Just to follow up on this post from earlier about a blue-check doctor who thinks it’s totally fine to keep kids at home to fight COVID-19, here’s blue-check lawyer Walker Bragman who is making the same argument with the added wrinkle that the United States — the largest economy in the world — needs to copy the tiny island nation of New Zealand in a quest to reach zero Covid cases:
Hospital workers are overwhelmed. We need to be shutting down, not sending kids back to schools and their parents back to offices.
Remote until zero COVID—like New Zealand. That’s the humane solution. Anything less is gambling with human life.pic.twitter.com/3zMDpOo2oS
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 21, 2021
You see, we cannot rely on the health policy we “wish for” but it’s totally fine to “wish for” politicians to pass legislations to “pay people to stay home” to fight a virus:
We cannot craft public health policy around the population we wish we had. We’ve relied on vaccines alone to end this pandemic. It isn’t working. We need try something else.
Pay people to stay home. https://t.co/Agn82LXVNx
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 21, 2021
And this is just a mathematically illiterate argument:
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Missing school is a lot less damaging to a child’s development than dying from COVID. 🤷♂️
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 22, 2021
But it sounds like we’re going to hear it more and more as the Delta variant spreads:
Missing school is a lot less damaging than ending up in a children’s hospital ICU—or worse: needing access one that’s already full up.
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 22, 2021
These people demanding children go back to school are motivated by a lot of things—child safety isn’t one of them.
Nor do they appear to care at all about medical personnel in this country who are already stretched thin.
We’re in a pandemic. It’s time to grow up.
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 22, 2021
The primary reason political leaders want to get kids back to school is to get people back to work. Schools double as childcare.
Let’s just be honest about that: it’s always been the economy over all.
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 22, 2021
It’s embarrassing:
Being terrible at statistics is a lot less damaging to one's career as someone who opines on such things for a living is a lot less damaging to one's credibility than it should be. Also, being a democratic socialist. https://t.co/YUdKzTWf3r
— James Lindsay, raises DiAngelo's eyebrows (@ConceptualJames) August 22, 2021
Here are the actual numbers driving the panic:
360 children under 18 have died of covid in the US this entire pandemic out of 74.2 million. https://t.co/Fa6sTzewve
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) August 22, 2021
And:
From 1/1/20-8/14/21
USA:
Population (age 0-17): 73,039,150
Deaths (age 0-17): 53,193
COVID-19 deaths (age 0-17): 361
COVID deaths / 1M (age 0-17): 5Florida:
Population (age 0-17): 4,229,929
Deaths (age 0-17): 3,428
COVID-19 deaths (age 0-17): 21
COVID deaths / 1M (age 0-17): 5 https://t.co/kyOLHnUnvI pic.twitter.com/sSm9hB4TqU— Max (@MaxNordau) August 22, 2021
Libs right now are trying to drag Glenn Greenwald for this response:
Missing school is a lot less damaging to a child’s development than dying in a car accident on the way to school. 🤷♂️ https://t.co/yzVuWmcr0w
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 22, 2021
But he’s right:
"Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54….
Each year, ***1.35 million people*** are killed on roadways around the world….
The crash death rate is over three times higher in low-income countries."https://t.co/6ECRNklezJ
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 22, 2021
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