Coronavirus: COVID-19

[Vertigo 7]

Whose fault is it for turning common sense safety into politics, hmm?

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Whose fault is it for turning common sense safety into politics, hmm?

It's Greek's fault. Democracy, letting everyone vote, has the consequence of putting on the table literally every argument. Yet, it's still the best way to choose rulers.

On school opening: in Italy parents have to test their children temperature before sending them to school and keeping them at home in the case of a temperature > 37.5 C. But nobody does that, nobody can keep their children at home, unguarded. So, they just send them anyway, giving them some antipyretic to make the fever go down.

[CBJ]

Reading mainstream news it feels like the narrative want me to believe that the "evil goverments" just want to force kids back to school despite risk for nothing more than a big "LOL".

You must be reading different "mainstream news" to me then, because I've not seen any news saying anything remotely resembling that. Nor have I seen anyone argue the subject who didn't already understand and accept the two "points" you made below that. Teachers, better than anyone, understand the importance of what they do for children, and the impact it has on parents' ability to work. They deal with both every day, and people pointing these things out as though they were some remarkable insight are either insulting teachers' intelligence and professionalism, or trying to use emotive arguments to force an agenda (I'm looking at you, Gavin Williamson).

I suggest there is one very simple reason why you see a lack of "balance". You are in the US, where apparently everything is fair game for use as a political pawn, and there is level of ignorance (some of it wilful) regarding science among the general population that is, frankly, shocking to the rest of the developed world. You have politicians deliberately down-playing the virus, actively spreading misinformation, and forcing people back to work without appropriate levels of protection. You also have large numbers of people refusing to take simple, harmless measures to protect themselves and others, and the virus spreading widely as a result, not to mention a healthcare system that means people who do get badly sick risk bankruptcy even if they do survive. And then you wonder why some of the more intelligent, rational members of your society object when they are asked to go into an environment that is a well-known germ-factory, without appropriate protective measures, risking their health and lives, and those of their families. Top that off with a news media that picks and chooses its content based on its political affiliation, and you're pretty much guaranteed to see a polarised and distorted picture. Where, exactly, is the "balance" going to come from in that situation?

Contrast that with the UK. The response to the pandemic has been far from perfect, but the government has firmly given its vocal backing to "the science", even if it hasn't always acted perfectly on that science. The opposition parties have largely supported the government's actions, reserving their objections to points of detail where they don't think the government has gone far enough. The mainstream media has, in general, behaved responsibly, reporting the science as well as the government advice, and neither playing down the situation nor stirring up panic. And people, with relatively few exceptions, have understood the severity of the situation and dealt with it. Yes, there have been idiots, and in general people have started to "relax" a bit too much, but there is no mass movement to ignore the problem or deny its existence. The result? Schools have gone back here without much fuss. They have taken what measures they can, and everyone has been made aware of what they need to do to try and keep the schools open (whether or not they actually do those things remains to be seen). Teachers are nervous, but generally accept that schools need to be open, and there is relatively little media "hype" about the subject.

[matthewfarmery]

Wasn't sure where to post this, as it covers both the virus AND Trump.

But anyway, this is a very inhuman thing for the president to say, when he suggested the country’s fatality numbers would be far lower “if you take the blue states out”.

The thing is, for the top 15 states, 8 are democrat controlled, 7 are republican.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 64383.html

What a silly and utter disrespectful thing to even say.

Oh yes, to put things back on topic,

Trump also said, that the CDC director ‘confused’ over 2021 vaccine timetable. As the director said, there won't be a cure until late next year.

I guess its Trump who is confused. as he still trying to make people believe that the virus will vanish soon, and there will be a cure soon too.

But anyway, if there is a cure, it will probably be a while yet.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Testing time for a working and safe vaccine is at least 12-18 months, so a working AND safe vaccine won't be on the market until at least next summer.

Anyway, Trump was right when he said there wasn't going to be a "second wave", because the first one never stopped in the country he's responsible for.
Crossovers between Trump and Covid threads are inevitable.

[Mightysword]

... chooses its content based on its political affiliation, and you're pretty much guaranteed to see a polarised and distorted picture. Where, exactly, is the "balance" going to come from in that situation?

No where, and that's exactly my point. If anyone do a search of the posts I made with "distortion" as the keywords will see it has come up several times the last 4 years. For the record I understand and agree with what you said above, I'm merely pointing that out, probably more often than some people would like, but it's my 'chore'.

Contrast that with the UK...

Than I'm happy for the UK, because the US definitely is not the same. As a moderator you probably had said something like this many times: discuss the post, not the posters. And I believe the point of that is so that every action/statement can be discussed on its own merit without the prejudice one may have about a poster. And the "discussions" in the US is being carried out the opposite, often it's not about what is said, but who said it. As @Registerme mention, most issue and decision regarding COVID-19 has a 2nd or 3rd order costs with them and there is no such thing as a perfect solution on most issue right now.

The point here is this: I'm not asking for an agreement, but rather acknowledgement. If there are multiple angles regarding an issue, people may weight each angle differently and ultimately decide on which is the correct solution. However, even with that disagreement I wish people can still acknowledge the other angles. It may not help you agree, but it helps you understand. But that's not happening at least in the mainstream media, they're polarized and hyped up to the extreme, not only people don't want to acknowledge the other angles, they also give themselves the liberty to assign whatever degenerate motives they have on those disagree in place of respecting that other angle. And whenever someone want to bring up an addition point to make a more completely picture, it's often dismissed or met with open hostility. Because objective point of view can not be used as a political beating stick.

I can agree with every points someone make, that doesn't mean I agree with their conclusion, often because it only contains half of the truth. And that's what the media specialize in - half truth. For example, when this school year start you can get 10 headlines a day about some location under-prepared and screw up, some specific teacher union refusing to come back to teach because they feel their specific district is not preparing well enough. There is almost zero news talking about the "necessity" for school re-opening, or highlighting the fact that the "majority" of faculties and school administrator have been working around the clock in the summer to mitigate the issue, or interviewing students concern about their future concern. That "majority" got no mention, because the "minority" of hot spot is what can be used as the beating stick on anyone who advocate for re-opening school. While it's not about education itself, I believe you yourself had this exact same conversation with someone else in this very thread.


Regarding your point about science, again I don't agree that's the issue. I feel your view to it is very linear, as if people will do exactly what they're taught. Do someone steal because they don't think it's wrong? Or do they know it's wrong and do it anyway? I would like to point out that many countries probably have a lower level science education than the US, but are not screwing up the same way we are. Hell, I remember as a kid going to school in Vietnam, I somehow doubt my science teachers actually had the qualification on the subject matter, and the country was generally poor that we hardly had adequate facilities for demonstration. Yet, "my" generation of Vietnamese sure as hell take Covid-19 very seriously. Ultimately, people choose what they want to believe, more often or not depending on what convenience them. And right now the US is so polarized that it acts as a override on objective thinking - and I'll say it again - you don't need to have a good science education to be able to think objectively.

[CBJ]

There is almost zero news talking about the "necessity" for school re-opening, or highlighting the fact that the "majority" of faculties and school administrator have been working around the clock in the summer to mitigate the issue, or interviewing students concern about their future concern. That "majority" got no mention, because the "minority" of hot spot is what can be used as the beating stick on anyone who advocate for re-opening school.

I would say that there is no news about it because it's not "news". Everybody knows that it's important to re-open schools if at all possible. There's no need to keep repeating this obvious fact because it's, well, obvious. And given the political climate in the US, I'd say the motivation for highlighting the arguments against re-opening may well be the opposite of what you suggest. Far from being used to beat people who advocate for re-opening schools, the emphasis seems to be on trying to paint the teachers as the bad guys.

I feel your view to it is very linear, as if people will do exactly what they're taught.

I didn't say that at all. I said several times that not everyone was doing what they should be, but that on the whole, people in the UK (and the rest of Europe - I don't know what's happening elsewhere) accepted that they needed to behave sensibly. That's in stark contrast to the US, where there are entire sections of society in which it seems to be a badge of honour to deny the science and defy whatever rules are put in place based on scientific advice.

[Mightysword]

I'd say the motivation for highlighting the arguments against re-opening may well be the opposite of what you suggest. Far from being used to beat people who advocate for re-opening schools, the emphasis seems to be on trying to paint the teachers as the bad guys.

Have you considered the possibility of both? Because that's the reality here. Each side take the half-truth that convenience for them, pin it up and run away with it. And sadly it's not a 1+1 = 2 where you can just put 2 half together to make one whole.

I didn't say that at all. I said several times that not everyone was doing what they should be, but that on the whole, people in the UK (and the rest of Europe - I don't know what's happening elsewhere) accepted that they needed to behave sensibly. That's in stark contrast to the US, where there are entire sections of society in which it seems to be a badge of honour to deny the science and defy whatever rules are put in place based on scientific advice.

Again you're correct on the "what". Yes, there is a section of the US acting in defiant of good science, I'm not disagreeing with you on that. My point of contention is on the "why". I don't believe some people don't listen to science simply because they don't know what is good science, but because it gets in the way of personal interest. In a way the true issue is even worse than what you're suggesting. If the true reason is simple due to being oblivious, then all you have to do is teach it to fix. Teaching good science is 'easy', teaching a mind set is much more difficult. There is a world exist outside of Europe and US, like I said you can look at other place with a far more lower bar for science than the US (the US maybe low, but only among developed world standard), yet those countries are not as much in denial about science issue as loud as some section of the US are. A lot of these issues have more to do with sense than science.

[felter]

The problem with them sending kids back to school, wasn't so much that they wanted to get the kids back into school, it was more they were demanding that this happened without them giving any advice on how to protect the kids, the kids parents and siblings, teachers or the teachers families. Originally in England it was just being left to the schools and teachers to sort that out, at the time the advice from Johnson was Kids can't catch it. There was no safety advice coming from the Government until schools and teachers started making a hullabaloo about the lack of advice. Meanwhile in America, Trump was calling for kids to get back into school and his only safety advice for them was then and still is now, you don't need to wear a mask, it's perfectly safe as I don't wear one and have never caught it.

Both the US and UK governments have made a mess of things right from the start and the worrying thing is, after all of these months they are still making a mess of things.

[Vertigo 7]

The problem with them sending kids back to school, wasn't so much that they wanted to get the kids back into school, it was more they were demanding that this happened without them giving any advice on how to protect the kids, the kids parents and siblings, teachers or the teachers families. Originally in England it was just being left to the schools and teachers to sort that out, at the time the advice from Johnson was Kids can't catch it. There was no safety advice coming from the Government until schools and teachers started making a hullabaloo about the lack of advice. Meanwhile in America, Trump was calling for kids to get back into school and his only safety advice for them was then and still is now, you don't need to wear a mask, it's perfectly safe as I don't wear one and have never caught it.

Both the US and UK governments have made a mess of things right from the start and the worrying thing is, after all of these months they are still making a mess of things.

When your government leader literally turns everything from toilets to white nationalist murderers into a political issue, ignorance and stupidity are given a ton of ground to grow. But it doesn't help that some wanna be Confucius wants to try to turn this into a discussion on what he thinks were the failings of the media and wants to further highlight a political divide by pointing out the obvious - that there's 2 sides in polar disagreement.

Here's a news flash. When there's a potentially smart path for the people, Trump is going to do the opposite and pick a fight over it. There will be 2 sides, Trump vs intelligent people. That's the way it has been, that's the way it is, that's the way it will be. If Trump wasn't whining about masks and whining about social distancing, any push back from his cultists would be virtually non existent. But no, instead of leading, Trump turned it into a fight and convinced his "dey tuk ar jerbs" crowd to arm themselves and go threaten democratic legislatures because they told everyone to do something to keep themselves safe. Why is anyone surprised that there's a fight now over physically sending kids to schools?

So today we have Trump's campaign acting like COVID is over, which it clearly isn't. Parents and teachers from coast to coast are literally scared, both for themselves and their children. The job of teaching shouldn't involve an unnecessary risk to the teacher's lives. Neither should parents be risking their lives just to send their kids to school. Anyone out there that has children knows the little bastards are nothing more than a walking and talking Petri dish, especially the younger children. If they're exposed to COVID, they're going to bring it home, they're going to spread it around at school. And again, the whole thing becomes moot by giving them a laptop and an internet connection. Is it perfect? newp. But it works. It's the simplest and safest thing to do under the current circumstances by keeping them in class without creating spreader events. And having communicated with my PTA, the teachers and parents are all largely in agreement with the only push back being from those that are still having to leave the house for work, an inconvenience that they are okay with remedying themselves.

This will be shocking to some, my PTA can discuss this without making this a political thing. Because we all know this is what's best for our children and our community. This isn't about being a Trump supporter or not, it's about our children getting their education without risking anyone's life to do it. There really isn't room for anything else to be discussed there.

[eladan]

Have you considered the possibility of both? Because that's the reality here. Each side take the half-truth that convenience for them, pin it up and run away with it. And sadly it's not a 1+1 = 2 where you can just put 2 half together to make one whole.

This thing of yours where you sit on the fence and talk about both sides being dishonest is dishonest itself. You're treating both sides of the political divide as if they are fundamentally equivalent - "there are fine people on both sides". No. There are not. The 'leftist media' may put some spin on some reporting, and sensationalise certain aspects, but at the core they are not just making up stuff from thin air. Comparing and contrasting with conservative news sites, of which Fox News is one of the more honest(?!) ones, well - there is no comparison.

In short: One 'side' is pulling 'facts' out of its arse and spinning a web of lies which would hog-tie Shelob. The other side is not. Stop trying to argue a false equivalence.

[CBJ]

The problem with them sending kids back to school, wasn't so much that they wanted to get the kids back into school, it was more they were demanding that this happened without them giving any advice on how to protect the kids, the kids parents and siblings, teachers or the teachers families. Originally in England it was just being left to the schools and teachers to sort that out, at the time the advice from Johnson was Kids can't catch it. There was no safety advice coming from the Government until schools and teachers started making a hullabaloo about the lack of advice.

I completely agree with you up to this point. For quite a while there was a lot of emotive rhetoric and "won't somebody think of the children" and not a lot of action. By the start of term, though, there was fairly detailed advice available for schools (it's not perfect, but it covers most issues) and UK schools seem, in general, to have bridged any gaps and managed to open without there being a huge outcry from teachers or teaching unions. It remains to be seen how long they manage to stay open as numbers creep up again, of course. Where the UK government really messed up was in totally failing to plan for the inevitable surge in test requests once schools went back, and even having the gall to admit that this wasn't predicted.

So yes, there are problems with schools and the response to the pandemic, but I don't think they are even remotely comparable to those in the US.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I wonder what were doing education ministers around between march and august.
I mean, ladies and gents, they had 5 (FIVE!!!) months to plan school openings, how it is now and just now they realize they had some work to do?

[RegisterMe]

The problem with them sending kids back to school, wasn't so much that they wanted to get the kids back into school, it was more they were demanding that this happened without them giving any advice on how to protect the kids, the kids parents and siblings, teachers or the teachers families. Originally in England it was just being left to the schools and teachers to sort that out, at the time the advice from Johnson was Kids can't catch it. There was no safety advice coming from the Government until schools and teachers started making a hullabaloo about the lack of advice.

I completely agree with you up to this point. For quite a while there was a lot of emotive rhetoric and "won't somebody think of the children" and not a lot of action. By the start of term, though, there was fairly detailed advice available for schools (it's not perfect, but it covers most issues) and UK schools seem, in general, to have bridged any gaps and managed to open without there being a huge outcry from teachers or teaching unions. It remains to be seen how long they manage to stay open as numbers creep up again, of course. Where the UK government really messed up was in totally failing to plan for the inevitable surge in test requests once schools went back, and even having the gall to admit that this wasn't predicted.

So yes, there are problems with schools and the response to the pandemic, but I don't think they are even remotely comparable to those in the US.

There was a typically pithy comment from the HIGNIFY crew recently:-

"As the government struggles to keep up with demand for Covid tests, Gavin Williamson suggests an algorithm to simply predict everyone's results".

And @BrasatoAlBarolo unfortunately we have one of the most incompetent governments in living memory in charge at the moment. The main criteria for being a member of the Cabinet are a) loyalty to Johnson and b) ideological commitment to Brexit as a cause.

Sunak is smart and on his game. I originally gave Hancock the benefit of the doubt but he's floundering and mis-stepping all over the place. The rest of them I wouldn't trust to run a chip shop.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

The problem with them sending kids back to school, wasn't so much that they wanted to get the kids back into school, it was more they were demanding that this happened without them giving any advice on how to protect the kids, the kids parents and siblings, teachers or the teachers families. Originally in England it was just being left to the schools and teachers to sort that out, at the time the advice from Johnson was Kids can't catch it. There was no safety advice coming from the Government until schools and teachers started making a hullabaloo about the lack of advice.

I completely agree with you up to this point. For quite a while there was a lot of emotive rhetoric and "won't somebody think of the children" and not a lot of action. By the start of term, though, there was fairly detailed advice available for schools (it's not perfect, but it covers most issues) and UK schools seem, in general, to have bridged any gaps and managed to open without there being a huge outcry from teachers or teaching unions. It remains to be seen how long they manage to stay open as numbers creep up again, of course. Where the UK government really messed up was in totally failing to plan for the inevitable surge in test requests once schools went back, and even having the gall to admit that this wasn't predicted.

So yes, there are problems with schools and the response to the pandemic, but I don't think they are even remotely comparable to those in the US.

There was a typically pithy comment from the HIGNIFY crew recently:-

"As the government struggles to keep up with demand for Covid tests, Gavin Williamson suggests an algorithm to simply predict everyone's results".

And @BrasatoAlBarolo unfortunately we have one of the most incompetent governments in living memory in charge at the moment. The main criteria for being a member of the Cabinet are a) loyalty to Johnson and b) ideological commitment to Brexit as a cause.

Sunak is smart and on his game. I originally gave Hancock the benefit of the doubt but he's floundering and mis-stepping all over the place. The rest of them I wouldn't trust to run a chip shop.

School openings are very confusing in Italy, too, I was just making a very generic rant on governments around. They literally had months to plan the safest school opening around, yet they just waited the bomb to tick down.

[Vertigo 7]

I completely agree with you up to this point. For quite a while there was a lot of emotive rhetoric and "won't somebody think of the children" and not a lot of action. By the start of term, though, there was fairly detailed advice available for schools (it's not perfect, but it covers most issues) and UK schools seem, in general, to have bridged any gaps and managed to open without there being a huge outcry from teachers or teaching unions. It remains to be seen how long they manage to stay open as numbers creep up again, of course. Where the UK government really messed up was in totally failing to plan for the inevitable surge in test requests once schools went back, and even having the gall to admit that this wasn't predicted.

So yes, there are problems with schools and the response to the pandemic, but I don't think they are even remotely comparable to those in the US.

There was a typically pithy comment from the HIGNIFY crew recently:-

"As the government struggles to keep up with demand for Covid tests, Gavin Williamson suggests an algorithm to simply predict everyone's results".

And @BrasatoAlBarolo unfortunately we have one of the most incompetent governments in living memory in charge at the moment. The main criteria for being a member of the Cabinet are a) loyalty to Johnson and b) ideological commitment to Brexit as a cause.

Sunak is smart and on his game. I originally gave Hancock the benefit of the doubt but he's floundering and mis-stepping all over the place. The rest of them I wouldn't trust to run a chip shop.

School openings are very confusing in Italy, too, I was just making a very generic rant on governments around. They literally had months to plan the safest school opening around, yet they just waited the bomb to tick down.

I would rather that be the case here than the president using children and teachers as pawns in his political games.

[Mightysword]

In short: One 'side' is pulling 'facts' out of its arse and spinning a web of lies which would hog-tie Shelob. The other side is not. Stop trying to argue a false equivalence.

Do you notice that when person A bait person B into flame war, and if B takes the bait the moderators will often issue citation to both A and B equally? And if B try to argue with moderators that "but A started first!", they don't care. Also good luck trying to defend yourself with something "I can flame the other guy because of my moral high ground!!" and see if that flies. And why do you think the moderators have that policy?

Because a flame war is not a good conduit for a proper discussion, which what a forum is (ideally) supposed to be. And there is someone like me, who will assume "good intention" first - aka taking the bait - for the first few attempts. But once I decided that the other party has no interest in a discussion but just outright want an argument, my policy is to put the person on ignore and completely dis-engage from any future contact. Now while that may help avoiding future conflict, it's also not a good conduit for proper discussion either. And if you extrapolate those 2 issues to a large scale, they illustrate the exact problem in society. The former issue when 2 sides are more interest in flaming each others than "talking", and the latter is when some people just completely dis-engage altogether. NEITHER are goods thing when society need to come together to find solutions to problems.

The reason you don't like my approach because you're seeking the gratification of casting the blame, of being "more right than the others", and often the justification is "well the other side is more wrong than me so my wrong doing doesn't count!" - which exactly what you just said as far as I'm concern. I don't care about assigning blame, I care about proper discussions and dialogue. Before someone want to talk right/wrong or moral highground, I want to see 2 respectable adults first, and right now that impression is very lacking.

[Alan Phipps]

Moderators here will also say to *both* parties, please discuss the topic and not other posters or their posting styles.

[Mightysword]

To clarify, I'm just using the forum/moderator example to explain my reason why I hold both side of the media of equal responsibility.

[Alan Phipps]

.. and also to clarify, I was just pointing out why *anybody* commenting on other posters or their posting style rather than on thread topic is a bad idea that often just leads to further off topic arguments. Now back onto thread topic please.

"Stop trying to argue a false equivalence ... "
"The reason you don't like my approach [is] because you're ... "