You are right. There were no good choices...and I don't think there is one right strategy for everyone. I wish that it had not become so politically toxic.RoganJosh wrote: ↑Tue Oct 06, 2020 2:33 pmI also wished more people would acknowledge that in a pandemic, there are no good choices. Whatever strategy you choose, people will suffer and people will die. You can minimize, but you can't avoid. The question is who and when. The current lockdown approach has been effective in shielding the middle and upper classes. It is the poor, and in particular the children of poor families, who've had to absorb all the risk. School closures is the most egregious example. The US alone has about 13 million poor children. For most of them, online education means no education, due to lack of parental support. And one year shorter education is associated with about 1.7 years shorter life expectancy. Yes, yes, very rough estimates, not all children are school age, etc. But what is clear is that children from poor families will suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives. They've been thrown under the bus.
However, I think your understanding of how COVID affected the poor in the US is wrong...and your narrative is completely ass-backward. The poor have been the hardest hit by COVID by far. The poor have the worst pre-existing conditions which leave them most at risk. Many of the poor, especially in the cities, live in multi-generational households...if a kid brings home COVID they are at really at risk of killing grandma.
I know this from our personal experience. My wife works in the Bronx in a neighbourhood which I realize had not only has one of the highest death rates in the country but of the entire planet. Before the shutdown occurred, these families were already pulling their kids out of school. Even though all kids can now go physically to the classroom (at least part-time), most are choosing not to. By latest count I think my wife told me there were 20 kids out of potentially several hundred physically in the building.
Given how bad it is has been, many people in these poor neighbourhoods are still very afraid of the virus. They aren't willing to send their kids back to school. They aren't complaining about the schools being closed. The ones complaining the most about school closings are the white middle and upper classes which didn't have as bad an experience with COVID. You can decree all you want that schools should be open and "tut-tut" about it allegedly hurting the poor the most..but that is no good if the response has been so messed up that the poor people have no confidence in their safety if they do send their kids back to the physical classrooms.
