
Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills - sharkweek
https://www.interest.com/mortgage/pandemic-top-parent-school-vs-mortgage-worries/
======
oxymoran
I can’t believe how dismissive people are about people who are worried about
their finances during this. So many false equivalencies being made about
bankruptcy being preferable to death. I am not one of these people that is
cavalier about COVID, it’s a real danger and the long term damage to the body
is just being discovered. But we all know for sure what the long term health
effects of poverty are. Whether you like to admit it or not, the economy is
vitally important to our health, life expectancy, and quality of living. You
can be worried about both COVID and the economy.

~~~
spaced-out
If you care about the economy, the best thing we (the US) can do is follow the
lead of other countries that have gotten this under control with evidence-
based measures, and push the government to provide support to those in need,
so the economy can bounce back quickly, rather than sliding into depression.

~~~
jacquesm
You currently do not have a government that will be swayed by evidence.

~~~
cmurf
It isn't only the government, it's a significant minority of the population
nationally; and at a local level it can approach significant majority.

A Marion County Florida Sheriff ordered that staff and visitors to his office
cannot wear masks. That order is uncivilized behavior. The state governor
should have removed him from power. People speeding on roads get sanctioned
more, for being less of a menace to society.

At least the kooks who wear masks to have Zoom conference calls aren't
subjecting anyone to risk their health or life.

~~~
solaceb
You've touched on exactly what worries me most about the Trump era. Somehow,
unnecessary combativeness and _flamboyant_ disagreement has come to be valued
in and of itself. As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

~~~
HumblyTossed
> As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

Certain people apparently do.

------
roland35
Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I
am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse)
than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders
are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid
related help they can provide).

I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different
species when it comes to covid. Yes they have less effects than adults but
some children do go to the hospital and ICU. And also they can easily spread
it to the parents/grandparents.

~~~
umvi
> I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different
> species when it comes to covid.

Well, it's not that surprising when you have a disease whose harm factor is a
function of your age. The vast majority of covid deaths are the elderly. The
tiniest minority of covid deaths are young children. Their ability to spread
to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself.

~~~
_jal
> Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor

Others have mentioned this, but just for emphasis: you do not know that. Nor
does anyone else. Repeating it is irresponsible, and you should stop doing
that.

There have been a lot of lessons the epidemic can teach us. But one big one is
that magical thinking is still accepted as a substitute for reason by a
frightening number of people, and that's before you get to the outright
grifters.

~~~
koolba
But we do know that. Or at least we can glean as much based upon the
distribution by age for hospital admittance and death.

We don’t know what, if any, the long term consequences will be. But the short
term death risk for young children appears to be minimal.

~~~
tptacek
The difference in worry parents have over short term and "long term" death
risks for their kids is marginal. In particular: if something could happen to
jeopardize your kids lives _while they are still kids_ \--- which we do not
know --- it's an overwhelming worry.

This is one of those conversations where message board logic stands a good
chance of taking us far away from how real-world humans would reason.

~~~
jacquesm
I think all it really does is that it highlights the difference between those
who have children and those who do not. As a parent, I couldn't care less
about the monetary impact of COVID-19 beyond the basics to survive and the
years have taught us to be very frugal when we need to be.

Meanwhile, the thought of sending my kids back to school in two weeks has me
sleepless (again). We have already seen different evidence surface in the last
month or so but zero adjustment to the school plans. As much as I would like
to approach this all in a dispassionate and rational way the parent 'module'
in me tells me in no uncertain terms that I'm doing something irresponsible by
not standing up for them more forcefully and trusting the experts on this.

~~~
tptacek
My kids are going back to college in a couple days. They're adults! They're
sharing an apartment this semester! And I'm a wreck. It's hard for me to
fathom how this story is even news. What would be shocking is if the numbers
had come in any closer between infection and work.

~~~
greedo
My oldest daughter left for college yesterday, living in a dorm. She's only
10min away, but between having her move out and worrying about COVID, I'm a
basket case. I expect the campus to shut down in a month when cases numbers
balloon, but I hope I'm wrong and they keep things under control.

~~~
seunosewa
You should strongly encourage your daughter to commute from home, since her
college is only 10 minutes away. Students will take precautions during classes
which will limit the spread, but in the evenings when they return to their
dorms, they will let down their guards and the inevitable will happen. COVID
spreads easily in dorms.

~~~
gremlinsinc
There's also the potential that they bring it home, causing the op to get
sick/die. I'm a little more afraid of dying early, not because I want to live,
but because : A. I don't want my kids to grow up w/out a dad, and B. I don't
want to miss the important things in life. C. I'm hoping their chance of
serious illness is less, but if I were wrong, I'd wish for death quickly
afterwards.

I'm also sure things are easier when you have a parent to lean on for support,
when a crisis comes up. (Lots of those on the horizon)...i'd rather be here to
help them w/ that.

So part of me feels me living is important to their survival (mine are <4 yrs
old - 2 boys, I'm 40). So, it might be safer and less traumatic if they stayed
in the dorm, assuming they're healthy and have higher chances, and assuming
they're good at social distancing / masking up to keep viral load down.

It'd be a hard decision to weigh, but I'd probably have a family council
discuss the pros and cons and call a vote or something.

Basically commute or dorms, they can still catch it. At least in dorms maybe
they don't infect older more vulnerable people or family members. Honestly,
I'd probably teach them to code and say, hey work w/ dad till this is over
then go to college :).

------
blakesterz
The survey does say just enough about their methods to make it sound like it's
not at all something that can be taken all that seriously.

"In a recent survey, we asked about 1,000 parents what their biggest worry
amidst the pandemic was, and what we found was a surprise. It turns out that
the majority of parents are worried about their families being infected by the
virus rather than finding work or paying the mortgage."

I'm not sure why that's surprising. If you ask 1,000 people who have jobs that
aren't gone or at immediate risk of going away, then yep, that's exactly what
we're going to worry about. There's probably some serious statistical problems
there.

~~~
darawk
Why do you think they all had jobs, or their jobs weren't at risk? All it
says, afaik, is they asked 1000 parents.

~~~
nickthegreek
Seems to me that would of been an important data point they could of gathered
during the survey.

~~~
darawk
Could be, but if you want to answer the question "what are most people worried
about" the correct thing to do is ask a random sample of 1000 people, not just
to ask the people who've lost jobs.

~~~
scott_s
Correct, but that's the question: _is_ this a random sample, or do their
methods have a selection bias?

------
jedberg
The study doesn't say how many of the respondents still have jobs.

If I have a steady job, then of course I will worry more about my kids --
because I don't don't have to worry about the bills!

If you have kids you will worry about their safety.

If you lost your job, you may still worry about their safety more than your
bills, since you know that the bills can always be dealt with later.

This survey seems quite flawed.

~~~
shortlived
Yup! I’m equally worried about my kids and bringing home the bacon because my
travel industry employer is going out of business and I still haven’t found a
new job.

------
dmurray
People are, statistically speaking, really bad at figuring out what to worry
about. See: terrorist attacks, plane crashes, shark attacks, abduction by
strangers. So maybe this is good news about the pandemic.

~~~
Animats
This is encouraging. People are most worried about the most serious problem.

~~~
WalterBright
Are they? Nobody seems to care much about the ordinary flu, though lots still
die from it. Hospital acquired infections are a major cause of death, but few
worry about that. The most likely causes of death for children are drowning
and car accidents, but people worry far more about terrorist incidents. And on
it goes.

~~~
thomaslord
Do you believe that the flu poses a more significant risk than COVID-19,
despite being both more contagious and more deadly?

~~~
dmurray
Well, I'm going to die of something, but surely I'm more likely to die of the
flu. You can do weird things with statistics.

------
CasualSuperman
Worrying about a potentially deadly illness that you can do little about, vs
worrying about losing your source of income and having to.. look for another
job.

I'm definitely more worried about infection, too.

~~~
shaunn
My thought is the fear of additional medical costs due to infection on top of
the bills I am expected to pay.

~~~
UncleOxidant
Yep. If you have to spend a week in hospital in the US it can break you even
if you have "decent" insurance. Three words that strike terror into the hearts
of Americans: "Out of network"

------
rwcarlsen
I've personally heard from several tens of parents that they are primarily
worried about the economic and social affects of all these so-called safety
measures governments and communities are taking. Just because it's easy to
measure cases and deaths and hard to measure lost human connection,
depression, children being left in environments of neglect, delayed/paused
innovation and economic growth, etc. doesn't mean that those costs are less
than the loss of life incurred from not being "safe". I would rather my
children (and I have 5) grow up not being told they need to be afraid of
everything. I would rather they grow up being able to learn with and interact
with their peers face to face. And I am absolutely willing to sacrifice
possibly a few years of extra time I could have my grandparents around for
that. My grandparents are also happy to make that sacrifice so their
grandchildren and great grandchildren can grow up in a better world.

We all will die. Can't let a fear of dying prevent us from living.

~~~
latchkey
The fear is not death.

How about the fact that long term effects are unknown. Or what sort of ongoing
medical issues will people have for the rest of their lives?

There is people who believe that once you're done with this virus, it is gone
from your system and you're back to normal. Certainly that is the case for
many, but there are still many more that will continue to suffer from what
they are calling now 'long haulers'.

Spend some time in a large (91k people and growing) Survivors group [0] to get
a feeling of what people are facing.

[0]
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/)

~~~
rwcarlsen
Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown
risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we
have enough data for people to evaluate their own personal risk and generally
take appropriate personal measures for safety. We can and should make efforts
to accommodate those who assess their personal risk to be significant. But
when you/others ask schools to close - are you really considering what the
short-medium-long term costs of those choices really are? I have personally
taken neighborhood kids to pick up free lunches offered by schools while they
were shut down - because those kids' parents didn't care to take them and
neither cared to help them feed themselves. I've seen working parents leave
their young children at home because child care logistics and cost were not
acceptable for their circumstances. I know kids down the street that are
basically ignored by their parents that are not likely to have a healthy
structured school environment they can count on.

I believe these hard to measure costs are enormous but easy to ignore because
the affected demographic can't fight for their rights/desires - they can't
even vote. And privileged SV folks and internet yuppies are happy to drive
this line forward. I have friends who have lost their jobs. I have a cousin
who has lost their small business. Not because of COVID - but because of the
"cure" for COVID.

~~~
thex10
Most of this just speaks to how problematic it is for a society to rely on
(poorly-funded and unevenly-resourced) schools alone for universal childcare,
alleviating child hunger, ensuring safety from awful households, and other
concerns that could have been addressed elsewhere (this is all orthogonal to
the effects of COVID).

~~~
rwcarlsen
Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without
adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where
closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So
acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between
fictitious ones - what do people want?

Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary,
middle, and high school students? Or maybe 500,000 people dying a bit early
(just making numbers up on this one - adjust up or down depending on various
factors)? That is not so one-sided obvious as many people on the internet seem
to want to make it.

~~~
latchkey
How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1
is enough and we are already there.

How many children will bring it home to adults? For me, 1 is enough and we are
already there.

On the other hand, not all 56 million kids will end up ruined if education is
delayed a bit or parents need to come up with new and creative ways to educate
their children safely.

You're basically arguing to 'stay the course' during a global pandemic and
fact is that isn't workable either.

~~~
curryst
> How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me,
> 1 is enough and we are already there.

This is equally as irrational as people who just want to fling the floodgates
open.

~5 children per year die on playground equipment in the US. Are you actually
proposing that we sit around until we've neutered a lethal virus enough that
it's less dangerous than playground equipment?

The IFR for school age children is astonishingly low. Low enough that we don't
even really have a good sample size. CAs data right now is showing 1 death out
of ~50k infections. My first Google hit with IFR estimates for those age
ranges puts them at 0.0016% for 5-9, and 0.00032% for 10-17.

Assuming every single one of those kids is in the higher risk 5-9 bracket and
that every single one gets infected, we would end up with less than a thousand
fatalities. That's about 10% lower than children that die from drowning (or
congenital birth abnormalities, or drug overdose/poisoning, they all hover
around 980 per year). It's slightly higher than the number of children who die
from heart disease.

On the other hand, it's less than a quarter the number of children who die in
car crashes per year, and less than a third the number who die from firearm
accidents.

I don't suppose that you're going to stop putting your kids in the car,
despite it being 4 times more likely to kill them than the worst case scenario
of Covid in schools.

------
JackFr
This is a terrible article. It’s subtle clickbait, seemingly designed too
discourage constructive discussion while encouraging argumentation.

The choices are ambiguously worded to the point that one could project a
spectrum of meanings to them. We know nothing about the sample other than that
there are 1000 of them and they are parents. We don’t know where they live. We
don’t know whether they’re employed and what their level of employment and
financial circumstance is. We don’t know how old they are or how old their
children are.

Finally they are asked what their greatest worry is and then they have to
choose between three choices or assert that they have no worries at all.

At the same time the completely ambiguous results and ambiguous wording allow
anyone who feels like arguing to project their own hopes and fears to the
results.

Just stay away from bullsh*t like this. It’s poison.

~~~
chasd00
"Just stay away from bullsh*t like this. It’s poison."

I say that to myself so much when reading any kind of news on the pandemic.
The pandemic landing in a US presidential election year has made it at least
3x worse in my opinion.

------
zozin
This seems like a worthless comparison. One hundred percent of parents can get
C19 and 100% of their children can get it too. How many of these parents still
have jobs? The unemployment rate for parents is probably lower than the
aggregate population. Again, this (5x!) is a worthless comparison.

------
nickff
The headline is completely wrong. The study shows that infection is the _top
concern_ of five times more parents than work or paying bills. The parents
most concerned about infection may only be slightly less concerned about work
or money.

------
screye
I am going to sound like a looney, but bear with me.

The mortality rate of Covid isn't that much higher than the seasonal flu for
those aged under 50. (most children or their parents). It is far lower for
those under the age of 30. Assuming 200k Americans have died from Covid,
current stats put the number of deaths under the age of 18 at 70/200k and
18-44 at 6k/200k.

In other words, you child is more likely to die of the seasonal flu and about
50-100x more likely to commit suicide than dying of COVID 19. The parents
themselves are at about an equal risk of dying of Covid as they are of dying
by the flu.

Covid is killing plenty of folks over 50. We know this. We've known this from
the start. It is incredibly odd to me, that no country has taken precautions
that particularly target the safety of these older people. In places where
Covid is on its last legs like MA/NY, a large number of deaths are coming out
of old age homes. Surely there must be way to address those directly.

The concerns around COVID are misplaced. It is a drop-let borne disease that
primarily kills old people and uses delayed symptoms to facilitate spread.
Sanitizing surfaces is not going to help. Acting paranoid about your kids is
not going to help. ________

P.S: _I have looked up legitimate stats for my claims, but am not linking them
atm, due to lack of time. Also, I am purely looking at death and not side
effects. I also don 't claim to make the comparisons in controlled-trial
manner. Lastly, masks and distancing are essential, irrespective of the points
I make above. It also assumes that the current strategy is to distance until a
vaccine arrives. Because, I don't think herd immunity or complete eradication
are realistic possibilities._

~~~
fiblye
I think the big concern for young people is the lingering effects. Once people
get a flu and recover, they’re back to normal. People with COVID are
struggling to breathe months later and heart damage is being reported.

~~~
screye
I particularly left them out because it is insanely difficult to find any real
stats on what the rate of lingering effects of COVID might be. The only thing
we know, is the effects only manifest for seriously symptomatic patients.

Of course, in case of substantial rate of effects post illness, my comment
would be rendered entirely invalid.

------
JTbane
Parents have good reason to be worried, not so much that their kids will
suffer permanent complications, but that they will spread it around the whole
family, hitting the elderly hardest.

Teachers have a right to be heard on this as well.

------
colechristensen
There is far too much “survey says!” in the place of news.

I can’t quantify my emotions and share their weight distribution. Anybody
writing an article like this has already written the entire thing before doing
any of the questioning, and it’s stupidly easy to get a survey result by
asking the right question.

------
markus_zhang
Damn work has always been the easiest part in life, I mean as long as I can
find one. And once I get a job I won't worry too much about bills.

But infection and school...I have no control over them. They control me, and
definitely I'm going to be more worried about them. Same for kids and family.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Yeah, I think the lack of control is a key observation here. I bet most people
would tell you they're more scared of plane crashes than car accidents, even
though most people are at much larger risk of a car accident.

------
roody15
The goal has shifted. The lockdowns and extreme shutdowns were in an effort to
keep hospital resources from becoming overridden thus causing even more death.

The new goal of attempting to prevent the actual transmission of the disease
itself has been disastrous.

------
sadfev
Yeah the health ramifications are massive. you may go under debt and probably
accrue more of you default on a few payments but if you are sick and can’t get
back up fast potentially your entirely family will suffer a lot

~~~
UncleOxidant
The bigger worry here is that the kids pass it to a parent since most cases in
children are mild. A bad case of covid (not even talking about a fatal case)
could have you out of commission unable to work for months. And then medical
bills on top of that.

------
twoslide
5x more worried? That implies measuring “worriedness” on a ratio scale (ie a
scale with fixed zero). This wasn’t discussed in the article. Maybe they meant
“5x more parents are worried,” although looks more like 3.5x

------
briantakita
Who was sampled in this study? Renters do not pay a Mortgage. Only the
unemployed (not working & looking for work), the employed looking for another
job, or the underemployed are worried about finding a job.

------
Nasrudith
Well of course - they can delay retirement, cut back, or work longer hours
later to make up for financial hardship and address debts eventually. They
cannot bring their children back from the dead.

------
jccalhoun
I wish I was living in a country where the government takes care of its
citizens and makes sure they don't have to worry about losing their jobs or
homes because of a global pandemic.

------
Solvitieg
I wish there was more conversation happening about other countries who have
already successfully put kids back at school.

That might give confidence to people in North America who feel uncertain about
it.

~~~
ardy42
> I wish there was more conversation happening about other countries who have
> already successfully put kids back at school.

> That might give confidence to people in North America who feel uncertain
> about it.

This is like trying to give someone confidence to jump out of a plane
_without_ a parachute by talking about all the people who've safely jumped out
of planes _with_ parachutes. It's BS: the situations are different, so the
examples don't apply.

Step 1 of opening us schools in the US is implementing policy to get to the
(lower) infection rates of those countries that have been able to safely open
up schools. Unfortunately, there are US political factions that just want to
skip that step and go straight to the end of the plan.

~~~
Solvitieg
I don't think you analogy is well thought out.

It's more like giving them the confidence to jump by telling them that other
people have successfully jumped.

Perhaps the jumper does not have the ideal mindset, but it's better to inform
them that it is possible rather than keeping them in the dark, acting as if no
one has ever successfully jumped before.

~~~
ardy42
> I don't think you analogy is well thought out.

> It's more like giving them the confidence to jump by telling them that other
> people have successfully jumped.

No, you're missing the point: other people have successfully "jumped" (opened
schools), but the person you're talking to (the US) _is not equipped like they
were_ and will _die_ if they jump. Success in this case doesn't have anything
to do with having the mindset to jump or not, it has _everything_ to do with
having made the right preparations _before_ jumping.

The kind of mindset change that you seem to be advocating for is the exact
thing that got us into this mess: the idea that you can be successful merely
by confidently believing you will succeed (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Positive_Thinking...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Positive_Thinking#Popular_culture)).
That kind of thing causes people to overconfidently blunder into failure like
an idiot.

If there's any mindset change needed here, it's to convince the person adopt
the the mindset to be willing to turn the plane around, land, buy a parachute,
take a parachuting class, go back up in the plane, and _only then jump_.

------
bullebak
It's an interesting thing to balance. The health risk of the disease vs the
'developmental' risk of a lack of 'normal' social interaction with other kids
and teachers in a 'so-called' formal school setting. I am all for my kids
returning to school, but that is easy for me to say and so I think everyone
needs to have the space to make the decisions that they feel comfortable with.
And that extends to the teachers as well, and this is where it gets really
interesting. What happens if the teachers aren't comfortable with going back
to a class full of little germ spreaders?

------
marpstar
Not me. I'm more concerned about my kids going back to school so that I don't
need to be here all day and try and monitor their education on my own AND
trying to focus on my job. The risk of me or my children DYING from COVID is
practically zero.

The average age of a COVID death is 70+ years old. The average life expectancy
in USA is < 80 years old. People won't live forever, no matter how many masks
we wear or how hard we lock down.

~~~
Afton
My spouse has no relevant health complications, and has been knocked
absolutely _FLAT_ from this. We didn't have to go to the hospital, there were
no ventilators involved. But now, almost 4 months later, and they struggle to
walk 100 paces, to go upstairs, etc. The risks are more than dying vs not-
dying.

------
john_moscow
I don't like that the handing of COVID has turned into a partisan issue.
Putting emphasis on death risks has become an equivalent of Democrat virtue
signalling, while focusing on the economic factors is almost solely viewed as
support for Republicans.

Wake up, people, that's not how you solve problems. What we need is a good,
high-quality debate, and a way to quantify and compare costs and benefits from
both sides. We need mortality numbers for different age groups from different
independent sources. We need research on mental health effects of lockdown and
pulling kids away from school. Anecdotally, I have a 6-year-old son, who got
noticeably distressed after the school went online-only during his
Kindergarten. I am not worried about his academic success (he's doing Grade 2
workbooks at home), but the lack of social interaction is certainly freaking
him out. Except, I don't know the real numbers. In fact, nobody does, because
there is too so much focus on political stand-offs instead. It's hurting both
sides, really.

It's like with Hydroxychloroquine. Ever since Trump endorsed it, the
republican media is proclaiming it to be The Cure (with people literally
considering it for prophylactic (sic!)), while the democrat sources are
censoring videos and avoiding the topic, because the paper stating its
benefits used weak methodology. And again, your stance on HCQ is used as a
proxy for your political orientation, rather than an honest professional
opinion. All that instead instead of an actual unbiased research aimed at
discovering cases and circumstances where it could work. And a proper debate
between medical professionals on risks and possible advantages.

------
lifeisstillgood
that's because we are used to paying bills and know what to do about work -
the unknown is always scary

------
nickreese
Dubious study. Clear affiliate site.

------
tossAfterUsing
Without meaningful information about the geographies of the participants, how
this data would be valuable is not quite clear to me.

------
zocoi
The article didn’t share the survey method and the sample size is 1000. I
couldn’t take it seriously

~~~
dhosek
A sample size of 1000 is huge.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-
of-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-only-100/)

~~~
whatshisface
It could be huge or tiny depending on the size of the mean and standard
deviation of the effect you're looking for in comparison to the mean and sdev
of unrelated variations.

~~~
notafraudster
Given that the QOI is a single multinomial proportion, an unweighted[1] random
sample of the population has a maximum[2] ~3.1% margin of error on either
side.

You could argue the QOI is something else (the sum or difference, or even the
ratio estimator reported in the title). Margins of error on ratio estimators
are quite a bit larger because of numerical properties of ratios.

Since there is interest, I ran a quick simulation[3] to derive the CI of the
ratio estimate above ("5x"). By Monte Carlo and using standard assumptions,
the confidence interval on the "5X" quantity of interest is 4.51 - 6.82x
calculated via the quantile method.[4]

The confidence interval is not appreciably smaller in magnitude if you double
the sample size, we're well past the point of diminishing returns.

[1] Weighting would induce a design effect, but here I would suggest that the
real problem is a poorly defined population and sample frame, not sample
error. This is the real issue here: we have zero reason to believe these 1,000
people are a random sample of any interesting population.

[2] For a parameter \theta = 0.5 -- uncertainly decreases as the statistic
becomes further from 0.5. But classical MOEs overreport like this.

[3] R Code on Pastebin:
[https://pastebin.com/raw/UjHg7qnR](https://pastebin.com/raw/UjHg7qnR)

[4] Similar results come from taking the numerical sd of the sampling
distribution and calculating a NACI about the mean, I just did the quantile
trick because it's less code.

------
vmchale
Makes sense in the US. The Trump administration has done an abhorrent job
handling the virus and isn't making the slightest effort to change course.

~~~
mindslight
s/abhorrent/malicious/

I subscribe to Hanlon's Razor, but at this point we're well past any benefit
of the doubt.

------
tomohawk
Data on euromomo for 0 - 14 shows that excess mortality this year is
indistinguishable from other years.

At this link, check out the euromomo section:

[https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-
covid](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid)

The charts above clearly show the effect on 14+ due to covid this year.

If you scroll down further, you can select 0-14 in the country-by-country
data.

What you'll see there is that Sweden looks the same as all of the other
countries for 0-14, and they did not close their schools for those ages.

EDIT: what's with the downvotes for showing data?

------
debacle
There is a massive, silent demographic who wants a return to status quo.

There was a conference call with the school district the other night. A friend
in the district was in awe at how many parents want their children to return
to school, are upset about sports, etc.

Many people want to look at this as a black and white issue - either you
believe social distancing and masks are necessary, or you believe that Bill
Gates wants to put a microchip in your head. The media is of course greatly to
blame for this.

The reality is that there are many people who share different priorities than
vocal groups on the Internet. Several times I have written blog posts about
lay statistical analysis of the virus, and how more conservative states have
the benefit of seeing reopening in action in states like Florida and Texas.
Many of the responses assume I am against masks, against social distancing,
trolling etc. No discourse is possible.

~~~
dboreham
Silent?

~~~
debacle
On the Internet, I believe so. You see the crazies and the anti-maskers but
anyone worried about e.g. the mental health of their children or the viability
of their family business is filtered out.

We are seeing waves of permanent restaurant closings where I am from, and
people seem reluctant to put 2 and 2 together.

