@churchface The other angle is that her questionable opinions and the way she’s funded make it morally irresponsible to support her.
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- Thread starter churchface
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@desperatehokie I feel like they've generally been right though? We know based on today's data that extended school lockdowns were a huge policy failure, resulting in no meaningful reduction in COVID cases/deaths among children while creating significant learning loss relative to peers in other developed countries where schools opened much earlier.
@hancha https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(23)00115-5/fulltext
Is every child infected with measles going to die? No, but we still try to eradicate that virus.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(23)00115-5/fulltext
Is every child infected with measles going to die? No, but we still try to eradicate that virus.
@011235813 Not sure what point you're trying to make with this comment or how it refutes my comment? Obviously eradicating measles would be a good thing, but nobody thinks we should prevent every kid in the country from going to school for two years in order to eradicate measles.
@hancha I would also add that where I live, taking away masking policies in schools dramatically increased cases…until the government stopped tracking cases in schools.
The lockdowns were necessary because we had no idea what we were dealing with.
We now know that it’s airborne. Clean air in schools through ventilation and air purification can do a lot to reduce all kinds of illness, and masking when symptomatic or when someone else is ill can also be a huge help.
But Oster describes more of a “let them get covid, they’ll probably be fine” model. So is she advocating for public schools getting those improvements for air quality? Masking when needed? No?
Then she’s not following the science, she’s following what’s best for her.
The lockdowns were necessary because we had no idea what we were dealing with.
We now know that it’s airborne. Clean air in schools through ventilation and air purification can do a lot to reduce all kinds of illness, and masking when symptomatic or when someone else is ill can also be a huge help.
But Oster describes more of a “let them get covid, they’ll probably be fine” model. So is she advocating for public schools getting those improvements for air quality? Masking when needed? No?
Then she’s not following the science, she’s following what’s best for her.
@011235813 I agree that lockdowns were necessary at the beginning. But it became apparent after a few months that the effects of COVID on children were not significant enough to justify the huge costs of shutting down schools. That's why the majority of the developed world re-opened schools after a few months - because they made a reasoned decisions based on balancing costs and benefits.
Schools in Germany/etc. did not make nationwide efforts to improve air filtration, and obviously had plenty of COVID cases in their schools after they re-opened - but the data we have today shows that health outcomes among children in these countries were no worse than they were in the US, and their educational outcomes were much better.
Schools in Germany/etc. did not make nationwide efforts to improve air filtration, and obviously had plenty of COVID cases in their schools after they re-opened - but the data we have today shows that health outcomes among children in these countries were no worse than they were in the US, and their educational outcomes were much better.
@hancha
But part of the problem is that that early data was based on very few kids getting infected, because schools were closed.
Transmission in schools also cause community spread. That’s why schools have had vaccine mandates for decades.
They also made those decisions based on economic needs, because most of us in North America don’t have paid sick leave, have to work or else we can’t pay rent/mortgage and feed our families, so sending kids to school/daycare was an economic necessity, and claiming (based on little evidence) that kids are unaffected or immune or don’t spread it was a convenient thing to say, because it meant that public health, employers, and governments didn’t have to do squat to protect anyone.
I’m definitely not advocating for ongoing school closures, but bring kids back and then letting covid rip through schools without better preventative measures was and is scientifically unsound and morally unjust.
Also, the CDC now has recommendations for the number of air exchanges per hour in room. It’s also proven that a classroom with more recycled air (higher CO2 levels and less fresh oxygen, and also more infected aerosols) results in students and teacher being less alert, poorer learning/cognitive ability, and increases spread of illness.
So like, if you want to advocate and support kids going to schools, you should advocate for clean air in classrooms, which most schools in North America do not have. Has Oster consistently voiced support for that sort of thing? With her platform she could make a huge difference.
I agree that lockdowns were necessary at the beginning. But it became apparent after a few months that the effects of COVID on children were not significant enough to justify the huge costs of shutting down schools. That's why the majority of the developed world re-opened schools after a few months - because they made a reasoned decisions based on balancing costs and benefits.
But part of the problem is that that early data was based on very few kids getting infected, because schools were closed.
Transmission in schools also cause community spread. That’s why schools have had vaccine mandates for decades.
They also made those decisions based on economic needs, because most of us in North America don’t have paid sick leave, have to work or else we can’t pay rent/mortgage and feed our families, so sending kids to school/daycare was an economic necessity, and claiming (based on little evidence) that kids are unaffected or immune or don’t spread it was a convenient thing to say, because it meant that public health, employers, and governments didn’t have to do squat to protect anyone.
I’m definitely not advocating for ongoing school closures, but bring kids back and then letting covid rip through schools without better preventative measures was and is scientifically unsound and morally unjust.
Also, the CDC now has recommendations for the number of air exchanges per hour in room. It’s also proven that a classroom with more recycled air (higher CO2 levels and less fresh oxygen, and also more infected aerosols) results in students and teacher being less alert, poorer learning/cognitive ability, and increases spread of illness.
So like, if you want to advocate and support kids going to schools, you should advocate for clean air in classrooms, which most schools in North America do not have. Has Oster consistently voiced support for that sort of thing? With her platform she could make a huge difference.
@011235813 For what it's worth, Oster did indeed write at least one op-ed in early 2021 where she argued for the federal government to provide funding to upgrade school ventilation systems. Her overall argument was that CDC needed to publish actual achievable risk-based guidelines that would allow for schools to re-open as soon as possible (which CDC never ended up publishing), and the federal government needed to provide funding to meet these guidelines: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/02/15/emily-oster-how-safely/
I don't think I will be able to convince you, but regardless of whatever specific school-related policies you think should have been implemented, all of this just adds up to the fact that public health decision-makers in the US did a bunch of stuff to prioritize the protection of the elderly and immunocompromised over essentially all else, and children were the ones who were most negatively affected by these measures. And now, with the benefit of hindsight and data, we can compare the US with other developed countries that did not make the same decisions that we did (and didn't implement enhanced ventilation or mask requirements in schools either), and this data clearly shows that the measures adopted in the US didn't reduce the impact of the disease, while at the same time significantly harming the educational attainment of a generation of children.
I don't think I will be able to convince you, but regardless of whatever specific school-related policies you think should have been implemented, all of this just adds up to the fact that public health decision-makers in the US did a bunch of stuff to prioritize the protection of the elderly and immunocompromised over essentially all else, and children were the ones who were most negatively affected by these measures. And now, with the benefit of hindsight and data, we can compare the US with other developed countries that did not make the same decisions that we did (and didn't implement enhanced ventilation or mask requirements in schools either), and this data clearly shows that the measures adopted in the US didn't reduce the impact of the disease, while at the same time significantly harming the educational attainment of a generation of children.