January 17, 20223 yr https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/progressives-must-reckon-with-the-school-closing-catastrophe.html Quote School Closures Were a Catastrophic Error. Progressives Still Haven’t Reckoned With It. Sometimes you need to own up to an error so it’s not repeated. By Jonathan Chait Recently, Nate Silver found himself in the unenviable role of main character of the day on Twitter because he proposed that school closures were a "disastrous, invasion-of-Iraq magnitude (or perhaps greater) policy decision.” The comparison generated overwhelming anger and mockery, and it is not an easy one to defend: A fiasco that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and rearranged the regional power structure is a very high bar to clear. Weighing policy failures in such utterly different realms to each other is so inherently difficult that any discussion quickly devolves into "Could Superman beat up Mighty Mouse?” territory. But these complications do not fully explain the sheer rage generated by Silver. The furnace-hot backlash seemed to be triggered by Silver’s assumption that school closings were not only a mistake — a possibility many progressives have quietly begun to accept — but an error of judgment that was sufficiently consequential and foreseeable that we can’t just shrug it off as a bad dice roll. It was a historic blunder that reveals some deeper flaw in the methods that produced it and which demands corrective action. That unnerving implication has a mounting pile of evidence to support it. It is now indisputable, and almost undisputed, that the year and a quarter of virtual school imposed devastating consequences on the students who endured it. Studies have found that virtual school left students nearly half a year behind pace, on average, with the learning loss falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students. Perhaps a million students functionally dropped out of school altogether. The social isolation imposed on kids caused a mental health "state of emergency,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The damage to a generation of children’s social development and educational attainment, and particularly to the social mobility prospects of its most marginalized members, will be irrecoverable. It is nearly as clear that these measures did little to contain the pandemic. Children face little risk of adverse health effects from contracting COVID, and there’s almost no evidence that towns that kept schools open had more community spread. In the panicked early week of the pandemic, the initial decision to close schools seemed like a sensible precaution. Authorities drew on the closest example at hand, the 1918 Spanish flu, which was contained by closing schools. But in relatively short order, growing evidence showed that the century-old precedent did not offer much useful guidance. While the Spanish flu was especially deadly for children, COVID-19 is just the opposite. By the tail end of spring 2020, it was becoming reasonably clear both that remote education was failing badly and that schools could be reopened safely. What happened next was truly disturbing: The left by and large rejected this evidence. Progressives were instead carried along by two predominant impulses. One was a zero-COVID policy that refused to weigh the trade-off of any measure that could even plausibly claim to suppress the pandemic. The other was deference to teachers unions, who were organizing to keep schools closed. Those strands combined into a refusal to acknowledge the scale or importance of losing in-person learning with a moralistic insistence that anybody who disagreed was callous about death or motivated by greed. Social scientists have measured the factors that drove schools to stay closed last year. One study found schools with unionized teachers, more of which were located in more Democratic-voting districts, were more likely to remain all virtual. Another likewise found "local political partisanship and union strength,” rather than the local severity of COVID, predicted school closing. It is always easier to diagnose these pathologies when they are taking place on the other side. You’ve probably seen the raft of papers showing how vaccine uptake correlates with Democratic voting and COVID deaths correlate with Republican voting. Perhaps you have marveled at the spectacle of Republican elites actively harming their own audience. But the same thing Fox News hosts were doing to their elderly supporters, progressive activists were doing to their side’s young ones. In a big country, there are always going to be crazy people at the margins. You can measure the health of the parties by the degree to which crazy ideas are taken up by powerful people. (This, of course, is why the Republican Party handing the most powerful job in the world to a conspiracy theorist is the grimmest possible sign.) But the Democratic Party’s internal debate on school closings was making room at the table for some truly unhinged ideas. The head of the largest state’s most powerful teachers union insisted on the record "there is no such thing as learning loss” and described plans to reopen schools as "a recipe for propagating structural racism.” Within blue America, transparently irrational ideas like this were able to carry the day for a disturbingly long period of time. In recent days, Angie Schmitt and Rebecca Bodenheimer have both written essays recounting the disorienting and lonely experience they had watching their friends and putative political allies denounce them for supporting a return to in-person learning. Bodenheimer’s account is especially vivid: "Parents who advocated for school reopening were repeatedly demonized on social media as racist and mischaracterized as Trump supporters. Members of the parent group I helped lead were consistently attacked on Twitter and Facebook by two Oakland moms with ties to the teachers union. They labeled advocates’ calls for schools reopening "white supremacy,” called us "Karens,” and even bizarrely claimed we had allied ourselves with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s transphobic agenda.” The fevered climate of opinion ruled out cost-benefit thinking and instead framed the question as a simple moral binary, with the well-being of public schoolchildren somehow excluded from the calculus. Social scientists like Emily Oster who spoke out about the evidence on schools and COVID became hate targets on the left, an intimidating spectacle for other social scientists who might have thought about speaking up. The failed experiment finally came to an end in the fall of 2021. (A handful of districts have shut down during the Omicron wave, but this is mainly a temporary response to staff shortages rather than another effort to stop community spread.) The Chicago Teachers Union, one of the more radical unions, did stage a strike, but it was met with firm opposition from Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and ended quickly. But the source of the sentiment has not disappeared. The Democratic Party’s left-wing vanguard is continuing to flay critics of school closings as neoliberal ghouls carrying out the bidding of the billionaire class. Bernie Sanders aide Elizabeth Pancotti claims that "the loudest and most ardent supporters of keeping schools oepn [sic] (& those who dismiss legit concerns about teacher/child health risks) are largely those with remote work options/resources for alternative child care arrangements,” as if only some selfish motive could explain the desire of an American liberal to maintain public education. A story in Vice praises a student walkout in New York as a national model. The ideas that produced the catastrophic school-closing era may have suffered a setback, but its strongest advocates hardly feel chastened. Whether educational achievement can or should be measured at all remains a very live debate within the left. Most progressives aren’t insisting on refighting the school closing wars. They just want to quietly move on without anybody admitting anybody did anything wrong. One of the grievances that critics of the Iraq War nursed after the debacle became clear was the failure of the political Establishment to draw any lessons broader than "don’t invade Iraq without an occupation plan.” Their anger was not unfounded. The catastrophe happened in part because the structure of the debate allowed too many uninformed hawkish voices and ignored too many informed dovish ones. (As a chastened Iraq War supporter myself, I’ve grown far more cautious about wading into foreign-policy debates for which I lack adequate understanding.) Many liberals are complaining that the recent debates over short-term closings are creating a hysterical overreaction from people still angry about the 2020-21 school shutdown. Perhaps a first step to building trust that we are not planning to repeat a catastrophic mistake is to admit the mistake in the first place.
January 17, 20223 yr 41 minutes ago, The_Omega said: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/progressives-must-reckon-with-the-school-closing-catastrophe.html Anytime I tried to discuss this topic in here I was crucified. This type of reflection will extend to mask use in schools for the young kids under 10 as well down the road. Kids have paid a price. No doubt this post will get a Moss smiley and maybe a few other hater type responses.
January 17, 20223 yr Quote Nicanor Austriaco, a Filipino-American molecular biologist, also believes Covid may slowly be killing itself off with the milder Omicron variant. During a Town Hall meeting, last week, he said that those infected with Omicron will have antibodies that "will protect them against Delta, Gamma, Beta, Alpha and D614G” variants. "This variant is the beginning of the end of the pandemic that has crippled the global community for two years already,” Austriaco told The PhilStar newspaper last week. Bad News for Viruses and Tyrants I guess the psychopaths will have to find some other rationale to brutalize their fellow men.
January 17, 20223 yr 31 minutes ago, Abracadabra said: Bad News for Viruses and Tyrants I guess the psychopaths will have to find some other rationale to brutalize their fellow men. I'm certain the kung flu isn't the only virus they've been playing with behind closed doors
January 18, 20223 yr 7 hours ago, lynched1 said: I'm certain the kung flu isn't the only virus they've been playing with behind closed doors Again, Who is they? In your mind, is it bill gates, Fauci, and the ceo of Pfizer huddled in a lab with a microscope trying to concoct the next mutation? In your mind, are you tucker Carlson who has stumbled upon this secret lab and you see that it’s your civic duty to out these commie **** who aim to control your every thought with their next virus? If so You need to talk to your weed guy because he’s Fing your crap up.
January 18, 20223 yr 6 minutes ago, Kz! said: Seems like a big deal. Those under 2 year old kids have a higher IQ than you. Seems right to me. 3 minutes ago, Kz! said: And he lived to tell about it. Weird. Guess the vaccine works.
January 18, 20223 yr Just now, DBW said: Those under 2 year old kids have a higher IQ than you. Seems right to me. Another great zinger from fat and old.
January 18, 20223 yr Whelp, Denmark just destroyed it's daily case record by over 5K the previous record, set just one day earlier. Quote Denmark has today smashed its daily corona infection record with confirmation from Statens Serum Institut that the number totalled 33,493 for the 24 hours up until 14:00 today. It is nearly 5,000 more than Monday’s total – the previous record total. It means that 1.15 million people have been infected at least once – just short of a fifth of the entire population. Healthcare system in good health, though While the Health Ministry confirmed that the Reproduction Rate has grown from 0.9 to 1.2 over the last week, there are "reasons for optimism” as the healthcare system is still a long way off being under extreme pressure. The number of people in hospital would need to approach 950 for it to buckle, but for now the count remains stable at 810 – just eight more than yesterday. Of these, barely 5 percent are in intensive care (49) while 29 are on respirators. A further 14 people have died. Region Zealand, meanwhile, is cutting down on the number of beds reserved for corona patients due to a lack of demand. And yet, one region is cutting beds reserved for corona patients due to a lack of demand. This is the chilling future that awaits the US as Omicron takes over. Again, it's over guys, time to get back to normal life and end the hysteria.
January 18, 20223 yr 2 hours ago, Kz! said: Seems like a big deal. Fake News. It's not possible for kids to be getting any dumber than they already are. We hit rock bottom about 10 years ago.
January 18, 20223 yr 3 hours ago, Kz! said: Seems like a big deal. The kids referenced would be less than 2 years old, so they're not even preschool age yet.
January 18, 20223 yr 8 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said: The kids referenced would be less than 2 years old, so they're not even preschool age yet. Yes. Damn, that's a bummer. Hope the fifth dose fairs better.
January 18, 20223 yr 2 minutes ago, Kz! said: Damn, that's a bummer. Hope the fifth dose fairs better. The need for an Omicron-targeted dose is clear.
January 18, 20223 yr 1 minute ago, EaglesRocker97 said: The need for an Omicron-targeted dose is clear. Is it, though?
January 18, 20223 yr 26 minutes ago, Kz! said: Yes. Damn, that's a bummer. Hope the fifth dose fairs better.
January 18, 20223 yr FYI, the site to order 4 free tests went live a day early (good enough for gov work), you can go in and put an order in now.
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