OT: LOCAL COVID19 - PART II... Seriously, local only

[Sens of Anarchy]

I don't think you'll find anyone who disagrees here. Schools should be open and the fact that they're not is doing an awful lot of mental health damage. But sending them back shouldn't be at all costs. What have we been doing to make schools safe for these kids and educators to be around?

Simply not enough.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

 

[Golden_Jet]

One would assume that just like here, Johnson is taking guidance from a team of scientists and doctors. Are the scientists in the UK wrong and terrible, while the scientists in Ontario right and smart?

We need to stop conflating science and policy.

Science is the data. People interpreting the data set the policy. Criticizing a policy is not being anti-science.

The UK and the US have not closed schools. Ontario has. The leaders in both countries have access to the same underlying scientific data, but they've come to vastly different policy decisions.

The US has, didn’t check UK
US alarm at rise in child Covid infections sees school closures back on agenda | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Sure would help if people used google before typing false data.

 

[DaveMatthew]

The US has, didn’t check UK
US alarm at rise in child Covid infections sees school closures back on agenda | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Sure would help if people used google before tying false data.

Some districts in the US have chosen to close schools, but most remain open for in-person learning.

A vast majority of U.S. public schools appeared to be operating as planned this week, including those in New York City, the country’s largest district.

Omicron Upends Return to School in U.S.

And there has been no state-wide mandate to shutter schools, in any state, like we've seen here in Ontario. It's been up to individual school boards to make decisions, based on local spread.

So yes, if you be helpful if people used google before spreading false data.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Some districts in the US have chosen to close schools, but most remain open for in-person learning.



Omicron Upends Return to School in U.S.

And there has been no state-wide mandate to shutter schools, in any state, like we've seen here in Ontario. It's been up to individual school boards to make decisions, based on local spread.

So yes, if you be helpful if people used google before spreading false data.

Yep thousands of closed schools, some closing before Christmas, some return later in January, some indeterminate.
There are more open than closed.

Better than saying NO schools have closed in he US , when that’s either lying or uninformed.
Nice backtrack though. Cheers.

 

[dumbdick]

Absolutely, but the same can be said about Ontario. Closing schools, restaurants and gyms is not a purely scientific decision, either. Nor is having a curfew in Quebec.

Countries and jurisdictions all have access to the same underlying scientific data. And they all have smart scientists and doctors. But they can come to vastly different policy decisions.

So saying that we shouldn't lock down or close schools again is not anti-science, and there really isn't any concrete data to suggest that Ontario's approach is better than New York's, or Florida's, or the UK's.

This sums up where we are pretty well.

Bottom line is there is no objective right decision for any of this. There is a ton of scientific uncertainty. Like for example, all else equal how much spread does keeping the schools open add, and "butterfly flapping it's wings" how much does that impact health outcomes and Healthcare capacity?

That's a really fundamental question that we can't answer.

Ideally you'd want to add up all the costs of each option (health impacts vs lockdown costs), stack the options against each other and make a perfectly informed and rational decision.

We don't have anywhere near enough information to do that. The people making the decisions have more info than we do, but still nowhere near enough.

And even if we did, we'd be sitting around arguing about how much one grandma's life is worth relative to the joy and health benefits people get from going to the gym. Wholly subjective valuations, even if science could calculate the dead-grandmas-per-gym trip tradeoff.

So again, THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER TO QUESTIONS LIKE "SHOULD THE SCHOOLS BE CLOSED".

It's just a subjective assessmemt masking a shitload of poorly informed scientific assumptions, personal risk tolerances, valuations about human life and health, and other junk.

That's why I find it supremely frustrating when people suggest that the government is 100% for sure doing things right or 100% for sure doing things wrong.

Literally no one knows the answer to to that. We'll probably never know definitively.

 

[Caeldan]

Some districts in the US have chosen to close schools, but most remain open for in-person learning.



Omicron Upends Return to School in U.S.

And there has been no state-wide mandate to shutter schools, in any state, like we've seen here in Ontario. It's been up to individual school boards to make decisions, based on local spread.

So yes, if you be helpful if people used google before spreading false data.

Discussing what the US does with respect to COVID policy falls almost entirely down party lines - so becomes a political topic more than anything.

Additionally, their hospitals are privatized so the government's only stake with regards to blunting the effects is how it might impact their reelection chances.

So in short, discussing what moves the US makes is pretty much a mangos to onions comparison

 

[Caeldan]

As a parent working a shift alternate from their spouse with a kid in JK though, I'm both relieved that I can control her exposure to some extent until the wave passes and/or the government sees the light and allows her to get her shots.
But it does suck that she's missing out on social activity as she is an only child, and we don't have a lot of adult friends with kids her age which we can spend time with outside school hours to make up for the closures.
And JK really is free daycare, so miss that convenience.

 

[YouGotAStuGoing]

This sums up where we are pretty well.

Bottom line is there is no objective right decision for any of this. There is a ton of scientific uncertainty. Like for example, all else equal how much spread does keeping the schools open add, and "butterfly flapping it's wings" how much does that impact health outcomes and Healthcare capacity?

That's a really fundamental question that we can't answer.

Ideally you'd want to add up all the costs of each option (health impacts vs lockdown costs), stack the options against each other and make a perfectly informed and rational decision.

We don't have anywhere near enough information to do that. The people making the decisions have more info than we do, but still nowhere near enough.

And even if we did, we'd be sitting around arguing about how much one grandma's life is worth relative to the joy and health benefits people get from going to the gym. Wholly subjective valuations, even if science could calculate the dead-grandmas-per-gym trip tradeoff.

So again, THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER TO QUESTIONS LIKE "SHOULD THE SCHOOLS BE CLOSED".

It's just a subjective assessmemt masking a shitload of poorly informed scientific assumptions, personal risk tolerances, valuations about human life and health, and other junk.

That's why I find it supremely frustrating when people suggest that the government is 100% for sure doing things right or 100% for sure doing things wrong.

Literally no one knows the answer to to that. We'll probably never know definitively.

I'll agree to the concept that no one knows for sure, and dealing in absolutes only makes people look closed-minded to new information amid all this.

But where I'm struggling with this logic is that we've pretty widely accepted that those who are not fully vaccinated are significantly more impacted by Omicron relative to those who are fully vaccinated. We've only just approved vaccination for school-aged children a month or so ago. Only 44 per cent of eligible Ontarians between five and 11 have received one dose, while less than two per cent are fully vaccinated.

​

So... do we know for sure? Not definitely with 100 per cent certainty. But we can form a pretty good idea that jamming a large portion of the most vulnerable among us in a communal area with limited mitigation efforts will end poorly, which once again raises the question: what are we doing, exactly, to make schools a safe place to congregate? Neither Ford nor his entourage seemed to have any concrete answers when pressed on this.

 

[DrEasy]

Absolutely, but the same can be said about Ontario. Closing schools, restaurants and gyms is not a purely scientific decision, either. Nor is having a curfew in Quebec.

Countries and jurisdictions all have access to the same underlying scientific data. And they all have smart scientists and doctors. But they can come to vastly different policy decisions.

So saying that we shouldn't lock down or close schools again is not anti-science, and there really isn't any concrete data to suggest that Ontario's approach is better than New York's, or Florida's, or the UK's.

Could be because their health care systems are vastly different, in particular when it comes to their capacity and cost to society at large. In Ontario, we were over capacity and doing hallway medicine BEFORE the pandemic.

 

[SENATOR]

Anyone had covid here? My whole family had this omicron thing, one got tested, we assume all of us have it. Daughter's circle almost all had it and still having it now. It looks like people just delayed inevitable with all those stages of hell. Look at Sens. I am sure they are just a slice of a society. All had covid, or almost all. I believe 30% in the city of Ottawa going around with omicron right now. It is just a bad flu now. And so many people are asymptomatic.

 

[YouGotAStuGoing]

Anyone had covid here? My whole family had this omicron thing, one got tested, we assume all of us have it. Daughter's circle almost all had it and still having it now. It looks like people just delayed inevitable with all those stages of hell. Look at Sens. I am sure they are just a slice of a society. All had covid, or almost all. I believe 30% in the city of Ottawa going around with omicron right now. It is just a bad flu now. And so many people are asymptomatic.

Have more than a few friends who have caught it this time around and, from anecdotal experiences that have been told to me, friends are having a much harder time with it than "a bad flu."

 

[Golden_Jet]

Anyone had covid here? My whole family had this omicron thing, one got tested, we assume all of us have it. Daughter's circle almost all had it and still having it now. It looks like people just delayed inevitable with all those stages of hell. Look at Sens. I am sure they are just a slice of a society. All had covid, or almost all. I believe 30% in the city of Ottawa going around with omicron right now. It is just a bad flu now. And so many people are asymptomatic.

Lots of Asymptotic and symptomatic, seems like reading reports from players or interviews, about 20% -25 are symptomatic. Reading the Leafs forum, a few posters in their twenties had it bad, one 20 years older had problems breathing.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Could be because their health care systems are vastly different, in particular when it comes to their capacity and cost to society at large. In Ontario, we were over capacity and doing hallway medicine BEFORE the pandemic.

Friend of mine a few weeks ago stated that the big difference between us and the US is that they have about 8x as much ICU capacity. I haven't verified that but it is certainly believable.

As such, they don't need to be nearly as cautious as us to guard against overwhelming their system.

Of course, you do still read stories about a city / county / hospital in the US being ICU overloaded and people not getting beds. But I think it'd be much much more prevalent here if we had their case rates.

 

[aragorn]

Friend of mine a few weeks ago stated that the big difference between us and the US is that they have about 8x as much ICU capacity. I haven't verified that but it is certainly believable.

As such, they don't need to be nearly as cautious as us to guard against overwhelming their system.

Of course, you do still read stories about a city / county / hospital in the US being ICU overloaded and people not getting beds. But I think it'd be much much more prevalent here if we had their case rates.

They also have 8X as many people so it makes sense.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Friend of mine a few weeks ago stated that the big difference between us and the US is that they have about 8x as much ICU capacity. I haven't verified that but it is certainly believable.

As such, they don't need to be nearly as cautious as us to guard against overwhelming their system.

Of course, you do still read stories about a city / county / hospital in the US being ICU overloaded and people not getting beds. But I think it'd be much much more prevalent here if we had their case rates.

Is that per 100k or per million people, or just in general

 

[Caeldan]

Is that per 100k or per million people, or just in general

Not sure if there is more recent data anywhere but per capita would seem that the US has roughly twice the icu beds as Canada about a year and a half ago (actually even that's not entirely accurate as the Canadian data is from 13/14 while the US data is from 18) https://a.storyblok.com/f/81332/1214x822/a240915cd7/intensive-care-beds-capacity.JPG

In general, any data I seem to be able to find seems to consistently point to roughly double the icu capacity per 100k for the US over Canada.

 

[Mingus Dew]

Anyone had covid here? My whole family had this omicron thing, one got tested, we assume all of us have it. Daughter's circle almost all had it and still having it now. It looks like people just delayed inevitable with all those stages of hell. Look at Sens. I am sure they are just a slice of a society. All had covid, or almost all. I believe 30% in the city of Ottawa going around with omicron right now. It is just a bad flu now. And so many people are asymptomatic.

I had it about 2 weeks ago. I had a lot of nasal congestion and a sore throat. Headache. No trouble breathing, no cough, no fever and no chest pain. Symptoms lasted about 4 days. I tested negative on 2 rapid antigen tests and 2 PCRs before finally testing positive on a rapid antigen test.

Fiance had it a few days earlier and she had similar symptoms however it hit her harder and she slept for the majority of 3 days.

Both of us were triple vaxxed more than 2 weeks prior to exposure.

Edit: I'll add that there have been noticeable after effects. Upon returning to weight training I noticed a decent drop off in strength and conditioning. Hopefully temporary but a bit surprising after the mild symptoms.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Very important message. Prioritizing the children. Make schools as safe as possible and keep them open. Its Sad .. our leaders don't think its important enough .

 

[DaveMatthew]

Very important message. Prioritizing the children. Make schools as safe as possible and keep them open. Its Sad .. our leaders don't think its important enough .

Good to see that message gaining steam.

 

[GCK]

I'll agree to the concept that no one knows for sure, and dealing in absolutes only makes people look closed-minded to new information amid all this.

But where I'm struggling with this logic is that we've pretty widely accepted that those who are not fully vaccinated are significantly more impacted by Omicron relative to those who are fully vaccinated. We've only just approved vaccination for school-aged children a month or so ago. Only 44 per cent of eligible Ontarians between five and 11 have received one dose, while less than two per cent are fully vaccinated.

​

So... do we know for sure? Not definitely with 100 per cent certainty. But we can form a pretty good idea that jamming a large portion of the most vulnerable among us in a communal area with limited mitigation efforts will end poorly, which once again raises the question: what are we doing, exactly, to make schools a safe place to congregate? Neither Ford nor his entourage seemed to have any concrete answers when pressed on this.

Schools will never be a safe place to congregate no matter what is done. Indoor filtration and physical distancing are a red herring with this variant. Every kid is going to get the virus no matter what we do as will the staff. All 2 weeks of online learning does is try to ride out the largest spike in cases as there would likely be a high number of teachers off with Covid anyway.

 

[YouGotAStuGoing]

Schools will never be a safe place to congregate no matter what is done. Indoor filtration and physical distancing are a red herring with this variant. Every kid is going to get the virus no matter what we do as will the staff. All 2 weeks of online learning does is try to ride out the largest spike in cases as there would likely be a high number of teachers off with Covid anyway.

This is where we'll disagree. It doesn't have to be that way if we'll at least put an effort into making it not this way. (For clarity, by 'we' I mean those who are able to approve enhanced safety measures and infrastructures in schools. I'm in no way diminishing the fact that we've all been doing what we can for running on two years now.)

 

[GCK]

Very important message. Prioritizing the children. Make schools as safe as possible and keep them open. Its Sad .. our leaders don't think its important enough .

Give the teachers N95 masks that are fitted and fire any teacher who is unvaxxed, then send kids back. Cancel JK for this year.

 

[GCK]

This is where we'll disagree. It doesn't have to be that way if we'll at least put an effort into making it not this way.

What you underlined is the harsh truth. This variant is so transmissible everyone will get it. There is no preventing it.