It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.
Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.
Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can't choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental/emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.
There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even the biggest transfers of wealth from "the poor" to "the rich" in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people's mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.
It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly, at the expense of quality of life for a younger generation, versus the opposite. The effects are, as you said, probably not measurable, and so the calculus is near-impossible. However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to "stop covid" at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus.
In my opinion, the vast majority of the world lost its cool in the pandemic, and in our panic, we may have made mistakes. Or maybe not. The long term results remain to be seen. Certainly, however, we as a society did not act with a level head and think things through rationally before acting.
When you try to mix human morbidity and mortality with market economics, basically you just piss everyone off. I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece? And how much money are you willing to pay to extend the life of any of these people. We are hesitant to ask these questions for good reason.
The NHS in the UK - whose low, low costs certain US political activists point to as proof public healthcare is not just better but cheaper - literally does this. There's a fixed amount they're willing to spend per expected year of healthy life saved, adjusted for quality of life during that time, and treatments that are expected to cost more than that aren't available on the NHS. This is surprisingly uncontroversial, possibly because the NHS as an institution is basically beyond questioning. However, the same reasoning was not applied in the UK over Covid; the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it.
Yes, any public healthcare system will obviously make these calculations. Private insurers also do this in the US however they are more limited in what they can do to control costs.
I suspect that because there is one universal system, people accept that they're all more or less bound by the same rules (I'm aware there is private care in the UK too), whereas in the US it can be pretty arbitrary as to who gets healthcare; obviously money helps but there are multiple single payer systems (lol) that some belong to also.
> the mainstream consensus was that anyone who prioritised the economy over stopping Covid was an evil murderer, and every single Covid death that happened was caused by our government not stopping it.
This poses a false dichotomy between strict lockdowns and economic growth. The UK had both bad death rates and a bad economic hit compared to other countries in europe. I think the conservatives tried to balance the short-term interests of the economy against case numbers, and ultimately ended up muddling about in the middle, which was why they ended up with the worst of both worlds.
The countries that did really well in the pandemic (east asian countries) typically went for what seemed like drastic measures in the early stages. As time went on, it's become apparent that their liberties, economies, and also case numbers were all far less impacted by the pandemic compared to western countries that had to go into emergency lockdowns as case counts soared out of control. Even in the limited context of western europe, one of the reasons why the UK had so many days in lockdown (more than France or Germany, often with more stringent rules, iirc) was because they prevaricated so much about bringing in lockdowns, then had to make them much tighter to compensate.
> The countries that did really well in the pandemic (east asian countries) typically went for what seemed like drastic measures in the early stages. As time went on, it's become apparent that their liberties, economies, and also case numbers were all far less impacted by the pandemic compared to western countries that had to go into emergency lockdowns as case counts soared out of control. Even in the limited context of western europe, one of the reasons why the UK had so many days in lockdown (more than France or Germany, often with more stringent rules, iirc) was because they prevaricated so much about bringing in lockdowns, then had to make them much tighter to compensate.
This raises an interesting point I hadn't considered; assuming that there will still be some transfer of the virus during lockdown (although presumably more limited) due to people still needing to go out to get food (or have food delivered, which still requires someone else going out), getting medical care, etc., the amount of time needed to stay in lockdown to lower the number of cases below a given threshold seem like it would grow in relation to the number of cases at the time lockdown was initiated. To make up some numbers, if the goal is to get the number of cases below 1% of the population, it's much easier to get there if you start the lockdown with only 2% of the country infected versus 5%. I don't have anywhere near the expertise to do even the most naive of calculations of how many extra days that would translate into in the real world, but given that I imagine the virus spreads faster than it goes away, it sounds like delaying by a certain amount of time would lead to _more_ than that amount of time needed to stay in lockdown. I wonder if the US had gone into lockdown at the beginning of March or even earlier, then the lockdown might have been shortened by months.
I imagine 'reluctant lockdowns' also create unclear messaging, so the general public is less likely to know or follow lockdown rules, making them less effective.
As I understand it, lockdowns were generally put in place to stop the hospital system from collapsing under the case load - so I imagine the higher the case count (which typically increases during the first weeks of the lockdown due to lead time) the more time you'd need to resupply, reorganize, process the patients coming through the system, etc.
You can't seriously claim that countries which imposed serious, long-lasting restrictions on the basic human right of freedom of assembly did "really well" in the pandemic. That's revisionist history.
Saving lives is not a valid justification. If you think it is, then why not impose a permanent police state? We could probably save some lives by giving police the power to search anywhere without a warrant.
That's the point. If you consider hours spent in lockdown per-capita, even a country like China, an authoritarian police state, did less harm to the liberties of their citizens than countries like the UK, France or Germany with their pandemic response.
That's without bring up countries like Japan, South Korea, or Australia, all of which are liberal democracies.
Well now you're just making things up. UK, France, and Germany did harm to civil liberties but nowhere near as bad as China. They still have entire cities under strict lockdowns right now!
I didn't downvote, but the UK was middle of the pack amongst European countries in terms of Covid deaths and economic damage. It's just our media focused on anything that'd make us look worse, like comparing total deaths without adjusting for population size or cherry-picking specific time periods to yell about. Also, pretty much the whole of Europe pursued very similar policies so that comparison isn't going to tell you much anyway.
>I mean, if I want to be crass about it, I could ask you who's life you value more - your father or your son, your aunt or your niece?
That's an incredibly easy one, if I had kids it would be my kids over my parents, and I'm certain my parents would agree and be willing to sacrifice themselves to save their grandkids if it truly came to that. The fact that this apparently isn't the default moral calculus for most people (as shown by the pandemic response) is deeply troubling to me.
Also an extremely easy answer for me to choose the future over the past. There was no reason my grandpa should have been getting dialysis paid for by taxpayers at the age of 93. For years. Give him access to assisted suicide and invest that money into the nation’s children.
And while it is probably easier to talk the talk than walk the walk, I do not want a dime spent on me once I am chronically unable to do simple tasks myself. If I need 24/7 care, then I like to think I will opt to take myself out.
So your grandfather lived for years after the age of 93 with the help of basic, modern medicine. Yet you feel that his medical care was a significant share of society's resources. Dialysis costs between $30K and $90K per year (in the US) depending on type of treatment.
In 2019, the Federal budget outlays were $4.4 Trillion dollars. State expenditures were another $2.3T. Total US wealth was roughly $96T.
I think we can afford to give dialysis to anyone who needs it.
It's part of the societal contract, though: Why would I rip myself a new one for a country that hands out suicide pills or lets me die in agony because some kid on the other side of the country doesn't get free healthy food from their school, if the resources for universal healthcare are there, but are not distributed equally?
Old people vote. Kids by definition don't (and parents of kids that can't afford healthcare are also less likely to vote).
See this is where the hypotheticals go. Let's say your grandpa doesn't want to do the assisted suicide thing. Are you willing to "withdraw care" (the medical term for when doctors kill people on purpose) or even take more active measures? I know the arithmetic is pretty obvious but as you say walking the walk is something different entirely.
If the question is would I want a significant share of society’s resources to not go towards extending the life of a 93 year old, then my answer is no.
Of course, I would not want society to force anyone to accept assisted suicide (which would not really be suicide).
Ok, what if we tell the grandparent that we'll take half of their expected costs for care and give that to their grandchildren's college funds if they go through with the suicide? Is that an acceptable compromise or horrible dystopian bargain? Basically it's the trolley problem in that there are endless hypotheticals you can construct to determine your values, but as I said it can get pretty distasteful.
I do not think it would be useful for a society to specifically allocate the resources saved by not extending a 90 year old’s life specifically to their grandkids.
Society already triages resources for various populations. It is not like the government throws unlimited money at old people to get all the gold plated healthcare they need. It is allocated roughly based on how rich you are, with poor people getting less care via reduced Medicaid reimbursements and a million other ways to price discriminate recipients.
If anything, this opaque maze of who does and does not get a share of society’s resources is worse than a transparent policy.
Yea, but that isn’t rhe choice. It’s about quality of life, not life itself. Ask your teenager if they are willing to let grandma choke to death or spend two years with just family, and rhe answer will be different.
As the song goes, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". The fact that we've steadfastly refused to verbalize the implicit choices that have been made doesn't change anything about what was actually done.
The government already has these answers. There is a value assigned to life per year it could be extended. For some reason that was thrown out the window for covid.
tl;dr, if memory serves correctly, it's about 60k GBP per full health year left. So 2 years at 50% health is 1 full health year, with formulas to tell you what 50% health means exactly.
I don't know of other countries that make this calculation so explicitly.
Hopefully history remembers that there actually were people who acted with a cool head, among them: Sweden, Japan, Africa, and large swaths of the USA. Now we have a pretty good control group to assess the effectiveness of measures like school closures, social isolation, cloth masks, and lockdowns.
I suspect that some people are in for a bit of cognitive dissonance, if it does come to light that said measures were not actually based in science and had an overall negative impact on society.
"During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, we try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions."
"Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives."
Hardly anywhere seriously tried this. New Zealand probably came closest.
It seems that far too many people in this thread are arguing that the total number of COVID deaths - 980k in the US - is effectively too low? As a result of excessive caution? Are you sure about that?
We absolutely made mistakes - but it'll take decades before there's any consensus on what exactly they were. On a more personal level I can confidently say that the pandemic has caused many (although still a minority) to go insane - in the literal sense of disconnected from reality. This ranges from treating the pandemic as if it's still incredibly deadly to completely denying there was ever a problem. The consequences of that I'll be dealing with personally for a long, long time.
> It's certainly a difficult cost/benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly ...
Human beings have rights, including and especially to life, regardless of the costs to you. The question is, how do we preserve as many lives as possible, and then at the least possible cost.
Many of the protocols mandated had minor or no impact on the spread of the disease, but inflicted horrendous pain and suffering on people. Policies that locked down nursing homes, for example, preventing family from attending to their loved ones in their last moments of life, or allowing nurses to attend covid positive patients and the vulnerable uninfected simultaneously, and many other practices by the dodgier health care facilities made the lockdowns a nasty and dehumanizing exercise of power with no basis in rationality. Shutting down small businesses, allowing oil companies to take in obscene profits and increasing their subsidies because you can sell a "people are driving less" narrative, and toying with a ludicrously dangerous profit incentive for public health by making the vaccines legal without liability or recourse for injury. It turned out relatively OK, but almost everything done in the name of public health had ulterior motives behind it, or a mad scramble to cover up incompetence or graft.
>> However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to "stop covid" at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus.
Stop Covid at all costs is what they said, but not what they did. HCQ was shot down without investigation even as doctors were reporting success. Most things were simply shot down as "not an FDA approved treatment for covid19" even though there were no such treatments for the first year. I had covid so my immunity is better than the vaccinated, but I was still supposed to get vaxed because it helps a bit more and we needed to do everything possible. OK vitamins D was thought to help and has since been proven to help, so why are there not ads pushing that? It's never been about doing (certainly not trying) everything possible. Its always been "do as I say" from the government.
> HCQ was shot down without investigation even as doctors were reporting success
This narrative was and continues to be pushed by the same people who refused to mask up, isolate, stay home, and otherwise exercise non-pharmaceutical intervention techniques.
>> This narrative was and continues to be pushed by the same people
No, it's been replaced by Ivermectin (spelling?) which I have no idea why that became a thing. The HCQ was still shot down without trial when doctors were claiming it worked, and had a hypothesis as to why it might.
There was an early study back in April 2020 (right after the lockdowns started) which showed that ivermectin could inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro. Some irresponsible people (including a few physicians) took that and ran with it even though there was never any high quality evidence for it as a clinical treatment.
Correct. Vitamin D deficiency makes one more likely to get COVID-19 and more likely to have a severe case if you do get it. There really is a lot of evidence to support this, including studies from the NIH. Also, most people in the US are deficient in the winter and having a bit extra is considered harmless, so not suggesting it was always stupid.
There is also a traditional vaccine now that is completely ignored in the US. The ONLY acceptable response to COVID according to our government (and unfortunately one political side for reasons I don't understand) is one of the MRNA vaccines. Nothing else is acceptable even as an adjunct to those vaccines.
What has been shown in other studies is that giving hospitalized COVID patients vitamin D has no effect on outcomes. We could do studies that show the same lack of effectiveness for a lot of treatments including the vaccines. Once you're hospitalized it's too late for a lot of things.
I have to agree. As I walked around a local strip mall with closed gyms, closed stores, but open nail salons I realized the whole precautions nature was doomed.
Sure seems like an attempt to maximize theater and sell vaccines
From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity. While this might disproportionally benefited older folks, hospitals are a service anyone could need at any time for a wide range of reasons.
> From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity
And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk. We should have relaxed our approach to all this when cities across the country were closing their unused field hospitals. Instead of celebrating the fact that covid wasn't nearly as lethal as the earliest models predicted, governors across the country doubled down on their covid restrictions. Two years later, they are finally almost gone.
Did any of these restrictions provide enough benefit to justify their immense social cost? It will probably take much cooler heads to find out. It troubles me that we went into this mess with little understanding if the measures even worked. In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody's consent.
> And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.
What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
> Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
I don't recall this happening. Can you provide a source for this?
I haven't seen anything considered "essential" being delayed, but anything that was not "immediately, medically" necessary in Texas was delayed on order of the Governor: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/09/texas-coronavirus-ho... My mother is a cancer patient and frequently had to delay (what I would consider essential) treatments by request of her provider.
Anecdotally, as someone married to an RN, supplies were absolutely running low throughout the pandemic. For the first year they were limited to 1 N95 mask per week, they frequently ran out of specific types/gauges of needles and had to make do with what was available, certain medications were hard to come by, etc. She doesn't work a COVID floor but still more often than not had a double patient load compared to pre-pandemic levels, both due to more patients and less staff. It was also incredibly common seeing people in neighborhood groups trying to find available beds for their family members during our surges, as most people were told there was a wait list expected to last at least 24 hours before something would be available.
I was referring specifically to Omicron, so both of your links aren't really what I was looking for—thanks anyways.
My main surprise was OP's assertion that medically necessary supplies such as blood had run out during the last surge, but so far this seems unsubstantiated. As you mentioned, I was aware masks have been in short supply at points throughout the pandemic, but blood and masks aren't quite equivalent.
> My main surprise was OP's assertion that medically necessary supplies such as blood had run out during the last surge, but so far this seems unsubstantiated.
>> (January 13th) "We are being absolutely crushed," says Dr. Gabor Kelen, chair of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland.
They can't. You'll just get links to some NYT article whose main content suggests "we are preparing for a surge" or something of that nature.
I've yet to see any kind of actual study that compares hospital capacity during these "surges" vs hospital capacity in the "before times". Also I strongly suspect future research will show that most of the hospital issues were self-inflicted wounds. We tested everybody who came into the hospital and invoked crazy high-overhead processes for positive results irregardless of symptoms.
The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet. There has never been a real issue of hospital capacity--at least in the US anyway.
> The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet.
Image caption is: "A nurse walks inside a temporary emergency room, built into a parking garage at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2021. Since Thanksgiving, cases have risen to the point where 80% of the hospital is filled with patients with COVID-19 and 90% of the ICU is filled with COVID-19."
Covid was the cause of the largest mass casualty death event in US history.
It's embarrassing people keep pretending like every doctor in nurse in the USA who has said their hospitals have been overrun with death for over a year now and is the worst they ever have seen are just lying.
I'm guessing this is just some kind of coping mechanism because it's too terrible to comprehend and don't want it to be true, but it is fact.
Your links mention nothing about patients receiving their care in temporary emergency rooms within the parking structure of the respective hospital, though?
> Since Thanksgiving, cases have risen to the point where 80% of the hospital is filled with patients with COVID-19 and 90% of the ICU is filled with COVID-19."
The confounding factor here is that this includes patients hospitalized for reasons other than COVID. A patient that had a positive test might not be in the hospital because of COVID, but good luck to anyone trying to tease out that data.
My father was taken to a hospital for a broken hip in December. There were no beds available. He had a procedure and was sent home. I have no news article to provide, only this anecdotal account. This is something that I can't imagine happening prior to 2020 unless a natural disaster (hurricane, flood, tornado) had occurred.
It happens all the time in flu season. You even get articles that read very much like the ones people link to with Covid. Funny nobody gave a shit about all those…
You don't run an ICU with stretchers out the door, because that's not how you can provide ICU treatment. Overflowing ICU means "queue of ambulances out front waiting if someone dies or doctors decide someone can be pushed to lower intensity care" or "patients being driven further away in the hope to reach available capacity elsewhere". And if you need an ICU, 10 mins, 30 mins or 2 hour ambulance driving time makes a lot of difference (and means the ambulance is blocked longer of course as well, again hurting other patients needing one).
And re general capacity: Someone I know spent a day waiting to be seen in an emergency room and then got sent home from the hospital with a (non-covid) lung infection with "you really should be kept under supervision, but we need the space for people who probably will die tonight if they are not here". He did make it (with help from family and some emergency intervention by a local doctor), but certainly had a higher risk than if he'd been kept in a normally-operating hospital.
Yes I remember a few similar stories that made front-page news on various establishment sites. Most of them were very similar:
- older person has some sort of non-covid related serious illness or injury
- can't get ICU bed in the "top" hospital in their area due to ICU overflows.
- Thus, patient sent to less renowned hospital where he eventually succumbs to disease or injury.
- Media blames Covid / unvaxxed for his death.
A couple points that they never mention:
- ICUs, by design, are usually at 90% full, so these scenarios happened before Covid due to just random odds of a few extra people needing ICU beds at some particular hospital in some particular week.
- If the media has to trot out stories of 70 year olds with chronic heart failure who may have been saved had they been able to get a bed in the nation's top cardiology department instead of merely some average hospital, then does it really represent a legitimate issue the rest of us should be concerned about?
It reminds me of how the media kept demanding we accept the narrative that Covid was super deadly to children, when by all accounts it's less dangerous than the flu, swimming pools, etc even BEFORE the CDC quietly revised their own numbers* downward. So they'd push some article about a 22 year old died of Covid. "Look - this virus will kill your kids toooooo."
And you'd actually read the article, and then realize it was some chronically sick kid who weighed 400 lbs and had suffered from severe respiratory and immune issues all their life. And you'd know - if this was the best example they could find to scare us - then you shouldn't really be scared.
The average ICU occupancy is actually ~ 70 %, to have some slack in it during the annual flu season. If patients have to be turned away because everywhere is full, then there's a problem. Also, under normal circumstances, people tend to spend only a few days in ICU, then they are either better or dead, but serious Covid cases require weeks of artificial respiration, even a few cases tie up a lot of hospital resources.
And what's with the focus on Covid deaths - Covid sequelae are a thing and can significantly affect quality of life. My colleague is in his mid-20's, in good health - he had a mild case last Fall and still hasn't got his sense of smell back. When you can't smell methacrylic ester you know there's a problem.
> The entire two years of this I've been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet.
Your following sentence refers to the U.S., but as for this one- this is exactly what's happening in Hong Kong right now:
They will overrun the ICU's with mild Covid symptoms? That was the problem during last year's big waves - overflowing ICU's combined with hospital staff out sick.
Look, it's a communicable disease. There's no need for healthcare staff to spread Covid to each and any patient that comes to see them. The phenomenon of asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is well known with Covid.
"My Tinder date told me she has chlamydia, but she's asymptomatic. All good!"
Because such would imply mandatory unlimited paid sick leave, unthinkable in the current political environment. OSHA only recommends flu testing and leave for healthcare personnel, but they are a joke.
You can go to a hospital, and will be sent home if you don't need to stay in hospital, especially if the hospital has more urgent patients to attend to.
> Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.
Npr is a governmental new source and thie government has been pushing scare tactics to make people get vaccinated so unfortunately I rate this as zero credibility unless you show me actual data.
I had to delay and miss many appointments because everything was shutdown due to pandemic. Nearly died from it. Many others did die because they stopped getting routine care.
Nope. It was due to hospitals being on edge and delaying elective surgery "just in case". COVID didn't cause capacity issues at hospitals, humans reaction to covid did.
There won’t be a source. It will take a decade of research to show my hypotheses as valid or invalid. No way can it be measured now… too many hot heads.
But I’d wager a lot of money that I’m right and most of the hospital issues were self-created problems caused by testing everything with a pulse. That’s my hypothesis and I’m sticking to it!
AFAIK, this happened, but was consistently due to proactive closures in expectation of overcrowding that nearly never came to pass. Although a lot of ink was spilled on the potential for hospitals being overrun, there were vanishingly few cases in which it actually happened.
> And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.
Interesting take. My healthcare friends (doctors and nurses) literally 100% of them have either already bounced from the field, or have plans to immediately once they pay off medical debt.
Fully and entirely due to the way they were treated during covid by hospital administration and the collapse-like conditions they were forced to work through.
The bill coming due for our healthcare system hasn't even started installment payments yet.
> In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody's consent.
But then… doesn’t this cover all government decisions and legislation?
If presented with this hypothetical situation in advance, perhaps we’d have preferred our governments did X, Y and Z differently.
But the ‘consent’ was given when our generation, or our parents’ or grandparents’, voted in the governments which passed the laws to allow for this.
With hindsight, I suspect many will not vote for the same governments again. But some will. Perhaps even the majority will.
In fact, during the pandemic, many governments who enacted what you call ‘experiments’ were re-elected in landslides.
In that case, I’d say that many people have given consent.
That said, I agree with your suggestion that we should try to figure out the cost/benefit of these measures. I think that’s a critical step over the next few years.
The problem is that democracy is the tyranny of the majority on the minority.
I think we need to move to a more decentralised society where power is spread across the population and it sits as close as possible to the individual affected by the rules, the ultimate form being personal responsibility.
> In fact, during the pandemic, many governments who enacted what you call ‘experiments’ were re-elected in landslides.
the governments had the media in their pockets from day 1 so of course the prevailing opinion would be they did well and would be reelected. just like Putin having great ratings in Russia.
Korea is currently rationing hospital care in the middle of an Omicron wave. Covid-related patient care (previously unlimited, with a small fraction of patients hospitalized for four to six weeks) is now provided on NHS for only seven days, after which point the patient must pay out-of-pocket and/or find their own hospital bed. When this policy was introduced (the limit used to be two weeks), there was a minor uproar, with doctors accusing the government of killing patients.
> And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.
My parents' friend had to delay a surgery after a heart attack in Minneapolis this winter because so many places were booked. I heard similar issues in New Hampshire. Nobody seemed to talk about it at that point, maybe because it's hard to quantify "strain" or exactly how many people died or otherwise suffered as a result.
If we didn't do the lockdowns then we would have seen a huge increase in mortality over all age groups as hospitals where overwhelmed.
Also, Long Covid is very much a thing.
I get it though: teenagers are growing up during a once in a century pandemic in the middle of an existential climate crisis which the old leaders (all 70+ in the US!) are not addressing.
> If we didn't do the lockdowns then we would have seen a huge increase in mortality over all age groups as hospitals where overwhelmed.
This is just wishful thinking. There is no real way to know if lockdowns had any material impact on hospital capacity. And besides, we had field hospitals set up in the early days... though they were all closed because they didn't get used. Hmmmmm....
The percentage of young people who needed to be hospitalised for covid is still very small.
A lot of the symptoms of long covid seems to be fatigue / depression related.
The climate crisis is the last of our concerns, technology is well on its way to improve the situation and paving the way for renewables. Now, if the governments of the world would stop messing up (eg. by removing nuclear power, or waging wars against each other), that'd be great.
>that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old
Holy crap, never thought about it that way. Add to the equation that it was the generation that gave us climate abuse, debt and pretty much loaned themselves out of our future (I'm in my 30s ...) and I don't think that's fair, at all.
Few major effects. Young people mostly work service or part time jobs which were completely destroyed. Very few were able to work from home. Property values across the planet exploded, further benefiting those who already had them. Cost of living and inflation exploded without any bump to wages on these low end jobs.
If you don't work in tech, are an exec, or own significant assets, your life has been ruined by covid restrictions.
Absolutely agree, I am lucky enough to own an apartment, have plenty of disposable income, and I was working from home already, so COVID was meh for me. But, I am not indifferent to my peers and
>life has been ruined by covid restrictions
this is completely true for a large swath of people, and it wasn't fair for them.
> […] but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years[…]
I believe that we'll see studies for the rest of our lives on the effects of the pandemic / lockdown among different age groups. Young people will likely be the most affected longterm. This will be the new "lead paint" for a generation.
You're absolutely right, and I've heard firsthand accounts of this.
My sister-in-law is a middle school counselor at a large midwest US public school system and her stories about kids dealing with the pandemic are heartbreaking, the mental health support system in some US schools is completely falling apart due to the workload.
She's never seen a mental health crisis on this scale in schools in her entire career. She remarks that kids really weren't able to learn much during the pandemic due to remote learning and in many cases are now playing catch-up to get back on track. The school system she works for basically didn't hold anyone back for a year because they had no real way of knowing who progressed as her school district cancelled standardized testing.
Anyone who believes that the pandemic wasn't a serious setback for many kids developmentally is woefully out of touch with reality.
...or they lacked the resources and infrastructure to accurately assess students as nobody had been prepared to move the entire public education system online for an extended period of time.
That's true, but what does that have to do with automatically passing every student during the pandemic? It's just one cynical take after another with you.
It's tragic to see someone so intelligent being so bitter about a thankless job like working in public education.
Bitter? Not at all. There are some good teachers deserving of thanks. Some I was fortunate to have as a teacher. But I am cynical of an industry that demands 6 figure salaries along with no accountability. Where teachers are rewarded for length of service and educational attainment, not success in educating the students.
Want to improve education for the kids?
Give teachers a base salary, plus $X for every student of theirs that meets grade standards at the end of the school year.
----
A long time ago, the company I was working for hired a team of 6 or 7 older contractors to do a special job for IBM. They completed it on time, under budget, and IBM was completely satisfied. They also each received a $10,000 bonus for meeting those conditions (a lot of money in those days). I asked them if the bonus had any relationship with meeting that goal, and they were offended, saying they were professionals and gave it their best regardless.
Haha, I didn't buy that. Do you?
Remember that earthquake in LA where a freeway interchange collapsed? They offered the contractor $1,000,000 for each day ahead of schedule the reconstruction was finished. I don't recall the exact details, but they finished it months ahead of schedule.
> Give teachers a base salary, plus $X for every student of theirs that meets grade standards at the end of the school year.
Wouldn't this cause misaligned incentives leading to teachers going out of their way to game the grade standards, similar to what has happened with No Child Left Behind
Not that there probably shouldn't be experimentation with compensation to create incentives, but $X per head is overly simplistic and is the sort of thing that gets gamed all of the time.
I know it doesn't boil down to a sentence. Actually implementing it would be more complex.
Will it be gamed? People will surely try. People try to game the SATs all the time, with some small success. But the SATs are still very useful and effective.
The bottom line is, will better results be achieved with this method? Almost certainly.
P.S. Much of the cheating from on the NCLB system was the people who were affected by the test results were the ones administering the test. Of course that won't work. An independent organization has to administer the tests.
Are talking about software or teaching? My accountability is quite low compared to teachers and i make significantly more. I do believe those IBM contractors because it wouldnt motivate me. I'm already doing quite well so you have to get to 1/3 my yearly salary to actually change my behavior but Im a professional so i already give it my all. I do think teachers should make more and software devs should make less but it is not the world we live apparently.
You're a unicorn, then. Pay for results is a big reason why the free market works so well. Socialism relies on altruistic self-sacrifice, and we both know how well that works.
Because it's being directly tied to funding. Do well, more funds. Tests are low, less funds. It's completely ass backwards. Teachers aren't afraid of being graded, the issue is what's being done with that information.
The result you want from gymnastic coaching is well aligned with what the test measures because, well, the test and the desired result are the same thing.
This is not the case with standardized testing in education, is it? It's a lot like these tech interviews people keep complaining about that test a knowledge bunch of bullshit you have to cram for but have nothing to do with the actual job.
Not just the isolation, there are so many crazy covidian rules that some schools have pushed on the kids to uphold the safety theatre.
In California, it was absolutely forbidden for anyone to be indoors without a mask for more than 15 minutes, but you still have to serve school lunch to kids.
Some schools solved this by moving lunch outside. No matter the temperature.
Some schools solved this by giving the kids a 14 minute lunch break.
No talking, no socializing, no enjoying the meal together in peace. This is how you give kids eating disorders.
> In California, it was absolutely forbidden for anyone to be indoors without a mask for more than 15 minutes
False. There was no such directive.
We were one of the first schools in California to reopen, too.
I think you may be referring to what was initially considered a close contact under the CDPH guidance: unmasked and close for more than 15 minutes.
> Some schools solved this by moving lunch outside. No matter the temperature.
This is our normal procedure at our school on non-rainy days, COVID or not.
There were 2 or 3 rainy days (yay drought!). Kids ate indoors, spread out, with the doors open. It was a stricter lunch environment than they're used to for those few days.
Our biggest change was cohorting for those in elementary. You really only could play with your own class.
Of course, while these rules were in place, any schoolkid could go to a restaurant with their parents and enjoy a meal together in peace for hours if they so wished.
Yeah it's weird that a place that has 1000s of people in it at once has different rules than a place with 50.
We may never know why that is. Truly, a mystery. An enigma for the ages. Scholars will be working on this for 1000s of years. Who could know the answer to such a question?
believe it or not there is more to life than a myopic obsessive fixation on Covid to the literal sacrifice of everything else. It is complete BS that restaurants were open but schools closed. There is more to the world than just Covid you know…
All the lockdown people thought mattered was Covid. They completely ignored every other problem and mocked people who pointed it out.
> It is complete BS that restaurants were open but schools closed.
Completely different environments with different requirements.
> to the literal sacrifice of everything else.
Except for, you know...public health and disease control. Not minimizing covid would maximize long covid which would be a whole other public health nightmare we'd have to deal with for decades to come.
Also, you know, it just kind of made sense to mount some kind of response to a pandemic. I realize you see it as an all-or-nothing proposition, so at least be glad it was only a mixed response and I'll remain content that the experts, in some jurisdictions at least are out there being put in charge of things like this.
> All the lockdown people thought mattered was Covid. They completely ignored every other problem and mocked people who pointed it out.
Except in the US at least where we've seen some of the most organized nationwide protests organized and attended by a mostly mask wearing populace. Another bit of fabricated wisdom from your keyboard to the bin.
> It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.
It shouldn't be so astonishing. People who wanted to take a laissez faire approach to COVID (especially pre-vaccine) would often incoherently throw literally every idea they could think of against all the mitigation measures, including various mental health arguments. Of course, that approach didn't change a thing except 1) lead to more polarization, 2) harden people against those arguments forever.
COVID was a serious problem, and it's rare that serious problems can be addressed without cost.
COVID was a serious problem, but that doesn't mean any of the mitigation measures were helpful or justified. That's a total non sequitur. Many of the areas which took a more laissez faire approach came through fine.
People may rationalize these things because the alternative is to admit that one may have been wrong and/or caused harm to others in the process. People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt.
What a load of crock. My elderly father, terminal illness, was hit by the lockdown days before coming to visit us. He DOES NOT CARE about covid. He is dying anyways.
Then they wouldn't let our young son go play with friends or play on beach. This is lifetime impact stuff at 2-3.
When I wore an N95 mask I was told over and over it didn't help. Hello, it's an airborne disease, why wouldn't my mask help?
So we can't wear an N95, we CAN go to crowded grocery stores, we CAN'T go outside to the beach (huge volume of onshore fresh air and sunshine) and school is remote only (for a 2 year old this is TERRIBLE).
Worst of all, despite the talk of being "science driven" they have not been releasing age banded fatality rates by variant and a timely basis so folks can make informed decisions.
We got fed so much BS that the hit is going to be very long lasting in terms of credibility of the "establishment".
My father has a phd in a hard science. My wife has a phd in a hard science. If you are losing these folks, you are losing LOTS of folks.
That makes me wonder, what IS the fatality rate for 5 year olds. Seriously give me a table. Is it lower than just random accidents per 100?
Finally, why can't I wear a mask (N95 with ventilator) that is comfortable so easier to wear and protects me. ANd others can make their own decisions. Instead we spent huge amounts of effort trying to force people who may not have believed in mask wearing to wear masks, but these masks (cloth / surgical) were I suspect largely ineffective.
It sounds like you have been dealing with a lot of ineffective health theater. That is unfortunate. But that's a very different thing from "cloth/surgical masks are largely ineffective".
We are told that an N95 with a vent is "ineffective" and prohibited, but someone wearing a bandana is OK. That at least was the guidance for a long time.
So based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective.
Of course, it turns out that an N95 with an exhalation valve is VERY good at protecting the wearer, and AS GOOD as all these others at protecting others.
"The findings in this report are based on tests of 13 FFR models from 10 different manufacturers. These findings show that FFRs with an exhalation valve provide respiratory protection to the wearer and can also reduce particle emissions to levels similar to or better than those provided by surgical masks, procedure masks, or cloth face coverings."
"An N95 filtering facepiece respirator will protect you and provide source control to protect others. A NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator with an exhalation valve offers the same protection to the wearer as one that does not have a valve. As source control, findings from NIOSH research suggest that, even without covering the valve, N95 respirators with exhalation valves provide the same or better source control than surgical masks, procedure masks, cloth masks, or fabric coverings."
So, my elderly parents trying to fly United Airlines are BANNED from wearing a comfortable N95 with an exhalation valve that would do a GREAT job protecting them. Instead they are told to wear a surgical mask (which does relatively little by comparison to a well fit N95) especially on INHALATION, where a surgical mask often passes air long the sides. And they sit next to folks barely wearing a light cloth mask that may no almost nothing.
Again, why not let folks make their own decisions? Concerned? At high risk? Let my elderly parents wear an N95 with exhalation valve, they can wear that comfortably for 3-4 hours if needed. Instead it is this theatre just as you describe, but based on so little actual research (and so unwilling to change with new research) that it is crazy.
As I understand it, masks with exhalation valves only exist because that design works fine for masks intended to protect the wearer from spray-paint (and similar industrial hazards). That design was never meant for use in a respiratory pandemic.
There's no shortage of normal (no valve) N95/N99 masks.
> based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective
A good point, but it's not the only perspective on this.
If we consider that only some proportion of the population will be wearing N95/N99 masks, it benefits everyone to insist that those masks not have valves. Of course, if people aren't fully aware of the rules ahead of time, this is undermined.
Or a less utilitarian angle: to deliberately build (or buy) a mask with an exhalation valve is to deliberately introduce a feature which increases risk to other people, for no appreciable upside. There should be real push-back against these designs.
Seems to me the airlines/airports would do well to offer a vending machine of non-valve N95/N99 masks at reasonable prices. Do any of them do that?
And this is the issue. Folks like you are fighting a (losing) battle to force people to wear uncomfortable N99 masks on flights.
Heads up, plenty of folks have masks off their nose, off their mouth while eating, are wearing surgical masks, cloth masks, bandanas and other stuff that does nearly nothing.
"it benefits everyone to insist that those masks not have valves."
False. I can wear an N95 with a valve for hours. As a cited, the risk to OTHERS is as low as any of the allowed alternatives. More importantly, compliance is much easier.
And N95 with valves despite your claim that it doesn't work against things like covid DOES in fact do a fantastic job protecting wearer. That is why the CDC itself had to do a total uturn here and now both recommends them and specifically suggests they should not be blocked.
There should be real push back against this totally backwards approach in public health which by the way is not working, which is to try and force places folks in places like Florida and Texas to comply with absolutely over the top requirements (hint, they wont) while at the same not allowing folks like myself who want to wear a high protection comfortable mask (N95 with exhalation) to do so.
The public health folks and scientists truly lost their minds on this. I can go into a resteraunt TODAY and see people with NO MASKS AT ALL. And yet my N95 with an exhalation valve is considered some high crime, despite no actual real science saying it doesn't work or that it increases others risks.
And the upside is comfort, which is real. Why do folks NOT want to wear masks? Public health folks don't stop to ask this. One major reason if you would stop and ask is COMFORT!
I literally cite the CDC on masks with exhalation valves, and this is the "mental version of COVID".
I get it, I've been lectured to by folks like you repeatedly. And this is where public health credibility goes to die.
There seems to be a crazy desire of public health folks to preach and be surprior, put down others, even though their advice has been so wrong, and many of them are wrong on the actual science, the risks, the tradeoffs.
Cloth / surgical masks are largely ineffective. I recommend you listen to the explanations by infectious disease experts Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Michael Osterholm.
> People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt.
The pandemic had nothing to do with keeping kids out of school for more than a year. That was all humans doing. The virus didn't wake up some morning and tell us to shut down down schools.
Lockdowns and government caused virtually all of the lasting side-effects from the last two years.
It is my strong opinion that history will not look kindly to almost every single thing humanity did the last two years. They were humans at their absolute worst... Making knee jerk decisions based on fear and panic never end up well...
My state in Australia had a lockdown where for a while it was not permitted to go outside for fitness by yourself. I can't imagine the physical and mental health damage this caused.
Had those in Canada too. There seemed to be the medical based rules (distancing, limited occupancy, washing hands) which made sense. And then there were the "me too, more must be better" types. For example, closing down provincial parks seemed odd. These parks are not rabbit warrens; but no, you can't. Going for a walk down a trail in an urban woodland park where distancing is not an issue - nope. What is/was sorely lacking was a common (medical) sense approach to the rules and I think that's what tipped the scale for some (many?) folks that there was overreach with the lockdown rules.
What state was that? I don't think we had that in NSW, or at least I never took notice of it and always just went out by myself for a walk even during the hard lock down days.
South Australia. It was actually only for a few days but they had planned to do it for much longer before they worked out the whole lockdown was based on a lie from one of the cases.
I agree with you, except, generally, when we say the pandemic caused something, we are referring to both the spread of the virus and the human and social response to it, including lockdowns. The lockdowns absolutely were avoidable and more harmful than helpful.
>Fatigue, cough, chest tightness, breathlessness, palpitations, myalgia and difficulty to focus are symptoms reported in long COVID. It could be related to organ damage, post viral syndrome, post-critical care syndrome and others.
Acknowledging the damage done by isolation doesn't mean you have to believe it was the wrong choice. In my country a million people have died of covid even with the isolations.
Was it "worth it"? I don't fucking know and I don't believe anyone else does either. Would it have been better to just let it rip and hope for the best? How many more would have died that way, and would our mental health be better for it? If it was, could we even live with that? If there was a button that would cure my depression and kill a stranger, I wouldn't push it.
EDIT: ok yeah I get it consensus is we should have pushed the button you can stop telling me now.
In the beginning, it was widely accepted that the virus would spread and ultimately infect most people. Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
> Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
1) Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
2) A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
> people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
As they should. I didn't sign up for two years of this nonsense. We didn't know any of it would work but we knew it could cause serious harm to society yet we choose to it anyway. I'm not some lab-rat who is forced into participating in an uncontrolled experiment performed by a few cherry picked "experts" and their political backers.
Most people are absolutely not at risk of serious covid issues. We knew this even in the first month or two of this adventure but it was taboo to discuss. You'd actively be shamed, mocked and humiliated if you ever discussed actual public data showing covid isn't the monster the media and self-appointed "experts" made it out to be.
It scares the crap out of me how many people willingly played along for two years. Do people not question anything?
> And we can thank those people for giving us one of the worse outcomes.
It takes a lot of hubris to suggest these mitigations did a damn thing. And it takes a lot of mental gymnastics and rationalization to completely ignore their very significant costs to society. We fucked kids, fucked small business owners, fucked hospitals, fucked the poor and working class, enriched the wealthy and old while stealing from the poor and young.
Life is too short to obey the orders of a handful of unelected, cherry-picked "experts". None of them could ever say the crap they had us do would work. We still can't say any of it worked in a meaningful way.
People flushed two years of their short fucking lives down the toilet to participate in an uncontrolled experiment... naw... I'll opt out, thanks.
It's no joke, I know people in their early-mid thirties ( they were somewhat late bloomers from career growth being stunted from the recession) who decided just to not have kids all together as a result of the lockdown/drama it's kind of sad
There is a pretty big difference between washing your hands and having the government shut down your means of earning a living, or not being able to take your kid to a playground for more than a year…
And I can label their actions as selfish too. Expecting society to shut down for years because they are afraid. I could also label people who kept kids out of school as incredibly cruel.
Also arrogant and naïve… thinking humans could somehow control or conquer a highly contagious respiratory virus outside of a vaccine. All these NPI’s are nothing more than modern rain dances. Humans tricking themselves into believing they can control Mother Nature… that they even have a right to try…
> And I can label their actions as selfish too. Expecting society to shut down for years because they are afraid
And if you base your labels on BS like your second sentence, people should probably put little stock in your judgement. You don't have any idea what you're talking about.
Oh really? Because that was what was expected by all these “experts”. We were told to focus on Covid spread to the exclusion of literally everything else. And yes, lots of people were afraid. The only reason to support these measures are fear and a blind trust in authority (and a very narrow and cheery picked band of authority, mind you). Every argument for lockdowns and restrictions are ultimately based on one or the other.
Dismiss my argument all you want. I’m arguing from good faith. It is very possible to see what happened in the last two years and disagree with every bit of it. The idea everybody was supposed to just fall in line and agree with “the narrative” is wishful thinking. People should disagree and you should listen to them…
> It scares the crap out of me how many people willingly played along for two years. Do people not question anything?
As one person that played along, my understanding was that by playing along, all of that would end earlier and we could go back to normal faster. This didn't happen, so I have learned my lesson for the next time.
> As one person that played along, my understanding was that by playing along, all of that would end earlier and we could go back to normal faster. This didn't happen, so I have learned my lesson for the next time.
If that's the lesson, it should be formulated: we can't have nice things because those will fuck it up, so I might as well join the assholes and let the fabric of society get a little more tattered.
That is indeed another way to see things. What would be your suggestion instead, keep being exploited by assholes all my life? Unfortunately I can't run solely on moral high ground, so this is not really possible for me.
I am not implying that. The expectation was that there would be a pandemic and that, unfortunately, a lot of people would die. The idea was to avoid preventable deaths stemming from an overwhelmed healthcare system. It then somehow turned into full blown moral panic, attempting to minimize deaths from infections at almost any cost - something that we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease.
> attempting to minimize deaths from infections at almost any cost - something that we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease.
So first off no, not "at almost any cost." The largest, most effective mitigations were never on the table: wind down the entire global economy into "safe mode" and focus only on life-making activities; send all workers home except the truly necessary. Instead we sent home office workers while labeling as essential the food, delivery, and retail workers we forced to continue to serve them.
Second, "we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease" well we fucking should. Every single preventable death is a tragedy of cosmic magnitude, and much disruption is justified in avoiding even one.
> Every single preventable death is a tragedy of cosmic magnitude, and much disruption is justified in avoiding even one.
Couldn’t disagree more. Death is inevitable, and most death is preventable. There is absolutely nothing cosmically tragic about death.
Government imposed disruption is only justified to a very measured extend. Think “seatbelt laws” and environmental and product safety regulations.
We are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most choices a human makes along that path will involve a measure of risk of shortened lifespan.
The purpose of life for most people is not to live as long as possible. Certainly a government has no right or moral authority dictating that to anyone.
And the most glaring point is that even if the goal is altruistic (i.e. extend lifespans) the implementation was a ineffective totalitarian shit show than could actually in net total cost more quality adjusted life-years than it saved.
> people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
This is what actually fucked the US and led to the million deaths there. I live in Ecuador and we had a bad go in the first few months of the pandemic, with near total lockdown and many deaths. Afterwards though, we went very hard with masks and reasonable restrictions on numbers of people in buildings at once and the cases/deaths have been very steady and controlled since then. Yes, masks really do work, if everyone actually wears them, our numbers have proven this. The biggest restriction has been that schools have shut or gone remote during the entire pandemic and only recently have in-person classes started back up. The US seems to have had it much much worse and it seems to be entirely self inflicted. I personally don't understand why the US didn't just give up after a few months once it was obvious that people wouldn't really do what it takes for success. It looks like the US has stayed on a path that everyone hates, but keeps getting no benefit from.
Ecuador had a much higher death rate than other countries which took less extreme measures. Sweden, for example, never shut down primary schools and never had much in the way of mask mandates yet they came through much better.
Pointing to EC as "the" way to handle this is not my point. The fact is, there were many paths available to the US that could have helped keep that million people from dying. We proved that masks work if people use them, that is a fact. Other strategies also can work. My point is, if the US could have gotten its people on the same page and actually done something rather than self sabotaging itself, it would be a completely different story. As it stands, it failed at this, and it has kept its ineffectual policies in place, to the detriment of social cohesion, but sadly not the virus.
Sweden had fewer per capita deaths than many other EU member states. You haven't provided any evidence that extensive pandemic control measures actually helped.
They didn't need to have it figured it out, just recognized that they didn't know what they're doing, were unable of being any help, and stayed quiet instead of blindly making things up.
> They didn't need to have it figured it out, just recognized that they didn't know what they're doing, were unable of being any help, and stayed quiet instead of blindly making things up.
You're basically advocating that they stop doing their jobs, and let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Think of it this way: Imagine you're a general in a war. It would be the most reckless kind of incompetence to refrain from giving any orders until you worked out a surefire plan to defeat the enemy, since that kind of inaction is literally a recipe for defeat. In the real world, to actually solve real problems, it's pretty much a requirement for responsible people to take action based on incomplete information and imperfect understanding.
That is not a useful analogy. Dealing with a public health crisis is not at all like fighting a war. Doing nothing is always an option, and is often a better option than acting on guesswork.
> Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
Then they shouldn't act like they have all the answers if they have no idea what is going on. This is exactly what all the "conspiracy theorists" expected, and it's exactly how it played out.
The CDC has seriously destroyed public faith in the government generally by pushing "two weeks to flatten the curve" and "100% effective vaccines" when, in reality, they did not have a handle on the situation.
Health authorities pretty much everywhere have been quite clear about data and conclusions constantly evolving, but people just don't read or process that far. Or only read the "CDC recommends XYZ" headline and then complain that nobody told them that this isn't 100% valid-forever fundamental laws. It's been staggering to see how many people will claim "but they never said this might change" while you can just go back and look at what actually was written at the time and see that it was of course said that things can and will be adjusted as the situation changes.
We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless. Being an authority in general doesn't help in a novel situation that they're unable to understand correctly.
> We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless.
That doesn't follow. Evolving conclusions are what you get and almost want (even better would be someone who guesses everything correctly beforehand, but ... that's not how it works) in a changing situation. That doesn't mean people drawing the conclusions are useless, nor do their conclusions have to be perfect to be useful - as long as they are better than the ones the people who'd have to draw them instead would. And at least around here, given the choice between politicians deciding with or without the health authorities involved, yeah, it's pretty obvious which one I want.
And besides, that wasn't even the point of the comment chain, but rather people claiming that conclusions are constantly evolving was somehow hidden.
> A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
Communism is a wonderful thing, if only everyone and their dog were on the same page, we'd all live enlightened lives with every need fulfilled. It truly is great, on paper. "Scientific communism" has proven it, being an academic discipline for decades.
A big reason it has not happened as it could was that some people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one. They didn't want to see the light. So the implementors were forced to isolate, expulse or exterminate those people. Just 0.1% of population. And then another 0.5%. And then a few. And then some more.
So in reality, we have to deal with "just a few more bad apples" forever, having Gulags and Holodomors, and the communism itself "just around the corner" permanently.
For me the parallels between that and covid measures are crystal-clear. If something only works with 100% uptake and participation - the in reality it doesn't work. And all the "unintended" negative outcomes are on the conscience of those who pushed for these measures.
Would they have died anyway, or did they die with Covid? It’s the repeated question, together with “Didn’t the flu cause as many deaths”, and even if it was actual death, it’s a transfer of years of life from the young to the elderly.
Curiously the elderly seem to feel the most robbed. In my family, the young locked down while the elderly went about as normal.
Discussing this today, the predominant feeling amongst the over 70 cohort was that they had at best a few more years of health with everyone and didn’t want to spend that in lockdown.
I've used that argument and the counter is: depression due to lockdown can heal once lockdown is over. People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.
Suicidal ideation among kids in the US is up 100%, suicide attempts are up 50%, actual suicides are up 20%.
Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent.
And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. Hell, we haven't even acknowledged that every single pandemic rule and restriction and measure has a cost in human life. Instead, we've been getting shitty platitudes about how "kids are resilient", or "it's just two weeks", or "your surgery is non-essential and therefore postponed".
>> [Column A] People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.
> [Column B] Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent.
> And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion.
So, which is higher: Column A or Column B? I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd be astounded if there wasn't at least and order of magnitude more COVID deaths during this pandemic than total number of teen suicides (i.e. all of them, not just the increase due to the pandemic).
These children will never fully recover their formative years. Also, what impact, if any, did the treatment of young people have on the ultimate death toll from this virus? We will never know, but I am afraid if we could, we would not like the answer.
Closig schools has been the core of the US pandemic influenza control strategy since the second Bush administration. There were detailed simulations showing that shutting schools is the only single intervention that can significantly affect R: schools are the best place for spreading influenza due to the very small spacing between seats in classrooms, the number of students who pack into schoolbusses daily, etc. (However, the studies were done before masking everyone was a possibility.)
Most parents with k-8 children should know this first-hand. Memory is fading but as I recall, two weeks after school year started we could pretty much expect a bug to come home. (continuing through out the winter months of the school year)
Does it make sense to specifically focus on Covid response here? By which I mean, is this not really just the same problem of an overbearing system continuing to turn the screws, and now the system input contains the additional stressor of Covid? Some of the response is seemingly necessary, and ignoring the issue is certainly not the answer. But administrators craft obtuse top-down policies, announce "Mission Accomplished", and don't particularly examine their effectiveness from the perspective of those on the receiving end of their blunt tools.
It's the same exact dynamic as how the media scares everyone with sensationalized school shootings, and then schools respond by making kids go through metal detectors and draconian zero tolerance policies and the like (also horrible for kids' mental health). We've built this no-win bureaucracy where the primary dynamic is avoiding any blame. Because if the blame does come, it will itself be merciless and unempathetic, despite how reasonable or well-intentioned an administrator's motive was.
Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone.
I don’t speak for anyone but myself, and I am an extreme outlier. But I would have been delighted. Alone, I could spend my time how I want, learn what I want, and associate with who I wish. There is also a much larger pool of love interests online than offline, especially in small town Missouri.
I’m a loner. I’m happy alone with a PC and internet, when it’s my choice.
During the pandemic, I live alone and have had minimal contact with family. Going months on end, lack of sun in northern climate, not seeing human faces in real life… the government said we had stay at home. Nope, I’m going out for a bike ride.
Choosing to be a basement dweller is one thing but this has been close to prison.
It also astonishes me that people put all blame of the pandemic's effects on the counter-measures and none on the pandemic itself. Having seen the situation in Wuhan or Bergamo, fearing about loved ones also puts a lot of stress on kids.
I agree with you: fundamentally a bad thing happened. Mitigating the harm may have been possible to some degree but perhaps a more significant degree of freedom was simply choosing which form the negative consequences would take: more deaths or more isolation / economic problems. Since they are in different units, I’d say it’s subjective how to decide what’s optimal there.
>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this.
The CDC study was specifically in relation to covid lockdowns. Virtually everyone pointed out how this would happen and that this unprecedented move to lockdown the healthy vs the standard for thousands of years of quarantining the sick. The cost is far worse than the healthcare system melting down. Then again you look at Quebec nurses... they literally went to the United Nations to say they are slaves. Provincial government is doing it to them. Federal government is tyrannical. They had to go to the UN. Insanity how bad our healthcare system is collapsing.
> I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health.
So something that north america doesnt seem to have that most of the world does have... imagine you are poland or somewhere in the middle east. You fear war every single day. People who live there think about having to escape every day.
North America doesn't have that. Nobody fears a surprise war because thousands of nukes will launch out of fear wiping out whoever is attacking. Flipside, Russia's new threat of imminent nuclear war means North American teens will now have to worry about their impending doom.
This return of the cold war will make things worse; not measured in this study.
Lock-downs didn't just have effect on social life.
Young people's education during lockdown have been pretty much written off as a casualty of pandemic. Suspending state testing or admission requirements was just a band-aid solution. Now young people are left to fend for themselves, to try to plug holes in education they received. No wonder their stress levels are high.
Wasn't there a reduction in suicides? Not that that's the only factor when it comes to mental health, but it's probably something to take into account when you talk about the mental health toll of the past 2 years
Total suicides went down, but child and teen suicides are way up, and "deaths of despair", i.e. people drinking or drugging themselves to death are up considerably. So while it's true that total suicides went down, it's masking the reality of the situation.
I agree with your high notes, but also imagine the adults in your life sending you to a place that is unsafe every day. There’s a double edged sword effect of the pandemic here.
As a high school teacher(14-18 year olds) who actually spends a lot of time trying to interact with students and get to know them, I keep hearing this kind of statement:
There is no room for mistakes.
Students cannot miss a homework assignment, fail an exam, not achieve an A, make any kind of faux pax on social media, etc…
And then you combine this with many adults in their lives telling them, I got into UCLA, why can’t you? Just work harder, or just not caring about their mental health.
They see this never ending cycle of
turn the assignments in and then go to sports practice(where again the competition is at such a high level) and also, get a job, because they want or need money.
Many are going to bed after midnight every night.
Something has to give.
This is really disturbing to me.
How are they doing living up to this? Many are living up to it but the cost is substantial, and the others that have no hope of being this are giving up.
I'm a senior in university now, but it did really feel like this when I was in high-school. And it still feels like this in university, though I'm now much more capable of reasoning of whether it's true or if I just feel that it's true.
I think this is a consistent theme throughout the entirety of the United States. There's so little leeway. Fail a class -> you might have to go into an extra 20k of debt. Lose your job -> Homeless, foodless, insuranceless.
> This week, Anthony Clark, an Air Force veteran and Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois, noted how deeply embedded this trend is in American military service, detailing how he, his brother, father, and grandfather were all drafted or enlisted because “poverty is the draft.”
I don’t see any evidence it’s shaping up to be a long war. Russia has effectively abandoned their western front. They’re focusing on the east and somewhat the south.
The Russian army’s performance has been pathetic and wouldn’t last long at all vs. nato. Nukes are a thing, but not a long war thing.
Ah yes, massive equipment and personnel losses, reminding the world that Putin is a flagrant liar, spurring movement off national gas, and making clear exactly how formidable the Russian military isn't. All while not actually taking strategic points in the east one month in.
Unfortunately Russia can just launch rockets and shells from within their own borders and completely level Ukrainian cities... Even if they lose most of their army they still can 'win' by using tactics no other nation would deem acceptable. And that's likely what they'll do as long as they feel the west won't directly intervene.
The Ukranians can fire back? Such as at Belgorod? Besides, even rocket artillery range is only about 30km. Kyiv is now out of range of everything except airstrikes, and Russian air power is of limited effectiveness as they never achieved air superiority.
It is quite possible the Ukranians will retake everything taken in the recent offensive. The question is then whether they will also attempt to retake Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea.
Why stop at reclaiming former Ukrainian areas defined post USSR collapse?
It would be beneficial to the world to see a Novo Ukraine, a wealthy country committed to peace and modeled with a federalist system, taught by the mobocratic failures of the last 30 years, stretching from eastern Europe to Siberia.
There is no evidence they are regrouping. There is strong evidence of vehicles being trained back out of Ukraine via Belorussian rail. To attack kyiv again would be starting from scratch.
Putin’s approval rating is irrelevant.
Russia has managed to lose the battle of kyiv, and among other blundering failures, has repeatedly failed to establish air superiority. The extent to which they would be utterly slaughtered given actual western air support is hard to exaggerate.
At least to the extent of arbitrary Europeans needing to worry about a draft.
I mean, all these things are true. The middle class is disappearing, and society is quickly bifurcating into a few haves and the rest have-nots. When I was a kid, you could get B’s or C’s and have a good job after high school. Now you’re competing with the smartest of the ~50M other kids your age globally for one of the few tickets out of poverty. And you can bet if you miss that one homework assignment or get that one B, you’re way behind the kids who are doing everything to 100% perfection. I can understand how it is a pressure cooker of stress!
Skilled labor jobs or military service are a great option for people who didn't get excellent grades in high school but are willing to work hard to get a ticket out of poverty. Unfortunately, many educators and parents don't promote those career paths as much as they should.
> Students cannot miss a homework assignment, fail an exam, not achieve an A, make any kind of faux pax on social media, etc…
As someone close to a high school student, I’m actually surprised how much “make up” is allowed. All missed assignments can be done any time during a semester for no penalty. Two exams can be retaken for a max grade of 80.
When I was in high school there were no retakes at all.
These are honors and ap classes. There’s also unlimited turins for higher grades. Each class is 20-50% assignments so if you just turn in your homework you’re kind of guaranteed a B.
I think this is because of hyper competitive college prep where everyone wants to get straight As.
Back in the day, getting a C was fine but getting an A was really hard, most students got Bs or Cs.
Now, getting an A isn’t so hard but a C is seen as a terrible, because most students are getting As.
Lots of schools have policies like yours but they’re not removing the pressure, they’re just shifting what’s “acceptable”. Sometimes they actually make it worse because now near-perfect scores are the norm, and if you mess up there’s no way to do extra somewhere else to bring you back to average.
There were none of these when I was in high school only a few years ago, and they still aren't a thing from the high schoolers I know.
The system is still the same - every day you miss the assignment is one fewer grade, except for some, where you automatically get zero. You cannot retake an exam without cause.
I think it's more common than you would expect. It's a configurable option in many online learning solutions (Canvas, BlackBoard). InQuisitive allows you to keep answering questions until you reach 100% grade, and often represent 10%-30% of a course's entire grade.
It's because, fundamentally, the middle class is shrinking. The barrier for staying in the middle class is getting higher and higher every day. And this is happening before our eyes at a rapid pace over the last 10-20 years.
Who knows what will happen. I think the mass control of people has basically been perfected, so revolution feels really unlikely. Instead we'll see a police state and quality of life continues to go down for the plebs. Throw global warming on top of that and I think 50 years from now is going to be a pretty dire time. Better get that job at Evil Corp.
That's the super high achieving group.
I saw that some decades back when I kept a horse at the barn on the Stanford campus and met some of the local teens. These were kids with very high powered parents, and were pressured to keep up. These teens knew the ones who committed suicide at Gunn and Paly high schools.[1]
Notes from then:
- Saw a group of high-schoolers discussing grades. Asked "What's considered a good grade point average today?" Reply, in a bleak voice, "4.5".
- Teen shows up at the barn with her arm in a sling. Asked "What happened, did you get dumped?" (Meaning, off a horse.) "No, I fell off the cheerleader pyramid. And now I'm letting the swim team down."
- One of the less bright ones, worried that she can't keep up, saying how hard it was.
"Less bright" here means "can't get into Stanford/Harvard, will do fine at a lower tier college.
This is real, but it's not the typical teen experience.
> adults in their lives telling them, I got into UCLA, why can’t you
Not just adults. This is a difference even compared to students who graduated in 2019, which would include siblings and other near-peers. We're in the middle of the college selection process for the HS class of 2022 right now. Many colleges are getting record numbers of applications, because of all the deferrals and transfers from the last two years. That intensifies the competition for this year's kids, leading to a lot of waitlisting and outright denials even from schools that would have been fairly safe bets any other year. Just about every kid has had to lower their sights an extra notch, and some who didn't apply to enough safeties are facing unexpected gap years.
> Many are going to bed after midnight every night.
Some aren't? Between extracurriculars and homework loads for the more advanced classes, any kid who hopes to get into a first- or even second-tier college doesn't have much time to socialize or play games etc. any earlier.
Don't forget affirmative action (sorry, reverse racism). If you are Asian (or for some schools, male), the standards are substantially higher than if you are black or Latino.
I know if I ever have kids, I'm probably going to tell them it's okay to even drop out of high school.
None of it really matters, you can drop out of high school, go backpacking in Europe, and as long as you find a way to support yourself, no one has a right to judge you.
You definitely don't need to get into college. In the last 30 years or so, we've turned everyone into maniacs. Back in the day, if you just graduated high school that was something to be proud of.
Now, no, you need to get straight A's, no, you need to take a foreign language. If you're not able to pass a foreign language class, maybe you're messed up in the head, maybe we can give you some dangerous stimulants to fix you.
Again, none of it matters, I make significantly more money than most of the rest of my family and I'm one of the least educated. I was making more than what they make now with their fancy masters degrees, before I even finished my BA.
The only thing that really matters is finding peace with yourself, and again as long as you can support yourself. Nobody really cares. Of course. Someone's going to be smarter on paper, someone's going to get into a better school, someone's going to have a bigger house. But if you're constantly trying to compete with every other person, you're going to find, no matter how well you do, you'll devalue your own accomplishments.
I mean it really does matter. You got lucky. Compare yourself with the millions of people working at restaurants with no health insurance and nothing they own worth any value. That's the norm, not your experience.
The problem is there is a huge income gap between the people with degrees and good jobs and people with just high school educations. Much of that is due to offshoring / NAFTA / etc.
"We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south."
BTW, that dollar amount is double in todays dollars vs 1992 when that debate happened. Imagine if we had millions of jobs for people without college degrees paying $28 an hour with health care. That's a stark contrast with the $15 minimum wage people are clawing to get with massive resistance. Something as simple as NAFTA causing so much destruction 30 years after the fact is amazing. Imagine kids where both parents didn't have to work to make ends meet. Imagine kids where their parent's weren't exhausted from working all the time and could spend more quality time with them. Imagine kids who could have a future where they didn't have to attend college and the pressure that comes with it. imagine kids who can get regular health checkups without breaking the bank. The cascade effects are immense. But hey, look on the bright side, PROFITS!
>I mean it really does matter. You got lucky. Compare yourself with the millions of people working at restaurants with no health insurance and nothing they own worth any value. That's the norm, not your experience.
I've met plenty of people with various fancy degrees working those jobs. I recall in my early twenties I met an alumni from one of my dream schools. He was making roughly as much as I was without a degree.
If you go insane in your pursuit of academic excellence, you'll be rendered unable to work.
Plus, theirs no rule saying a high school dropout can't attend community college later. This is much better option for most people.
The alternative is losing your mind trying to get into that elite top ten college
>I've met plenty of people with various fancy degrees working those jobs. I recall in my early twenties I met an alumni from one of my dream schools. He was making roughly as much as I was without a degree.
Sure, you got lucky and he probably picked a less than lucrative degree, or wasn't as lucky. There is certainly overlap, but the statistics show that there is a large wealth gap between people with a college degree and people without. Bill Gates was a college drop out and he has billions, but is that the norm? Absolutely not.
>Plus, theirs no rule saying a high school dropout can't attend community college later. This is much better option for most people.
Yes, but I thought we were talking about the prospects of high school drop outs vs people with college degrees. You're kinda moving he goal posts a bit I think. I think dropping out of high school, getting a GED and then attending college is essentially the same thing as the "normal" college route.
>The alternative is losing your mind trying to get into that elite top ten college
That's a false dichotomy. You don't have to get into an elite top ten college to have a future, statistically speaking. The main income gap is between people with a college degree and people without. I do agree with you that people who aspire to get into an elite college can easily burnout and go mad, but that's not what I'm comparing here. I also know not all college degrees or even institutions are equal. Some are absolute shit, but the majority of accredited institutions are good enough. Degrees, not so much though. Some degrees are an absolute pyramid scheme. It's tough to navigate for someone with experience with it, much less an immediate family without a college degree.
Not everyone is even capable of attending college. That's just what it is.
You can get into a trade, etc.
And if you don't like trades you can always go back to community college.
In the early 2000s you had an all out attack on tradesmenship. High schools use to offer classes in woodworking, automotive repair, and even metal working.
All of a sudden it was decided these jobs were 'dirty'. How dare some students have different aptitudes!
Life is long. You can try to become an electrician apprentice, decide you don't like it and attend community college after that
Relatedly, the delaying actions on "fight for $15" is darkly genius. It puts off implementing it, of course, but also every month of inflation eats away at the "$15" number. Wikipedia says the campaign was started in 2012, so today it should be $18.78.
The number in the slogan stays the same, but reality slips out from under it. The democrats are about to lose the midterms, so if it doesn't get done in the next few months, they'll be another six years of inflation from even getting another swing at the ball.
I actually don't think rasing the minimum wage is a solution to poverty.
Back in LA I was only making 10$ an hour, which was enough for a 600$ apartment. We need more 600$ apartments, if you make 15$ an hour but rent is 1200$ you lost money.
While making this 10$ an hour I worked alongside many brilliant folks, a few had masters degrees. They had to manage student loans as well off 10$ an hour.
While this got muddled a bit, my point is there's more than one life path.
If you're not able to attend college, maybe your just not a good fit for it, you can still find a great career.
Likewise, you can get into a top school and still squander your life. Mental health here is a big issue, the pressure to do well can leave you permanently disabled.
College sorta serves as a filter, someone who attends an elite school is much more likely to be intrinsically motivated. But it serves no one to pressure people who just aren't college bound into attending anyway. It's just a great way to make someone nuts.
The pandemic was the last straw… I thought. I’m disturbed to see that the world is going right back to 'the way things were'.
Folks take the idea that you have to work for a living, and have dialed it up to eleven…thousand!
As best as I understand: hard work is not rewarded, it’s exploited. A natural resource to be drilled, pumped, and burned out.
That observation doesn't obviate some of the other points—there seems to be an "excellent sheep" problem: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/11/30/briefly-noted-excellent-s... most people who claim to be busy, but show many hours a day on their phones, will privately admit that perhaps there's something else going on than purely being "busy."
It's like you're completely ignoring the fact that phones and apps are designed to be addictive.
Growing up in a world where tech companies have been given free reign to psychologically manipulate users to increase screen time is yet another pressure facing that generation, it shouldn't be thrown in their face.
> admit that perhaps there's something else going on than purely being "busy."
- Snapchat is essential to some youth friendships nowadays, unfortunately,
- People dwell in dopamine hits, notably because their social life is broken. It’s a self-reinforcing problem, true, but initially their social life was broken. You don’t get into drugs when all is good, or at least you can resist.
School pupils having even 8 hours a day of screen time would not even remotely surprising during the pandemic — what else are they going to be doing? My (UK) school day routine was get up at 07:30, breakfast, leave the house at about 08:00 either for the bus or just (once I realised I could do the 3-ish mile walk fast enough) go direct on foot, 09:00-15:30 was the actual school day.
Initially I got home by 16:15, then watched a lot of TV; later, the school got an ISDN line and I stayed until 16:30 — memories of downloading and printing pictures from an artist called The Werewolf and getting home at 17:30 — but again followed by TV. Possibly video games on a Commodore 64, followed by a BBC model B, followed by a Performa 5200.
Actual homework? Bus, lunchtime, whenever; I had no interest in the tasks we had to do.
Of course, now I’m a “responsible adult” or something. Screen Time is reporting 6h 28m average per day over the last week, yet despite that, this is what I get done in a typical week:
Lol literally our whole world revolves around things that don’t matter think about it our whole
World revolves around things that won’t benefit us in the next life , just a bunch of people wasting their energy and time doing something another human came up with, and of course knowing how long the devil been around he’s pretty good at his job and if you look at the scripture you would know how he tried to trick the humans before us and a lot of information that most people won’t know because their so busy beeping tricked by the devil for example Solomon temple back in his time they also had technology but not as advanced if you knew what technology really was somethings will start to make sense and if you run the thought of how pretty much everything things we do in our lives was designed in a complex system by the devil and his helpers but wait you don’t want know the real truth it’s madder then anything you watched or
Your small
Little human brain could possibly imagine and oh covid omg wtf why so desperately did they want at least 70% of the world vaccinated and how did everyone go along that blows my mind more then anything I just told you lol I’ll predict the future so easy everything revolves around ISREAL lol too much
I am glad this is not the case in Europe (with the exception of the UK). Here we do not only look to performance and pride and you need to win everything. Individual development is very important. Hope it will remain like that.
This is a funny reply because “individual development” isn’t something you schedule in European eyes. You just hang around with friends and learn to be a good person, and specifically not a tight wound asshole.
They do, but the point is that you don't have to be better than everybody else at it to get into university. You just do it for yourself.
I'm not the in US, so my knowledge of the educational system comes only from what I read, but it's my understanding that "extracurriculars" are an important part of college admissions, which is different from Europe.
> I'm not the in US, so my knowledge of the educational system comes only from what I read, but it's my understanding that "extracurriculars" are an important part of college admissions, which is different from Europe.
That's really only a thing for the private universities and those don't make up a large percentage
I think it's a question of "important for what" and how society goes about teaching kids those things. As in:
In Europe, it's important that kids learn self-development, so we let them do it. And they do it by hanging out with friends, learning an instrument, etc. They're not pushed to do those things because colleges don't take these into account for admissions.
In the US, it's important that kids learn self-development, so we have them learn an instrument, or participate in sports. They are pushed to do those things because colleges take those into account for admissions.
I'm not sure the pandemic is solely or even largely responsible.
Zoomers are the first generation with nearly unrestricted access to social media essentially from birth (access that probably should've been restricted early on, but that's water under the bridge). Couple that early and frequent exposure with artificial echo chambers created by apps to boost engagement, and impressionable minds end up soaked in endlessly-amplified negative perspectives.
The test case for this was 4chan incubating incel/redpill culture and Reddit later amplifying it among late-millennials. Today, EDs, ideation of self harm, etc are all mercilessly reflected back at people on just about every social media platform rather than just the niche ones. The pandemic only made it worse by preventing people from spending time with each other in person, but kids are glued to their phones anyway.
$1 Bet: millennial parents will probably learn from this with their own kids. Or if not, legislators probably will. Late Gen-α and the generation that follows will hopefully see a rebound from these trends with parenting habits that benefit from these learnings.
Kids have been exposed to multiple consecutive years of social isolation due to the pandemic. They haven't been going to school or seeing their peers in person. That's kind of the obvious hypothesis. To just completely write that off, you really have to have axe to grind against social media.
As you said, "kids are glued to their phones anyway." That was already true before the pandemic. Which, again, suggests to me that the extreme factor here is the isolation, not the phones.
Not that social media is good or healthy. But the way it's scapegoated reminds me of the way television and video games were demonized when I was a child growing up in the 90s. It was over the top.
I’m a high school English teacher. What you’re saying seems mostly right - but, anecdotally of course, the trend has been made more severe. Their ability to engage with in-person socialization is very obviously impaired, and their pre-existing tendency to snack on social media is compulsive for a whole bunch of them.
At a much higher level than I’ve ever seen, kids will choose swiping over talking with their friends who are sitting right next to them.
It’s getting better, but - man - it was bad when we first returned from distance learning.
> They haven't been going to school or seeing their peers in person.
I'm not sure there's a single family in the continental United States that has spent the entirety of the past two years keeping their children locked up in their basement.
Even when school is closed, nobody has been stopping children from seeing their peers in person outside of school.
And if our society can't figure out a way to make that a priority, then that may be the problem with it, not the school closures.
>Even when school is closed, nobody has been stopping children from seeing their peers in person outside of school.
Why do people always treat friction as something that is irrelevant?
Shutdowns and kids being unable to hang out when they choose to creates a situation where they just lose touch with one another. You can't just deliberately flip a switch to turn it all back on. Social connections don't work like that. Social connections involve a whole series of spontaneous events. If those events don't happen, then social connections fall away. Adults have a hard time making friends, because they have a lot fewer opportunities for those spontaneous events that create friendships.
Rolling the dice less often will give you fewer successes. Some amount of those successes is required for upkeep of a friendship.
You may have missed the fact that many countries / localities in fact did do lockdowns on and off for the last two years that did prevent childrend from seeing their peers in person outside of school. Couple that with the non-stop fearmongering by the media, and it's not an unreasonable assumption to make that many kids were probably kept at home and away from their peers, even between lockdowns.
I dunno why this is downvoted. I know several people who intentionally isolated their kids for at least a year. These kids couldn't even go outside...
Instead of telling people to remain calm, these fucking "experts" intentionally scared the living daylights out of people. And for many people in my particularly liberal region, they took it all to heart and went well above and beyond what these "experts" were demanding.
In the US, those on and off lockdowns[1] lasted for about a month per locale, and weren't even enforced during that time.
What about the other 23 months?
[1] 'Lockdown' is a completely inappropriate word to describe a world where the greatest practical impediment to your freedom is that you can't go to the theatre, the bar, or to Hawai'i. Or host a wedding.
Everything is exaggerated nowadays. “Unenforced suggestions to stay at home” = lockdown. “A minor inconvenience” = torture. “Sensible public health policy” = tyranny.
No US state implemented anything close to what a reasonable, sane person could describe as lockdown. Nobody was locked into their homes. Stay at home was routinely broken with zero consequences. Business closures went unenforced outside of a handful of urban areas. Calling it “lockdown” is clown world logic.
There is an entire spectrum on the scale of hard lockdowns to curfews to public health orders.
The GP I was replying to made the assertion that they can't believe there would be even a single family that made the choice to keep their children isolated.
Do you agree with their assertion that no portion of the population could have "over-reacted" to the prevailing health advice? Or that no family had vulnerable persons they were looking after that resulted in a higher level of isolation?
I'm always entertained by the idea that 4chan did something to people as opposed to it revealing what was always there. We're social animals, we're more defined by our environment than we'd like to believe; but similarly, we have the capability to generate and manipulate that environment ourselves.
I would suggest that the basic human feedback loop just got more tightly coupled and that mass personal communication was always going to lead to this.
It gave them a positive feedback loop and gave them a safe space to become more extreme and weaponize their own stupidity.
You can easily see this to a lesser extend by going to any sports team subreddit and then going to the subreddit of the league that team plays in. The voices will be much more uniform and arguments more minor in the team subreddit for the most part... and views that are freely expressed and thought to be factual in the team subreddit may not be at all popular in the league subreddit.
> I'm not sure the pandemic is solely or even largely responsible
I agree that the pandemic is probably not a root cause: I think the global reaction to the pandemic could have a related root cause (social media, outrage / attention culture, the breakdown of normal human discourse, polarization) as the mental health problems. Blaming "the pandemic" fails to acknowledge that covid was as much or more about our collective reaction as it was about the actual virus. It's the "powder keg" thing - the conditions were there, and inevitably something would come along to set it off.
I'd add 'collective overreaction', at least from a fear perspective. I know plenty of adults that lost their rational minds during the pandemic: believing all the media-driven fear porn that never once honestly explained the true risk to the < 70 year-old crowd. Older children/teens watched those same news programs and also picked up on their parents' fear, and they had even less wisdom and ability to think clearly than the parents.
> I agree that the pandemic is probably not a root cause: I think the global reaction to the pandemic could have a related root cause
I keep seeing the argument that the pandemic and the response to it are distinctly separate phenomenon. They are not.
The pandemic response is explicitly part and parcel of the pandemic, you don’t have a pandemic without a response, and there’s no response without a pandemic.
In many places this was actively encouraged during the last two years. Virtually every other activity was banished. Playgrounds, schools, extracurricular activities, pools, museums, you name it... closed. In many places you literally couldn't go outside without some kind of government issued hall-pass.
We absolutely, shamefully fucked over kids the last two years. And so many people cheered it on despite kids being the lowest risk group out there.
Kids have less freedom today than they eve did - my parents roamed the city freely, i only walked to school by myself, kids today hardly leave the house alone
>The test case for this was 4chan incubating incel/redpill culture and Reddit later amplifying it among late-millennials.
4chan did not incubate redpill. Reddit was the primary spot for redpill to congregate, until Reddit started cracking down on TRP and related subs. Cherry on top, Reddit has not acted against the highly similar FDS and many other subs.
Incel culture is also skeptical at best. Yes, 4chan did have the famous Elliot case, and several boards were famous among them. However, Reddit also banned several subreddits related to them which made them flock towards 4chan.
This doesn't change the issue (rampant media exposure is bad for the human psyche). It just puts into perspective things have been going downhill since the masses got access to social media and unlike 4chan, the darker corners of Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and whatever else aren't nearly as taboo and may even sneak onto the homepage feed randomly. 4chan was mostly the place where the extremists would congregate, but extreme cases don't explain why the number of moderate or higher cases would increase.
To put things further in perspective: 4chan started in 2005. Twitter founded in 2006. Reddit, 2007. Smartphones took off somewhere late 2000s/early 2010s. The "average" kid did not have access to these platforms 24/7 before 2010. Those that would likely didn't spend the little PC time just browsing the darkest corners of the net on a single monitor.
I’ve been wondering about “mid phase” internet a bit recently. The time where it opened up to “nerdy” people, after tech professionals, and before general masses. There was a pushback against the internet being serious business. All someone has to do was turn off the computer and it all went away. Could it be that even back then it was somehow known what would happen with the influencer marketing engagement stuff that is a known problem now? Unwarranted self importance? Superman vs Goku and Star Trek vs Star Wars as training in not only how to leverage conflict for engagement (or your personal internet points) but also in how to see through it as being bait? That if you let the general masses make the internet real life then you open pandora bawks? Not sure that’s why it’s all questions.
My awareness of TRP MRA ETC was only after internet feminists started complaining about it loudly, for whatever that’s worth.
As a tangent: how often do we rediscover what the ancients already knew? Can anything survive touching the general masses?
> I'm not sure the pandemic is solely or even largely responsible.
The article is literally reporting a major change in mental health metrics in teens as of a year into the pandemic. You honestly think social media/4-chan/reddit is the culprit? I think I'm starting to see why a million Americans are in a box today. There is a disconnect here.
>Concerns about adolescent mental health were rising before the pandemic: Teens had been reporting poor mental health at higher rates. Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported having “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 37 percent. In 2021, the figure rose to 44 percent.
I assume this is the line you're talking about. So in the span of a pandemic, it increased by 7% as opposed to the 11% between 2009 and 2019. While the premise "the pandemic didn't matter" might not be valid, it is a good question to ask which things that are now returning to normal had an effect, and whether the trend is still continuing up otherwise. It has been between 2009 and 2019. It's not difficult to find sources showing correlations between some mental health issues (in this case depression[0]) and internet usage. Several other aspects have not gotten any better either, and do not seem to be getting better anytime soon. Things these teens will inevitably have to deal with in the next 5 years unless things change drastically.
So the pandemic did matter, but I'd also be skeptical of what long term effects the pandemic caused which would not have happened otherwise, and which effects are caused by other trends which quietly continued or were amplified by the pandemic and will plateau or continue growing after.
Again, we are talking about an effect that has been showing a 1.1% increase year over year up to 2019. If we assume that 2019 was much like previous years, then the 7% rise reported from 2019 through the first six months of 2020 would result in approximately a 6% rise in those first 6 months alone. That is an astounding increase in the overall metric in a very short period of time coinciding with the beginning of pandemic lockdowns. I posit to you that this is due to the pandemic; that is, to social isolation, economic disruptions to households, fear of death to self and loved ones, actual deaths of loved ones, etc. I think that is a much better explanation for what has been observed than screen time or social media.
I am seeing that kids are less and less interested in online-only bubbles. They use social media, whatever the current popular platform, as ways to enhance connections if they use it at all.
There are many who are addicted to their devices. But there are many that are not. Why?
Most kids I know, think social media are lame. They use it complement for their hobbies and activities. It was pandemic that glued them to their phones, not the other way around.
Here, have an anecdote: I always spent a lot of my time online (I got Discord at 12 or 13 I think, I never got Twitter or any FB/Meta apps, but now I'm on the fediverse which is nice) and the pandemic didn't really change much other than me not having to leave the house to go to school.
The undergrads I work with don't seem to ever mention Facebook, but Discord seems pretty popular. Social media is like everything else: There's the "bad" product which has been ruined by old people and the "good" product that the hip young crowd likes. This treadmill will continue as people join networks, settle in to their preferences, and then age.
The quality of the discussion is in parts abysmal. Assertions are thrown into the world without even mentioning a source.
A substantive discussion is therefore not possible. It is just 'opinion porn' imho.
Regardless of whether the pandemic, social media, (real) porn, industrial food, excessive demands at school, any combination thereof or other anecdotes are used as the cause. Nothing is substantiated by linking sources. Or at least naming them.
Whatever is claimed can only be questioned, not refuted, as there is no substantive point of attack.
Thus, in the end, everyone feels good because they were able to express an opinion. But unfortunately we have learned nothing.
The reality is the pandemic fear mongers won't cite fataility rates for groups like 5 year olds, because the data doesn't support steps taken.
They won't cite data about N95 use because N95's DO work, and if we just let people who wanted to / were at risk wear N95's we'd solve half the problem right there without burdening anyone else. And yes, N95's with a vent are fine and should be encouraged because they make mask wearing a LOT easier.
Instead we are just fed endless BS. Citing the CDC and WHO is pointless because their stuff was not actually grounded in science but in BS. Witness their loud announcements that travel restrictions (time honored method to reduce spread) was racist and wouldn't reduce spread. Or that masks don't work etc. You have an airbone disease, masks probably help. You have a transmittable disease, reducing travel may help.
I think we can be a little less confrontational in the discussion. I also believe that it helps not to impute bad intentions to the other side, but to assume that they make mistakes (like every side), but also try to achieve the best possible outcome under the given circumstances and knowledge at the time.
Especially during Corona I think you have to distinguish clearly between politics and science. Science has the great advantage that it does not have to deal with feasibility. It can call out what works best (after appropriate studies have been done with good study design). Does science make mistakes? Sure. Still it is the best methodology we have. Does politics make mistakes. Oh - absolutely. Also probably some politicians wet their pants in regards to the power trip they had. Still - I think the majority tried to do the best they could.
However, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of what we know today was yet unknown. So a lot of decisions were necessarily wrong in hindsight. but right under the given circumstances and the goals of the people involved.
Was it known that N95 masks (very likely) help? Yes. Were there enough N95 masks available for everybody? Probably not.
When I look at how toilet paper was hoarded in Germany at the beginning of the pandemic and how there was almost nowhere to get toilet paper, the political action was not so stupid. Because N95 masks would have been off the shelves in minutes.
So letting people wear any masks (at least they help a little bit) and let as many people as possible stay at home as much as possible and in public only gather at an appropriate distance. Not too bad an idea when dealing with too few effective masks as a limitation imho.
When enough masks were available, the requirements for masks were tightened (although not enough, in my personal opinion). But again: I know a lot of people who think wearing masks is important, but have a hard time wearing N95/FFP2 but are fine with surgical masks due to for example panic attacks. The fact that currently quite a few public places like universities demand FFP2/N95 to be worn permanently makes for a bad situation for these people as they can't partake in their courses under this regime. While nearly all over Germany mask mandates fell yesterday.
Also taking into account possible long-term consequences of a Covid disease for children (or anyone), it was unclear for a long time (and partly still today) whether there is/was a corresponding danger. Therefore, one can also see appropriate measures here as a balancing of protection of society vs. individual liberties.
And that people are not the best at acting rationally in groups (sorry - but I have become very cynical and misanthropic during Corona) and to act reasonably in the masses we see again and again. Without coercion, most people (in groups) do not behave sensibly.
You know, opinions are valuable here for hypothesis generation.
No one knows and there is no consensus why this is happening. I have a few opinions as a middle-and-high school teacher. But talking about this is important to help wrap our heads around it.
If a definitive understanding or reason were easy to acquire, we'd have done it already. So, the toil continues: for researchers, policymakers, laymen... and those of us in the trenches trying to do something about it with not enough information.
There are for quite some time already studies happening so I doubt that random people on the internet sharing opinions help much in generating valid (or interesting) hypotheses. Also how would you validate those?
A few observational studies are fairly meaningless-- they don't establish causation, etc. Your meta-analysis highlights as such.
Discussion, speculation, and reasoning about problems are valuable-- even if the process does often lead us astray.
Do you ever talk about things that you are not an expert on or that aren't settled? E.g. You made some comments about team culture a few days ago-- ignoring the massive body of literature about conflict in teams and engaging in speculation based upon personal opinion.
I'm a teacher at a school where neither COVID "lockdown" nor excessive social media use would be a great explanation for poor student mental health, but still there has been a significant increase in problems in the past few years. Should I just ignore the problem and hope research pins it down and solves it? I need to make reasonable guesses and act upon them.
I did not say, that I evaluated the studies. I just wanted to exemplify that with very little effort one could find studies. I don't think it is my job to evaluate every study on any subject.
If I were interested in the details and interested in discussing the actual content (not the meta layer of discussion quality) I would first look at meta studies and see were they lead me, though.
So sorry for posting examples that there are studies without the disclaimer, that I did not check the strength of any of those.
This situation if the result of the destruction of the social network of relations due to the modern lifestyle. To have meaningful social relations with our peers is extremely important for humans and even more so for teenagers I guess.
First the modern lifestyle mostly destroyed the small communities where people know each other and spend a lot of time together. People began to stay in their house all the time with no contacts with a community.
At this first stage, as the local community was eliminated, the remaining pillars of social relations were school, for young people, and work for adults. I some case adults were able to maintain some degree of additional social life by having some friends and inviting them regularly to create the opportunity to meet.
Later it come all the smartphones, tablets, computers, social networks that captivated all the attention, especially of young people so even more so people were pushed to stay more at home and meet less people further increasing the social isolation.
The final blow came from the COVID-19 confinement were people were forced to stay at home reducing social contacts only to the close family members. This situation created an unsustainable isolation raising serious mental health problem especially for teenagers but also for adult people.
Modern society got it all wrong. We think having more goods and entertainment to consume make us happier but this is not how it works. Not if the social life and the social network around us is poor or non-existent.
Scientific thought that they know all and can say people what to do and they give us instruction just to avoid that people dies. The problem is that people doesn't just need to stay physically alive, we need to be also happy and fulfilled by our life.
We need to radically change modern lifestyle and stop with all the bullshit coming from politicians.
I agree with a lot of this, but I think the effect has more complex roots.
I think there's an economic component to this as well. Housing prices are rising, meaning a lot of people are pushed out of their existing community, or that they perceive their community is temporary (until they all get pushed out). It starts to feel pointless to build a community of renters when you don't think it will exist in 5 years.
A lot of local shops have been overtaken by corporations, who exist in the community but aren't really part of it. Walmart/Target/Dick's/etc isn't sponsoring the local little league, or throwing a potluck, or creating any kind of space or events to build a community around.
Religious service attendance is also down, which is another way people used to build communities, and I haven't seen a lot of secular replacements (not a criticism of anyone, I don't attend myself). I think a lot of people replaced religion with politics, which has created communities more focused on things outside themselves (laws and public opinion) than within themselves.
I don't even know that social media is the cause of loss of community. It seems to me that social media was the market responding to the loss of in-person communities; it was responding to an already-established need. It might have accelerated the decline, but I think healthy communities could have withstood social media. We just didn't have many healthy communities left.
The problem with community is everyone (or at least most people in the sample space) has to buy-in for it to work. Sometime in the last 15 years, it slowly started shifting online and then beyond a critical threshold, it began to snowball. And now you have generations that play together on minecraft and roblox. And how exactly do you fight that when it is mostly frictionless and requires much less social energy? You can't.
Hmm, when we decided religion was bad and decided to phase it out of our lives, did we perhaps throw the baby out with the bathwater?
> Hmm, when we decided religion was bad and decided to phase it out of our lives, did we perhaps throw the baby out with the bathwater?
No. The abuses perpetuated by religions justify discontinuing adherence, regardless of worldview. New wine, old bottles do not mix as the parable about the wine bottles (or skins, at the time) dictates.
Anecdotally I've seen much less damage among those who are deeply religious that I know(Muslims). Social networks are strong so they were preserved even among the pandemic. Say what you want about the problems that come with religion, but it is great at solving a lot of the issues that humans have dealt with for thousands of years. Those problems are ones modern society has done little to solve
Communities fell apart starting in the 60-80s, well before the internet and social media.
People forget the concrete institutions that were dissolved that led to communities collapsing.
First it was families falling apart due to high rates of divorce and low birth rates. Also people moving away from home for job opportunities split the family apart. Entire towns were hollowed out.
Also the dissolution of institutions like church, political groups, fraternal orders (e.g. Elks, Kiwanis), Charity Groups. See the book "Bowling Alone".
Social media and entertainment spiked afterward to fill the void – but it was the collapse of the families, community groups & towns that were a precursor to the death of communities.
I have some first hand experience with fraternal orders. They sowed the seed of their own destruction somewhere around Vietnam.
They experienced a huge boost in popularity following WW2, where soldiers returning home looked to fill the companionship void left by leaving military service. They experienced similar boosts following Korea and Vietnam, but they got spoiled by these: they got so veteran-centric (in no small part because of the negative view Americans at large had of the Vietnam war) that they basically stopped recruiting anyone else.
Then military culture shifted, leading a lot of people to not identify with their service as much as prior generations. The fraternal orders didn't try to recruit, and by now it's too late: very few young people cherish the thought of hanging out with a bunch of septagenarians.
They started to decline before then, if I recall correctly.
Most required dues; the Great Depression saw the roles sink dramatically as dues could not be paid.
Health insurance, home insurance, and other social safety nets were often paid for or covered in-kind through fraternal orders.
Fraternal orders (not sure of the general, non-gendered term) are an alternative community organization to religions that would do well to return.
EDIT: looks like we are both sort of right. The Freemasons continued to grow after WWII but the general ecosystem of fraternal orders started their decline after the New Deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_fraternalism
Sure the pandemic may have accelerated or been the catalyst, but let's be honest here. TV/Internet/Video game addiction is a serious thing that nobody is paying attention to. I struggled with this personally for the last 25 years of my life and I'm 30. I now have two kids and have to ensure I moderate their usage in responsible ways as they grow up.
I was a generation before the iPad, but the current teenagers struggling have likely had a smart device from as early as 2. My smart device was a TV and nintendo. The guidelines the CDC even has for responsible device usage is reasonable, but nobody follows it. Most people are picking up their devices up to a hundred times a day or every 10 minutes. The average screen time is close to 3 hours. That's an average by the way...
We need to bring awareness to this problem like Nicholas Carr did over a decade ago. We can't let big tech companies convince us this isn't a problem with their sponsored studies to control a narrative.
Before 2000 or so, every stupid thing you did as a kid wasn't recorded on a phone or online somewhere permanently that you could forget it.
Maybe at school but bullying wasn't possible 24/7 online like now.
You had no idea what the latest news or political drama was as a kid before 2000 because it wasn't in your hand 12+ hours a day. No twitter/facebook or whatever they are using now.
Now being a kid is as depressing as being an adult and you are wired-in to a world that's overwhelming you. Sure they don't have jobs or rents to pay but everything still feels fatalistic to them, like they can't escape the world defines them, not the other way around.
Solid and deep points. At era around 2000 things-culture started to decline. No coincidence global IQ and many qualities (eg music, education, human relations) started to decline at that time too
> Although young people were spared the brunt of the virus — falling ill and dying at much lower rates than older people — they might still pay a steep price for the pandemic, having come of age while weathering isolation, uncertainty, economic turmoil and, for many, grief.
The honest truth that most people don’t want to face is that there is a direct relationship between economic turmoil and mental health. Instead, we will get politicians and community leaders blaming everything else for the problem, when all you have to do to address it is to pay people a living wage and provide an adequate social net to fall back upon. Our leaders will never admit this.
These trends have been happening for decades and it tracks quite well the gradual breakdown of stable family structures. Psychologically for example, kids experience their parent’s divorce as worse than a parent’s death.
Do you have a source for that claim? It sounds like nonsense. My parents divorced when I was 6 or 7 years old, and I’m pretty sure it would be unimaginably more traumatic if one of them had died instead.
If you compare children of divorce with children who have a parent die the children of divorce look worse on basically every measure, sure. That doesn’t mean divorce is worse for children than the death of a parent. Divorce is a choice. The king of person who gets divorced is different from the kind who doesn’t. By way of example Asian-Americanc college graduates who get married in their 30s have a divorce rate around ~2%. Most people who get divorced remarry. The kind of person who marries a divorcee is not the same king of person as those who don’t.
I've read some takes that divorce can be positive for a child. The theory was: parents having time away from their child gave them a break, and also helped them value their time with the child more. There are also theories that living in a divorced family is better than living in an unhappily married one.
AFAIR there are studies looking at families with different cultural stances on divorce (but good luck controlling for other factors there). Also they tend to measure more easily measurable outcomes in the child than mental health, such as grades, which don't necessarily correlate.
Of course divorce can be positive! My parents divorced in my late teens and it was hugely beneficial for me since it meant I could live with my mother and entirely avoid the very stressful daily conflicts with my father.
This is unsurprising. There are no good prospects — war, climate change, a divided society — in all of this: You, a teen with a digital mirror, that keeps you updated on how much more you seem to suck than all the others you have to compare yourself against. Your parents who constantly tell you your generation has to fix and/or safe the planet, while you wonder if you will even be able to fix and/or safe yourself.
Meanwhile even people who you see as adults have given up of ever being able to retiring, but you know it is quite definitly going to get worse for you.
I often feel my development went... much different than most in my peer group due to my much earlier access to the Internet/on-line services and me being a "curious hacker" getting into places and reading things I definitely should not have at that age. Seeing how utterly incompetent "powerful" institutions were (combined with teenage arrogance) that I was raised to deeply respect is still something I have difficulty processing.
I can't imagine being bombarded not just with 100x more information about how the future is f*cked and how incompetent those running the show are, but also it being amped up to 11 by hucksters selling "engagement" and ads. The content is coming to you now.
I think a lot of early adulthood is just brazen naivety. For example, I'd never have started the company I did at 17 at age 37, there would be too many reasons I know it'd fail. If you lose that naivety too early, at least personally I would have utterly lost any motivation to "try" since the odds were so astronomically against me.
When a generation collectively believes they will have it worse than their parents I'm not entirely sure what to expect the outcomes to be.
I think it is our responsibility as older generations to show them that the world can be changed, even if it is just on a small scale. Too many people view everything around them (including themselves!) as immutable. What people are trying to do is getting a better spot on the sinking ship. Happyness defined as drowning just a little bit later than your neighbour (but focus, you could slip at any moment). The pumps that could easily keep the ship from sinking are mounted only by a few idealists, which are called names by those with the most fear in their eyes. Some, with their feet already in the water vehemently insist water is not real — their anger directed at those busy pumping the water. Those higher up the ship tell those stories, because they hope it will keep them dry till some divine help arrives. In the end, everybody dies, but those on top die a little bit later.
1) how am I missing the link to the actual CDC study? or did WaPo not even post the link to the survey results they were discussing?
2) disappointing not to see any comparison to other advanced economies. Is this happening everywhere with high internet usage? Did the severity correlate at all to how severe the pandemic was or what the responses were? Does it correlate to income levels or political polarization or religiosity or any of the other things that vary (at least somewhat) between different advanced economies? Maybe the CDC study looked at this, but if so WaPo said nothing about it. Hard to know what to do with this information with nothing but a WaPo text wall talking about it.
My wife's a middle school teacher for over 22 years. If you want an unvarnished view into just how bad things have gotten since the pandemic begain--for mental health, school engagement, and all things related--talk to a teacher. It's unprecedented, and the long tail of the damage will take decades to understand.
I worry that it is the expected result of taking away hope. Powerful actors try, and have succeeded - with our unwitting help - in spreading a highly reactionary message of despair, disabling those who might challenge their power. You have no power; only the wealthy and large corporations, and all that matters is profit.
Progress; the equal value of individuals from any class, status, ethnicity, gender, etc; the power of any individual to change the world through hard work; - the things humanity has worked for since the beginning of the Enlightenment, with incredible success - are derided, even here in the heart of innovation and entrepreneurialism, which fundamentally depend on those notions. The garages of Silicon Valley defeated IBM.
Younger generations now believe they have no power, that humanity is fundamentally evil and corrupt, that progress isn't possible. Look at climate change: most believe not that, 'the people, united, can never be defeated', but that nothing can be done. We have the tools, the knowledge, the need is clear, but the powerful have created despair. That's not what I grew up with; I grew up with hope, and people who changed the world, from George Washington to Dr King, from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein, from Edison to Jobs.
Even the left-of-center and many progressives have adopted this message. Somone - that means you - needs to start spreading one of hope. I think they would be incredibly popular.
Another factor may be that many people that teens look up to today talk openly about mental health problems, to the point that now it seems almost trendy to struggle with mental health. Perhaps this encourages teens to let their mental health deteriorate for attention, which is the social currency of today’s society. Remember they are not entirely rational beings.
Or if we want to be less mind-blowingly cynical about it, we could simply assume that the increased openness to discussing mental health is itself helping previously unnoticed mental health issues to come to light.
Makes me wonder what the CDC's recommendation will be. More medication? More pills? Isn't that their answer for everything. We are already the most medicated society on earth. I guess a little bit more won't hurt.
The only teens who have been "isolated" for two years are maybe some of those at very high risk (or the unfortunate children of hyper-paranoid parents). No need to exaggerate.
A lot of people would, and did, isolate even without being told too until they were vaccinated. They would have done so out of fear. All that governments really did by mandating lockdowns was enforce it on the part of the population that wouldn't do it with the hope that it would stop the spread of COVID. In some countries it worked, in others it didn't.
All this is to say there is no causal relationship between the government lockdowns (mandated at the state level in the USA, no?) and the CDC reporting on mental health. Both occured independently. There are however plenty of plausible arguments to make for lockdowns being causal on mental health though.
> In some countries it worked, in others it didn't.
You cannot say this for certain. It will take much calmer heads before anybody can say these restrictions were worth their incredible costs.
> Both occured independently. There are however plenty of plausible arguments to make for lockdowns being causal on mental health though.
Kids were not allowed to go to school for more than a year. You don't need any research to suggest that isn't good for kids. Seriously. Claiming these lockdowns and restrictions didn't have a significant impact on children is being willfully ignorant.
There are dozens of countries that held off the pandemic for over a year. They mostly had the advantage of being islands.
> Claiming these lockdowns and restrictions didn't have a significant impact on children is being willfully ignorant.
Im not disputing this because I do think they had a serious impact. I do dispute the argument that the CDC mandated lockdowns and then were surprised when it wrecked mental health. They weren’t, and they would have examined mental health anyway.
The entire pandemic felt like screaming in an empty room sometimes.
My wife is a teacher in a low-SES area, and my sister-in-law is a psychologist dealing specifically with at-risk youth.
From the start they could see first-hand the detrimental impact lockdown had on the poorest and most vulnerable.
For many of these kids, school is a sanctuary from a dysfunctional and/or abusive home life. They don't have quiet places to study, let alone the means (laptop, internet).
Just a little example here, based on a close friend's upbringing. A young teen can't sleep because her degenerate father is blasting music from 11PM to 3AM. Fortunately, her grandparents live up the road, and their house has become a bit of a safe-haven. So she runs down there, and gets a good night sleep. When things are tough at home, she knows she can always stay there a few nights.
In lockdown world, that option is totally removed. The father, now out of work, is verbally abusive and blasts music all night. How do you think she's going to fare with "remote learning"?
2 years cut off from their peers, stuck in toxic environments, these kids have come back terribly damaged. My wife says she has never seen so many fights at school. My sister-in-law says they are so short-staffed right now they're having to turf kids because they're not "at-risk" enough.
Of course, politicians kept assuring us this was not the case, that there was no data showing any negative impact. Of course there was no data yet - it was still being collated! But talk to any person on the frontline and they could tell you.
But I suppose politicians' kids go to pretty nice schools, with supportive family environments and the means to support remote learning (laptops, fast internet, a quiet place to study).
A more disconnected, clueless lot, I have never seen.
That's a little fatuous, and it does disappoint me a bit how we devolve to this immediately. I guess we're all a bit on high-alert when it comes to politics?
It's not really an either/or. I don't advocate for zero measures. More like, there's a range of different measures we could have taken, with varying of positive vs negative side-effects.
We should of course take measures that have lots of positive side effects, and relatively few negative side effects. Things like contact tracing, and the vaccines of course. Masking early on was a good idea when we didn't know much.
However it's a little silly to deny that there's some measures taken that didn't have so many clear positive benefits, but definitely had negative ones. For example, in my state they closed all the playgrounds & skate parks, even though there was no evidence of transmission there. For some kids, blowing off a little bit of steam by riding their bike at the local skate park is a huge deal, and not at all trivial.
Similarly, my sister-in-law had to conduct all her appointments remotely. She's dealing with traumatised kids that struggle to maintain eye contact, let alone human connection. That face-to-face time is really crucial for establishing rapport with these kids. Not to mention the fact that many just didn't bother dialling in.
These aren't kids presenting with anxiety btw. These are kids with some of the worst trauma imaginable.
I think the biggest problem with these things is not that they are actually shit, but some section of adults have convinced kids that these problems will be the death of everyone. I'm thinking of Greta Thunberg crying about not being able to have a family or kids of her own because of global warming. That's a bit melodramatic, especially for someone coming from Europe.
Aren’t we in the longest economic boon ever? This might be the first bear market in over 10 years.
Schools didn’t require sats and other exams and were actually easier to get into during the pandemic. The past two years were like a glorious time for school admission.
I don’t think so. Low home interest rates have helped first time home buyers.
Stocks benefit pensions and 401k.
Low interest rates help for credit card debt, auto loans, etc.
Lowest unemployment in the history of the stat helps with all job seekers.
Of course it helps billionaires more because they have more stocks. But bull economies are pretty good for everyone and there’s a whole generation pretty much that’s never experienced a down year of s&p.
> Low home interest rates have helped first time home buyers.
I hear it is almost impossible to buy a house in the US these days, what with private equity firms bidding cash for everything.
> Stocks benefit pensions and 401k.
nice if you have them, but it is hard to invest if rent is 50% of your take-home (and not because you are living large, but because that's all that was available)
You hear wrong as every house gets bought almost immediately and while 10-20% are institutional, the rest are private buyers. This is also fairly new and interest rates have been 4% for almost 10 years long before the current situation.
Rent is not 50% for most people. Yea, it’s bad for those people. But even then it’s possible to save.
Most people have benefited greatly from this very positive economy. Not everyone, but most.
Even if you’re minimum wage, the low unemployment has driven up wages
Food and housing and education and healthcare are all more expensive than ever. I work in tech making six figures and can't afford a single family home. My employer pays $700 a month for my insurance. I spent $1000 a month on groceries.
Before you blame circumstances, remember that even people with seemingly perfect lives (money, fame) still suffer. I can think of a wealthy public figure who's full time job was to travel and enjoy great food, yet still abused drugs and committed suicide.
Suffering is part of life. Until recently, poverty, starvation & disease were universal. We certainly have it better than that, even with "social media", "bullying", "college acceptance" threatening teens.
The bigger problem is that we haven't given young people a solid sense of purpose. If their only purpose is money and fame, they will certainly fall apart, even if it goes well. You can never have enough.
No amount of money, anti depressants or therapy will make up for a lack of meaning.
Sure we should work to improve circumstances, but unless we give people a reason to live, it won't matter.
"We" as adults at least have the mostly-capable ability to discern good from bad, whereas a child until the age of 14-18 (depending on the topic at hand) does not have the sense of responsibility, especially about the crucial aspect which is his/her own health. Therefore you could expect an adult to be able to take care of him/her-self after the ~age of adulthood, whereas a children is very rarely expected to do so, because most of the times they're not even fully aware of it (consciously speaking, not talking about almost instinctive reactions).
I am helping a family member recently diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic. I looked up this google trend and my jaw dropped. Clearly the world has yet to come to terms with the social, emotional and psychological effects of this pandemic. If anyone here knows anything about what's causing the rise in adhd specifically, I'd love to hear about it: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
You don't really "get" ADHD as it's generally lifelong. Symptoms can wax and wane over time though and can be exacerbated. Combine that with diagnosis getting better, especially for women and non-hyperactive subtypes.
It’s possible there was a rise of incorrect diagnosis where lockdown stresses gave rise to ADHD-like symptoms. Alternatively more people WFH and not having other distractions could’ve led more people to figure out their existing ADHD. Likely more people also sought mental health care given the stressors of lockdowns and media coverage of COVID. Just hypotheses.
Drug seekers as well for performance enhancers like adderall or ritalin. If you're somewhere on the spectrum it's pretty trivial to present ADHD with some practice to a clinician who doesn't care much, especially if remote.
I heard of a couple instances of this throughout my extended social network - largely from people who found it very hard to focus at home and get work done (they required work/home separation for mental health), but certainly did not have ADHD.
I don't have an answer or even a guess really, but I want to bring up that "autism" shows a strikingly similar trend in google searches and searches for "depression" kind of go down starting at the same time.
Search terms for ADHD doesn't necessarily mean that ADHD prevalence is increasing. ADHD awareness is increasing, which can be anecdotally observed everywhere from HN to TikTok.
If you really want to see how bad it has gotten, try finding a therapist for a teen. Even in communities where supply is high and demand is (relatively) low, they're all absolutely overwhelmed. When I went looking, ~75% of them were explicitly not taking new clients. Working through the rest, through multiple directories and services, I was denied or simply ghosted ~20 times before I finally found someone. Naturally it was the newest, youngest member of a large practice. She has been great, but the struggle to find her was a real eye opener.
When CDC warns about society as a whole being subjected to total and deliberate menticide and discloses all means towards that end, it is only then that there will finally arrive some substance to discuss.
Otherwise it sounds like researching the swaying of trees without ever mentioning the wind.
I'm not sure what you expect when you instill constant fear of simply getting sick, take away all of their social structure, and isolate them in front of a screen, all for a virus that doesn't affect kids barely at all. Per the CDC there is a 0.003% chance of someone under age 20 dying from COVID; they have greater risk driving to school.
It's no wonder their mental health is so poor, even if the trend was starting before the pandemic.
The point was to limit the spread of the virus throughout the entire population, and an attempt to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by the infected.
Too bad you'll never really know if any of it worked. Kinda would have been nice to stick with proven mitigations we had planned out for decades instead of chuck it all out of the window in search of a miracle cure. If you read pre-covid pandemic planning, virtually everything they suggestion you dont do society decided to do. Everything they suggested you should do, we ignored.
And if we (the US) are going to take example on Europe for anything, let's do universal healthcare first before taking the laissez-faire approach to a pandemic. Seems like a good pre-requesite.
It disgusts me to see this downvoted. There isn't anything false about what you said. What we have done to children the last two years is absolutely disgusting. The fact so many people seem to cheer it on makes it even worse--especially how so many of the "pro-education" crowd cheers it on too.
We fucked kids the last two years and it requires some serious mental gymnastics to rationalize it away.
"all for a virus that doesn't affect kids barely at all"
It's downvoted because the above line is either a willful misrepresentation in service of a political gripe or, less likely, a genuine ignorance that should not be promoted.
All initial restrictions were to slow the spread of the virus to prevent overwhelming healthcare systems, not to prevent children from getting ill specifically, as literally everyone knows.
That argument holds true only for the first month or so. Once governors started closing unused field hospitals and then extending their stay at home order instead of celebrating Covid not being nearly as bad as predicted… once that happened your argument no longer remains valid.
The day those field hospitals closed was the day data left the building entirely… we should have opened everything back up when those field hospitals shut down… we should have celebrated that Covid was not the threat it was originally believed to be.
I'm curious, do you have young kids? If so, I would very much like to know how you parented over the last two years to give your children a perfect experience.
I had a 5 year old at home for the past two years, and no matter what you do, you simply can't replicate school as it normally is when schools and daycares are all closed and all you can do is sit your kid in front of a screen all day to get a checkbox for "attendance". And when schools finally did open up, everyone had a wear a mask. So kids aren't even seeing their friends' faces. This isn't good for them, especially when these are formative years for developing these skills.
Not a single parent I know hasn't mentioned how horrible the last two years have been for their kids' social skills and mental health.
I do, two to be exact. And they don’t mind masks at all.
> Not a single parent I know hasn't mentioned how horrible the last two years have been for their kids' social skills and mental health.
I’m getting the sense that this is a parents problem. Children’s brains are objectively more flexible and accepting to changes. And if we were to accept that there might be some mental health issues as a result of pandemic measures, we must also concede that death of close ones is a more radical and permanent cause of those.
In other words, kids cannot pick and choose here. They may not benefit from not seeing their friends for a while, but they will most definitely be impacted by a loss in their family circle.
Right now, in Victoria, AU kids from grades 3 to 6 must wear masks full day in school - and only those grades. So must people on public transport. The fare for maskless PT ride is $3600. I don't know what is the fine for school kids, but there is some as well. Vax mandates are off for most public places, but curiously stay on for most places you'd normally visit with kids: swimming pools, libraries, bloody open-range zoo! The latter one has also mask mandate! Oh, they don't really enforce the mask, they give you a big sticker "mask exempt" if you claim so! Luckily it is a green circle, not a yellow magendavid, so no cheeky parallels can be seen here. The government defends the staying measures with froth at their mouth, and refuses to give any indication to when they might end. But yeah, if you're a party animal you can go to pubs unrestricted and knock yourself out.
Who are the judges about how "widespread" the harm is? I can tell you that our family of five is 100% fucked over with all the "pandemic" measures. I am at the point of suicide, barely clutching to straws to hang in. All the tools I previously had at my disposal to cope with my problems, like traveling to remote crowdless places, or night dogwalks were taken away from me. I've put up extra 20 kilos, now riddled with conditions usually presented in people 20 years older. My wife is similar. I've got my blood sugar elevated through the roof. Not to mentioned hypertension and panic attacks. I am unable to see a doctor because seeing masked faces gives me acute psychosis. I am afraid I'm going to throw punches or worse, so I'm confined to my study and working my arse off for 10 hours a day, so that my wife and kids have somewhat smaller mortgage to repay when I inevitably kick the bucket in the next few years. Oh, and the chance to ever see my parents or in-laws in-face is non-existent now, especially with the bloody war now raging over the countries they live in. I cannot even send them a parcel, now because of the war sanctions, and previously because of "pandemic". Just curiously, if the war sanctions are indistinguishable from "public health measures" why is it inappropriate to think about them in the same way?
Our youngest son is 4, and he has missed the most important part of his life when he needed to get used to socializing with kids of his age. Playgrounds were empty for 2 years, and they are still largely empty where we live. Playgroups didn't run. We're now seeing him not fitting in in the kindy, with emotional problems. Yeah, maybe better that losing relatives. As if his relatives now going to live forever...
You may say it is anecdotal, but for me all this harm is absolutely 100%. Why should we've been fucked over something with risk profile smaller than everyday melanoma or heart attack? Or diabetes that I've got regardless? Why somebody decided to sacrifice my family to "save" whom exactly? Why you and other people support this atrocity? Forgive me, but I have nothing to say except big "fuck you" to you and your ilk. You're as complicit in my family's demise as people who support Putin in the destruction of Ukraine. Believe it or not, I'm not the only one affected and thinking in the same way.
I’m going to start saying that all this was about kids, not adults.
> Why you and other people support this atrocity? Forgive me, but I have nothing to say except big "fuck you" to you and your ilk. You're as complicit in my family's demise as people who support Putin in the destruction of Ukraine.
So, I live in a country with a reported COVID-19 death toll of almost one million.
Are you suggesting that supporting measures to avoid the spread of the respiratory virus causing such deaths, puts me in the same league as Putin sycophants? That’s nonsense.
Also, I want you to understand that what you just said in so many words is that, because COVID-19 might not affect you personally, you shouldn’t care.
Now, I doubt these measures would harm you. You harmed yourself by not being able to cope. And I’m not arguing here that the Australian government did the absolute right thing, I’m arguing that if losing your routine is going to kill you, you might want to take a hard long look at yourself.
Me? I actually lost weight and became more active, and my kids are happy and safe. So please excuse me if I don’t pity you at all.
This response is so single-dimensional that I couldn't have done a better job at exposing the extremity of your position than you've done yourself. It is also so predictable and unimaginative that it could have been written by a bot. Is there a textbook with these platitudes?
The rhetoric bundle is also impressive. First, denial. "Are we the baddies? No, it cannot be!". Realizing that you are complicit in suffering of others is unpleasant, isn't it? A non-constructive dismissal with a sprinkle of insult, a lot of projection plus canonical victim-blaming with a hint of ad-hominem. All in one bottle - what a bouquet! "Fuck you - I've got mine" - a cherry on top. "You harmed yourself by not being able to cope" - what is it, standup comedy? I suspect it as dead serious as people claiming "Ukrainians are bombing themselves". Because! We! Are! Good! We! Are! Caring! - how dare you to suggest that we may be harming you! How dare you!
You see, two can play this game!
I see, as time and again, that the original engagement was a mistake. The division is now complete, the arguments are futile, the heels are dug in and nothing could sway anyone. As a bear of very little brain, further arguments in the demonstrated spirit will only make me slip further towards the darkness of losing the remains of faith in humanity. Today was a better-ish day, so I won't make this mistake, if only for the sake of staying sane.
I can only add my "Q.E.D." under your response. Hopefully some people visiting this dark corner of HN will be able to see for themselves.
I am certainly don't need your pity, and neither my family. We'll find a way, despite the world efforts to sink us, enthusiastically supported by you. However, on the eve of Good Friday I may extend my forgiveness to you. God bless!
Somehow grocery stores managed to stay open. So did tire repair centers, auto shops, home depots, uber drivers, pot shop employees, pharmacy employees... what makes teachers so damn special?
Adults sacrifice for children. Asking children, none of whom are at risk, to sacrifice for more than a year for a bunch of frightened adults... it is so disgustingly immoral I can't even.
If teachers were scared, they should have quit and let somebody else teach the kids. Covid isn't and never was some modern black plague. The median age of death was higher than the average life expectancy of a human.
Ridiculous. None of those jobs can be performed remotely.
> Adults sacrifice for children [...] If teachers were scared, they should have quit and let somebody else teach the kids.
So you recognise the need for teachers, but not their right to live? Laughable. Also, there is a teacher shortage in the US. It's not like there are people queuing up to become teachers, so your point is moot.
> The median age of death was higher than the average life expectancy of a human.
Disregarding the fact that comparing medians and averages makes no sense, what does this matter? Lung cancer disproportionally kills more old than young people, does that mean that youngsters should be allowed to work in an asbestos infested environment?
Regardless, the average age of teachers in the US is 42 years, and ~20% of them are 55 years or older [1]. COVID-19 deaths are 4% in the 40-49 age range, and 19% in the 50-64 age range [2]. On top of that, 60% of Americans have one or more comorbidities that increase COVID-19 risk [3], and long term COVID-19 is definitely a thing [4]. In comparison, if we were to accept that not going to school made children suicidal, which is quite a leap, still puts suicide rates hundreds of times below COVID-19 mortality rate.
So what exactly is your standing here? That we need healthier teachers? More reckless ones? That teachers should be trained to disregard their own safety in order to satisfy your demands? What exactly are the risks in children development that would justify all this, by the way?
> Your own data says teachers aren’t the largest risk group.
Of course they aren't, because the largest risk group is likely retired already. What's your point here, then?
Frankly, it seems that you are arguing that playing Russian roulette is fine with up to three bullets, and that we should be only slightly careful when going over that. For the children, that's it.
What is your point? I said that children making sacrifices for adults is pretty craptastic. Especially given Covid isn’t some Super Ebola or something… it’s a respiratory virus in line with the 1956 pandemic flu. They had Woodstock in the middle of that…
> I said that children making sacrifices for adults is pretty craptastic.
Unless you can quantify such “sacrifices”, this point is also moot. There is a quantifiable risk of death among teachers, a risk objectively deadlier than kids not seeing their friends for a while.
> it’s a respiratory virus in line with the 1956 pandemic flu. They had Woodstock in the middle of that…
What are you even talking about?
COVID-19 killed 10 times more people, so far, in the US than the 1957-1958 flu. Also, Woodstock happened 10 years later.
Is your statistic adjusted for population and age group?
It doesn’t matter if i cannot quantify the impact of keeping kids out of school. You are the one arguing for dramatic changes to their short childhood. You need to prove that the sacrifice is worth the cost, including all the second and third order effects. I don’t have to prove anything, that’s not how this works.
Thus far, I see no evidence that says we ever should have closed schools and other stuff for kids. We absolutely fucked kids in our myopic obsession with one very specific illness. And one must be willfully blind to not see the damage we caused our kids. Not cool.
> It doesn’t matter if i cannot quantify the impact of keeping kids out of school.
COVID-19 had a quantifiable harmful impact among teachers, and society as a whole, and you are unable to produce any evidence of temporary online learning being “worse” than a million death and tens of millions suffering long term from the illness.
It seems to me then, that you are in the “my feelings don’t care about your facts” camp, so we are done here.
Although I’m genuinely curious about your interest in this. I myself am a parent, and some of my relatives happen to be teachers. Both my kids and my relatives are doing fine. I didn’t mind having my kids around at home for a while either, and they seem to have enjoyed it.
So are you a parent and you couldn’t take care of your kids? A kid bothered for not being able to see your friends for a while? You also seemed to profess an absolute disdain for teacher’s right to protect themselves. Do you truly believe that COVID-19 impact is overblown, even after almost one million people have died in the US so far? Maybe you care more about “the economy” than any of that?
I’m asking because I cannot see your angle in any other way that using some nebulous risk to children to obfuscate some unmentionable personal interest, and, frankly, that would be borderline sociopathic.
Thanks for agreeing that the teacher's union pursued an agenda contrary to the needs of our children.
It won't be shocking given this activity to undermine our children's health that parents will work to re-orient the teacher's union to a mission that is actually useful to society.
> Thanks for agreeing that the teacher's union pursued an agenda contrary to the needs of our children.
That’s the (far) reaching conclusion from the NYP, that not going to school made kids depressed.
The reality is that the only obvious consequence was that schools were closed during the pandemic for health reasons.
Now, children mental health treatment have been on the rise for the past 30 years or so. Teen suicide grew by 60% between 2007 and 2018. I doubt that you can blame that to the pandemic too.
> It won't be shocking given this activity to undermine our children's health that parents will work to re-orient the teacher's union to a mission that is actually useful to society.
Here’s the thing: teachers didn’t sign up to be expendable babysitters. They are supposed to teach, not to risk their lives or keep your kids under supervision. If you would like that, schools may be as well served by the National Guard.
They are “anti-parent” only if they are viewed as babysitters.
I think that this idea has been pushed by right wing media as part of their “open for business” rhetoric. They claim to be concerned about children wellbeing, when the actual goal is to get kids out of their homes and parents back to the offices.
As I said to my psychologist at the beginning of the pandemic - what is done to the children as supposed pandemic fighting measures will generate as much work for him for many decades to come as he can take as naturally nobody cares about long term.
Blaming it all on the pandemic is an absolutely hilarious misdiagnosis. Everything seems to be on the brink of collapse all the time, housing prices are absolutely bonkers in most cities and wages are, in the best scenario imaginable, same they were 20 years ago for your average professional who lives paycheck to paycheck. Politicians have no vision, they are just parasitic entities that benefit electorally from violent asinine confrontation between voters on pointless cultural issues that never find any satisfactory or permanent resolution. Mass media are fully immersed in a two decades long psychic war against the general public that only seems to be accelerating.
There are too many structural weakness in our society to point out without having to write a full essay, but this mental health decline is the direct result of our failing political and economic systems and our apparent impossibility to challenge them in any productive way.
Are you sure you can't imagine why the terrible economic situation a family is living in could impact the mental health of a 13yo? We love problem solvers in this site.
The economy is not in terrible shape though. And even in horrible economies like Venezuela, we don't see a teenage depression trend that follows GDP chart. I just don't think there is a meaningful correlation.
As a matter of fact, I would hazard a guess that there is more teenage depression in America's wealthiest suburb (Loudoun County, VA) than in inner-city Detroit.
True. The economy is great … if your wealthy and own/trade bubbling assets. The other 80-90% of people are not fairing better given the scenario described so aptly by an above post. Flat real wages (adjusted for inflation) and soaring fundamental expenses like housing, medical care, education, and now everything else including food and transportation do not bode well for most people. Basic math.
Sorry to say, but you are somewhat out of the loop.
The reality is, both Venezuela and Colombia(I have lived in both) are absolutely desolate, it is impossible to know how bad it is there if you have not actually been there(not as a tourist, though even that would give you an idea).
And it's not the first generation in either country that gets their future thrown away because of political corruption and incompetence.
Outside of the capitals it is absolutely hopeless and the people can't easily emigrate anywhere.
Forget statistics, go into the real world at times.
It's doesn't take machine learning to realize that the working poor and most middle class are living kg paycheck to paycheck and owning a house will remain a pipe dream for many people around the world if nothing changes.
Because even if it's their parents that pay for the mortgage, they are still affected by the consequences of high housing prices (longer travel times, less disposable income, lack of space, bad neighborhood, lack of social mobility, etc...)
13 year olds don't worry about houses, they worry about things shared online by their peers. That's on Silicon Valley, folks. Denial of our own hand in this is real.
It depends on what you count as part of the pandemic. At its core there's just the disease itself and the risk of catching it. Then there's the chance of knowing someone who has been severely ill from it, and the precautions taken to mitigate that risk. A few kids were fine with remote learning; for many more it absolutely sucked. Then there's the fact that those precautions have precluded many other activities, leaving even more time to read all the doom and gloom online. For high-school seniors (like my daughter) there's the college-admission situation which is an absolute mess right now due to two years of pandemic-related issues. Stressed out parents, cabin fever, contentious battles with friends and neighbors over vaccines and masks ... the list goes on and on.
If you interpret "the pandemic" as just that core, maybe it's a misdiagnosis. If you include all of the secondary and tertiary effects, the case is much stronger.
> Everything seems to be on the brink of collapse all the time, housing prices are absolutely bonkers in most cities and wages are, in the best scenario imaginable, same they were 20 years ago for your average professional who lives paycheck to paycheck.
Personal income per Capita went from ~$30k to ~$63k in the last 20 years [1]. REAL weekly earnings are at an all time high [2].
Debt service reached an all-time low during the pandemic [3]. Even for new buyers with house prices at their peak, with interest rates where they WERE, mortgage payments were historically quite low.
Now that interest rates have gone up, payments are ~20% higher. But unsurprisingly, the insatiable demand has also dried up.
I honestly feel sorry for all the people like you who can't see how manipulated prices are and realize that it's a good deal. The market shouldn't be this manipulated (by our government) and confusing. It's screwing over so many people who think common sense still applies.
You yourself actually linked to the relevant plot "Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings". If you want to make credible arguments, look for median income.
Q3 2001: $338, Q3 2021: $367, so that's an 8% increase, claimed to be CPI adjusted.
CPI measures price changes for things such as flip flops, snickers bars, and TVs - things you find in Walmarts. What people complain about is the price of housing.
It WAS within reach everywhere beside the most desirable parts of the most desirable cities.
You only need to put 3.5% down. When interest rates were at 2.75% and PMI is only .5% for 3 years - the median HH could EASILY afford the median house.
At 2.75% - almost 40% of your mortgage payment is principal - even in the first year.
This made the true cost of your housing absurdly cheaper than rent.
Owning a house is so much better than renting in Portland and you need jumbo loans here.
It's only places like the bay and other ultra hcol locations where renting is cheaper. I specifically bought my house to escape renting in the bay area when my job went remote. I do not want to rent anywhere near Portland. More than Half the rent price for a third of the home prices...
I'll post my own anecdote regarding this topic. Not drawing global conclusions but perhaps providing a different perspective. This will probably be a long read.
I am almost 57. I have two daughters aged turning 25 and 23 this year. Before COVID here were our various diagnoses.
Me: clinical depression, poor impulse control (addiction, in long-term recovery). "High functioning".
Eldest daughter: borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety, poor impulse control (addiction). Relatively "high functioning".
Youngest daughter: ADD, anxiety, depression. Not "high functioning".
My wife: "doesn't need to see a psychologist".
During COVID, my eldest who had moved out, moved back in with us. Despite the difficulties of COVID, being together probably helped in that we were able to support each other and any deterioration in mental health was moderated. It helps that I totally lifted my game as a practicing stoic during this time and led by example (not bragging, but that's how it played out).
I earn a VERY good living in IT.
I also have a pre-diagnosed heart condition (growing aneurysm on the ascending aorta, not yet at "needs surgery" stage) and hyper-tension. Otherwise in reasonable fitness (another area I lifted my game in during COVID). I'm one of the category of people that lockdowns protected. If I had gotten (or get) COVID, there's a decent chance things won't go too well for me (am fully vaccinated and boosted).
Because I make a good living, I was able to pay for a two week stay in a really good private rehab/mental-health retreat (multi-dimensional professional care) for my eldest - during one of the many lockdowns. We're talking decent 5-figure cost - not covered by our insurance (I should point out that we live in a country with national health insurance, though there's a vast gulf of difference between private and public systems when it comes to mental health). Of all the help she's gotten during the last ten years she's been battling her issues and addictions, it was the single most effective thing she's ever done, to the point that I feel I've gotten her back. She's the best "her" she's ever been. She's now moved out again and living with her boyfriend (a lovely kid, also with pre-COVID mental health issues). They are making a good fist of it, and are both doing really well and feeling very happy despite living largely hand-to-mouth.
I'm about to send my youngest to the same place my eldest went to.
If I had gotten COVID and died, chances are very high that both my daughters would have had worse outcomes. The reality is they wouldn't have been able to afford the help they need. And this is help that they needed before COVID.
I'm not saying that COVID hasn't made it worse. It has. But to those who are looking at some kind of naive calculus as if there's an inverse correlation between "protecting old folks from death" and "protecting young people's mental health" - I say the world isn't that simple.
Listening to my kids and understanding both what makes them happy and hopeful, and depressed and anxious, I'd say that the former is primarily related to connection, love and focusing on what they can control vs what they can't. The latter, seems to a great degree related to focusing on what they can't control - the state of the world, its politics, climate change and "the fact that everything is turning to shit".
This is where I encourage them (by example and through discussion) to adopt stoic philosophy as a way of living and being. It's been what kept me sane during COVID and helps me deal with the shittiness of life while focusing on the beauty that life still holds.
My 2c (probaly $20 going by the length of this post. Apologies).
I hear you. But chances are that the parents will be earning more than the children on average. But I agree I'm not most people either in my salary or my situation (adult kids).
> Regardless of any internet-level understanding or resentment, the millennial/zoomer understanding of mental health is completely destroying people's lives.
> I work and have worked in mental health for my entire adult life (late 20s now). I have my own mental health diagnoses. I was diagnosed with severe OCD when I was 11. Since then I've gone through periods of generalized anxiety, agoraphobia, panic disorder, you name it. It has destroyed my life once every three or four years without fail. Losing jobs, friendships, my grades in college, everything. Just utter ineptitude and catatonic inability to take care of myself. I have been blessed with the most supportive family anyone could ask for. I do not fail to see the differences between myself and those who I now serve. But there is an intense illness that is permeating through our younger generations that is destroying the possibility of recovery for these people suffering through legitimate mental health issues.
> I have met and helped and treated numerous individuals now who are my peers in age - anything from 18-early 30s. And so many have internalized a generational "understanding" of mental illness that is toxic and worthless beyond condemnation. Our youngest generations' understanding of mental health enables, encourages, and at worst glorifies mental illness. I can not understate the number of times I've met a young woman who has made being mentally ill, and polysexual, and queer, and autistic, et cetera, their identity.
Can we stop pretending like being fashionably ill is a new problem plaguing our youth? This is a phenomenon that has happened before in history - Tuberculosis was seen as crazy fashionable during the romantic period, and could be part of the reason that things like pale skin, thin bodies, and fragility are STILL seen as fashionable to this day[1]. Maybe we're seeing something similar happen here?
“I can not understate the number of times I've met a young woman who has made being mentally ill, and polysexual, and queer, and autistic, et cetera, their identity.”
Not sure what OPs original meaning was, but I think a legitimate statement can be made stating that being queer/polysex (or any other non “standard” sexual identity) comes with a higher probability for mental illness due to discrimination.
A major political part in the US at the time I write this has had in their national platform the removal of rights from such people including, but not limited to, the removal of their ability to marry who they want to so it is a bit more than "perceived discrimination".
Yes but gay marriage has been legal for a while, and so now we see the invention of new things to be offended about, like they/them pronouns, and pretending that we don't actually know the definition of a man or a woman or that all that makes a man or a woman is which one they'd like to "present" as that day.
I do recall one of the arguments against gay marriage being that once gay marriage was allowed, they'd move to something else. "They literally just want to get married" was the common retort to that argument, but lo and behold, it is becoming clearer day by day that the "give them an inch" slippery slope argument may have applied here. (I support gay marriage, FWIW.)
Regardless, everyone has been discriminated against at some point in their lives, but evidently, certain groups handle it differently than others.
Said political party is fighting to get that reversed and has begun to make noise that states should be able to ban birth control because they think that Griswold v. Connecticut was wrongly decided [1]
This is a really personal opinion that comes based on a decade of life as gay and trans so if emotivism is your moral framework you really shouldn't try to tell me anything on this
Best to just make statements instead of validating mine against your power ranking
You're adorable, is what you are. Try not to embarrass yourself too much before you grow out of it - no one else will remember, but maybe you can save yourself a little cringe five years or so from now.
Social media and pornography are the two biggest enemies of teenage mental health, and both of them have been available for almost the entire Gen-Z person's life, delivered straight to their bedroom via high speed internet, and follows them everywhere they go on their smartphones.
Both social media (in some form) and porn has been around for far longer than this has been a problem. I'm a card carrying "Starcraft and DeusEx defined my teenage years"-millennial, and these things have been around most of my formative years as well. I think I was like ten when a friend showed me you could type "boobs" into altavista and get whitehouse.com, which back then was a porn site alluding to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.
I think the big difference now is smartphones, and being always online. It's much easier to have your entire world view informed by the Internet now than it was twenty years ago. It's a stark contrast. If you look on twitter and reddit, everything is always burning, the sky is falling every day for a hundred different reasons, the bees are dying, the Russians are about to trigger a nuclear apocalypse, there's indignant outrage and injustice everywhere.
If you look out the window, there's literally none of that going on. Like it's almost all speculation, or happening somewhere else. Twenty years ago, a lot of bad things were happening as well, but they weren't up in your face in nearly the same way. For some things, you had the dotcom bubble, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq. While they made a prominent impact on the news, the news was only on while you watched them. They didn't follow you around everywhere you went like they do today.
I strongly agree with you. Social media, if it was used through a computer, isnt the problem, its instant access to everything all the time via smartphones. I feel like Bo Burnams "Inside" struck a chord with me and has been living in the back of my head for a year and a half now as I slowly digest it.
See a man beheaded,
Get offended, see a shrink,
Show us pictures of your children,
Tell us every thought you think,
Start a rumor, buy a broom,
Or send a death threat to a boomer,
Or DM a girl and groom her,
Do a Zoom or find a tumor,
Here's a healthy breakfast option,
You should kill your mom,
Here's why women never fuck you,
Here's how you can build a bomb,
Which Power Ranger are you?
Take this quirky quiz,
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids,
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything,
All of the time,
Apathy's a tragedy,
And boredom is a crime,
Anything and everything,
All of the time
The problem is IMHO not that things change, but that parents and teachers have difficulty adapting to that change and prepare their offspring for life. We are trying to establish a protected physical world that does not really teach you much about that "other" life and helps kids to develop resilience.
Maybe. I do think this parallel reality you get from primarily interacting with the world through social media is deeply problematic. It may not be a learning-to-relate issue as much as needing-to-change-the-medium issue.
Social media is probably the 2000s' tobacco industry. The are likewise big vested interests pushing back against any report that it's harmful.
I guess the point about the tabacco industry is really resonating with me in the sense that the possibility to generate life long revenue by advertising to minors really is a problem. In the end it is about getting children to use drugs.
The people who grew up with east to access online porn are now in their 30s. In the early 2000s it was harder to escape porn online, because you'd see it in ads and people would trick each other with (eg the content of downloads were swapped out).
>Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported having “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 37 percent.
The starting figure from 2009 would consider teens who grew up with easy access to porn. But it fell from there.
Social media has been around since the early 2000s, over 20 years, and easily accessible porn has been around slightly longer. So, no, I am not convinced this is it. Smartphones on the other hand is a possible culprit.
Social media wasn't ubiquitous and certainly not mobile. What was there was an extension of your meat space life. It wasn't until the late 00s early 10s that social media blew up and took on a life of it's own.
It makes me feel pretty lucky to be born in the last generation where those aren't part of my life till I'm almost out of my teenage years. I didn't even get a smartphone until I started university and that was considered early adopter for my group of friends.
I wish tech had frozen at like the 2005-2006 era; good enough for wireless routers in homes and some Web 2.0 capabilities but before everything was aggressively targeted towards an always connected phone in your pocket at all times
I’d argue social media is far
more damaging, especially Twitter and the advent of outrage culture. It breeds hatred and intolerance, two thought patterns that will send us back 30 years.
It's not smartphones or "straight to the bedroom". Online communities for teenagers have been around in some form since the 80s.
Now everyone is expected to be on social media and it is the main community for a teenager, not an escape for nerds. If you're not successful there, you're also an outcast in reality.
This exposure wasn’t mainstream until the early-mid 10s when every high schooler got a phone and social media. Before then, it was computer and game system based and that changes.
I don’t know real screen time data, but the use of phones probably added an extra 4-10 hours of screentime per day. And the type of activity is very different with notifications and pickups being top of mind.
Add very unhealthy inflammatory diets/low quality food (processed etc), pharmaceuticals, and multi-generational dis-ease progression to that list; your parents' health, society's health as a whole and how they interact with you, much more greatly affects a culture than is talked about - most of society has lost the ancient traditions and understanding of health, and the body-mind-spirit.
I couldn't think of a worse situation than being isolated from classmates and friends, cooped up at home, having extra time on my hands and unlimited access to social media.
It's always been someone else's job, it's just that 'someone else' used to be called 'grandma'.
In the nuclear family of 2022, grandma no longer lives with you - or within half a mile of you - so she's no longer an option.
We've built our society such that it's impossible to go anywhere without a car, and then we wonder why children don't get enough socialization, or why the only caretakers they have access to are their direct parents, and their teachers.
We haven't really built that society, that was just the trade off people made.
I have several friends who made the trade off the other way. They live with extended family, kids can wonder around and explore the neighborhood on their own.
Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.
Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can't choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental/emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.