January 18, 2022

"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... Progressives were 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.... 'Parents who advocated for school reopening were repeatedly demonized on social media as racist and mischaracterized as Trump supporters.'...  Most progressives [now]... just want to quietly move on without anybody admitting anybody did anything wrong."

Writes Jonathan Chait in "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" (NY Magazine).

131 comments:

MikeR said...

Good article. Will Chait learn any lessons himself or do anything to prevent the next liberal disaster?

MikeR said...

Asking in general: Is it possible for sensible liberals, or sensible conservatives, to identify the major figures in their movement who made disastrous mistakes, and publicly note that no one should listen to them any more? How would that work?
On the conservative side, nominations? I happen to think Donald Trump would be at the top of my list. He did some good things as President, but that stuff at the end (and till today!) is out of bounds.

Drago said...

MikeR: "Will Chait learn any lessons himself or do anything to prevent the next liberal disaster?"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL (holding side due to cramps forming) LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

How about "NO"?!!

cassandra lite said...

Anybody who didn't know on Day One (after we'd learned that the virus barely affects young people) that this would be the case should STFU now. They don't get to pretend they didn't contribute to the damage.

Ice Nine said...

>'teachers unions, who were organizing to keep schools closed."<

Never forget these words. Especially, the next time someone tells you how wonderful teachers are.

Achilles said...

MikeR said...

Good article. Will Chait learn any lessons himself or do anything to prevent the next liberal disaster?

It wont be long before the WaPo and NYT's start running stories about how school closures were Trump's fault and how schools were forced to close because of budget cuts by evil Conservatives.

History will be rewritten as the need progresses.

Critter said...

Great example how the Left imposes bad ideas with very harmful consequences on society and when it becomes obvious just moves on without real regret of admission of failure. This is a recurring theme over time with other recent examples including defunding the police, bail reform gone mad, Russian collusion, and BLM/ANTIFA riots that destroyed peoples’ lives. This practice began in the modern era with the Great Society destroying black families with welfare rules that penalized intact families. The failures have been so obvious that it created the theme that one’s intentions are what counts. Thus, policies that actually helped blacks could not be good because Trump did them and he is by leftist decree a racist.

The Democrat Party is like a sorority where only the cool women belong. It’s driven by manipulative social strategies. The beauty is that it survives without the facts on their side. Only need to do a periodic housecleaning to remind women that membership is a privilege that can be taken away, like they are trying to do to women who don’t want destructive and divisive ideologies taught to their children in schools.

Achilles said...

MikeR said...

Asking in general: Is it possible for sensible liberals, or sensible conservatives, to identify the major figures in their movement who made disastrous mistakes, and publicly note that no one should listen to them any more? How would that work?
On the conservative side, nominations? I happen to think Donald Trump would be at the top of my list. He did some good things as President, but that stuff at the end (and till today!) is out of bounds.



I think we need to start looking at ourselves.

The politicians seized on this and instituted bad policies. But the primary fault in all of this lies with the body politic.

I remember at the beginning of this being in a fairly small group of people that actually looked at the numbers and that most of the people posting here freaking out.

I remember being called some pretty nasty things and being told I would never be forgiven.

And now that I am right about everything people want to switch gears and blame the politicians.

That in my opinion is not what needs to happen first.

PM said...

1. Agree with Ice Nine. Teachers' unions are the worst in SF. Thank Odin for Catholic and private schools, provided you can afford them. (Hello, 'underclass')
2. And where will they seat the three-and-four year-olds coming up if the five-and-six year olds still haven't learned counting or the alphabet? Fubar+

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Never take Chait at face value. He is a dishonest person who should be kept as far away as possible from influence or power.

And now that I am right about everything

C'mon man! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwoN-FvVEsA

rehajm said...

On the bright side they were exposed a little less to CRT, which would fuck them up anyways. so pick your poison…

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

"Thank Odin for Catholic and private schools, provided you can afford them. (Hello, 'underclass')"

Catholic and Protestant schools take in a substantial percentage of kids whose parents are poor - especially the Catholics. In states with school choice or voucher programs, religious schools take in even more poor kids.

Secular schools, not so much.

TML said...

Read it this morning. Stunned. And from a huge lefty, too. What a brutal smackdown. My prediction for 2022's most consequential political development is the self-immolation of the Education Bureaucracy and unions and their swing from huge net positive for democrats to a net negative

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I remember Scott Adams trying to start the conversation about the threshold of how many people would we willingly accept dying before dissolving our rights, privileges and way of life. It was a non-stater. The un-conversed, unagreed upon answer seemed to amount to ZERO. No sacrifice was deemed too great nor too burdensome in the quest to eradicate the ineradicable. A couple of things that constrained the possibility of having such a conversation.

1- It didn't help that this generation values virtual signals beyond proscribed benefits to the society as a whole.

2- It didn't help Trump was president. The distortion field created around his presidency fucked up many an intelligentsia orientation antenna. So much so Kamala went from, I'll never take the vaccine one day and not only taking it but promoting it the next.

David Begley said...

Will public schools, the unions and Dems pay any price for harming kids? Not much.

As I commented in the trans post, the Dems hate children.

rehajm said...

Just for fun I went back and looked at the early COVID Althouse posts, the ones where I remember discussion of the costs of isolating everyone. Pretty much the people you'd expect got it wrong, and are still getting it wrong...

rhhardin said...

I could have handled it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

On second thought... Maybe VP Kamala was not the best example to use in my previous comment.

Mike Sylwester said...

Apparently, Chait is trying to stick to a New Year's resolution to cut down on his drinking.

Big Mike said...

Will Chait learn any lessons himself or do anything to prevent the next liberal disaster?

Just as a note, no liberal should be be associated in the same sentence as “learn” or any variant of the word “learn.”

Yancey Ward said...

I scanned the article- did Chait himself admit to being wrong? It is one thing to write that the Left needs to do a mea culpa on this subject, but it would lend some weight if Chait did one himself.

tim in vermont said...

Never admit an error. The students failed the Democrats, the Democrats didn't fail the students. And it was all the Republicans fault anyways.

tim in vermont said...

"I could have handled it."

Yeah, there is a small percentage who don't need schools to learn, except as a way to keep them from being put to work doing stoop labor

Achilles said...

rehajm said...

Just for fun I went back and looked at the early COVID Althouse posts, the ones where I remember discussion of the costs of isolating everyone. Pretty much the people you'd expect got it wrong, and are still getting it wrong...

The discussions about how many people would die are the best.

Especially now that the CDC has quietly conceded that less that 100,000 people died OF Covid and the rest died with Covid and 2 or more comorbidities.

But you will still get banned from most major platforms if you say that.

M Jordan said...

The tide has turned. Progressives are in tiptoe retreat soon to full-blown panic fleeing. This is supremely satisfying to me, a person who said at the beginning and still holds that this so-called pandemic was a fraud. Will Republicans wisely take advantage of this moment to inoculate us against a future Marxist-hatched conspiracy?

Doubtful but upon watching the new governor of Virginia’s start in office, maybe. Just maybe.

Lewis said...

It's not just Covid where progressives let their virtue signaling lock them into a destructive course of action. Climate change is another great example where they don't let cold hard facts get in the way of their fantasies. I guarantee the consequences are going to get brutal before they will begin to acknowledge that maybe they might have been almost mistaken about a few completely minor but unimportant consequences of the policies they are promoting.

Kathryn51 said...

There are a number of teachers/education "professionals" in my extended family. In the summer of 2020, their primary thought was "I don't want to be sick" or "I have co-morbidities, I don't want to die". Never a thought for the kids other than "Kids are resilient". Of course, most teach in fairly lily-white, upper middle class schools.

The one family member who wanted to get kids back in the classroom is a principal - he knew the long-term consequences.

Kevin said...

Sometimes you need to own up to an error so it’s not repeated

If that were to happen, remote schooling wouldn't crack the top 10.

For example, today's Progressive Agenda is the resegregation of America by race.

Achilles said...

M Jordan said...

The tide has turned. Progressives are in tiptoe retreat soon to full-blown panic fleeing. This is supremely satisfying to me, a person who said at the beginning and still holds that this so-called pandemic was a fraud. Will Republicans wisely take advantage of this moment to inoculate us against a future Marxist-hatched conspiracy?

Doubtful but upon watching the new governor of Virginia’s start in office, maybe. Just maybe.


This would require mass deportations/military conquest.

They seek power for the sake of power. They will not stop unless stopped.

stlcdr said...

cassandra lite said...
Anybody who didn't know on Day One (after we'd learned that the virus barely affects young people) that this would be the case should STFU now. They don't get to pretend they didn't contribute to the damage.

1/18/22, 11:56 AM


Unfortunately, that's exactly what they will do. Democrats have very simplistic minds and have no concept for cause-and-effect. As such, they believe they are not culpable for the effects of their decisions.

Rollo said...

Isn't it all part of the plan to achieve racial equity by never teaching anyone anything?

RideSpaceMountain said...

Embrace the possibility that it was on purpose and it might make more sense.

Christy said...

Draconian costs to get to an unachievable zero risk permeates much of modern life. We've gotten used to it and no longer notice. All those regulations that generate unsustainable costs give us happy Brahmins and a growing underclass. Only when the victims are our children does the body politic notice. When the victims are other people's kids, we either don't notice or shake our heads regretfully but accept the price of a better world.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

I'm just glad we didn't have to live through "frontline" "essential" teachers being moved to the front of the vax line and then refusing to teach in person anyway. Now THAT would have been a sign we have crossed the tracks into crazy town.

tim in vermont said...

Link @rehajm, it's not that hard.

Carol said...

Swell. Who's going to teach when the teacher is out sick and all the subs are busy?

Or are they supposed to just work sick? I mean we know that's already happening. Should people not quarantine anymore? Some schools are so short they have to herd a hundred students into the cafe-torium to play with their phones while a staffer tries to keep the peace. Parents aren't happy with that either, but who tf is supposed to teach?

"falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students"

Hint: These students weren't doing well before the pandemic either.

Now you know.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Swell. Who's going to teach when the teacher is out sick and all the subs are busy?

Good question. Also:

Who's going to stock the shelves at the grocery store?

Who's going to repair the power lines?

Who's going to plow the snow from the roads?

Who's going to deliver the packages?

Who's going to respond to 911 calls?

Who's going to harvest the crops?

Who's going to provide technical support?

Who's going to provide medical attention?

Who's going to repair the roads?

It's hopeless!

Leland said...

Arguments like "indisputable" is how we got into the mess of shutting down schools. It needs to be relegated as some sort of logical fallacy.

Virtual schooling can be quite effective with some students. Universities have been offering such education long before Covid. The harm virtual schooling has really done is to the various arguments of the past for government managed public schooling. Among those arguments was the use of government provided public schools that gave an education that "left no child behind". Some students don't do well in a virtual environment, but no students were given a choice in how they learn. Those students that needed the discipline being in a classroom provides were left behind.

hombre said...

Progressives can’t own up to the error or damage as it would expose teachers for the cowardly, anti-science dunces they are and might jeopardize union campaign funds for Dem Pols.

Achilles said...

cassandra lite said...

Anybody who didn't know on Day One (after we'd learned that the virus barely affects young people) that this would be the case should STFU now. They don't get to pretend they didn't contribute to the damage.

I made this point often based on the results of the princess cruise ship.

This is a very typical progression where people slowly shuffle away from one group and pretend they never advocated for something when it becomes too embarrassing.

You can see it happening right here in the comments on this very post. It wasn't just the teachers unions and leftists advocating for school closures and distance learning.

None of those people are going to acknowledge this and really nothing will change until people recognize why they made the wrong choices. Of course they can't get into why until they admit they did which is the hardest step.

Most people in the beginning were scared and advocated for shutdowns and travel closures.

MOST PEOPLE.

And now we have people that want to start distributing blame.

The Venn Diagram for this situation would be entertaining.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Every teacher getting sick and being out, even for an entire month, will have a relatively minor impact overall.

Achilles said...

Carol said...

Swell. Who's going to teach when the teacher is out sick and all the subs are busy?

The only solution to the education problems we are facing is school choice.

If you don't want to teach kids that is your choice.

If teachers don't want to do their job that is there choice.

We shouldn't be forced to pay them to do nothing.

Mason G said...

"Swell. Who's going to teach when the teacher is out sick and all the subs are busy?"

Heard on the radio last week, schools were looking for volunteers to assist due to lack of teachers/substitutes.

Sweet gig- have the people who are paying your salary do your job for you so you can stay safe at home.

hombre said...

MikeR wrote: “On the conservative side, nominations? I happen to think Donald Trump would be at the top of my list. He did some good things as President, but that stuff at the end (and till today!) is out of bounds.”

I would prefer another, younger nominee. However, when evaluating Trump on his Covid performance one must look at who was advising him and the attacks by the media when he didn’t toe their line — think hydroxychloroquine. As for his ongoing complaints about the election, there is ample evidence of unlawful conduct by state and local election officials to cast doubt on the efficacy of the election. It is time for him to get past that, but I’m not sure many of us could do it if we were in his shoes.

cubanbob said...

If the memory of this sticks then the conservatives should campaign on abolishing the Department of Education and instead issue block grants to follow the child. And if they were to do that, tie the money to only the three R to avoid the state and local school leftists from forcing private schools in to their ideology.

Gahrie said...

I am a public school teacher in California, and I have been opposed to school closings since March 13, 2020 when my school closed and sent me home.

I've been opposed to masks since March 2020 when we were told it was "for 15 days to flatten the curve". It's now nearly two years later and I still have to wear a mask at work and when shopping. Masks that they are now admitting are nothing more than virtue signaling.

I had 12 kids out specifically because of COVID, and 10 other absences on Friday, and the kids didn't care. Why? Because the only people dying OF COVID instead of WITH COVID are people that were sick and dying anyway.

cubanbob said...

hombre said...
MikeR wrote: “On the conservative side, nominations? I happen to think Donald Trump would be at the top of my list. He did some good things as President, but that stuff at the end (and till today!) is out of bounds.”

And what exactly is according to you out of bounds?

Gahrie said...

If the memory of this sticks then the conservatives should campaign on abolishing the Department of Education and instead issue block grants to follow the child.

Get rid of the block grants too. Most of it goes to bureaucracy and edu-fads anyway. (Notice how CRT has replaced No Child Left Behind? There's a new fad every five years or so, and the consultants merely recalibrate)

tim in vermont said...

"You can see it happening right here in the comments on this very post."

Let's see the original words in the original posts you are talking about. I advocated for schools to offer early retirement to teachers who were over 50 or so and felt like they didn't want to take the risk, as I recall.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Jeeze Carol my grocery store cashiers came through it fine, what with handling all that dirty currency. Mask and jab worked well for them. Perhaps teachers should be required to wear masks all school year long though, those infectious kiddies. And students of color... just pile on, that's the way!

BUMBLE BEE said...

Maybe teachers should try bagging groceries?

Mason G said...

"Maybe teachers should try bagging groceries?"

It would appear that many of them don't really want to work, they just want the paychecks to keep coming.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Plastic straws kill Gaia, Chinese face masks not so much.

bobby said...

Y'all make it sound like this extinction of learning was some liberal failure.

Heck, it was a huge success!

They've been telling us for years that education, knowledge, and expertise are all ray-cist constructs that work to hold back certain populations. Our leadership has been staunchly supporting them in this claim.

Well, now we've solved that problem. Let's move on, in logical progression, to outlawing the hiring of people based on experience. Discriminates against the young, of course.

Then drive across that new bridge if you dare.

Rit said...

I remember at the beginning of this being in a fairly small group of people that actually looked at the numbers and that most of the people posting here freaking out.

I remember being called some pretty nasty things and being told I would never be forgiven.


THIS -- I remember the same and I remember posting that it was those telling us we would never be forgiven who need forgiving.

Scot said...

When I was a kid, my mother kicked me & my brothers out of the house, said make your own fun. Come back when the street lights come on. Does that still happen?

Achilles said...

Sarah Atcho, Olympic sprinter, develops Pericarditis.

That story mentions that Fabiene Schlumf developed Myocarditis from the vaccine as well.

Their careers are almost certainly over and their life expectancy just got slashed by decades.

A lot of soccer players having heart attacks.

The issue with these particular heart conditions is that they do not become apparent until there is serious stress on the heart which athletes tend to subject themselves to on a regular basis.

It looks like large portions of the population have just been exposed to these 2 conditions. The fallout from this is going to be quite unpredictable and explosive.

I predict in a few years these will be the Trump vaccines again and Democrats will go back to their skepticism of vaccines developed by Trump and all the people that pushed vaccine mandates will quietly shuffle away from that position as well.

Everyone is going to try to blame this coming wave of sickness and death on someone else.

tim in vermont said...

"And now that I am right about everything"

LOL.

Achilles said...

I also expect a lot of Conservatives to start blaming Operation Warp Speed for the problems the vaccine is causing.

The most vicious attacks on Trump are going to come from the Conservative tribe.

And none of them will remember supporting Trump's efforts to fight COVID.

And they will all remember their principled stand against panic and lockdowns.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Progressives were carried along by two predominant impulses, neither supported by 100 years of epidemiological medicine and public health, nor by common sense. Forcing children into a vaccination and masking regimen, both unnecessary, were also wrong. Taking billions in public funds to install hepafilter systems was wrong and a con, since teachers still did not use their classrooms. Disparaging their opponents as callous, when they themselves were the most callous of actors, was wrong.

Now they want to "move on" as if nothing happened. Progressives are dangerous to human life and other living things. Move on! As if.

Mason G said...

"And none of them will remember supporting Trump's efforts to fight COVID."

I distinctly remember supporting Trump's efforts to fight COVID, but I have never supported the "Warp Speed" thing, except for those who have the capability to understand that there's a risk involved and that they choose it for themselves voluntarily.

Bottom Line: There is no way to know what the long-term effects of an experimental medicine is going to be without doing long-term studies.

MikeR said...

@cubanbob "And what exactly is according to you out of bounds?" Van Jones called it long before the election. You are perfectly within your rights to dispute election issue, to litigate, to protest. You may continue to feel that the election is stolen, and lots of Democrats do about several past elections.
But at a certain point every candidate has a duty as a responsible American, to tell his people to stop. We lost this one. I'm not going to be President, not this time. It may not be fair, but it's what we're going to do. Wait till next election and we'll do it then.
Donald Trump was not capable of that. He bought into some narrative that the Kraken was going to come and save him, weeks after most of us supporters had realized that this just isn't going to work. It was pretty obvious, to anyone who wasn't locked in.
The fodder provided by this to the nutcases on both sides is incredible. Half of America are nutcases now.

M Jordan said...

“I also expect a lot of Conservatives to start blaming Operation Warp Speed for the problems the vaccine is causing.”

I’ll never blame Trump for anything concerning Covid. He did the best he could against a worldwide conspiracy. Many on the Right are now bitching that Trump should’ve fired Fauci. Idiotic and revisionist. Had he done so he would have been impeached and removed. I remember the Loki atmosphere of the early days, a full-blown Mass Formation Psychosis, to coin a phrase. Trump got us vaccines that proved ultimately to be therapeutics only, but that’s worthy a lot.

Michael K said...

Everyone is going to try to blame this coming wave of sickness and death on someone else.

I don't think we have any idea of the effect on children.I hope it is modest but no one knows. I have five grandchildren. Three are with my conservative son and none have been vaccinated. All three are athletes of varying levels. Two are with my left wing son and both have been vaccinated.

I hope we can eventually learn why early treatment was suppressed. A woman physician has been punished by the Maine medical Board for prescribing HCQ and Ivermectin. Amazing. I am reluctant to accept the conspiracy theories of RFK Jr but too many conspiracy theories have turned out to be correct lately.

Lars Porsena said...

After glancing at the article I went to the comments. If you think Chait has slapped the woke into regaining their senses you are deluded. They are going down with the ship on this. The lack of self-awareness and introspection is stunning.

tim in vermont said...

Covid also causes pericarditis, for those who think that the case is closed on vaccine safety.

https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2021/06/14/11/35/pericardial-involvement-in-college-student-athletes

I have always opposed mandates, and have always said that the unknown risks of the vaccine probably outweigh the benefits for people under 50, but there are real risks from COVID, and pointing at the vaccine without evidence that excludes COVID as a cause is must more shooting from the hip.

Michael K said...

Bottom Line: There is no way to know what the long-term effects of an experimental medicine is going to be without doing long-term studies.

That's why it made sense for older, at risk, people to take it. "Long Term" we're dead anyway. It makes no sense to inflict this on children who are at zero risk unless already ill with something.

tim in vermont said...

Of course, had they not mandated the vaccine for young people, we would stand a far better chance of knowing what the true cause of this increase in pericarditis is.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

On the other hand...

If you consider the earlier post about putting kids on blockers, blocking them from schools, what with school shootings and CRT class indoctrinations, maybe it all evens out.

While trying to mitigate one mildly insignificant contagion (to kids) we put the brakes on a dangerous one. Who knows?

Sebastian said...

"Progressives were 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."

Which was doubly irrational: zero Covid was an illusion, and refusing to weigh cost and benefits is cruelly stupid.

"The other was deference to teachers unions, who were organizing to keep schools closed."

IOW, politics prevailed, while progs postured about "following the science.".

"Most progressives [now]... just want to quietly move on without anybody admitting anybody did anything wrong."

Not so quietly: some of the same parents are now targeted as domestic terrorists. But of course prog privilege means never having to admit doing anything wrong. Check out the comments on the article.

At some point, the nice women may figure out that progs actually don't have their best interests at heart. Will payback be a b#%*h?

Sebastian said...

"I remember being called some pretty nasty things and being told I would never be forgiven."

So do I. I believe "denier" was one of the terms used.

Chait acts as if what he says is news. It isn't. Many of us pointed out the distinct risk profile of Covid and the ineffectiveness of the proposed "mitigations" and the lack of rational cost-benefit assessments and the needless harm done to younger healthy people from the outset.

wild chicken said...

"...Who's going to repair the roads?

It's hopeless!"


None of the jobs listed involve dealing with stupid and violent Title 1 school students and their gawdawful entitled parents.

Which is the the secret sauce in this whole debate. Notice where the teachers unions are strongest?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

When SNL is putting out stuff like this, you know he tide has turned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEu3YfxKhw

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Amadeus 48 said...

The Catholic and Christian schools in Chicago were doing in person classes through most of this mess. The public schools weren’t.

The public schools in Chicago are a disgrace. They are a jobs program for graduates of teacher training colleges with a big dollop union strong-arm tactics.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

None of the jobs listed involve dealing with stupid and violent Title 1 school students and their gawdawful entitled parents.

Cry me a quitter.

RMc said...

Progressives Still Haven’t Reckoned With It. Sometimes you need to own up to an error so it’s not repeated

The next time "progressives" own up to a mistake will also be the first time.

Achilles said...

Michael K said...

I hope we can eventually learn why early treatment was suppressed. A woman physician has been punished by the Maine medical Board for prescribing HCQ and Ivermectin. Amazing. I am reluctant to accept the conspiracy theories of RFK Jr but too many conspiracy theories have turned out to be correct lately.

We know why. The Aristocracy was losing control in 2019. Economies were exploding all over the world. People were escaping poverty. China was on the brink of collapse because Trump was putting the screws to them.

They needed COVID to be scary and devastating. That is why they added flu and pneumonia deaths to it from the start. That is why they added anyone that died with a positive PCR test to the death totals.

And they used the crisis to implement massive state tyranny. Australia has concentration camps. Europe is locking people in their homes. They are developing chips you will implant in order to be able to leave your house.

And they stopped all "non-emergency" procedures. More people have died because they got delayed and/or no treatment than died of COVID.

And they forced billions of people into Isolation. All of the secondary effects of depression and isolation are exploding. Suicide. Drug Overdose.

Notice that none of the State tyrannists like Biden or Merkel have pointed out China developed this and released it on the world.

In any decent world there would be a 50 million dollar bounty on Xi's head and 1 million dollars for every CCP head delivered.

But we know that Biden is on Xi's side.

jaydub said...

"teachers unions, who were organizing to keep schools closed.

Never forget these words. Especially, the next time someone tells you how wonderful teachers are."

People seem to be unable to separate "teachers" from "teachers' unions." My two daughters are nationally board certified teachers in Georgia and have been in the classroom since the start, except during the last two weeks of the Spring 2020 semester when the schools closed early for the summer because of the uncertainty of the virus. It is manifestly unfair to group teachers together with teachers' unions.

Also, I completely agree with Achilles about the people on here who suffered the wrath of people like Ken B and Florence Nightingale of Milwaukee ( AKA Inga) and, among others, the same state fellators who have been notably absent from the comment section on this post. I, like others here, analyzed the Diamond Princess numbers and came to the conclusion that the panic over the deaths (13 out of 2500 elderly ship passengers and 0 among the 1000 crew members)were vastly overblown. Plus, all the passengers who died had multiple comorbities and were already seriously unhealthy. Also, I analyzed the data from my home county (Guilford county NC, pop 360K) and determined that of the 109 who died in through July 2020 included Zero below the age of 25, two between the ages of 25 and 49, 8 between the ages of 50 and 65 and 99 over the age of 65, 60% of whom were in nursing homes and almost all of whom had multiple comorbidities. I pointed out the insanity of closing schools when there were no indications that the children were affected at all, then shutting down the economy for 10 deaths in the working age population. I specifically advocated protecting the elderly and vulnerable and posted as much on this site, and for that I was labeled a "Covidiot" and a "grandma killer" by the resident chicken littles. All I have to further add for the smug, narcissistic and ignorant assholes who vomited hate to anyone who questioned the shutdowns is "Fuck You."

Rory said...

"But at a certain point every candidate has a duty as a responsible American, to tell his people to stop. We lost this one. I'm not going to be President, not this time. It may not be fair, but it's what we're going to do. Wait till next election and we'll do it then."

What you're missing is that literally no one on the left has accepted the 2016 result yet.

gadfly said...

So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn. How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted? Empty office buildings did not shut minds from finding another way to run businesses but lifesaving did happen by keeping people apart.

Conservatives and liberals alike, usually cry when children die, except in this instance when Trump drives his mostly non-conservative followers to oppose anything he personally finds offensive. One child's death is enough to try to keep another from death by Covid.

The pandemic continues so the answer is go back to normal living? I don't think so! Since when is American normal the only way people get by?

Joe Smith said...

'Progressives' don't have to reckon with it.

Nobody will call them out.

Being a leftist moron means never having to say you're sorry or wrong.

Joe Smith said...

Rush used to have a great take on liberals which is undeniably true.

They never have to show results, it's all about intentions.

If they have good intentions, every (inevitable) failure is acceptable to them and their cult.

The Vault Dweller said...

I've always read that it is the right, and conservatives that highly value purity, and cleanliness moreso than the left. But it seems that overwhelmingly that it is the left that favors these strict lockdown measures and not the right. Does that mean the Left favors purity more? The constant purity tests surrounding wokeness and cancel culture suggest maybe it is so. Or perhaps it is something else and the right's inherent aversion to large government control outweighs their purity value.

Joe Smith said...

'How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted?'

That's the best you've got?

rehajm said...

tim in vermont said...
Link @rehajm, it's not that hard.


I’ll tell you what I tell the kids- do your own fucking homework.

Mason G said...

"Does that mean the Left favors purity more?"

"Control" is the word you're looking for.

For all the fake angst expressed over authoritarianism and "literally Hitler", it's the progressives who have mandated the more extensive lockdowns and restrictions. You can be nearly certain that whatever they accuse their opponents of is what they're doing (or want to do) themselves.

Ignore what they say and watch what they do.

M Jordan said...

I encourage all my conservative brethren to label the Covid response a Conspiracy with a capital C. Please, please, please, do not shrink from this word. It is a legitimate legal term (Mueller the God indicted 13 Russians on Conspiracy charges), and more so IT IS A REAL DEAL. Time Magazine even used the word to describe how the Left beat Trump in the election.

CONSPIRACY, CONSPIRACY, CONSPIRACY ... YES, WE ARE CHARGING THE LEFT WITH A MASSIVE, GLOBAL CONSPIRACY. Whether it was directed by Dr. Evil himself (whoever may be playing that role at the moment), Satan, or just the Hive Mind we have just witnessed a coordinated effort by a cabal to suppress truth and debate and shut down the world for what is about to be seen as nefarious reasons.

When we shrink from this term we lose. Call it what it is: Conspiracy.

M Jordan said...

Let me add the most important person in the development of this Conspiracy: Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. It was he who altered the course of history, a beta male who cheated on his wife, his own lockdown rules, and everything else but was able to convince the VIPs of the Western world to imitate what China supposedly did: Shut It Down.

He deserves a Nuremberg trial.

gspencer said...

"with the learning loss falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students"

Again with the POC and their self-imposed loser attitudes.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

gadfly said...
So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn. How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted? Empty office buildings did not shut minds from finding another way to run businesses but lifesaving did happen by keeping people apart.

Wrong.
1: The increase in average weight of Americans caused by the lockdowns has created a health crisis that is going to kill far more people than would have died with no lockdowns, and only having the truly vulnerable staying home
2: Covid is NOT a disease of the young. MN has over 5.6 million people. It's had 7 people under the age of 20 die with Covid.

Increase that 100-fold, and you'll still not come close to the destruction caused to children by the lockdowns

Conservatives and liberals alike, usually cry when children die, except in this instance when Trump drives his mostly non-conservative followers to oppose anything he personally finds offensive. One child's death is enough to try to keep another from death by Covid.

Oh GFY. How many children have been murdered in teh last 18 months because of the BLM George Floyd riots, and teh decrease in policing that came from them?

No one on the Left give a sh!t about the lives of children, other than their own.

The pandemic continues so the answer is go back to normal living? I don't think so!
That right, you don't think.

The "pandemic" is never going to "end". So, you can either suck-start a shotgun, or else get on with life.

Locking down is just suck-starting the shotgun very slowly

Achilles said...

gadfly said...

So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn. How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted? Empty office buildings did not shut minds from finding another way to run businesses but lifesaving did happen by keeping people apart.

Conservatives and liberals alike, usually cry when children die, except in this instance when Trump drives his mostly non-conservative followers to oppose anything he personally finds offensive. One child's death is enough to try to keep another from death by Covid.

The pandemic continues so the answer is go back to normal living? I don't think so! Since when is American normal the only way people get by?



Many more people have died and are going to die because of the lock downs than have died and will die from Covid.

Suicides and cancer deaths are spiking. Drug overdoses are spiking. Crime rates are spiking.

The Covid lock downs were particularly devastating for old people who were separated from families and suffered their last days dying alone. I knew of this happening many times.

Food is getting scarce in the US and shelves are empty. That means that people in poor countries are starving to death.

And this does not even start to cover the lower standard of living.

You want to try to blame us for the people that died of Covid?

Right back at you you piece of fascist shit.

And the backlash is coming. It is coming for people like you.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

MikeR said...
Asking in general: Is it possible for sensible liberals, or sensible conservatives, to identify the major figures in their movement who made disastrous mistakes, and publicly note that no one should listen to them any more? How would that work?
On the conservative side, nominations? I happen to think Donald Trump would be at the top of my list. He did some good things as President, but that stuff at the end (and till today!) is out of bounds.


Which "stuff at the end"? Pointing out that no honest vote counter excludes poll watchers from the President's campaign?
Pointing out that no honest vote counter stops counting on election night while there's still votes to count, kicks out all the press and poll watchers, and then starts counting again?

Or is just videoed receiving boxes while everyone's been kicked out?

Do you really live in such a bubble that you think the 2020 Presidential election was not fraudulent?

Drago said...

gadfly: "So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn."

LOL

When your entire wave of years long lies collapses, just as your years long conspiracy lunacies crater, well, why not make an appeal for future undefined magical make believe "analyses" that will enable you to potentially snatch rhetorical and policy "victory" out of the real world rubble your preferred policies actually created!

Gadfly is always gonna gadfly.

Drago said...

Gadfly is undoubtedly the worst Poor Man's *** ***** of them all!

MikeR said...

@Greg "Do you really live in such a bubble that you think the 2020 Presidential election was not fraudulent?" Scroll up.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I hope we can eventually learn why early treatment was suppressed.

Without even going into the Mass Formation Psychosis theory, which seems to fit to a tee, we can look back and see Fauci has a history of this. During the AIDS panic, while he was chasing a mythical anti-HIV "vaccine" (sound familiar?) and pushing expensive new antiretrovirals many physicians found that cheap old Bactrim worked wonders. Fauci had the FDA recommend against it (sound familiar?) just like like he did the dirt cheap Ivermectin and Hydroxychloriquine preventatives this time through. He didn't make $800,000 in pharma trades last year by substituting cheap effective drugs for the new expensive "vaccines" so he reaped the evil reward of corrupt bureaucrats. Almost every other country used them effectively. Early in 2020 a convalescent hospital had patients with scabies, so the whole ward got Ivermectin treatments. Miraculaously that hospital never had a COVID patient sick enough to transfer to a Med Center. Go figure. Mexico gives away COVID kits with Ivermectin and vitamin D and Z-packs to treat early onset of the virus. I'm still hoarding my last pack of Tamiflu, just in case I get it (again).

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Carol said...
Swell. Who's going to teach when the teacher is out sick and all the subs are busy?

Get more subs. Relax the Ed degree requirements, and let people who've actually accomplished something with their lives come in and teach.

Couldn't possibly be worse for the students than what did happen.

Oh, wait, you don't give a sh!t about the students, so that doesn't matter to you.

Or are they supposed to just work sick? I mean we know that's already happening. Should people not quarantine anymore?

I remember doctors and nurses coming back from treating Ebola patients when Obama was President.
I remember the total refusal by the Left to entertain the idea that people who worked around a viciously deadly disease might be expected to quarantine for a week or two.

So, what caused the change? Was it just that Trump was President,a nd therefore you wanted to harm America any way you could?

"falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students"

Hint: These students weren't doing well before the pandemic either.


And now they're doing much worse.

Now you know.
Now we know your'e an evil racist monster who hates children.

Thank you for clearing that up

Greg The Class Traitor said...

M Jordan said...
“I also expect a lot of Conservatives to start blaming Operation Warp Speed for the problems the vaccine is causing.”

I’ll never blame Trump for anything concerning Covid. He did the best he could against a worldwide conspiracy. Many on the Right are now bitching that Trump should’ve fired Fauci. Idiotic and revisionist. Had he done so he would have been impeached and removed.


Wrong. The day Fauci admitted he'd lied about masks because he wanted to "save them for health care workers" Trump should ahve fired him, and said "We can not have a known liar heading our Covid response. No one in the public will ever trust what he says, and we need trust to go forward."

Trump did a lot of great things as President, but he utterly sucked at personnel

Gator said...

"So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn. How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted? Empty office buildings did not shut minds from finding another way to run businesses but lifesaving did happen by keeping people apart."


Zero, this never affected kids, and this whole thing if you aren't completely stupid is a freaking hoax. 85 year olds die with Covid, not because of it.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

MikeR said...
@cubanbob "And what exactly is according to you out of bounds?" Van Jones called it long before the election. You are perfectly within your rights to dispute election issue, to litigate, to protest. You may continue to feel that the election is stolen, and lots of Democrats do about several past elections.
But at a certain point every candidate has a duty as a responsible American, to tell his people to stop. We lost this one. I'm not going to be President, not this time. It may not be fair, but it's what we're going to do. Wait till next election and we'll do it then.


Oh, you mean like the Democrats did in 2000 with Bush v Gore? Oh, wait, Bush was "selected, not elected." We were supposed to "re-defeat Bush in 2004"

Or you mean like the Democrats did in 2016, when they used teh known fraudulent "Russian collusion " bullish!t to try to cripple and de-legitimze Trump for 4 years?

Oh, have you talked with Stacy Abrahms about the 2018 GA Governor's race?

The election was clearly stolen. Should trump have focused on other things besides "the Kraken?
Yes

Should he have ever conceded defeat to the election stealers of the Left?
Hell no

Now, could you explain what kind of person expects the Right to always give in, but doesn't expect teh left to do the same?

Because if you had the same expectations of the Left that you had of Trump, you would recognize that "principle" is dead and buried, and not try to impose it on Trump

ALP said...

Time for my suggested solution to children in general: parents hand them over at age 4 or 5 to a Government Sponsored Child Rearing Center (CRC) that takes care of everything. The children are housed in dormitory type housing. Parents get them back once they graduate from high school for a few months, then they are shipped off to a university or vocational training center.

Had my solution been in place when the pandemic hit, children could have been totally quarantined within their respective CRCs, safe from the virus, not spreading it to anyone, and they would have lived life as normal - continuing their educational path.

So many parents don't want to take financial or other responsibility for their kids anyway, let the government raise them. It would be efficient in the way that Costco is efficient.

walter said...

Blogger tim in vermont said...
Of course, had they not mandated the vaccine for young people, we would stand a far better chance of knowing what the true cause of this increase in pericarditis is.
--
Consider artificially training a kid's body to create unspecified amounts/duration of systemic EUA Spike vs them encountering and countering it like any other respiratory virus.
Hmmmm.
Regardless, there was a long period prior to any jabs at all where we knew kids weren't at risk or "vectors".

walter said...

Spent a couple days last week working in a WI school system, again. I had almost forgotten how ridiculous the mask policy is in that setting. If you have any sense, it makes you feel like adults have completely failed them. But for photographic purposes, we had to police the damn things so as not to render the footage unusable.

Yancey Ward said...

Here is a comment I wrote on March 14th, 2020 in an Althouse thread when she asked how long "flatten the curve would last":

The British plan (still to be seen whether they actually have the courage to implement it) is based on the simple observation that large-gathering cancellations- i.e, schools, businesses, sports and enterainment events- doesn't do much to stop the spread because the people involved simply displace to larger numbers of smaller gatherings- pubs, movie theaters, restaurants, playgrounds, malls, etc.- which are just as likely to help the disease spread.

These are basically the choices:

(1) isolate the most at-risk for death until the disease runs through the rest of the less vulnerable;

(2) Country-wide quarantine for a month or two to stop the virus spread in its tracks- this is what the Chinese did and claim has worked;

(3) Do #1, but with firm suppression of the total numbers of infected at any given time.

The British want to do #3, but I suspect there will be little actual control, but they at least have some hope to suppress the maximum number of infected at any given time.

The main problem with option 3 is that it will require a long quarantine period for the most at risk- the longer this period is, the less likely it will be efficacious in the end analysis- people will tire of it and go their merry way and the quarantine will be more likely to simply break down anyway because the longer period makes the probability of accidental breaks to increase.

I personally think the most rational approach is the competely isolate the most at-risk, and get the rest of the population through the disease as quickly as possible without allowing the breakdown of necessary services like food production/distibution and basic utilities and sanitation services.

What I think will happen is that we will take the most irrational and damaging top down approaches and end up in the exactly the same place we would have if we had collectively decided to do nothing at all.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

tim in vermont said...
Covid also causes pericarditis, for those who think that the case is closed on vaccine safety.

So, Covid can cause pericarditis, and therefore we inject into people mRNA that will cause their cells to start producing large quantities of the Covid protein that causes pericarditis?

Is that the path you're supporting?

Richard said...

Thought experiment:
I read about a paper a virologist published--not in a journal--in which she reported that her experiments with one or another of the vaccines resulted in one hundred percent of her test animals that the germ cells were entirely gone.
I have daughters.
What do I do, whom do I believe, her or Fauci, WHO, CDC, and MSNBC or the virologist? I do some web searching. She exists. See her education, her present and past professional positions, etc.
Think of this in early 21, and think of it now?
Add in the increasing noise about minimal risks of the disease to kids.

Next step. I believed the establishment. My daughters reach puberty and prove to be eggless. Whom do I murder first? Me?

PB said...

yet those of us who warned it would happen were vilified. Those who did the vilifying should be ridiculed endlessly.

Mason G said...

"What do I do, whom do I believe..."

Ask yourself "What incentive is there for the government to care about how *whatever* affects me personally?" and make your decision about whom to believe based on the answer.

wild chicken said...

LOL. Oklahoma governor to dragoon state employees into substitute-teaching as covid surge jams the hospitals again.

Guess it ain't over after all.

https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/oklahoma-governor-kevin-stitt-to-announce-executive-order-to-address-teacher-shortage

Moondawggie said...

Chait's take on today's progressives made me think of a possible 1970's Gilda Radner/Jane Curtain Skit:

Emily Litella: We have to completely shut down the schools until the virus has been completely eliminated! Otherwise children and all their teachers WILL DIE!!!

Jane Curtain: But Emily, the number of healthy children who die of Covid once they are infected is virtually zero. And most teachers are healthy younger adults with no comorbidities, whose personal risk of becoming ill and dying are also almost zero. No different from the grocery store employees, police and firemen, doctors and nurses, and all the other essential workers who have continued to work during the pandemic.

So is there any logical reason to keep the schools closed down when closures cause so much damage to our children's education and social development?

Emily Litella: Never mind.

10 seconds later-

Emily Litella: We have to get rid of the Senate filibuster and eliminate carbon emissions immediately or PEOPLE WILL DIE!!!!

walter said...

"The teacher shortage isn’t a new problem. In the most recent school year, Oklahoma had 2,785 emergency teachers – teachers who aren’t fully qualified but allowed to teach if there’s a need. Ten years ago, there were less than 100.
“We’re just not retaining teachers,” said Robin Fuxa, Director of the Professional Education program at Oklahoma State University.
Fuxa is in charge of a program at OSU that trains new teachers in college. That program and others like it around the state can’t keep up with the turnover that Oklahoma schools see annually. "

StateImpact: Oklahoma Continues To Battle Teacher Shortage, But Pandemic Hasn't Caused A Mass Exit

Mason G said...

Fuxa is in charge of a program at OSU that trains new teachers in college. That program and others like it around the state can’t keep up with the turnover that Oklahoma schools see annually.

People are paying for degrees in order to get jobs they're quitting at a rate faster than they can be replaced? Clearly, the government is involved.

Narayanan said...

reparations for the children from teachers pension funds?!

MikeR said...

@Greg 'Oh, you mean like the Democrats did in 2000 with Bush v Gore? Oh, wait, Bush was "selected, not elected."' Exactly. As I said, if you had paid the slightest attention to the point I was making. But you didn't.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

MikeR said...
@Greg 'Oh, you mean like the Democrats did in 2000 with Bush v Gore? Oh, wait, Bush was "selected, not elected."' Exactly. As I said, if you had paid the slightest attention to the point I was making. But you didn't.

The point you were making is that Trump should have conceded the stolen election, even though Democrats routinely refuse to concede elections that they actually lost.

Even though the Democrats spent the entire four years of the Trump Administration refusing to accept the legitimacy of his victory, despite the reality that there wasn't the slightest shred of evidence that Trump cheated.

No

I repeat my question:

Now, could you explain what kind of person expects the Right to always give in, but doesn't expect the Left to do the same?

wildswan said...

"Especially now that the CDC has quietly conceded that less that 100,000 people died OF Covid and the rest died with Covid and 2 or more comorbidities."

It's important to understand that Covid is dangerous and has killed way more than 100,000 people. But it is also important to understand who it is dangerous to. It's most dangerous to people with two or more systemic diseases, vaccinated or not, regardless of age. It's somewhat less dangerous to people with one systemic disease. It is far, far, far less dangerous to healthy people and here age counts. The otherwise healthy people who died have mostly been over sixty and unvaccinated. This is the group, as I understand it, that the CDC was talking about when it mentioned "100,000." The point is that if you die OF Covid your lungs fill up with fluid whereas if you die WITH Covid your heart stops or your metabolism or your lungs don't function. A Medical Examiner can tell the difference and Covid deaths get reported to the Medical Examiner. So in my opinion the number of Covid deaths is pretty accurate.
People are dying of Covid but there's a disparate impact on different groups - and the impact doesn't sort by age or race. It's how many systemic diseases the person has and to a lesser extent whether they are morbidly obese. So you wonder if the one-size-fits-all mandates which the Karens and the Dems and the socialists like are smart policies. Those policies are extremely destructive economically and are ruining schooling for the children of the black communities in big Dem cities. And for what?
That's how I see the question

The Milwaukee Medical Examiner Public Data site was down for awhile but now it's up again and you can check my statements on the disparate impacts of Covid there.

https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/Medical-Examiner/Public-Data

Owen said...

Gadfly @ 4:16: Others have already jumped on your comment but it is so profoundly inane that I think a few late hits are warranted. The structure of your argument is dishonest because counterfactual. “If A had not happened, think how different B would have been.” It’s wishcasting. Fantasy. Deflection. Handwaving. “Might could maybe if only.” It’s exactly like Obama’s constant gaslighting: “Jobs created” but when that number was disastrously poor it became “jobs created or saved.”

Come back when you’re prepared to debate honestly.

Bruce Hayden said...

““ It's important to understand that Covid is dangerous and has killed way more than 100,000 people. But it is also important to understand who it is dangerous to. It's most dangerous to people with two or more systemic diseases, vaccinated or not, regardless of age. It's somewhat less dangerous to people with one systemic disease. It is far, far, far less dangerous to healthy people and here age counts. The otherwise healthy people who died have mostly been over sixty and unvaccinated. This is the group, as I understand it, that the CDC was talking about when it mentioned "100,000." The point is that if you die OF Covid your lungs fill up with fluid whereas if you die WITH Covid your heart stops or your metabolism or your lungs don't function. A Medical Examiner can tell the difference and Covid deaths get reported to the Medical Examiner. So in my opinion the number of Covid deaths is pretty accurate.”

“People are dying of Covid but there's a disparate impact on different groups - and the impact doesn't sort by age or race. It's how many systemic diseases the person has and to a lesser extent whether they are morbidly obese. So you wonder if the one-size-fits-all mandates which the Karens and the Dems and the socialists like are smart policies. Those policies are extremely destructive economically and are ruining schooling for the children of the black communities in big Dem cities. And for what?””

You are missing the point.

Someone is brought into the ER, bleeds out from bullet wounds, from a drive by shooting, but before they die, they are automatically tested for COVID-19 (because the hospital is financially rewarded for treating COVID-19 cases) and that is coded into their medical records. Note, the hospital likely used a PCR test with a high cycle count, yielding in some cases >50% false positives (remember - they make free money by testing high). The patient just died WITH COVID-19.

Yes, we really don’t know how often in the WITH cases, COVID-19 might have contributed to the death. I think that it is highly likely well under half. Very likely much more. In any case, the CDC (etc) was massively manipulating the data, for the advantage of the public health bureaucracy in particular, and the FJB Administration in general.

The other thing that you are glossing over is that age is not just a comorbidity, but by far the most important one. A 100 year old is better than 4,000 times as likely to die from it than a 10 year old. (See below). Moreover, the only kids who died had significant comorbidities, most often including significant obesity. If a kid could go outside at lunch and run around and play, he flat wasn’t going to die from COVID-19. We have 5 grandsons, and not a one of them was the least bit at risk, because they are all thin and active.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics (1/19/2022)

Data from 723,978 deaths. Age group was available for 723,835 (99%) deaths.
Age Group Percentage of deaths Count of deaths Percent of US population
0-4 Years <0.1 359 6
5-11 Years <0.1 231 8.7
12-15 Years <0.1 267 5.1
16-17 Years <0.1 270 2.5
18-29 Years 0.8 5,526 16.4
30-39 Years 1.8 12,756 13.5
40-49 Years 4 28,854 12.3
50-64 Years 17.6 127,060 19.2
65-74 Years 22.1 159,811 9.6
75-84 Years 26 188,163 4.9
85+ Years 27.7 200,538 2

Thus, there were 231 deaths for the 5-11 demographic, which is 8.7% of the entire population, while there 200,538 deaths in the >=85 demographic, which is 2%. The odds of a 85+ person dying were thus roughly 4,000 times that of a 5-11 year old.

Bruce Hayden said...

“So perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, there is a bigger analysis not yet made regarding the sending of students home to learn. How many more deaths would have resulted if the massing of thousands of students together at school, day in and day out, had been permitted? Empty office buildings did not shut minds from finding another way to run businesses but lifesaving did happen by keeping people apart.”

Best thing that we could have done was to separate out the K-12 kids with significant comorbidities from the rest, along with the teachers under maybe 40 without such. Put them all together, and separate from everyone else, and let COVID-19 run through the population. Then bring them back into society.

As noted above, the only kids in any danger, whatsoever, from COVID-19, had very easily identifiable comorbidities. Was he significantly obese? Immune compromised? Etc. Hence my point - if you could take him outside, and he could run around the field once, he wasn’t going to die from COVID-19. Practically every one of the 231 kids 5-11 who died from COVID-19 had known comorbidities, most often significant obesity.

RMc said...

What you're missing is that literally no one on the left has accepted the 2016 result yet.

The whole notion of "stolen elections" has now become normalized and mainstream. Now, everybody is absolutely convinced that the other side stole the last election, is stealing the current election, and will steal every election until the end of time. There will never be another "legitimate" president (or anything) ever again.

tim in vermont said...

I read about a paper a virologist published--not in a journal--in which she reported that her experiments with one or another of the vaccines resulted in one hundred percent of her test animals that the germ cells were entirely gone.

Yes, this is true, at the end of the paper she destroyed the test animals, none of them died from the vaccine.

tim in vermont said...

"Is that the path you're supporting?"

I have never once supported vaccine mandates, and have said I thought they were an especially bad idea for people under thirty, but people who are at genuine risk from the virus, and who are advanced in age have a different calculation. But I would rather have the adulterated version of a virus that causes pericarditis than the straight up full strength version. We can't know the absolution numbers on risk, it's not possible, therefore I can only use my judgement. Which is why I don't support mandates, as I have said.

tim in vermont said...

"Regardless, there was a long period prior to any jabs at all where we knew kids weren't at risk or "vectors".

Which is another point I frequently made.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

"The pandemic continues so the answer is go back to normal living? I don't think so! Since when is American normal the only way people get by?"

I assume this sounds like a good point to people for whom life is about "get[ting] by." The same people who are confused by empty shelves at the grocery, but think train robberies are an issue of equity and that the supply chain crisis can be solved by forcing ships to wait further out at sea for the port to clear. Who think it's a great idea to fire unvaccinated people during a labor shortage. Who favor laws precluding unvaccinated truck drivers from entering the country, but think it's racist to test for COVID in people entering the southern border illegally.

Richard Aubrey said...

Life is full of risks. The nation has been induced to pick one, against which to defend, all other risks are acceptable without regard to relative severity.

MikeR said...

@Greg "The point you were making is that Trump should have conceded the stolen election, even though Democrats routinely refuse to concede elections that they actually lost." Uh, no. Like I said. The point I made was... Well, if you ignored it the first time why wouldn't you ignore it the second time? The point I made was, he should have told his supporters to stop, once it was clear that Joe Biden was going to become President. Stop. That's different from concede, that's different from believe.
Importantly different. You don't notice that a line was crossed, the line that was only crossed before at the start of the Civil War.
I don't expect anything much of Democrats, since you asked twice. I expect them not to start a Civil War and I expect the same from you.

He himself should have stopped, but he wasn't capable. He didn't notice that he wasn't going to be President long after everyone else knew it. It isn't asking so much of a President that he not be that far out of touch with reality.
I can't push that point too far, though, since all recent Presidents seem to be pretty much out of touch with reality.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

RMc said...
Me: What you're missing is that literally no one on the left has accepted the 2016 result yet.

The whole notion of "stolen elections" has now become normalized and mainstream.


Well, only a moron doesn't do to the other team what the other team does to them.

The Dems lead the way, every time. But it would be entirely illegitimate for the Right NOT to do unto them as they've done unto us (see filibusters, and nuking thereof)

Now, everybody is absolutely convinced that the other side stole the last election, is stealing the current election, and will steal every election until the end of time.

When you block poll watchers from doing their job, you're stealing the election.

When you removed voter registrations for people who haven't voted in 8 years, and didn't respond to a postcard asking if they're still living there, you are NOT stealing the election, you're carrying out basic vote integrity measures.

Ditto for requiring people to show State issued photo ID before voting.

So, the reality is that the Democrats call "stolen" any election they don't win, and call "vote suppression" anything that makes it harder to vote fraudulently.

The Right calls an election "stolen" when Democrat voting officials violate the basic vote integrity rules, and then "discover" that they have just enough votes to "win".

There will never be another "legitimate" president (or anything) ever again.
Wel,, certainly not until the Democrats are willing to have honest elections

Greg The Class Traitor said...

MikeR said...
The point I made was, he should have told his supporters to stop, once it was clear that Joe Biden was going to become President. Stop. That's different from concede, that's different from believe

Ah, you mean the way Hillary told the FBI to stop pushing the utterly fraudulent "Russia collusion" hoax once it was clear that Trump was going to become President?

Oh, wait, instead she didn't, and Democrats forced through the illegitimate "Mueller" "Investigation" to keep Russian collusion stories going through the 2018 elections

Importantly different. You don't notice that a line was crossed, the line that was only crossed before at the start of the Civil War.
I don't expect anything much of Democrats, since you asked twice. I expect them not to start a Civil War and I expect the same from you.


Oh, you mean not to riot and destroy cities? And for teh Democrat elected officials not to shut down the police, and hold back the National Guard, so that teh Democrat Party thugs can riot and destroy?

Oh, wait, the Democrats did the exact opposite during the 2020 "Summer of Love"

No

Joe Biden is an utterly illegitimate President. The Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election, and probably multiple Senate seats as well.

There is no moral or ethical rule that can possibly require Republicans to accept an obviously stolen election, esp when the Democrats routinely refuse to accept obviously legitimate loses on their part.

I would much rather have a bloody Civil War that kills a million plus Americans, than allow Democrats to continue stealing elections.

If you don't want that Civil War, I advise you to focus on making sure the Democrats can't steal any governor's races or Senate or Hosue races, in 2022. A good place to start would be fighting to make sure that no Democrat "vote counters" can ever exclude, block, or obstruct GOP poll watchers

walter said...

"I would rather have the adulterated version of a virus that causes pericarditis than the straight up full strength version."
Hmmm. When injected systemically, repeatedly and invoking generation of unknown duration and amount, which is which? Still using a hammer based on original strain.
Trust PhiDerma and FDA's desitre to release documents over 75 years.
Maddy DeGara's family still awaits their callback.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

tim in vermont said...
"Is that the path you're supporting?"

I have never once supported vaccine mandates, and have said I thought they were an especially bad idea for people under thirty, but people who are at genuine risk from the virus, and who are advanced in age have a different calculation. But I would rather have the adulterated version of a virus that causes pericarditis than the straight up full strength version. We can't know the absolution numbers on risk, it's not possible, therefore I can only use my judgement. Which is why I don't support mandates, as I have said.


So, here's the problem, and it's a long running problem in medicine:
If 10% of the population will catch a disease unless you give 100% of the population a shot, then if the shot is 1/10 as damaging as the disease, you haven't accomplished anything by giving everyone the shot.

But the situation is worse here, because people who get the shot can still get the disease.

There's been ~69 million positive Covid tests in America, a country with 334 million people. In MN slightly over 5% of those who've had the shots, has had a "breakthrough Covid infection". Since America didn't really ahve widespread shot giving until April, that's 9 months since widespread shot giving, so ~3 months of the "sharp drop-off in protection after 6 months).

A year from now, we'll be able to have (if there are any researchers honest enough, and with enough access, to get the data and do the research), a chart showing how long the shot's "protection" lasts, and how long a "booster's" "protection" lasts. From that we should be able to reasonably extrapolate how many Covid shots it takes to prevent one Covid infection.

And then we can make an age related chart showing when a Covid shot's "Expected damage" is less than the "Expected damage" from not getting the shot.

but right now, we don't have the data to make a reasonable estimate