<story><title>Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/carolineodonovan/coronavirus-schools-teachers-fear-for-their-lives</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>electriclove</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m very pleased by the decision from the top in California today about keeping schools remote until things get better. The only complaint I have is how long it took to get there. Tons of people at hundreds&amp;#x2F;thousands of school districts and private schools throughout the state have spent incredible effort debating and planning and so much effort could have been saved if the decision from the top was made earlier.</text></item><item><author>oramit</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s all okay is telling people you don&amp;#x27;t care about them - they notice, they&amp;#x27;re not dumb.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t one. We&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn&amp;#x27;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!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bleah1000</author><text>But he&amp;#x27;s making the decision for all of California. If you look at the actual data, it appears that most of the cases are coming from southern california. Also, the real data to look at is death rate, and hospitalization rate. I don&amp;#x27;t know about the death rate, but the hospitalization rate is definitely going up. However, nearly all of the patients are in southern california again. In fact, it&amp;#x27;s LA that&amp;#x27;s really the epicenter of death and hospitalization for california.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s the hospitalization link I&amp;#x27;m using, because there might be better data somewhere else.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;public.tableau.com&amp;#x2F;views&amp;#x2F;COVID-19HospitalsDashboard&amp;#x2F;Hospitals?:embed=y&amp;amp;:showVizHome=no&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;public.tableau.com&amp;#x2F;views&amp;#x2F;COVID-19HospitalsDashboard&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s easy to be consumed by the fear about this disease, and that the number of cases that are rising. But we have to be careful to make informed decisions, and not compromise student learning in the entire state due to rising cases in one part of the state.&lt;p&gt;One thing, is it looks a bit like the hospitalizations might be starting to slightly level off, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to tell since it still could be trending upwards. At the very least, it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like the cases are on any kind of exponential curve.</text></comment>
<story><title>Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/carolineodonovan/coronavirus-schools-teachers-fear-for-their-lives</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>electriclove</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m very pleased by the decision from the top in California today about keeping schools remote until things get better. The only complaint I have is how long it took to get there. Tons of people at hundreds&amp;#x2F;thousands of school districts and private schools throughout the state have spent incredible effort debating and planning and so much effort could have been saved if the decision from the top was made earlier.</text></item><item><author>oramit</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s all okay is telling people you don&amp;#x27;t care about them - they notice, they&amp;#x27;re not dumb.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t one. We&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn&amp;#x27;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!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samatman</author><text>I share your pleasure in the decision, but staunchly disagree with you about the method used to reach it.&lt;p&gt;The correct decision was reached, in time (before the start of the school year) for it to make a difference.&lt;p&gt;Tons of people and thousands of schools vigorously debating is the democratic process.  A decision handed down from &amp;quot;the top&amp;quot; is authoritarianism, and as we&amp;#x27;ve seen repeatedly this year, authoritarian decisions are resisted even when they&amp;#x27;re the right decision.&lt;p&gt;For something like masking, you can justify it with the urgency of the situation (even though I&amp;#x27;m compelled to add that &amp;quot;the top&amp;quot; got this one &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; during the crucial months of February and March).  For starting school in the fall, you can&amp;#x27;t.</text></comment>