Over here (Hungary) the government had stubbornly resisted closing schools because, and I quote our Prime Minister, “children are not in danger” of getting sick from the virus. In his usual Friday morning propagan-- er, radio interview he insisted that if schools would close then it would mean the end of the school year, and he even noted that teachers would have to go on unpaid leave. (Which is not true, by the way - it was a veiled threat.)
By Friday evening, though, someone seems to have found a miniscule amount of reason, and Orbán announced that on the advice of the operative task force they decided that primary and high schools will be closed to protect the health and safety of children, and education would go on over the internet. He noted that this is an excellent opportunity to improve the digital education system in Hungary. Thing is, “improve” here is propaganda-speak for “build from scratch” because we don’t actually have any digital education infrastructure, definitely not for primary and high schools.
This was Friday. Schools close from Monday. The education system has had an entire weekend to make a jump from the 19th to the 21st century. I’m curious how they managed…
Extra hilarity: apparently this decision was so fast and unexpected that they forgot to inform the public TV about it… so the Friday evening news had an entire segment about how absolutely disastrous it would be if schools had to be closed down, and anyone suggesting this is a threat to Hungarian society. Oops.
There’s a lot of this going around everywhere because children appear to have dramatically lower mortality rates than older people.
They still have a mortality rate, over 0.5%. If you’re peachy about giving your child a 1 in 200 chance of dying… [Apparently not? See @anon29537550 below, still looking for my source to see what I got wrong]
I think we should also consider the possibility that higher mortality rates are driven by medical systems being overwhelmed. In that case, it seems possible to me that childrens’ mortality in China was likely reduced because they almost certainly prioritized them in triage. In the United States I think we will find that your mortality percentage will hew very precisely to the value of your bank account.
Unless you have seen more recent data than I, the mortality under 20yo so far is 1 person, and 0 people under 10. There will be eventually, of course, but nowhere near 0.5%
People in Wuhan were literally starving in their homes and their families overseas weren’t allowed to send them food supplies. That’s draconian, but I wanted to put your concern for one person’s needs over the entire rest of the community in some sort of perspective. Because we are likely to get to the same difficult place as well.
This is from my memory of the preliminary study coming out of Wuhan, but I don’t remember the news source and it was a week or so ago, so god help me finding it…
This is exactly why we will not be able to have the degree of success, even such as it was, that the Chinese did. I am seeing way to much “you can’t tell me what to do!” kind of responses. And welding doors shut? Yeah, not gonna happen. I am actually shocked at the national guard response in NY. No, we will get some cooperation with social distancing and such, but I am less than optimistic that it will be sufficient to flatten the curve enough to stay within our health care capacity.
You have to remember that for a lot of Americans, asking them to self-quarantine is also asking them to lose their jobs, and with them, their houses and (dun dun DUN) their medical insurance. Obviously that might be a different proposition if we hadn’t had Republican dominance of government for basically 40 years.
My mother is mid-80s and lives in an assisted living facility. I asked her about what the facility was doing to protect them, and she gave several examples that suggested they are taking it very seriously, but then she said that it’s very disciplined in the building but they’re allowed to leave, so she goes out to local restaurants and such. I pointed out that surfaces in other establishments would not be as carefully cleaned as at her facility, and her response was a rolling eyes emoji. Another Fox News devotee, can you tell?
My 74 yr old mum with a weak heart and so many meds that she rattles gets that groups are bad, but convincing her to not invite the odd friend over “because it’s just one!” is impossible.
This actually reminds me of the debates we had over concussion treatment a few years back. They do better isolated and essentially bedbound, but the impact on mental health was horrendous. Finding the sweet spot is key. And it will vary. An extreme introvert like me?
There is irony aplenty here, but I will leave it at thank you for the insanely rich gentleman for doing what our own fucking government is apparently incapable.
