Reply to Best Post I’ve Seen in a Month on DL/Hybrid Choice

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]If you’re in this camp, and I acknowledge that many, many people are, I’m asking you to consider that number from a slightly different angle.

FCPS has 189,000 children. .0016 of that is 302. 302 dead children are the Calvary Hill you’re erecting your argument on. So, let’s agree to do this: stop presenting this as a data point. If this is your argument, I challenge you to have courage equal to your conviction. Go ahead, plant a flag on the internet and say, “Only 302 children will die.” No one will. That’s the kind action on social media that gets you fired from your job. And I trust our social media enclave isn’t so careless and irresponsible with life that it would even, for even a millisecond, enter any of your minds to make such an argument.

Considered another way: You’re presented with a bag with 189,000 $1 bills. You’re told that in the bag are 302 random bills, they look and feel just like all the others, but each one of those bills will kill you. Do you take the money out of the bag?[/quote]

This doesn’t make sense to me. The death rate of 0.0016 is for those children who contract the virus, not of the total population. The author is saying that if all 189K students in FCPS contract COVID, 302 of them will die.

That’s not going to happen.

There have been 1,237 cases of COVID in children ages 0-17 in Fairfax County in the last 4 months. Zero of them have died.  [/quote]

Okay, fine.

If 50% contract the virus, 151 will die. 
If 25% contract the virus, 75 will die.
If 10% contract the virus, 30 will die.

Are those numbers okay? I hope not. [/quote]

You have to divide all those by 100, because the fatality rate he cited is actually 0.0016%, not 0.0016.

It’s a fair question to ask, but let’s at least try to get the numbers right.

FWIW 0.0016% is about the same death rate we have for all kids under age 5 annually drowning in backyard pools in the US (regardless if they have one, obviously the rate is higher for those who do than those who don’t).

There are many other factors to consider (spread to teachers and family members who are much higher risk even if not otherwise at-risk, for example) and I’m largely sympathetic to the arguments about uncertainty and people not feeling comfortable with the risks, but it’s important to acknowledge that the risks will likely never be 0 (just like pools, or walking/driving to school, or the flu, or countless other things) and so we should try to be as accurate as possible when discussing the magnitude of risk.[/quote]

How about changing the focus from the kids for one minute...what happens when their teacher is incapacitated for weeks, or even dies, from COVID? Working parents will have to figure out a plan for 3+ weeks. If the teacher doesn’t come back, they may or may not have a teacher for the rest of the year, especially at the elementary level. But, from what I read yesterday on here  teachers with asthma or who are overweight are asking for it. [/quote]

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