NY Times: Pandemic School Closures were Harmful and Useless

@wildgrass said
ok, you seem lost, I can catch you up. Much of this has already been covered in this thread. It's not off topic at all.

The NYT article cited one of the seminal research papers on the subject. Addressing the criticism that "it's only one study" it is notable that this paper has been cited more than 2,000 times in follow up studies, mostly corroborating the findings.

N ...[text shortened]... tals should close last, they're too important.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01563-8

WG: Back to the Nature Medicine article, they explain this result may have been due to the inclusion of low quality studies and bad statistics.


This is lie or plain stupidity. How an article written in 2021 was doing a post-mortem on a systemic review of hundreds of studies done the following year is a bit unclear.

@no1marauder said
I'll waste some time and demolish this.

Here's the data from the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01563-8/figures/1

There quite simply isn't enough data at all from either the Pacific or Northeast region regarding schools reopening with traditional learning to make ANY type of judgment: only two out of 64 counties reporting in the Pacific e ...[text shortened]... ws the exact opposite of your claims though there is some misleading commentary masking the results.

There quite simply isn't enough data at all from either the Pacific or Northeast region regarding schools reopening with traditional learning to make ANY type of judgment

Um you're making a judgement, handwaving, falsely saying the overwhelming opinion disagrees, not me. I trust the null hypothesis on this.

@wildgrass said

There quite simply isn't enough data at all from either the Pacific or Northeast region regarding schools reopening with traditional learning to make ANY type of judgment

Um you're making a judgement, handwaving, falsely saying the overwhelming opinion disagrees, not me. I trust the null hypothesis on this.

You're lying; there is no "overwhelming opinion" claiming that schools moving back to in-person learning during a deadly pandemic did not increase COVID transmission. The data from the study you are using mostly says differently and the consensus of studies agrees.

Now if you want to make some weak claim like "well, moving back to in-person learning in school districts with low population density and other protective measures like mandatory masking in areas with below average incidence of COVID prevalence in the community might not have caused significant increases in disease transmission" I'd probably agree with that. But claiming that such a one size fits all policy of mass in-person reopening would have been appropriate in the midst of the pandemic in ALL areas, including densely populated urban ones, is completely unsupportable.

@wildgrass said
You falsely stated multiple times that not opening schools reduced transmission. Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This nature medicine article is rigorous and well cited. They point in the discussion to numerous other studies corroborating their result, and numerous articles have since cited this article with corroborating ...[text shortened]... ep writing false things. Why? Are you covering for something? Youre the one acting like wajoma here.

WG: Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This is another falsehood or, maybe a simpleminded misunderstanding. There is a large difference between having "low confidence in the results" (your false claim) and the statistical certainty being "low".

BTW, regarding the GRADE certainty:

" All evidence was observational, and was therefore given a default GRADE of ‘low’ certainty. "

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/28/3/164#T2

The study you keep relying on admits it was "observational" and thus would be given a GRADE certainty of "low".

EDIT: " the GRADE system only allows for randomized controlled trials (RCT) to be rated as high evidence and rates all observational studies as low evidence because of their potential of confounding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRADE_approach

Pardon if the systemic review I referenced admittedly uses much higher standards in its author's evaluations of the data then the one you rely on.

@no1marauder said
WG: Authors in your SINGLE mega article said they had low confidence in the results.

This is another falsehood or, maybe a simpleminded misunderstanding. There is a large difference between having "low confidence in the results" (your false claim) and the statistical certainty being "low".

BTW, regarding the GRADE certainty:

" All evidence was observational, and ...[text shortened]... ittedly uses much higher standards in its author's evaluations of the data then the one you rely on.

No.1 still on his stats and surveys hamster wheel.

Zero proof lower or higher transmission rates are attributable to masks or no masks in schools. There are only about a million other factors could have caused it.

So the only reason for forcing masks on kids are the enforcers are too dumb, or they're vile sadistic power trippers getting their buzz torturing kids, there's no middle ground.

@wajoma said
No.1 still on his stats and surveys hamster wheel.

Zero proof lower or higher transmission rates are attributable to masks or no masks in schools. There are only about a million other factors could have caused it.

So the only reason for forcing masks on kids are the enforcers are too dumb, or they're vile sadistic power trippers getting their buzz torturing kids, there's no middle ground.

I wasted four years with clowns like you and MB; anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. No amount of evidence will ever be sufficient to move you to reality out of your ideologically driven DreamWorld; you've been shown the evidence many, many times but persist in your delusions.

I have no intention to do so again; the topic of the thread is essentially a cost benefit analysis of the decision to not resume full in-person learning in schools circa the 2020-21 school year. You obviously have nothing meaningful to add to that conversation.

@no1marauder said
I wasted four years with clowns like you and MB; anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. No amount of evidence will ever be sufficient to move you to reality out of your ideologically driven DreamWorld; you've been shown the evidence many, many times but persist in your delusions.

I have no intention to do so again; the topic of the thread is essentially a cost benefit analysi ...[text shortened]... ls circa the 2020-21 school year. You obviously have nothing meaningful to add to that conversation.

As mentioned before you posted stats to show in country X incidence of wuflu went down after mask mandates, unfortunately for you in country Y incidence of wuflu went up after mask mandates. Your, so called, cost/benefit, so called, 'analysis' means nothing, it's just you finding some separately occurring numbers and cramming them into your pre-conceived conclusions.

No.1 said:

"...anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers."

You tell us what the subject of the thread is but can't resist getting a few off subject jabs in, hypocrisy.

I am of course neither an anti-vaxxer nor wuflu denier, your name calling puts you on a par with shag doody for brains, sunstroker and my-good-self :^)

The cost you don't factor, i.e. the trauma bought down on innocent children to satisfy the power trippers and covid maximisers will live on for years. Happy?

@wajoma said
As mentioned before you posted stats to show in country X incidence of wuflu went down after mask mandates, unfortunately for you in country Y incidence of wuflu went up after mask mandates. Your, so called, cost/benefit, so called, 'analysis' means nothing, it's just you finding some separately occurring numbers and cramming them into your pre-conceived conclusions.

No.1 ...[text shortened]... innocent children to satisfy the power trippers and covid maximisers will live on for years. Happy?

One thing should be crystal clear.

Kids are way more resilient than snowflakes like you.

@suzianne said
One thing should be crystal clear.

Kids are way more resilient than snowflakes like you.

Noted, suziman does not deny tormenting children to appease the little hitlers.

@wajoma said
As mentioned before you posted stats to show in country X incidence of wuflu went down after mask mandates, unfortunately for you in country Y incidence of wuflu went up after mask mandates. Your, so called, cost/benefit, so called, 'analysis' means nothing, it's just you finding some separately occurring numbers and cramming them into your pre-conceived conclusions.

No.1 ...[text shortened]... innocent children to satisfy the power trippers and covid maximisers will live on for years. Happy?

Your ridiculous opinions on the effectiveness of mask wearing during a pandemic have been discussed ad nauseam on this Forum.

Their relevance to this thread is only that some of the articles relied on by those who think reopening schools for in-person learning during the peak transmission times of a deadly, contagious disease would have been a peachy idea, partially justified that position by claiming that other mitigation measures, like mask wearing, would have substantially reduced the danger of spread in these high density areas. Thus, even if you are correct that mask wearing is utterly and completely useless, it hardly helps the position of those such as sh76 and wildgrass (sh76, of course, strongly opposed the mandatory masking of children in schools).

I have no doubt you are sufficiently ignorant of logical and scientific principles as to believe cost-benefit analyses "mean nothing".

Every parent in the world gets some flavor of flu every year as a gift from their kids coming home from school or kindergarten but no no, covid is different.

@no1marauder said
You're lying; there is no "overwhelming opinion" claiming that schools moving back to in-person learning during a deadly pandemic did not increase COVID transmission. The data from the study you are using mostly says differently and the consensus of studies agrees.

Now if you want to make some weak claim like "well, moving back to in-person learning in school district ...[text shortened]... t of the pandemic in ALL areas, including densely populated urban ones, is completely unsupportable.

You're lying; there is no "overwhelming opinion" claiming that schools moving back to in-person learning during a deadly pandemic did not increase COVID transmission. The data from the study you are using mostly says differently and the consensus of studies agrees.

You resort to calling people liars and misquoting studies, like MB used to do. That study clearly stated that SARS-CoV2 incidence rates were not different in counties with in-person learning vs. remote. Of course you can parse and explain the data in many ways, and the authors do not shy away from possible explanations.

"Overwhelming opinion" was me describing your position, it is not my position. You have previously stated in this thread that the "vast majority" of studies agree with you. That's incorrect, and you should retract that statement.

There are many, many other high impact studies by experts in the field that support the Nat. Medicine authors' findings. The consensus seems to be that other mitigation efforts (ventilation, masking, distancing, testing etc.) that were or were not happening in schools within different districts were vastly more important. That's what explains regional differences and all the noise in the data. That's what explains why schools in rich districts could reopen, because they had the money to invest in HEPA filters and more teachers, while poor neighborhood schools had to stay closed. Its nothing to do with whether the school was open or closed, but what all else was going on in that school and in that community.

Here's a few others
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh2939

"... when seven or more mitigation measures are reported, a significant relationship is no longer observed. ... risk can be managed through commonly implemented school-based mitigation measures. "

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34404718/

Systematic meta-analysis of 7,474 different research studies (I thought this was your 'preferred' mode of analysis): "School reopenings, in areas of low transmission and with appropriate mitigation measures, were generally not accompanied by increasing community transmission."

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/pdf/S2666-3791(22)00063-5.pdf

This study suggests why there were no differences in covid transmission rates in districts with open vs. closed schools: reverse causality. The schools that were open were in areas with lower transmission rates already. Then, if the teacher is going to a rock concert with 40,000 unmasked people at night, it will not matter statistically if that person is in a room earlier in the day with 20 masked and distanced kids.

There's many more if you want to keep going.

@zahlanzi said
Every parent in the world gets some flavor of flu every year as a gift from their kids coming home from school or kindergarten but no no, covid is different.

Ummm. You're using the same anti-vax "they're only trying to control you" conspiracy theory talking point here saying COVID is no different from the flu? Did wajoma steal your login information?

I'm here to tell you that COVID is different from the flu. 2020 was not every year. Almost no one got the flu. Positivity rates fell way below 1% and stayed that way for more than a year after COVID hit, long after schools reopened.

@no1marauder said
WG: Back to the Nature Medicine article, they explain this result may have been due to the inclusion of low quality studies and bad statistics.


This is lie or plain stupidity. How an article written in 2021 was doing a post-mortem on a systemic review of hundreds of studies done the following year is a bit unclear.

Sorry but why do you insist on resorting to name calling? It's unnecessary and makes your argument seem petty.

I did some digging and in fact there are two meta-analyses on the same research topic posted in the same journal. I wholeheartedly apologize for the confusion this has caused and hope all the keyboard banging has not permanently damaged your computer. For the record, I do not think you are stupid. This is the one I was referring to:

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/8/e053371.abstract

"Among higher quality, less confounded studies of school closures, 6 out of 14 reported that school closures had no effect on transmission, 6 reported that school closures were associated with reductions in transmission, and 2 reported mixed findings..... Most studies of school reopening reported that school reopening, with extensive infection prevention and control measures in place and when the community infection levels were low, did not increase community transmission of SARS-CoV-2."

It's the other mitigation stuff that made the difference! Schools were not driving transmission rates. I am sorry that Slate author so badly misrepresented the scientific data on this.

@wildgrass said
Sorry but why do you insist on resorting to name calling? It's unnecessary and makes your argument seem petty.

I did some digging and in fact there are two meta-analyses on the same research topic posted in the same journal. I wholeheartedly apologize for the confusion this has caused and hope all the keyboard banging has not permanently damaged your computer. For the re ...[text shortened]... ransmission rates. I am sorry that Slate author so badly misrepresented the scientific data on this.

What part of "when community infection rates were low" didn't you understand?

They certainly weren't "low" in the areas that declined to reopen in-school learning in late 2020. Almost a half a million Americans died of COVID during the 2020-21 school year when you are claiming it was a mistake to not fully reopen for in-school learning every single school in the country. That it is an unsupportable position.