2024 Presidential Election: let the jockeying commence

This. Schools are germ factories. Have you seen a K-2 classroom? Nearly every kid has snot flowing from their noses. The kids naturally want to touch everything. Middle-school kids still are learning to sneeze into their elbow. My wife who no longer teaches elementary had children pee their pants on multiple occasions when she taught 1 and 2. There isn't a virus in a school that isn't a cold/flu virus in the school that isn't shared broadly. This is all based on the previous experience.

Not sure grocery store employees have to experience any of that.

 

But multiple scientific studies have shown that schools are not places where COVID is spread. That is not the case for strep and flu but COVID isn't a vector.

Plus you can look at every school open in the US and all the countries in the world where schools are open and see that this is the case. That Deez would even suggest that schools are dangerous for teachers is shocking to me. It defies an overwhelming amount of science and real world experience.

 

Maybe you were quoting someone whose kid is grown and attending street art festival love-ins in Seattle.

 

I'd say the data is inconclusive at best. Seriously, I've been looking and will continue to evaluate any studies. How can schools be a place where Flu/cold can easily spread but not Covid?

To date I haven't found any school actually testing the teacher/students on a regular basis to determine once and for all whether they spread the disease. Rather, the CDC studies, which are helpful, all rely on self-reporting and non-medical trained staff to investigate contact tracing. Of course the numbers are low when you rely on self reporting. Additionally, the US studies I've seen have all been based on rural school districts or private schools where they can limit classes to pods of 5-7 students. To be convinced, I'd love to see an urban school where all the staff/students are tested weekly, at a minimum to really tell the impact.

 

70% of my daughters basketball team have had it. Young’ens may not be affected much. We are still learning.

 

That's because I accidentally said what I meant bass-ackwards. Teachers do not face the same risks as grocery store workers. SH is right that elementary schools are germ factories - boogers, urine, etc. However, for whatever reason the available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that schools are not likely vectors of transmission. Kids generally aren't giving it to each other or to teachers even when they are infected. Here's a link referencing a study in France that addressed it, and of course, there are many others all over the world.

It may be the case that many studies are relying on self-reporting rather than broad testing. However, since they are choosing to hang their credibility on school closures, if there were significant examples of student-to-teacher transmission, there is no question that teachers unions would be highlighting them every chance they got, and the media would absolutely be helping them. These dying school teachers would be households names. That's not happening, which is why they're losing support even in blue areas where they're generally given the benefit of the doubt. It's just not likely that there are actually large numbers of teachers getting Covid at school and getting sick or dying from it but not reporting it to anyone. If there's some evidence that this is happening, I'm open to it, but I haven't seen it, and every political and financial incentive says to shout this stuff from the rooftops.

I'll readily admit that I don't understand why other diseases like flu, various types of cold, chicken pox, and before vaccinations, stuff like measles spread like wildfire in schools but that Covid doesn't. It doesn't seem to make sense to the layman, and I didn't have a problem with school closures and lockdowns before we knew how Covid spread. However, the evidence is what it is, and it overwhelmingly suggests that schools (especially elementary schools) should be open, especially in light of the far more established downsides of keeping them closed.

I think a significant factor may also be that schools that are open are doing an excellent job with sanitation and social distancing. I'm sure that's helping. I know I'm just one anecdote, but from about 1994 (when I graduated from high school) until 2015, I got the flu one time and never got a cold severe enough to put me out of commission (never missed a day of college or law school due to illness). The entire time I did God's Work (2002-2011), I literally missed two days due to illness. Deez, Jr. entered preschool in 2016, and I've gotten the flu three times and a severe cold every year (sometimes more than once). In the winter 2017-18, I got severe cold twice and the flu. In the winter of 2019-202, I got a severe cold in October, some beast of a flu-like disease that had a dry cough and made me throw up (which I suspect was Covid) in December, and the flu in January. This winter, I haven't gotten sick at all, and I'm sure it's because the kids at school are wearing masks, forced to wash their hands, and sanitize.

Frankly, I think the teacher unions are blowing an opportunity. The case to keep schools close is weak, but the case to boost school funding is not. Is it unreasonable to boost funding for sanitation at schools? I don't think so. Hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, extra soap, etc. cost money. Having a little more staff to actually do the cleaning more often costs money. Teachers are used to having parent volunteers. At least for a time, that probably can't happen, because though kids may not be spreading it to teachers, parents obviously could and likely would. In the meantime, I think the case could be made that more paraprofessionals should be available to fill the void - not one for every class but perhaps "floaters" who help a 2 or 3 classes. That costs money. They could even make the case that their workload is bigger in having to stay on top of the kids with washing, sanitizing their hands, keeping masks on, etc. and expect at least some additional pay for it. I'm not saying I'd buy into every one of these, but the case is much easier to make. In blue states, they'd get every one of these things if they were willing to just show up to work, and in red states, they'd surely get some of them.

 

Anecdotal evidence to follow, FWIW.

Mrs. Sangre has been teaching elementary school for the last 15+ years in a public school setting. She hasn't missed a day in the classroom during the kung flu "crisis", and has tested negative all along. The school where she works hasn't had any other teachers test positive for the kung flu either, though there have been a handful of cases among teachers in the overall school district.

 

Up here in Burr Ridge, our district has been a 5 days per week hybrid, or remote if chosen, model since September. Literally 2-3 positive tests the whole time. I call them that instead of cases.

We are going back to full time April 5. Yes, up here in Nazi Illinois, we are actually going back to close to normal in our school district.

 

Of course. The election is over.

 

Good point. But, back in the Fall when "spikes" were occurring, the county wanted to go to full remote. Our superintendent and district gave them the big middle finger and we stayed at our current model.

 

That's good. This is why local control is important. The new CDC guidelines (which both the director and Fauci were contradicting about ten minutes ago) make it pretty clear that the Administration would have virtually no in-person instruction now or anytime soon.

 

"Administration". What a joke. I didn't see that but glad Fauci, that dolt, was actually contradicting that.

 

I don't think he's contradicting it anymore.

 

Of course. Go along with the morons.

 

The number of blue-collar workers who call themselves Republicans has gone up by 12 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, blue-collar workers who identify as Democrats have dropped by eight points. The number of black and Hispanic blue-collar workers who identify as Republican has also gone up, with Hispanics up 13 percent and with black blue-collar workers up 7 percent over that same period of time. Meanwhile, the white-collar worker numbers have stayed about the same, with the GOP losing just one percent and Democrats picking that up.​

Labor voters are trending from Democratic to Republican

 

It hadn't occurred to me previously but Nikki Haley most assuredly changed her name to avoid racism impacting her political fortunes. Would enough South Carolinians have voted for Nimrata Randhawa?

 

Yes! Racism is the answer because...well....that is always the answer!

“Beto” O’rourke has a question, however.......

 

That's a bit of a stretch. She didn't change her name under unusual circumstances. Nikki is her middle name, and Haley is her married name. Having said that, do voters often have an aversion to foreign-sounding names? Yes. If she had gone by Nimrata Randhawa, she would have lost. Of course, that goes both ways. If there's a Wilkinson running against a Martinez in the Democratic primary in San Antonio (and most places in the American Southwest), Wilkinson is going to have his work cut out for him.

 

I hear you but then this next point reinforces my original point, that racism (not just by whites) does still exist. If one were so inclined, not me, you could say it reinforces that we are a "racist country".

This underscores that racism is more than just a "white" problem. Blacks, Hispanics and Asians can and often are racist. In fact, in my experience Asians are some of the most racist towards blacks. None of this forgives white racists but just an acknowledgement that all ethnicities have racist tendencies. Somewhere, it's human to want to look down on another group of people.

 

My half Indian dad was both pissed at being treated “less than” as he grew up and went through law school and folded himself into society; and still kind of a racist. I always thought it an enigma.

 

Of course it exists, and yes, every piece of racism can support the argument that this is a racist country. The real issue is whether or not racism defines our country and our history. Though it has always been present to wildly varying degrees, I don't think it defines our country.

We have a warped view of racism nowadays. We view it as unusually and supremely evil even when it's not accompanied by bad acts, and I understand that to a point, because we don't want it to lead to bad acts (unfair discsrimination or other injustices) and even horrific acts (chattel slavery or even worse, extermination). However, I think our harsh judgment causes us to lose perspective at times, because the reality is that from a human standpoint, racism is the norm, because it's part of the broader tendency of people to be suspcious of those who are different from or foreign to us.

What's unusual is thinking there's something wrong with racism or thinking that efforts should be made to diminish it, and that is something that Americans and Westerners should be able to be proud of, because it is largely unique to us. Yes, Nimrata Randhawa might have a hard time winning a Republican primary in South Carolina, just as Robert O'Rourke might have had a hard time winning a Democratic primary in El Paso. But both would have a much easier time than a guy named Bill Jones would have of winning an election pretty much anywhere in Asia or the Middle East. Furthermore, virtually no one in the Middle East and few in Asia would care or think they were doing anything morally questionable at all. Why the hell would they listen to or vote for some foreigner with a weird name (at least weird to them) when there's an alternative with a name that's common to them?

 

We have poverty in America. Would it be accurate to call America a "poor country"?

 

I think, given the divide between the haves and the rest of us, we are a poor country. It's crazy that the pandemic only widened that divide and we keep doing things like supply side economics and tax cuts for the wealthy that only serve to widen the gap. That said, the life of 95% of Americans is "better" than life of all Americans 100 years ago.

 

It’s the richest country on earth. Saying one level of inequality is preferred over the other is akin to saying the weather from 50 years ago is preferred over the weather today. This is liberal logic lunacy. What is the optimized level of inequality or what year in the last 100 was weather optimal? Loony tunes.

 

Bubba keeps using the tired Leftist phrase about tax cuts for the wealthy
Wonder if he is honest to admit he got a tax cut too

 

Because liberals have no clue what proper perspective means. And when perspective enters their thinking it's only for how they can use it for selfish motivations.