Reply to Hunkering down: the long haul

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

DP, but what you describe is exactly [b]what people in this thread are railing against.[/b]  They’re claiming that any social interaction outside of immediate family is a want, and, therefore, must be foregone in the time of COVID, apparently indefinitely.  I’m one of the PPs who is fine with what you describe.  What I’m not fine with is zero social interaction for my kids until there’s a vaccine.  It’s precisely because I know this thing will be with us for a long time that our family is adapting what social interaction looks like for us.  It’s not black and white, but many people find it more comforting to believe that it is.  That they attempt to use “science” to make their case, as witnessed in this thread, undermines the [b]actual science on so many facets of this pandemic and its impacts[/b].[/quote]

I'm the OP and I'm not railing against anything. I accept, with disappointment, that our government isn't capable of acting in the way epidemiologists would endorse, on the basis of what science is available, to appropriately mitigate the ongoing risk of this disease. (You will note that the many of the epidemiologists in that article who say they would or are sending kids back to school now are saying that it's on the basis of there being no better option, not on the basis of thinking that it's actually the best choice from a public or personal health standpoint. Aside: while this may be rational as pertains to kids, the impact on school staff, which one or two mention, is going to be gigantic. Those folks are NOT young and healthy.)

I'm in a situation where I can take on some of that for my household--which, as many here have pointed out, is a really fortunate position to be in. I'm not suggesting that this should be a universal response or that it is "your family's problem" what to do if you're not in that position (PP, that was pretty effed up). I'm trying to figure out how to proceed, personally, with that set of facts.

One factor here is that "actual science" on COVID is constantly evolving. There is a lot that is still unknown--witness this week's fracas about whether asymptomatic (or pre-symptomatic) COVID carriers can transmit it or not. I think the same is very much true on the question of whether kids spread it. There are studies, but those studies are small and not conducted under the conditions that prevail in US schools.

I agree with you that the situation is not black and white, but let's not pretend that is because there is a robust body of "actual science" that says it's all in the gray area. This hasn't been going long enough for that robust body of data and analysis to exist. We barely know what we don't know with respect to some key questions.[/quote]

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