Re:Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among p...
by disambiguation on Monday January 10, 2022 @12:32PM
(#29878326)
a) This is a false dichotomy, it isn't a binary choice between education and death. 0-17 accounts for 678 *total covid deaths* [0]
b) This IS a problem of people 60+ and 50+. Collapse affects everyone, but the vast majority of deaths and hospitalizations are among individuals in this age cohort (~93%). If hospitals collapse it won't be because the kids went to school.
The goal of this rhetoric should be to guide everyone towards consensus so we can plan better for the next time around. If it sounds extreme, maybe that's because it should be treated with urgency.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
I don't understand how this extreme rhetoric will lead anywhere. It distracts from the actual discussion about how to distribute the burden of the pandemic, and is dishonest in two ways:
a) It makes a whole lot of difference whether you lose one year in education vs. actually dying,
b) It frames the pandemic as a problem of the folks 60+, when instead the collapse of health systems and economies harms all members of society.
It is certainly a possibility that as a society, we have under-estimated the burden on children, and time will tell. However, in every single jurisdiction I know schools were the last public system to be locked down, and the first to re-open.