have to live in NYC and mine live in Columbus Ohio”
We can’t really reduce the cost, we need to do better helping people cover it
Or it could be subsidized by the federal government, or covered by health insurance
Like, you'd have more ability to rotate in and out of watching the kids, but larger family units increase the overall risk to the unit of someone contracting COVID, and probably everyone in the household gets it then.
If you understand what shitheads the wealthy are, it actually makes a ton of sense. Those fuckers want their peasants to toil away making their profits bigger and they've always had an issue with the idea that the children of the peasants could get an education and possible threaten their position or that of their precious snowflake children/grandchildren.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
If you mean extended to include grandma and grandpa, then it'd be pretty bad.
A lot of the ways this could work require 1000x the structure and discipline than families have.
Actually, yes. Bucky Fuller lived on polyphasic 'dymaxion sleep' for quite awhile.
(we're large enough that getting a death notice isn't TOO uncommon. Before, they always mentioned why. Now they don't citing "medical privacy laws" that mysteriously never stopped them before..)
Someone who stays minimally employed while raising a child is doing work. To our society it's not work reflected in short term dollars and a paycheck though.
I don't have kids. I don't like kids. I definitely acknowledge the importance of giving them an opportunity though and recognize it's a lot of work.
COVID-19 has our entire economic model willing to throw our elders and children into the wood chipper because stock market. It might be a good time to reflect on our priorities.
Until someone comes up with a better solution, you should expect parents to continue agitating for school to begin, because they can't keep putting food on the table if they can't work because they're now unpaid child care workers during normal business hours.
All the discussion about "well, should teachers be made to bear that risk" and "kids can survive without school" and "gee that Kawasaki analogue looks kind of bad" is just running into that fucking wall
Okay, let's look at this proposal.
I'm going to pick the largest school district in my state, the Seattle school district.
They have 3,745 teachers.
So you're already doing almost 7,500 tests per week for just that district.
But hey, we can't just limit ourselves to one district, so let's look at Washington state at large.
Washington employs 67,362 teachers.
So, with a test every three days, we are looking at 134,724 tests per week.
That seems super reasonable and attainable!
You forgot to include support staff, bus drivers, and janitorial in that count.
Its the only number I could quickly grab off of OSPI's website.
Labs are made to provide 'safe' airflows, but you can't really retrofit a school this way and it is very expensive because you're constantly bringing in fresh air, dehumidifying it, chilling or heating it, pumping it into the rooms, and then pulling it back out into HEPA filters. Think of your home with an aggressive thermostat setting while leaving all the doors and windows open. An old school building with radiant heat and a wallmount AC unit is not capable of this and can't really be made so. You'd be better off buying the teachers PAPRs in terms of cost and effectiveness. Since we're still at the "decontaminating N95s so they can be used again" stage of PPE preparedness, I'm going to guess there aren't enough PAPRs in the United States for all the teachers, if the nurses and doctors can't get them. We're keeping ones we would've thrown out for spare parts for the labs. Plus side if the US can make/buy them in time for fall and/or a second wave: the hoods and hoses are pretty easy to decontaminate for reuse.
Err, this is like a basic fact about the virus which has shown up in every data table, study and research paper for months. Women are at lower risk in every way of analyzing this virus.
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?:embed=yes&:toolbar=no&:tabs=n
Here is the data for new york state
Women in general across all age groups die 50% less frequently than men do
People under the age of 40 make up less than 2% of all Covid deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm
People under 40 are hospitalized in 2.5% of known cases (which is an unknown fraction of true cases), with women being hospitalized 10% less frequently than men (55% of hospitalizations are men)
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
We can see more data here where we find that those between 18-44 had a small increase in hospitalizations vs baseline, and a much lower number for their number of hospital visits. You can also sort by gender again for cases, hospitalizations and deaths and see that women have about the same number of cases, but then do better again on hospitalizations, and better again on deaths.
Everything we know about the risks from this virus points with absolute precision at one fact. If something needs to be done in society right now, a healthy woman between the age of 18 and 35 should do it. If you care about peoples lives, then it's as simple as that.
Maybe proclaiming women aged 20-35 as being at lesser risk than others should carry massive asterisks about “as far as we know”, and that any plan that suggests them leading the charge might be ignoring those asterisks?
A 55/45 split isn’t (to me) so overwhelming as to just foist that on women, let alone with “if you care about people’s lives” rhetoric.
Nope, but cable technicians are going into peoples homes multiple times a day to repair damaged equipment, plumbers are in peoples homes fixing toilets, farmers (espescially pickers) are working side by side gathering fruit and packing it. Grocery store clerks are interacting with hundreds of people every day.
Responsible organizations are taking steps to minimize exposure and minimize risk, but, if the cable is broken to someones house, the cable guy is still going and fixing it. People fixing electrical wires are still working in teams to get the job done safely without electrocuting themselves and so on. Because all this stuff needs to still be done to facilitate public safety and continuation.
And we know that children are not 'germ spreadin' machines for this virus. They are at worst equally infectious as adults, but from investigation it seems far more likely they are less infectious.
I don't know about that, you'd just need to coordinate everyone's job.
Our house has two kids under 10, two full time adults. I'm having a super shitty time because my partner's work schedule doesn't let them help with the home-schooling. Mine doesn't exactly support it, but at least it doesn't actively prevent it. If we had similar jobs, it would be a massive load off of me, no super discipline required.
Now let's say a close relation also has two or three kids. I could absolutely wrangle all five of them if that was my only job to worry about that day, as could any of the other three parents, we'd just need our four separate jobs to sign off on it.
The optimal solution is for everyone to have a spare room and an unemployed college student in the family, then pay them room and board to be a live-in sitter; unfortunately for us the only qualifying individuals in our family tree are less trustworthy than the kids they'd be watching.
If I ever run across a time machine, I may have a go at convincing my younger self that having a kid in highschool is actually a good idea, long term. For science.
In January-ish, I joined a gym that's 5 minutes from my house, and in February-ish I started getting personal training. I'm overweight and have borderline blood pressure, and am nearing 40, so it seemed like a good idea. And I enjoyed going; I'd go once a week for an hour of PT and once a week to do a customized workout in between PT sessions. It was a little pricey but it felt good, like developing a good habit for once. And then the coronavirus hit and the state started shutting down.
I borrowed some dumbbells and a kettle bell and some resistance bands, and got texted a couple home-compatible workouts, but part of the reason I joined a gym in the first place is it's too easy to ignore that sort of thing at home. So I haven't really had any success keeping up a routine here.
Now everything is starting to open back up of course, though I think it's way too premature. My work is still fully WFH. My wife works for Costco and so she's been going to work for all these months. And I just got a text from my trainer that the gym is opening back up, extra sanitizing, limited persons inside at any time, yada yada. And it feels wrong as hell. I sympathize with the owner and the trainers (it's a small gym, not a big chain) who have probably been struggling to make ends meet while they have been shut down, but this still feels way too early.
It is ironic that going to the gym and working out might help lower my comorbidities but going to a communal place where people by definition have elevated respiratory rates seems like a dumb fuckin' idea. It's probably only smart for, like, healthy people to do that.
This is the first thing in three months that I've wanted to do that I know I shouldn't do. We have a good protocol for getting takeout, I help my wife wipe down her keys and phone and stuff when she gets home from work, we sanitize or quarantine stuff that gets delivered. We're mitigating our risk pretty well. But I want to go to the goddamn gym =/
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
What the fuck
Can you please stop and think about what you’re suggesting
Actually, just stop
Women are people!
Not a resource to be exploited because someone doesn’t understand that death rates are correlated with lower education, not caused by it!
JFC
Especially if the "offer" is conscription. Cause that reeks eerily of some dark shit.
Now, if you want to offer people in certain low risk groups substantially more to do certain "at risk" jobs, and they're properly informed, insured, and protected, that's a different issue.
But requiring people to do said jobs, under threat of punishment, Potentially including imprisonment (else your conscription has no teeth)? Yeah, screw that noise.
That is completely reasonable and 100% attainable by the time schools should restart. By combining group testing (mix 10 samples, if positive, retest 5 mixed samples, repeat till individual case found) with follow up testing you can probably cut the actual number of tests by about 5x, but, even the "should do 134,724 tests a week" is completely doable. Thats 20k or so tests a day for Washington state, 874k for the country. About double our current capacity, even without group testing, even with more tests than you really need (testing every 7 days would almost certainly prevent spread through teachers in the schools).
This number takes us to the 'impossible and unatainable' level of testing reached in the imaginary and futuristic nation of Ireland. If we can reach the impossible heights of "Testing as much as Denmark" then we can have 875k tests for schools and 400k tests left over for other activities. And, as I said, you probably need 1/5 the number of tests you suggest in order to test every teacher every 3 days because its been clearly shown that PCR is more than sensitive enough to pick up very low levels of signal RNA even when mixed.
I specifically asked my management about whether or not we would be notified if anyone on site was diagnosed with COVID. It makes sense, because if someone with it was walking around, it's absolutely a certainty that it was spread, and the people in proximity would deserve to know.
The answer I got was basically, "No, we won't tell you."
Not really no. We have two-income families because women also wanted to work. (This also incurs a bunch of extra costs. Read The Two-Income Trap for a lot more on this.)
And childcare costs as much as it does because it's fucking expensive, not because they have leverage. Shit, childcare often works the opposite and competition drives prices down because of how price-sensitive most parents are about it. Childcare costs are fairly easy to understand honestly. Take whatever you think the salary of a daycare worker should be. Add fixed costs on top of that. Divide by the number of the children they can watch. That's why it costs so goddamn much. eg - Toddlers here in Ontario require a 1:5 caregiver:child ratio. That means a childcare costs minimum 20% of the salary of a caregiver.
It just costs a fuck-ton of money to raise children and we have historically just not done a lot to mitigate that cost to parents.
Yes, it would be stupid, reckless and selfish to go a gym during this outbreak
Have you met a human child? Do you think they are capable of practicing social distancing and proper hygiene required to prevent the spread of a highly contagious disease? In the time it took you to read that I guarantee at least 1 million kids ate a booger.
The only places you could go that would possibly be a worse idea are hospitals and doctors' offices where sick people go on purpose.
It's not a good idea for sick people to go to the gym regardless of global pandemic but it's currently not a good idea for healthy people to go either. You can go weeks with covid-19 without noticing any symptoms, then end up in the ICU. Being healthy today doesn't mean shit about your infection status.
Set an alarm on your phone. When it goes off, go get changed into your workout clothes, and work out. Go jogging. Do bodyweight exercises. Use the equipment you've got. If necessary, walk outside, get in your car, then get back out and go do your exercise not at the gym.
I want to go do a lot of things but there's a pandemic going on.