I don’t go anywhere and my kids don’t leave the street. “Sorry kids you can’t go outside for the next 3 months. I’ll keep the windows clean for you so you can look.” Tantamount to child torture.
Not sure what you mean, I think y'all might be talking past eachother: poster is saying they can't exactly go play outside with the neighbors right now, which is obviously true, if kids in the neighborhood are running around together, we'd just be building really efficient viral transmission chains
This is an assumption of yours for which there's insufficient evidence. Or even the evidence is currently rather pointing the other way. What I have is anecdotal evidence from here in Switzerland - adults generally keep distance while children in the neighborhood generally play with each other. We currently are down to ~120 new cases a day across Switzerland, hospitalization taken a sharp downturn and has never exceeded capacity.
It's all a game of numbers - sure, there will be some transmissions if you let children play together in open spaces, but overall, from what current data suggests, it's not a significant vector. We generally have to think like this now, there's no such thing as absolute safety and we really have to think hard about what should be restricted and what negative effects this will have long term. Isolating kids at home for months is IMO not worth it.
On a different note, neither is allowing small businesses to fail in droves even if they can provide a good hygiene concept. Switzerland has also opened up hairdressers since this week - with masks, hand sanitizing and contact tracing being mandatory for everyone. We'll see in a couple of weeks whether this works or not.
Another anecdote: Where I am in Switzerland, it's rather unusual to see kids playing together right now (except for presumably siblings). I can see a bit of a school playground from my home and the groups that visit have really dwindled over the past few months and it hasn't rebounded yet. There are usually only 1-2 kids playing at a time.
Adults more or less try to maintain distances, as you said.
Kids are known viral factories. They tend to have higher viral loads despite not getting as sick. This is one reason we have school breaks in the winter and spring, basically to cut down transmission chains.
The crux of the conversation is: either everyone is going to catch this because of how contagious it is, or we all stay home for ~1-1.5 years until a vaccine is widely distributed. There isn't much of a middle ground.
Everyone will catch this. To think otherwise is folly. Our intrepid leaders have had between 4-6 weeks to sort things out. Hope they did.
My kids can go play outside. This is getting absurd.
I don't think any reputable person has claimed an attempt to stop everyone from catching this. The mantra is "flattening the curve." It's been that since the beginning. We don't want to overwhelm the healthcare system like what has happened and is happening in Italy.
And shelter in place with strong social distancing has proven to be the most effective way to slow the spread of the virus given the current testing capacity and lack of contact tracing.
To everyone paranoidly sitting is strong isolation I’m saying “What is your exit strategy? The virus is not going away, there will be no vaccine for many months. Are you planning on sitting it out for a year? Two? Ten? If not, you might as well go on with your life while taking reasonable precautions and practicing hygiene.”
> Everyone will catch this. To think otherwise is folly.
I have my hopes, if not at least until Winter.
Luckily, I have hobbies that are easily done without large groups of people and believe I can avoid groups of 10 or more people for most of summer and probably 50 people until September. (I've not spent more than a few minutes with more than 3 others for the last month and half)
Ah, covid-shaming on HN. Then they go to Costco in unfitted, unfiltering masks and bring home bunch of packages, pretending they avoided “social contact”.