Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/carolineodonovan/coronavirus-schools-teachers-fear-for-their-lives <comment><USER2> What we currently have going on right now is a complete collapse in confidence. So many commenters are debating the death rate, case counts, hospitalizations, etc, which is all besides the point.

Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn't going to get people to cooperate. Do you want to be smugly right, or do you want things to actually get better? People are scared, that's just a fact, and they need to feel confident that action is being taken in their best interest. Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.

We all know that this is an exceptional event and that there will be missteps. People will forgive mistakes and setbacks and take on more risk if they are confident that there is a plan - but so far there isn't one. We're almost six months into this and the messaging is still chaos. The lack of a national strategy is what is causing this pandemic to worsen. The rot really does start at the top.

The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!

<comment><USER3> >Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.

No no no no no. It's high time we stop treating everything as black and white in this country. It's not just callously disregarding the dead - it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus. And the signal/noise ratio right now is absolutely tiny, especially considering how much damage the media has done by unambiguously turning this into an opportunity to bash Trump. Regardless of how you feel about the presidency, if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests (both left and right) began; and while I do believe it is shameful that we were caught with our pants down, scrambling to gather supplies nearly 3 months late, I'll remind you that _so was everyone else_.

Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine. We also shouldn't be applying the same policies to urban and rural areas.

You know what would really answer this question to me? What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR? That's pretty much worst case exposure and seeing as I haven't heard of doctors dying in droves, I'm inclined to start believing that people do have and/or develop immunity and the fatality/complication rate really is extremely low, for whatever reason. But I need data to be sure.

<comment><USER4> > Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't > lock down at all and are doing fine.

Sweden did a voluntary lock down, which was in practice pretty comprehensive. Even then they still had a death rate per capita many times higher than its neighbours, and it was economically hit just as hard.

Perhaps it was worth a try, but it didn't pan out. Their government even formed a commission to figure out why it went so bad.

<comment><USER5> This is the critical aspect of the Sweden example: the people of Sweden are rational and everything isn't hyper politicized. Even though they tried a different approach, many still took reasonable precautions. There still were significant restrictions on operations like bars and restaurants.

Sweden was never like the "COVID denier" communities in the United States.

And still its results are relatively terrible compared to its neighbours and peers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home.

All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out of my current state.

So good luck everyone with the education system.

<comment><USER7> I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really _do_ anything anymore in the US.

I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look how many heavy military vehicles the US managed to build during WWII, and then consider we can't even build _masks_ of sufficient quantity.

And this just follows an ever growing set of problems that the US has just oddly accepted without the political will to do anything, things like our totally f'd healthcare system, mass shootings, climate change, etc.

I disagree, though, with the sibling comment that says "Don't give up! Don't withdraw!" It's not like there aren't other functioning societies in the world that are way less broken than the US. Staying behind in some mythical "fight" is just misplaced patriotism IMO. There are other countries that live the _ideals_ that I used to associate with America (real freedom, upward mobility, democracy, rule of law, etc.) much better than the US does these days.

<comment><USER8> All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time manufacturing is more efficient. Accepting a reasonable profit at a time of crisis is considered stupid when a business can make windfall profits by pitting states against each other or signing a sweetheart deal in exchange for a no-bid contract. We're looking a lot like Russia under Yeltsin when the place was collapsing and people were stealing everything that wasn't nailed down.

Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who is committed to division, who's willing to undermine the efforts of those who work for him, who, even at this time of crisis thinks that nothing other than personal loyalty to him and that he should never make a mistake.

<comment><USER9> > Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable.

Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

> ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, > ...

I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple _website_ for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#Issues_during_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#Issues_during_launch)

<comment><USER10> Performance is in fact divergent by party; see e.g. [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_blue_counties_in_red_states_are_getting_hit/). Blue counties are doing worse than red in both state cohorts due to population density, but counties of either party are doing worse in R states. Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

Healthcare.gov was a shitshow, but referring to it here is a very silly false equivalency. It was not time-sensitive in the same way that COVID-19 response is. It involved getting the federal government to exercise new competencies that it hadn't done at scale before; responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government, and PPE acquisition, distribution, and even manufacturing are not new. It failed for reasons having to do with mismanagement of timelines, not outright fraud; COVID PPE shipments have been hijacked and sold off to the president's cronies.

But sure, both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

<comment><USER11> > Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly > overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) > are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

The relevant metric is not "amount of time doing relatively better or worse." You can get all over with quickly like NY did, but they ended up with 8x the deaths of FL. NJ has 3x FL's. AFAICT, "leading responsibly" here means simply having (D) after their names, as these governors' policies were catastrophically bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife is a teacher and starting school (in person) in a week and a half. There's no answers to questions like:

\- Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? \- When a teacher gets sick, what substitute teacher is going to want to teach an exposed class (also, they'll be making sub plans with covid?)? \- When they're sick are will they be getting additional sick leave? \- Do they get worker's compensation if they get sick, since they were knowingly sent into a dangerous environment?

<comment><USER13> > Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away?

It pains me to admit that this didn't even occur to me as part of the topic of teachers being sent back. The human aspects of students-teacher relationships. I feel I've been desensitized to this after exposing myself to a constant stream of news, and now I'm thinking further about what other aspects lie behind other headlines. Thank you for sharing this

<comment><USER14> It's a human aspect, but to be blunt, it's not a significant consideration as long as you aren't opening schools in an area with high community transfer (e.g. Houston today). IF you additionally filter out high risk-group teaches (known pre-existing health conditions, older than 65, etc.) excess death risk is quite low. (e.g. in the Bay Area, dying in a car crash remains far more likely (~10x) if you meet the criteria earlier noted)

(Children actually have had negative excess death rates this year: [https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-mortality-over- time-o...](https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-mortality-over-time-ons- update-2nd-june/) \--- reduction in travel, etc. has more than offset covid)

<comment><USER15> At least 30 teachers have died of COVID in NYC alone. That seems significant for a viral outbreak that is nowhere near containment or exhaustion, and if I was a teacher over 40 I would have serious reservations knowing it is extremely likely I will almost certainly catch the virus eventually.

But you can say the same for tons of occupations - flight attendants, cashiers, barbers. People will either be ignorant/dismissive of the risk or forced to take risk to feed themselves. I think the real change will have to be less preciousness/protectiveness of the value of human life, sadly.

<comment><USER14> > and if I was a teacher over 40 I would have serious reservations knowing it > is extremely likely I will almost certainly catch the virus eventually.

I'm not proposing schools open in an NYC/Houston/Miami type situation. But in lower infection area (e.g. the Bay Area), where about 0.1% of the population is infected weekly, you are not "almost certainly" going to get the virus.

Obviously, school opening should be gated by community transfer level. California seems to be using a 2 week target of < 100 confirmed per 100k people (with low test positivity), which seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER16> > (e.g. the Bay Area), about 0.1% of the population is infected weekly

I don't know if your 0.1% number is accurate, but let's assume that it is. If somehow cases remain completely level for the rest of the school year (which is far from a given, but for the sake of argument ...) over the course of 40 weeks, a randomly-chosen person has roughly a 40 * 0.1% = 4% chance of getting infected. But that is a randomly-chosen person, whereas it's not hard to imagine that a teacher exposed for hours daily to multiple young kids who aren't good at keeping their germs to themselves is (ballpark) maybe 6x as likely to get infected as a random person [1]. So then we arrive at an estimate of perhaps 24% odds of a teacher getting infected during the 2020-2021 school year using my assumptions (which you are free to disagree with).

Is 24% "almost certain"? No, but by highlighting the tiny 0.1% number, I think you are potentially seriously misrepresenting the true risk to an individual teacher. Hopefully, all of the measures that school districts might put into place will make my 6x-elevated risk estimate incorrect, but it's really hard to know. It's also possible that kids just don't transmit the virus very often. There's some evidence that that's the case, but I don't think we have really solid data on the question.

[1] "Teachers had six times more germs in their workspace than accountants, the second-place finisher ..." [https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/dirty-ten- germy...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/dirty-ten-germy- jobs/story?id=6107063)

<comment><USER14> > maybe 6x as likely to get infected as a random person

That is almost certainly not the case. California has had 350 daycare staff get covid infections out of 100k+ workers. That's actually about a third the rate on average.

Again, kids are less likely than average to have covid. Infectious kids may be less likely to transmit. This is different from flu where kids are large carriers. There are few documented cases of young kids (under 10) spreading to other kids or to teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Los Angelos teachers added a few other requests [1]. The introduction starts with:

[...] LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefit outweigh the risks [...]

And then proceeds to the following recommendations, among many others:

\- Defund Police

\- Shelter the homeless

\- Paid sick leave for all

\- Medicare for all

\- "Charter Moratorium"

\- "Financial Support for Undocumented Students and Families"

\- Wealth tax

\- Millionaire tax

\- ...

[1] PDF [https://www.utla.net/sites/default/files/samestormdiffboats_...](https://www.utla.net/sites/default/files/samestormdiffboats_final.pdf)

<comment><USER18> I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the needs of children, it's simply immoral and bordering on evil.

<comment><USER19> > I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters

The left doesn't hate charters, it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable. That's a subset of charters plus all vouchers.

Actual public charters, by which public schools are granted some variance of generally applicable rules to trial new methods are not a problem to the left; the hijacking of that process to create super-voucher schools when the voucher model failed to gain sufficient political support is what the left hates.

> Parents choose to send their kids there

Often, after the local regular public school has been replaced by a privately- operated charter in the same facility, and often the parents who most choose to send their children their are the ones whose most-local school was replaced, because it's the most convenient public school and going to a more distant one has added cost.

<comment><USER20> _it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable_

As opposed to existing publicly subsidized public schools that are not effectively accountable?

<comment><USER19> Charters are _explicitly_ reductions in institutional legal accountability, and unlike public (charter or not) schools, the chief decision makers so released from accountability with private schools are not accountable by election, either.

<comment><USER21> Yes, and it's difficult to get information from charter schools because they are not subject to the same reporting that public schools are. This makes it easy for people take advantage of their opaqueness.

These are a few examples from Los Angeles:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/06/17/how- does...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/06/17/how-does-million- charter-scam-work-heres-what-happened-california-before-people-were-indicted/)

[https://patch.com/california/studiocity/la-charter- schools-f...](https://patch.com/california/studiocity/la-charter-schools- founder-plead-embezzlement)

[https://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2013/04/05/13188/los- an...](https://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2013/04/05/13188/los-angeles- charter-school-founders-convicted-of-e/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My mother is an elementary school teacher, and I don't want her to go back to school this year. The federal government is worse than useless, and the state government is feckless and unwilling to make the tough calls to protect people's lives.

She's been a teacher for ~15 years and still makes less than $30k a year teaching. She loves helping the kids, but her life isn't worth it.

<comment><USER23> Where does she work that pays $30k for an experienced teacher? Teacher pay sucks

<comment><USER22> She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago.

This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that _requires_ a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; either their spouse has a higher-paying professional job or they are the beneficiary of some other form of generational wealth.

But we tend to lose the teachers who must make ends meet their own selves on a teacher's pay. There is no good economic argument made to become an elementary school teacher.

<comment><USER24> > There is no good economic argument made to become an elementary school > teacher.

AMEN. I would NEVER recommend ANYONE become a teacher based on my wife's experiences. You used to be able to write off expenses as "non-reimbursed employee expenses" but they cut that out so teachers get the token $200 writeoff. We spend almost 10x that annually supporting her in the classroom.

It really is glorified day care in most peoples minds which is a real shame.

<comment><USER25> My high school band friend became a high school music teacher. He was making hardly enough money for his family to live without stress or worry, he asked about wages they said they couldn't give raises, the only way they could justify a raise is if he had more education - so he took some student loans and got his masters. He was then told nothing could get him a raise, wages are frozen. Around that time he emailed me asking for help getting a corporate training gig where I was working. Of course I put in a word but I also pressed back because I'd always known him to be incredibly passionate about teaching and music. I always imagined him as a bit poorer than me, but a hell of a lot happier (I was going through a bit of a depressed time thinking about the "meaningfulness" of my corporate life). He said it wasn't about meaningfulness, or enjoying the work, or passion, it was that at one point they had to consider whether or not they had the budget for fucking light bulbs one week. He moved on to a nice corporate training job, and does well now. I haven't talked to him recently about if he still misses teaching, but I am acutely aware there's kids out there missing out on an amazing band teacher because we don't pay our teachers a salary that shows the profession any respect. I guess my friend's richer and happy he can take vacations and buy necessities without worry and for that I am glad, but I see the world as little bit poorer.

<comment><USER24> But he got his summers off! /s

Yea, it sucks all around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My wife is a teacher. She's quitting in two weeks so that she can give her mandatory 30-day notice in time for the beginning of the semester.

The planning being done for the next school year where we live is complete bullshit. The politicians and administrators running the planning have no idea about the realities.

They are driving these hybrid models with kids doing remote and in-person learning in alternative days/weeks with the in-person class sizes being about one third of the normal class size. To do that they would need at least twice the amount of teachers (one to teach in-person, and one to teach remotely to kids staying at home), possibly even more. Are they planning on hiring more teachers? No.

It's going to be a complete shitshow even without teachers quitting en masse.

There's this completely unrealistic sense among the people in charge that teachers will just magically make it work with no additional training, no proper support, no additional resources, nothing.

And I'm not even addressing the difficulties families, especially those that have multiple kids and/or can't work from home, will have with these proposed schedules.

<comment><USER27> > There's this completely unrealistic sense among the people in charge that > teachers will just magically make it work with no additional training, no > proper support, no additional resources, nothing.

I honestly doubt they think it will magically work, I think there are no good options that will give all the kids good educational outcomes, keep kids and teachers safe, and allow the economy to function without the use of schools as childcare, and that they are trying to pick the option that will have the least number of people calling for their heads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like there is too much emphasis on these and not enough on the ones that earnestly want to go back to work. There should be a balance here, as we really do need a lot of students to have access to schools in the fall.

Remote learning doesn't work for everyone and leaves a lot of people behind. The overall consequences of another lost semester may be far worse than the consequences of reopening.

<comment><USER29> I would prefer every student to be held back 1 semester from graduating high school than 1 more dead (if that were a possibility, but you get the point).

I don't even understand how its possible to prefer sending kids back over one semester. Of course I think the bigger issue is its just parents that want kids out of the house for a multitude of reasons including getting back to their own work.

<comment><USER30> It is easy to go about and proclaim, "life is priceless", "I would prefer to have every student held back than one dead", and so on.

What of students that have debt and now will have to wait more to get their "education"? Do you realize this is all going to cause more pain and suffering and possible deaths?

Do you realize given more budget it is possible to save more people if you spend it wisely?

<comment><USER29> How does delaying your school career 1 semester cause death?

What debt? School debt? Are you talking about college? If you aren't attending school at all then you aren't adding to the debt (in most cases with Federal loans). If its online then you are still on track so I don't see your point.

<comment><USER30> We are talking about large number of people. On average this would take away half a year of their productive life.

Nowadays, many people have a plan which is mostly: finish school, get a job based on the education.

It is not difficult to see that if you set back financially large number of people, suddenly, this might increase suicide rate, for example. Or may make them worse off in many different ways causing some to tip into loosing life.

These are not easy decisions, and saying "I would prefer people to pause their lives for 6 months than loose one life" is a completely braindead, extremist way of looking at things.

To show how stupid this is, you can use just a portion of your home budget to save a life. Today. There are many people that don't need much in the way of help. You are free to find one and help him/her, without involving large percentage of population that doesn't want to get involved in it.

I guess it is easier to go about and proclaim extremist slogans.

<comment><USER31> > These are not easy decisions, and saying "I would prefer people to pause > their lives for 6 months than loose one life" is a completely braindead, > extremist way of looking at things.

Based on the data from March it's pretty easy to estimate the effects of reopening things, including school. It's a very easy decision, don't reopen yet.

You're comparing an estimated thousands to tens of thousands dying from schools reopening to at most a few hundred thousand having to pause for 6 months and saying it's not an easy decision...?

Not to mention that most schools would have online programs as an alternative, not hold everyone back so your entire premise is false anyway.

<comment><USER30> I was reacting to the person saying how easy the decision is.

Whether it is actually safe to let people back in schools, I have not enough data and knowledge to decide. Most likely not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is exactly why all the people that said "choosing to protect life is also choosing to protect the economy" were right. It sucks, but people with savings can choose to quit over having to risk their lives. So if there is an appreciable risk (and associated hazard, which, for many of our older educators there is) then that is what is going to happen and you still get the disruptions to the economy.

<comment><USER33> Why are nurses and grocery workers working then? How are they less at risk than teachers?

<comment><USER34> Medical staff get to wear PPE. As for grocery workers:

My wife's a teacher. She was back in school for a day last week, with a much smaller class of children. The first thing one of her children tried to do on seeing her was give her a hug. I doubt this happens to many grocery workers.

In September she'll spend about six hours a day in a poorly ventilated and inadequately sized classroom with 30 children. Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves. From the single days she has been in each week, she's watched children unable to maintain social distancing in the classroom or the playground. They cough, sneeze and wipe their noses on their hands and then touch everything. That's what kids are like.

<comment><USER24> > poorly ventilated and inadequately sized classroom

BINGO. That's what has bothered me the most and I've talked a lot to my wife about what we can do to mitigate the risk.

> Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves

How is that enforceable? Seems like they shouldn't be allowed to mandate no masks given the documented health risks.

<comment><USER35> Because if they didn't, they'd get pushback from teachers unions demanding schools provide masks (and soap, sanitizer, etc.). What most of America does not realize is how little money American schools on average spend on school supplies. Most teachers pay out of pocket for the majority of school supplies (on top of their already low pay). So as with most things that make no sense, it's enforceable because there are people with significant sway up top that realize how much more money will be needed if they didn't enforce it.

<comment><USER24> My wife is a teacher so I understand the situation intimately.

I do not see how saying "no one is allowed to wear as mask" as a policy is OK when someone can provider their own PPE.

<comment><USER35> I get it too. I used to teach, albeit in a different country. Several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins are teachers too. My answer was more geared towards everyone else who had the same question you had but can't see how upper management would logically justify such a response.

The crux of your question, though, is an ethical one and I think everyone knows the answer - it's not OK.

Sadly, money often trumps ethics in America and my response was an explanation as to why that happens. You will also see the very same people trot out ethics as justification for their actions when it benefits them (case in point, one reason for re-opening schools).

Your comment and question is a great one that everyone should be wondering. The next step is to get people to understand why the illogical is happening and who are making those decisions. That will point people towards confronting the right people in power with the right arguments to push for change.

<comment><USER36> My god thinks mouths and noses are ugly, hideous things that must not be seen. As such our religious cannon/traditions require the wearing of masks over the mouth and nose at all times.

Join us @ Maskbeterian.org (I only bought the domain today, give me a minute to stand up a shitty wordpress site)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I live in the Netherlands. Schools were closed here for nearly two months and then re-opened for 6 weeks now, the re-opening did not affect R. Tests are available for all school personnel and there were no hospitalizations. Some more data points:

\- we do take care that parents stay 1.5 meters apart. There's special drop- off routes and such, parents don't enter the buildings \- I don't have data on this but I assume ventilation is good in our schools and they opened windows \- kids had to wash their hands a lot \- younger kids can come close to teachers and intermingle, older kids have to keep their distance \- we don't wear masks, they are only required in public transportation <— I disagree, just stating what's up here \- this is on a population of 17 mio

Perhaps this is in some ways too small or different a dataset for it to be meaninful, but politics aside and living this reality it is apparent to me that schools for young kids can be reopened with minimal risk.

<comment><USER38> What were your numbers for new cases looking like when the schools reopened, though? Keep in mind, many parts of US never even got past the first hump in the curve.

</comment></comment><comment> prof-dr-ir It is a bit surprising to me that there is such a strong focus in the US on school closures and mask wearing (here on HN but also in the major newspapers). It is my impression that in quite a few European countries there have been, and to some extent still are, significant debates about the effectiveness of both these measures. On the other hand, there appears to have been a much more universal implementation of other measures, namely 'stay home' (if you feel sick) and social distancing (be it 1m, 1.5m, 2m or 6 feet...) throughout affected Western European countries, all of which have the epidemic under control for now. Am I alone in thinking that these measures deserve more attention in the US?

<comment><USER38> Social distancing isn't really contentious in US (other than the subset of the population that believes that COVID is hoax).

"Stay home" is one of those things that are on every list of recommendations, but it's completely non-viable in practice because of the way US handles healthcare in work context. Keep in mind that there is no federal requirement for paid sick leave, and only 13 states mandate it. Consequently, 30% of workers don't get any paid sick leave at all - mostly the lowest-paying jobs, that are paid the least (and so taking an unpaid day off can easily mean an unpaid bill etc), and who interact with random people the most.

And don't forget that employment in US is "at-will", meaning that businesses can fire workers without giving a reason. FMLA limits that somewhat wrt unpaid sick leave, but 1) it only applies to businesses with at least 50 employees, and 2) it only applies to illnesses that are _incapacitating_ to the person claiming sick leave.

The focus is on mask wearing right now, because the return to stay-at-home is clearly not happening, and so people go and mingle. If they mingle with masks, they definitely reduce the transmission rate enough to notice - there's ample evidence of that. What's unclear is just how large the effect is.

Also, why focus on Europe alone? We could also look at Japan, which seems to have made a bet largely on mask wearing - and has some impressive results to show for that.

<comment> prof-dr-ir Those are some very good points, thank you. The lack of paid sick leave makes me both sad and worried. My guess is that changing that situation, even temporarily, could make a big difference in containing the pandemic.

I could not find a reliable source that ascribes Japan's relative success to masks. Some ideas are discussed in [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-53188847](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53188847) . The advice from Japan's ministry of health on masks is not a ringing endorsement, either: [https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryo...](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/dengue_fever_qa_00014.html#Q6) .

<comment><USER38> In Japan, it's not that the government forced everybody to wear masks - it's that people just did that, with nearly 100% conformance.

We aren't certain that it's masks. But they did little else (e.g. no lockdowns or travel restrictions); so it's either masks, or something unknown. Occam's Razor says masks are more likely.

There are other anecdotal cases about mask efficiency. E.g. there is a hair salon in US where two hairdressers got COVID, and they served 139 clients in 8 days, before testing positive; one was symptomatic for the entire period, the other one for 5 days. Per company policy, they wore mask consistently while working with clients.

During that time period, they infected 4 people - but all of these were their family or roommates. None of the clients they serviced developed symptoms then or within a month, and of the half who consented to testing, none tested positive.

Besides, we do have good reasons to believe that masks are efficient just based on physics and biology alone. We do know that masks are definitely effective at stopping saliva droplets, and we do know that droplets definitely spread COVID. So even if it has other vectors (e.g. aerosols), masks would still reduce the overall viral load, and thus chances of infection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One should note that the safety risks are not one sided, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has pointed out in strongly urging planning centered around means to reopen in-person schooling, there are risks to health and lives at issue with _not_ returning to school:

> the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming > school year should start with a goal of having students physically present > in school. [...] Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption > of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it > difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as > well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, > depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and > adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality

[https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus- cov...](https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus- covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return- to-in-person-education-in-schools/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Please note that there's more to the story than that statement: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/13/trump- ad...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/13/trump- administration-cites-american-academy-pediatrics-make-its-case-school- reopening-heres-what-aap-really-said/)

<comment><USER19> I'm not endorsing the simplistic and punitive Trump Administration spin that is at issue in your story, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Both the "reopen without significant investment in safety" and "stay closed" sides are both grave health risks and education failures, as the original statement itself implies and the further elaboration makes clear.

It's probably the case that, reduced to those options, "stay closed" (to in- person schooling, continuing distance learning) is best for _teachers_ , so it's understandable that with governments refusing to offer more when it comes to reopening that's their stance. But even when it is reduced to those two bad options, it's far less clear that that's the best for kids (especially since a lot of the private internet access subsidies from ISPs, that were given with no obligation by providers, that mitigated the inequities with distance learning have expired.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Well it is definitely true that having schools fully open does not contribute to much greater risk _if the community already has the virus under control_ as this has been widely demonstrated by many European countries where infection rates continued to decrease, hospitalizations and deaths decreased, even as schools fully opened. But in those countries, they actually did the responsible thing and had a full uncompromised lockdown for months to get the virus under control.

</comment><comment><USER40> For the teachers whose calling is teaching, I can see them moving to this part-time: [https://outschool.com](https://outschool.com)

My wife and I were concerned about our daughter getting isolated. We don't want her on social media, but we do think it is important for her to connect with her affinity group, and explore her passions. I found out about outschool recently, and it looked like exactly what we needed to address this.

The classes and activities on outschool don't conform to any national standard. Instead, teachers, both accredited and non-accredited, can teach subjects they are interested in teaching. In turn, technology is used to connect interested students together with the teacher.

There are some really unusual things that connects different disciplines together in a more wholistic way. Such as a class on world architecture using Mindcraft.

Teacher set their own pricing at a minimum of $10 for a course, and the platform takes 30%. Some are prerecorded and some are live. The intended audience if k-12.

<comment><USER41> So, keeping my child engaged for 5 days a week would cost about 150$ and 45$ go to the platform (judging from glancing over class duration/classes per week and cost).

Can somebody tell me what value outschool adds aside from being an agency?

<comment><USER42> What's wrong with the only value being an agency? Do you not approve of B2B generally speaking?

If teachers didn't have a service like this to use, they would each have to find their own way to attract the attention of potential students.

<comment><USER41> I don't care, I don't have children. I think it's interesting that 30% is evil when it comes to app stores or food delivery but with outschool.com suddenly it is well deserved.

As someone from Germany I also think that 600€ for "entertaining" one child (with 180€ going to a platform provider) is crazy.

I don't have kids though so in the end if that's what the market rate ends up at apparently it is either what parents are willing to pay or at least it is what market providers presume to be a realistic rate (and we will see how soon the marketplace will run out of money).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In Santa Clara County, CA (Silicon Valley), a group of 40 principals got together in person a few weeks back to discuss reopening plans.

And they got COVID.

Is it any wonder that teachers don't trust that they will be kept safe?

<comment><USER26> Israel was forced to close their schools again after infections skyrocketed with schools opened. One school had 114 students and 14 teachers get infected.

This is exactly what's going to happen in the US as well, especially in the states that are seeing explosive infection rates at the moment.

<comment><USER14> Well, that's what happens if you keep high schools open (where the kids are much more susceptible) and don't attempt reasonable social distancing.

20 elementary school aged kids that must stay with their group? Teachers required to only interact with one group of kids? I'm less worried at least in areas that aren't at TX/AZ/FL levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> A protest sign I saw is an apt response to the situation:

"Why should we go to school if you won't listen to the educated?"

<comment><USER45> Because education is valuable regardless of whether or not everyone listens to you?

<comment><USER46> If no one listens to you, who is a formal education valuable to, exactly? I assign no personal value to the pieces of paper I got from the various institutions I've graduated from - society and the job market values them.

<comment><USER47> To you, even if nobody listens to you.

<comment><USER46> I already answered that.

<comment><USER47> No, you didn't. You said you don't assign any value to the piece of paper. Find, but did you actually _learn_ anything in the process? That has value, to you.

Now, perhaps your point is that the _formal_ education didn't matter, that is, you could just as easily have learned the same thing by informal means. That is true, if you had the self-discipline or curiosity to do so. While you may have had that, and I did, many who attend public school do not. The things they learn are still of value to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Pennsylvania is considering putting the funding with the kids, rather than through the system/administration. The average spending per student in the US is about $15k/yr. If that money went with the student, instead of to administration, etc. a teacher could take on 10 students and make $150k/yr revenue. A mainstream online curriculum for those students costs less than $30/mo. I'm not saying that's exactly the solution, I don't want to get caught up in the details on the HN forum, but I hope we can head in that vague direction.

<comment><USER49> This is a great idea! Cut the amount a bit to pay for state oversight and certification. Maybe light standardized testing to make sure everyone is generally on track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Underpaid, unappreciated by many, overcrowed in classrooms, forced to pay for their own supplies. Not really surprising -- I would not last long in that situation when you add in life-threatening.

Education _needs_ a massive reform.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is another example of how modern economies are driven by individual choices about participation--in this case teachers refusing to provide service because they don't feel safe. The same choices are devastating a wide range of industries like aviation, hospitality, tourism, etc.

It's a little mindboggling that so many political leaders do not understand this basic concept. Economics is far from perfect but the effect of the pandemic on economic behavior was about as close to a slam dunk prediction as you can get.

</comment><comment><USER52> Serious question. At this point, why can't teachers wear n95 masks? Data has shown they adequately protect even healthcare workers that are constantly exposed to heavy viral loads.

<comment><USER53> > "They said we'd have masks and face shields and everyone is going to be > covered, but it's a school district — sometimes we don't have soap," he > said.

We've had trouble getting enough N95s for healthcare staff, let alone teachers.

<comment><USER54> Meanwhile multiple N95 production lines are sitting dormant in Texas and elsewhere. You're confusing not being willing to make masks with having trouble getting enough. No, we have no trouble getting enough. We have no willingness to make any. Those two couldn't be further from each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> There is no excuse for this behavior from politicians and the public at large. This is selfish ignorance of the utmost degree.

It is, at face value, ridiculous to even think of re-opening schools. The real story is the total and complete abdication of their duties by elected politicians. Faced with a tough choice, they'd rather let people die and systems collapse then take responsibility. Despite watching this unfold in the news and social media for months, these people chose to ignore it and shrug or, as we've seen with kemp, purposefully stop other governments from enacting policies, and now thousands will die.

Why these politicians haven't been dragged out into the street is beyond me. We are going to soar clean over 200,000 people dead in no time-- many of which were preventable.

Just imagine-- if a contractor's shoddy work resulted in 3 people being killed, they'd be hauled into court on gross negligence charges. Yet...politicians are being given a pass. That's not ok.

</comment><comment><USER56> What about the gas station workers? Grocery store workers? Millions are working during COVID as they're deemed "essential". Teachers are just as essential.

</comment><comment><USER57> We pay teachers poorly enough that plenty of people who otherwise would be teachers were already choosing to not take those jobs.

Now keep the poor pay and crank up the risk of death knob.

Obvious result is obvious, it's actually surprising to me that they're actually _able_ to reopen schools-- that the number of teachers uninterested in continuing in this environment isn't much greater.

How many teachers does it take to quit before you can't reopen? 10%? 20%? Many are economically desperate enough that they'll take the added risk of death, but surely a portion is not.

I can only imagine that there are also a lot of parents who don't want their kids back in schools, perhaps there is a much greater market now for private tutoring.

</comment><comment><USER58> School districts should give at-risk teachers the first pick for virtual work. When they run out of virtual teaching jobs, they should offer voluntary furlough. Allowing teachers the flexibility to temporarily leave would allow younger and healthier risk-takers to step up and do the job during the pandemic. In our current economy, there are tons of young healthy workers willing to take these teaching jobs.

Any worker is free to quit if they don't agree with the risks. The real problem, that I don't see mentioned anywhere, is that teachers want to continue being paid the same salary and benefits to teach virtually, despite virtual learning being a disaster. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

</comment><comment><USER59> The federal government is doing this on purpose to kill public schools.

<comment><USER60> Public schools have failed students, especially minorities. Good

<comment><USER61> I wish we had decent charter school options where I live.

I bet A LOT of parents have this same wish.

<comment><USER59> Charter schools take funding that was made by the public for the public and decide to do whatever they want from it.

Charter schools are also not required to provide adequate support for children that need extra accommodation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Media has done a great job at fear mongering. People aren't realizing that kids not being able to go to school means the child abuse numbers are through the roof and they aren't even getting caught or reported. There are safe ways of achieving schooling without putting older teachers at risk.

<comment><USER63> Such as?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I have to ask you Americans. Are you giving up on society yet?

I'm Canadian, and it is surreal watching the country below us completely waste the lockdown so they can go to beaches and bars and then urgently move to shoving kids back into the classroom.

Do you still feel that you can count on your government? On your neighbours?

<comment><USER65> I'm optimistic. We are being tested from many directions right now and when we come out of this we will be better for it.

<comment><USER66> Same. Progress isn't always smooth or comfortable. Like being at the gym and feeling your muscles burn. But the work and struggle will be worth it, and I'm confident the American spirit will pull us through to a better future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> My 65 year old parent, an educator in a sunbelt state, told their superintendent that if the distict came back for in person classes too early, they would walk on the spot.

they'll be online-only for at least the fall.

</comment><comment><USER68> I find it odd that countries/cities with _much_ higher population density (and some, worst healthcare ie. in east Asia) are not going through this paranoia (finding hard to pick a mildler term) that many in the west have been going through. It's like: "I'm not leaving my house EVER until my (insert authority) guarantees I or someone won't die".

I guess people suddenly have _much_ higher expectation of what is realistically authorized can guarantee. Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER69> I follow COVID-19 data. I notice an interesting trend: Cases increase. Deaths and hospitalizations have not increased much.

It seems the US has come up with good enough cures for COVID-19. The cost of shutdown is high. The trend is reopening.

[https://vida.io/dashboards/ckbk04mht00000ul63lr6m53w](https://vida.io/dashboards/ckbk04mht00000ul63lr6m53w)

</comment><comment><USER70> My wife is a school bus driver. I got another job where I could work from home and make more money partial so she could quit working.

</comment><comment><USER71> Here's San Francisco guidance for school reopening: [https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/covid- guidance/Preliminary-...](https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/covid- guidance/Preliminary-Guidance-TK12-Schools.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER72> I have a friend who got hired for his first teaching job this summer. It's all he's wanted to do and he's incredibly passionate. He's afraid that if he backs out now the school board won't hire him back after this is all over.

</comment><comment><USER73> Sweden's strategy is looking more sensible every day (with the exception of failing to isolate nursing homes, which was a blunder). Their excess mortality rate is back to zero, and they never closed schools for a day.

<comment><USER74> Once President-Elect Biden pronounces this strategy on November 4th (with universal acclaim from the media and all corners of the ruling class), you can point to your comment from today and get some more downvotes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> There isn't a way to force schools to reopen in person right now. As soon as there is an outbreak (and there will be), teachers will stop going, and parents won't allow their kids to go.

</comment><comment><USER76> In Iceland, they did extensive testing, and genetic tracing of infections.

Children infecting other children was extremely rare. In almost all cases, it was adults infecting them.

There was only a single case of a child infecting an adult.

[https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down- covi...](https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covid-19/)

Now that we have actual experience with the disease, hospitalization rates for children with covid is 5x lower than flu.

As pediatricians have noted, focusing only on covid risks leaves a whole host of other more serious risks with no management.

<comment><USER77> Iceland, of course, has only 360.000 inhabitants.

<comment><USER78> How big of a sample size do you need to be convinced?

<comment><USER77> 32 different countries? Iceland doesn't necessarily generalize to denser populations. Even the capital, Reykjavik, has a low population density, 472/km2, whereas New York has over 10,000/km2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Why not have older teachers that are more at risk teach from home via video? Then have a younger proctor coordinate with kids in the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER80> It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Whether we like it or not we're going with the Sweden Model. I've got school age kids myself, and I understand the risk. This is going to be a situation that could become hard to manage but our society's economy is constructed in such a way that relies on daytime programming for children and teens outside of their home. The teachers are going to have to help bear the load, just as we all are.

<comment><USER81> Are you willing to die for the economy? Ask your kids, are they OK with you dying so that money can be made, maybe collect on some life insurance money? Are you OK with your kids potentially dying (rare but not zero) just to keep them busy during the day? I bet not.

<comment><USER82> Yes. And there are many millions of unafraid people. Doesn't mean they aren't cautious, but they understand risk.

Children have a higher chance of dying in a car accident, are you going to stop driving tomorrow, because you know a non-zero chance of dying is all you will accept.

<comment><USER83> > Children have a higher chance of dying in a car accident

Some numbers related to this claim:

In 2018 about 37,000 people died in the U.S. in motor vehicle accidents, not all of them were children.

Currently, about 250,000 people are dying per year from COVID19 in the U.S. Not all of them are children.

It's not clear to me that your claim is true. Granted, only a few COVID19 deaths are children, but how many auto fatalities involve children?

<comment><USER82> For frame of reference according to the CDC 31 total deaths of children age 1-14 since the pandemic started.

That's not a typo - 31.

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex)

130 died from flu.

675 died children in car accidents.

[https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safet...](https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safety/cps- factsheet.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Teachers' unions are among the most powerful unions left in the country. If there ever was a time for them to flex that power, it's now: In the middle of a raging worldwide pandemic, they are actually being asked to risk dying for their jobs _and_ risk having their classrooms turn into petri dishes sending infected children back to infect their families. If that's not enough to motivate collective action, what is?

<comment><USER85> The power of teacher's unions varies a ton. Supposedly in some places they have so much power it's impossible to fire teachers for pretty much any reason. I've never seen anything close to that, but I believe accounts that such districts exist. Meanwhile in others the best they can do, with great effort, is get districts to pinkie-promise not to abuse teachers (but then do it anyway, of course). That's the only kind I've seen but I dunno how it works in New York or Chicago or wherever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Teachers have gone on strike for paychecks, I hope they do so because their lives are worth more than paychecks.

</comment><comment><USER87> Good, that will save us from laying them all off when Online school teachers are able to teach nearly unlimited students via repeatable content like videos.

And those who are better tutors than lecturers can become tutors for those who need more help

</comment><comment><USER88> Maybe a nationwide gap year.

<comment><USER89> This whole generation is going to be lost. It's not a cataclysm, but a whole generation of American kids are going to be a year or two behind on their studies. They will have grown up during unprecedented social unrest. If the economy doesn't recover and society doesn't support their families, millions of them will grow up in poverty. It's not a certainty, but the outlook could be much better. It's sad, I feel for these kids.

<comment><USER19> > They will have grown up during unprecedented social unrest.

No, they won't. The almost continuous post-war race riots and civil rights protests of the 1940s-1960s (overlapping with the anti-war protests of the 1960s), the intense period of labor and race riots in the interwar period, and...well, it goes on and on as you go back to and before the Revolutionary period.

Not unprecedented, or even close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Illegal to strike, my God ....

</comment><comment><USER91> Thinking about having a kid. There's no way I would ever have a kid in my current US state. Not saying anyone has done it well vs rest of the world, but there are clearly states (and counties/cities) that have done a much better job at protecting human life than others.

As someone who has lived in the US South for most of my childhood and adult life, I truly don't think it's responsible to have children here if you have another choice. I know a lot of people don't, but I do and I'm out of here.

<comment><USER92> Ditto, except I'm dubious about the prospect of having a child in America.

<comment><USER93> I think people have felt the same about having children throughout most of history.

Do you want a child born into slavery?

Do you want a child subject to a totalitarian government?

Do you want a child born into extreme poverty or famine?

I feel like if you want to have a kid you have one and you deal with whatever adversity comes along.

Take the opportunity to prepare your child to deal with the world that exists regardless of the circumstances. The more children that grow up with thoughtful parents that prepare them to face problems in the more possibility the world will be a better place in the future.

I'm sure my argument isn't well thought at being that it's 4:30pm on a Friday, but I really feel like regardless of the issues we face in society today we are living in the best time to be alive ever and if you have the means to care for a child, and you want children, there's nothing that should stop you from having one.

<comment><USER92> This argument is unconvincing and really annoying. I don't care about the calculus other people had to go through to have children in other times because _I'm not them_. Every human makes decisions based on the pressures they experience in their own life, pointing out that times were worse elsewhere is just annoying pedantry.

And of course, part of my point was I'm dubious about having a kid _in America_. As in, I'd be open to going expat and raising a child somewhere I think is safer and more stable.

<comment><USER93> I had no intention of being annoying. Apologies for that. I only meant to offer some optimism.

I understand your point of view, and I respect it.

<comment><USER92> No worries, it's a common response and I clearly have a knee-jerk reaction to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> How many? 2? 200? 20%? 90%? Without an answer to this question this doesn't seem a productive discussion.

</comment><comment><USER95> I believe the old FDR phrase, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself," is becoming more and more accurate with our situation.

The risk from this virus goes down dramatically the younger you are. Kids are young. That's obvious. Their parents also tend to be young, at least young enough to not be in the high risk groups.

These groups are also accustomed to being sick or dealing with sick people.

If there were no vaccine in the pipeline, our only option would be herd immunity. If we were shooting for herd immunity, the groups exposed by going back to school would be exactly who we'd want to put at risk from a statistical standpoint.

So it's really a question of do we want to continue hiding out in hopes that they truly are able to fast track a vaccine, or do we want to just deal with a couple hard months and get our lives back?

Most of the alarmism at the beginning of all this was centered around it being a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic. It's not.

<comment><USER96> Or you know, you could deal with the virus like 99% of the other first world countries and be half way through it instead of still not having hit the peak of the epidemic. It's crystal clear that the US is doing something wrong. "it's not that bad", "europe is reopening schools so we should do it too", &c.

What kind of mental gymnastic do you have to go through to even write these things... [https://i.imgur.com/2Pkl2PY.png](https://i.imgur.com/2Pkl2PY.png)

<comment><USER95> > It's crystal clear that the US is doing something wrong.

And if that's the reality, then we need to figure out how to move forward from there. We can't go back to March and convince everyone to do a better job of shelter in place.

We followed all the rules in my family. It was, in my opinion, a waste of time. I'm not going to hide in a hole for fear of the damn boogey man for the next three years.

<comment><USER97> > We can't go back to March and convince everyone to do a better job of > shelter in place.

Apparently it's impossible to convince Americans to do a better job of anything. So "moving forward from here" is going to be just as incompetent and half-assed as shelter in place was. Apparently no one in power has learned a thing, hence this article.

<comment><USER47> It's not just those in power. Too few people in the populace learned that they really needed to follow heath guidelines like this was serious. Without that, the people in power can't do too much.

And why do many people not take the guidelines seriously? Partly it's because of the fumbling and incompetent response to Covid, but it's not just that. Government/political leadership has been setting their credibility on fire for a decade or several. (To be clear: It's not just this president, it's not just this administration, and it's not just one party.) They've been too busy trying to win at political trench warfare to actually _govern_ , and the people have noticed. Too often, neither reason nor competence have been on display. So when it actually matters, nobody is willing to listen to the politically-driven clown show, because it's probably just more of the same. (And, to some degree, it was.)

So "moving forward" will require rebuilding trust in government. People need to trust that policy will be competent and (at least in something like this) not set by politics. That's going to take a decade or several to rebuild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Why wouldn't a teacher quit if they possibly could? The pay is peanuts, certainly not worth any serious immediate risk to your health.

<comment><USER99> It's a lot better than no pay at all!

(Also fwiw, teacher salaries in the US do vary greatly by state. You won't make off like a bandit anywhere, but it's a perfectly respectable amount in some places.)

<comment><USER100> Teachers around me (NYC suburbs) are getting $200K compensation packages!

I consider that making out like a bandit. Only 186 days of work a year, summers off, can never be fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Maybe all nurses should quit, too.

<comment><USER96> idk if it's a tongue in cheek comment or what but when you sign up to work in the medical system it's kind of implied (and probably explicitly written in your work contract) that you'll encounter dangerous and unpleasant situations, much less for teachers, especially when the whole thing is unnecessary and preventable in the first place.

<comment><USER102> Except the danger is overblown, there is risk ? yes of course, like everything else in life there is risk. Thats being said If they feel uncomfortable to work then they should quit, give opportunity for other teacher to take their job.

<comment><USER103> No. The danger is not overblown.

New teachers just don't appear out of the woodworks, it takes time to be trained. Plus, since in the US it's such a poorly paid and poorly respected profession (at least not respected by society; Id imagine parents appreciate teachers), where will these new teachers come from?

<comment><USER102> >No. The danger is not overblown.

Ok not for you but at least for me and whole lot other people consider the risk be overblown.

>New teachers just don't appear out of the woodworks, it takes time to be trained

This assume there are more teacher who are afraid than not. If there is truly lack of teacher then there are plenty of ways to urge them to work, such as giving more benefit.

<comment><USER96> > Ok not for you but at least for me and whole lot other people consider the > risk be overblown.

Funny to think that this is exactly the mental state that put the US at the top of the worsts countries in term of coronavirus response.

Six months in and "it's just the flu bro" is still going strong, humans are weird.

<comment><USER102> I agree the US government response is really disappointing, they should have just reopen everything now.

I'm not saying that there nothing should be done regarding this virus. The vaccine research still have to continue, treatment research still have to continue, increase medical capacity(if needed) still have to be done.

What I'm against is this lockdown/restriction and this fear mongering because the damage it cause is more than the virus.

>Six months in and "it's just the flu bro" is still going strong, humans are weird

I'm not saying its just flu, I'm saying the risk of this virus is very low. The data clearly shown that for majority of cases it either asymptotic or only mild symptom.

Would there be risk of death due or long term damage to his virus ? of course, any diseases could cause that but the risk is low.

<comment><USER96> > I'm saying the risk is very low. The data clearly shown that for majority of > cases it either asymptotic or only mild symptom.

The data also shows that 140k Americans died (probably many more if you take into account the excess deaths that have been recorded but haven't been linked to covid yet) and many more will suffer long term side effects. The data also shows that Europeans countries almost completely curbed the epidemic and can _safely_ and _slowly_ reopen because they went through a real lock down. If anything the data clearly shows that reopening anything in the US right now is suicide for thousands of people.

This situation will be a literal text book example of how to completely fail at handling an epidemic for the centuries to come, it would be comical if it wasn't for all the preventable deaths and suffering.

<comment><USER102> So only 140k died (0.04%) and with now with the death rate that is going down, its a good news, even more reason to reopen as soon as possible.

<comment><USER104> Amazing for someone to write off 140k deaths. Only 58,000 died in Vietnam. Thats literally in and out of "theaters of war". 1900 died in the Gulf war and those are ppl who "signed up for it".

So, only 140k died. Callous AF.

<comment><USER102> Because its not worth it to make millions other people suffer due to lockdown.

<comment><USER105> I'm sorry, but of all the things I've read on HN regarding this pandemic, your lack of empathy truly stands out. Of the "millions other people" you mentioned, there are two types: those who feel a sense of duty to bear their share of burden to stop this virus from taking (complete strangers') lives, and those who reject that notion, _eagerly_ treating those lives, and the lives of people who would grieve their losses, as statistics to be put on scale with profit and growth for a quick decision. I'm not saying that people in the latter invented that scale; that scale is indeed a fact of life. But when I think of my own experience of loss, I cannot imagine that those who tout the balance of this scale as the sole reason for policy decisions understand the weight of a lost life.

<comment><USER102> Of course i understand it can be tragic for some people to loss life due to this virus but I also understand to achieve near 0 death will also incur high cost.

>your lack of empathy truly stands out.

I disagree, I sympathize those millions who suffer due to the lockdown. Their suffering is real as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Wonderful. If they stay employed, we have to pay their salaries, despite not receiving any kind of education for America's children. We can't fire them, due to the union. But if they quit, we achieve everything -- tax payers save money for something they are not getting, and the funds can be used to educate children (Perhaps by direct payments to parents for use in hiring private tutors, or whatever).

<comment><USER106> This comment shows an astounding lack of anything resembling human empathy. Teachers do not want to return to work because the outbreak is getting worse in many places, and the already underpaid job of being a teacher would become even more dangerous. Ask any teacher (especially grade school) during normal times: they get sick constantly, and kids constantly pass around colds/the flu. In AZ, the emergency room ICUs are so full that patients are having to be flown to New Mexico. Huh, I wonder why teachers are concerned. Probably just union BS.

America's children not receiving education isn't the fault of teachers. It is the fault of a failed state that is unable to protect public health. Instead, you (and probably a large portion of older, affluent Americans) will celebrate as our already underpaid teachers are forced to seek other work rather than kill their students/families. Before the pandemic, many teachers in my district were forced to work second jobs (e.g. at restaurants). This is a breaking point.

America has truly lost any sense of community solidarity or just the barest altruism. Everything has become individualized and treated like a business cost that needs to be cut off like some sort of tumor in order to boost some shitty education startups that is "innovative" or "focused on shareholder value" or some shit. Teachers have an interest in not seeing their students/students' families die, so it seems pretty obvious why they would be reluctant to pack a bunch of children in a classroom setting. But hey, maybe we can all create tutoring startups and unbundle public education into 40 SaaS apps.

<comment><USER60> > Instead, you (and probably a large portion of older, affluent Americans) > will celebrate as our already underpaid teachers are forced to seek other > work rather than kill their students/families. Before the pandemic, many > teachers in my district were forced to work second jobs (e.g. at > restaurants). This is a breaking point.

Yes. Teachers at private schools are paid much less but produce better outcomes, despite having similar demographics. For example, Catholic school teachers earn much less (and catholic schools spend much less per pupil than similar pupils at public schools). Yet the outcomes are better. This is not a problem with pay. The public school system and teachers who are complicit in it have failed our students.

And to be clear.. I am not older. I have soon-to-be school age children. My mother was a teacher. We have seen the rot in the system, and our children will not be attending. Especially as a minority, we cannot let our children be subject to the silent and self-denying racism inherent in the public school system. Sorry you don't get to ruin my kid's life as people like you forced my mother to ruin other children's lives be following the edicts of the public school system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Human ingenuity has accomplished some marvelous things in the last century. I can't help but wonder how easily we could have tooled up for mass production of affordable PAPRs to distribute for times when remote work isn't very effective, like teaching children.

<comment><USER24> Powered Air Purifying Respirators

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe- strategy/p...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe- strategy/powered-air-purifying-respirators-strategy.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> LA's teachers union issued calls to defund the police and limit charter schools (AKA competition and accountability for teachers) as part of their reopening plans so I'm not sure that health is the only thing in play. It seems like large numbers of teachers are just openly exploiting this crisis for political and personal gain.

[https://news.yahoo.com/l-teachers-union-calls- defund-1649434...](https://news.yahoo.com/l-teachers-union-calls- defund-164943481.html)</comment>


Miscomputation: Learning to live with errors - <AUTHOR> http://tomasp.net/blog/2015/failures/index.html

<comment><USER2> I suspect as Moore's law runs out we will see a rise in speculative computing, where we write our code to work off of fast estimates of slow calculations (ie, detectable mistakes), and then double-check the work before committing the answer at the end.

Video games already do something like this to hide latency in multi-player scenarios. A generalized solution would be interesting, although given our track record with shared state concurrency, it may prove too confusing for the average dev.

</comment><comment><USER3> errors being acceptable is why the challenger disaster happened. Ok, not really, but you get the point.

Everyone has to evaluate the _risk_ of the errors and act accordingly.

<comment><USER4> It's likely worth noting that the shuttle has a famously robust computer system. The Challenger was related to an engineering flaw in the mechanical design of the system.

I forget my source, but IIRC the computer system actually noticed the pressure drop from the fuel lines (what with the exploding) and started the shutdown process, spinning down the turbos before the system was forcefully disassembled. Takes a while to turn off the turbos; a few hundred milliseconds really isn't enough time...

[0] Obligatory link to the Feynman report

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html)

[1] A cool article on the software running the shuttle

[http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right- stuff](http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)

<comment><USER3> The flaw of the O-rings was known, but the risk was considered acceptable by management.

This is specifically why I couched my answer in terms of risk. This was not specifically about the computer system, this was about the mis-assessment of risk.

<comment><USER5> So you're saying that we have a cult of unbounded precision due to our low confidence in appropriately assessing risk?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Bad Carver: Musings on why technology often seems to challenge the sacred - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/11/03/a-bad-carver/ <comment><USER2> This article makes a bunch of good points, but I'd like to deal with this: "A technological advance in the sense of a de-condensation is by its nature something that does not fit in the existing order."

A little jargon-heavy, and I think the author just tossed that off without thinking about short-term consequences of it. "Does not fit in the existing order" can be confused with "harmful to the existing order", and maybe it actually is harmful. What is the purpose of dragnet surveillance but to prevent harm to the existing order? One more step, and we have universal surveillance squashing technological innovation. I don't think that's too far fetched, actually.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree.</comment></comment>


Zynga Now Worth Less Than Its Own Office Building [Halting Problem] - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/halting-problem/zyngas-offices-now-worth-more-than-zynga-the-company-47a704d48249 <comment><USER2> > As of close of market today, the company's market value was around $2 > billion. However, due to its reserves of approximately $1.5 billion of cash > on hand, analysts estimate that Zynga is actually worth around $500 million

How does that work? If it has $1.5 billion in cash, surely it's not "worth" just $500 million, then anyone would go buy it and take their cash.

<comment><USER3> We have to value the company's assets and liabilities. The $2B market cap is a good perceived value of the company as a whole. If there's $1.5B cash on hand, then we can value that cash at $1 per $1 of face value (it's cash, which is easy). That leaves $500M in net value that the company has not accounting for that cash on hand. If the company owns the building, and the building is worth, say $550M, then factoring that out actually puts the value of the rest of the company at _negative_ $50M.

<comment><USER4> This made it even more confusing for me.

<comment><USER5> I'll sell you a piggy bank containing a $10 bill for $10.01 How much does the piggy bank actually cost? Even though you initially need to hand me $10.01, you can immediately crack it open and put the tenner back in your wallet, so the piggy bank actually only costs you a penny

Now suppose the piggy bank is actually a soda bottle. Returning the bottle to the store gets you five cents, plus the ten dollar bill is still inside, so the combination is worth $10.05 when broken up, but only $10.01 when together. Thus the bottle-bank has a negative value.

This might be because a bottle-bank is slimy and disgusting. Read whatever you will into this analogy :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MariaDB Temporal Data Tables - <AUTHOR> https://mariadb.com/kb/en/temporal-data-tables/ <comment><USER2> I've been begging for exactly this for quite some time. Because of the way I use databases, I've always been bewildered why this wasn't a core part of SQL from the very beginning.

From what I'm reading there's still a lot to be fleshed out to be maximally useful to me, but even in its current state I could imagine using this.

— I'd like to have a field property that limits stored values to a single version and thus is automatically cleared whenever the row is updated. This would be useful for inlining change annotations, and for associating a user_id to specific changes.

— I'd like to be able to arbitrarily select the n-1 value of fields regardless of their time period. E.g.

      select username, previous(username)
      from users

— When viewing a specific version, I'd like to know whether a field's value was supplied in that revision. That's distinct from if the field was changed. I want to know if the value was supplied—even if it was identical to the previous value.

— This might be possible already (it's hard to tell) but I'd like to be able to query/join on any revision. For example I might want to ask the question "show me all products that james has ever modified". That could then get more specific, e.g. "show me all products where james changed the price".

<comment><USER3> > I've always been bewildered why this wasn't a core part of SQL from the very > beginning.

It's a long and messy history (no pun intended), but essentially it was rarely practical to consider retaining database history for the first few decades of SQL, due to physical storage costs & limitations. Snodgrass and Jensen proposed initial bitemporal extensions in the 90s and lot of research was done subsequently, but most vendors didn't make their move until the 2011 standard was formed (Oracle Flashback being the most notable exception). Unfortunately the rollout of the 2011 temporal standard has been underwhelming across the board, as each vendor ended up implementing something subtly different, which I think has massively hindered adoption. Since then I would guess that "immutability" has been the largest driving force behind the resurgence of interest.

<comment><USER2> > it was rarely practical to consider retaining database history for the first > few decades of SQL

That does make sense from a historical perspective and I don't doubt that's why. But still I find it _unsatisfying_ because any competent database schema will always retain the history that needs to be retained. If you don't have the storage capacity, you choose to not store so much history. If you don't have native concepts for storing history, you kludge it yourself.

Whether you have native temporal support or have to kludge a DIY solution in the schema, the data you need to store gets stored.

My frustration is that I feel that temporal concepts should have been deeply native to SQL right to its core. History should have been as fundamental to database design as columns and rows. It should be a thing you turn off when you don't want it, not a thing you turn on when you do.

<comment><USER3> > temporal concepts should have been deeply native to SQL right to its core

Oh absolutely. I think the original intuition by Snodgrass et al. in TSQL2 to model temporality outside of the actual relational structure was a more promising direction, otherwise the complexity of composing joins across many tables, each with independent temporal versioning, seems rather overwhelming (note that the article doesn't discuss joins at all). Schema migration is another hairy topic that the 2011 standard barely addresses.

Modelling temporality outside of the database is what we've been pushing ahead with on Crux, which provides Datalog as the native query language but will imminently also support a simple bitemporal flavour of SQL for point-in-time querying (using Apache Calcite), where application & system time are defined by a single "as-of" prefix at the beginning of the statement that applies across the entire query: [https://github.com/juxt/crux/tree/master/crux- sql#bitemporal...](https://github.com/juxt/crux/tree/master/crux- sql#bitemporal-querying) (queries over ranges and periods are currently out- of-scope)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really hope Postgres can support temporal table out of the box. Temporal table can simplify development for the feature that need audits.

<comment><USER5> Shameless plug (I'm a co-founder) but this is basically what we've built with Splitgraph[0]: we can add change tracking to tables using PostgreSQL's audit triggers and let the user switch between different versions of the table / query past versions.

[0] [https://www.splitgraph.com/product/data- lifecycle/research](https://www.splitgraph.com/product/data- lifecycle/research)

<comment><USER6> Change tracking is not a fully bitemporal scheme, though. A bitemporal table tracks _two_ timelines. One is about when facts in the world were true ("valid time" or "application time"), the other is about the history of particular records in the database ("transaction time" or "system time"). Change tracking can only capture the second.

<comment><USER7> This was extremely confusing to me on first read but, since temporal data is an area of interest to me for improving an existing service I maintain as well as for future endeavors, it prompted me to go do a bunch of reading to understand what was meant by the distinction. If others are reading this and confused, maybe what I learned will help make the distinction clearer.

There's two cases where valid/applicable time might be meaningful:

1\. Future state known at present time (e.g. when you know now that a fact will change at a specific future point in time).

2\. Corrections to current state which should be applied to historical state (e.g. when you know your application produced invalid state and you want to produce a valid state both at present and in historical representations).

The first case is used more in the literature I found, but didn't really make the distinction clearer for me because I have limited domain use for that kind of behavior. The correction case really drove the point home for me, because my use cases would benefit from it considerably.

I hope this helps other readers interested in the topic but struggling to visualize the two timelines and how they could be used.

<comment><USER6> It _is_ hard to maintain the two timelines in one's mind at once. Most of the time I maintain the dehydrated version that "you need both" and talk myself through the details when I need them.

Typically what happens is that folks incorrectly capture parts of both timelines. For "valid time", folks will have "created at", "deleted at", "updated at" fields etc and assume this covers it. Unfortunately, it doesn't really capture proper _spans_. If I have a fact that starts being true on Tuesday, then add another one that starts being true on Thursday, can I deduce that the first fact was true from Tuesday until Thursday?

No, I can't logically make that claim. It's possible that the first fact was true on Tuesday only, leaving a gap on Wednesday. Without explicit valid time, I can't find those kinds of holes, or apply constraints against them.

Similarly, folks rely on history tables, audit tables etc to try to capture transaction time changes. These are still not enough, for the same reason. You need the _span_ of time, the interval, to properly assert the time during which the database _held_ a record to be true. When we discover that the Thursday fact was wrong, we need to be able to know over what window we held that to be true. Overwriting the record, or entering an update into a log etc, is not _enough_ to truly reconstruct the history. You must be explicit about the span.

The necessity of bitemporalism was easy for me, because I had been responsible for either creating or maintaining multiple databases in which I could not answer a wide range of questions after the march of time. I learned many of the standard hacks (copy the price of a stocked item into the invoice line item, or it will change beneath you! Use slowly changing dimensions! Have a transactions table which creates a slow-as-hell copy of what the database does internally, but not as well!). When I read Snodgrass's book it all went _clunk_ and I've been a wild-haired proselyte ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Had no idea until recently that MariaDB supported this out of the box. Does anyone have experience using this? How does it compare to [https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal](https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal) ?

</comment><comment><USER8> > mysqldump does not read historical rows from versioned tables, and so > historical data will not be backed up. Also, a restore of the timestamps > would not be possible as they cannot be defined by an insert/a user.

Given this caveat, this seems unusable for production systems.

<comment><USER9> Well, conceptually this makes sense for what mysqldump is.

I'm guessing that "backups" would actually have to be live replicas set up from the start, and if the master fails, you convert a replica to master.

In addition, you could perform actual static backups by pausing a replica, backing up the actual table files themselves, then resuming the replica (and it will catch up). In case of total failure, you just dump the table files into a fresh install of MariaDB. (Copying database files is a common technique for migrating data, not just SQL command import/export.)

Is there any reason why these wouldn't work?

<comment><USER10> Or ZFS snapshots, for example.

From the description it looks like it would be easy to do backups, it's just that mysqldump is not currently aware of temporal tables.

Just use

SELECT * FROM t FOR SYSTEM_TIME ALL;

And export it in an appropriate format.

<comment><USER9> That does, of course, export complete data, but the problem is you can't then import it, because that breaks the entire guarantee about not being able to edit past data.

<comment><USER10> Ah. There is that.

They really need to create a workaround for that, because sooner or later you _will_ need to migrate your data and right now it's simply impossible.

Edit: Particularly as, reading further, you cannot ALTER a temporal table. Which does make sense, but the problem remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm very happy to see an open source dB which can do something similar to Datomic/Crux, but is not tied to Clojure. It doesn't seem as sophisticated but I hope this project grows.

For anyone wondering why temporality matters and how this is different from adding a "create_time" to each row, I would highly recommend watching Rich Hickey's talk title, "Value of Values"

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a diff tool? Like show me all differences between now and 5 minutes ago?

Could be nice to see what magic goes on behind the scene in some applications.

For example when you do some clicks in the backend of WordPress and wonder what it actually did to the data.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is fascinating. I've got two basic questions, however:

1) Is this always going to be performant with indices? It seems like "time" is kind of like another index here, and when designing queries which indices are used and in which order can be the difference between taking milliseconds and taking an hour. It's not obvious to me whether this will have hidden gotchas or query execution complexities, or if it's designed in a way that's so restricted and integrated into indices themselves that query performance will always remain within the same order of magnitude

2) What is the advantage of building this into the database, instead of adding your own timestamp columns e.g. 'created_timestamp' and 'expunged_timestamp'? Not only does that seem relatively simple, but it gives you the flexibility of creating indices across multiple columns (including them) for desired performance, the ability to work with tools like mysqldump, and it's just conceptually simpler to understand the database. And if the question is data security, is there a real difference between a "security layer" that is built around the database, versus one built into it? It would be fairly simple to write a command-line tool to change the MariaDB data files directly, no?

<comment><USER13> re 2) - it is a complex topic but in short, the queries get really complex really fast for anything other than a simple select. see [http://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~rts/tdbbook.pdf](http://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~rts/tdbbook.pdf).

also, DDL migrations become a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this feature compare to MS SQL's Temporal Tables [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational- databases/ta...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational- databases/tables/temporal-tables?view=sql-server-ver15)?

This feature seems to be well fitted to support some of the cases where event sourcing is introduced, I wonder if someone successfully applied event sourcing with use of temporal tables to reduce the amount of work that has to be done in the application code (Akka, etc.).

<comment><USER15> When we looked at temporal tables in SQL Server for event sourcing, I was put off by the fact that you have to read from multiple tables. CDC + some external data source still seems to be the better solution here, imo.

<comment><USER14> What do you use for your event sourcing? Do you use Akka/Akka.NET Persistence or some other application framework?

<comment><USER15> We use Debezium and Kafka, it's been really nice.

<comment><USER14> Do you just process events it for analytics or do you actually perform rehydrating application state or replicating application state?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I understand the benefits of this feature for audits, but how does one deal with GDPR requirements? Is there some way to alter historic data to remove PII, or should the affected columns be excluded?

<comment><USER17> Possibly the idea of "crypto-shredding" could apply, where the PII values are encrypted and you throw away the key if you get a delete request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> MariaDB continues to be great.

Now all they need is materialized views and they'll be close to postgres.

</comment><comment><USER19> TimescaleDB competitor?

<comment><USER20> TimescaleDB is for time series data. Temporal data tables are for "versioning" data; for example, being able to query the state of a database as-of a certain time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series_database)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_database)</comment></comment>