Here we go again. It is December, and cases, hospitalizations and wastewater concentrations are all going up. How worried should we be? We should worry that cases will for a time double or triple from where they are. Combined with flu and RSV, this will mean that while our health care systems will hold, they will be under substantial strain that impacts quality of care. Things are going to low-key suck for a bit, and the number of worthwhile additional precautions to take, overall, will not be zero.
"I think that our implementation of ‘remote learning’ made things dramatically worse for children."
And, this is important to realize, to a very large extent schools never went back to the pre-Covid procedures. Often they're just conducting remote learning with the students in the schools instead of at home.
It's a bit better because the teachers are on hand if the student has the initiative to ask a question. But it's not the way they were conducting classes pre-Covid.
If I had my choice, they'd take all those Chrome books and put them in a landfill somewhere, and go back to non-electronic learning again. Again and again I'm seeing this electronic learning model have problems for my son, who was a straight A student before Covid, and now struggles to maintain a mix of A's and B's. The electronic learning has inserted too many failure points that are unrelated to the actual academics.
"He does not then make the leap to this being because sugar rushes are real. Of course they are real. Most people have experienced them, this is not a subtle thing. If there is data to defy, I happily defy it."
I've long been a sugar rush skeptic because I've never experienced a sugar rush myself (and not because of sugar abstinence!), so I am more inclined to believe this result. It strikes me as rather plausible that sugar rushes could be a combination of (1) a self-fulfilling prophecy, (2) generic reward-stimulation excitement, and (3) rationalization of random behavior.
I don't go around having arguments with strangers about this, but I have had a continuing discussion with my parents about the reality of "sugar rushes". According to my parents, when I was a child, I was _incredibly_ bad at handling sugar and they could immediately tell whether or not I had any. Of course, I was actually pretty good at sneaking candy, and they caught me in a pretty small minority of cases.
My view on the way that the science fits in with the lived experience of parents everywhere is that high sugar intake _usually_ occurs in very specific circumstances: birthday parties, sleep overs, etc. Those activities are likely to be high-excitement and lots of rambunctiousness going on. The perception is: child eats 1/2 of a birthday cake, then runs in circles until they fall over, and those things both happened, but the science says it's not related to the sugar. Luckily, we don't need to invalidate the experience of "child ran around like a maniac". That _did_ happen, it's just (in my opinion) more likely due to the environment in which the sugar was consumed rather than the sugar itself.
I did eventually learn to stop arguing with my parents about this (note: I'm far too old for it to be about regulating my own sugar content, more about discussions about parenting my own kids), or anyone else for that matter. It's too trivial, and people's opinions are too set on it.
Maybe my own experiences will change my mind in defiance of the data in the next few years. We will see.
I'm assuming some part is first-order protection of the vaccinated individual, and some part is "downstream infections" prevented by reducing transmissibility/infection?
I am actually quite interested in seeing a good explanation of why the data seems to so consistently reject sugar rushes, despite the support from subjective experience. Are the studies measuring something different from what we feel?
"I think that our implementation of ‘remote learning’ made things dramatically worse for children."
And, this is important to realize, to a very large extent schools never went back to the pre-Covid procedures. Often they're just conducting remote learning with the students in the schools instead of at home.
It's a bit better because the teachers are on hand if the student has the initiative to ask a question. But it's not the way they were conducting classes pre-Covid.
If I had my choice, they'd take all those Chrome books and put them in a landfill somewhere, and go back to non-electronic learning again. Again and again I'm seeing this electronic learning model have problems for my son, who was a straight A student before Covid, and now struggles to maintain a mix of A's and B's. The electronic learning has inserted too many failure points that are unrelated to the actual academics.
I think it's worth mentioning that RSV appears to have peaked. https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/region.html
Flu still on the rise, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm .
"He does not then make the leap to this being because sugar rushes are real. Of course they are real. Most people have experienced them, this is not a subtle thing. If there is data to defy, I happily defy it."
I've long been a sugar rush skeptic because I've never experienced a sugar rush myself (and not because of sugar abstinence!), so I am more inclined to believe this result. It strikes me as rather plausible that sugar rushes could be a combination of (1) a self-fulfilling prophecy, (2) generic reward-stimulation excitement, and (3) rationalization of random behavior.
I don't go around having arguments with strangers about this, but I have had a continuing discussion with my parents about the reality of "sugar rushes". According to my parents, when I was a child, I was _incredibly_ bad at handling sugar and they could immediately tell whether or not I had any. Of course, I was actually pretty good at sneaking candy, and they caught me in a pretty small minority of cases.
My view on the way that the science fits in with the lived experience of parents everywhere is that high sugar intake _usually_ occurs in very specific circumstances: birthday parties, sleep overs, etc. Those activities are likely to be high-excitement and lots of rambunctiousness going on. The perception is: child eats 1/2 of a birthday cake, then runs in circles until they fall over, and those things both happened, but the science says it's not related to the sugar. Luckily, we don't need to invalidate the experience of "child ran around like a maniac". That _did_ happen, it's just (in my opinion) more likely due to the environment in which the sugar was consumed rather than the sugar itself.
I did eventually learn to stop arguing with my parents about this (note: I'm far too old for it to be about regulating my own sugar content, more about discussions about parenting my own kids), or anyone else for that matter. It's too trivial, and people's opinions are too set on it.
Maybe my own experiences will change my mind in defiance of the data in the next few years. We will see.
Note the Stanford SCAN project is showing all-time highs for wastewater concentrations, even higher than last summer (https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/CalSuWers-Dashboard.aspx). Not sure if this is a difference in location or methodology. Given the all-time highs, I'm masking right now.
Unfortunately for my attempts to understand the model, the Bardosh et. al. booster paper just scales the CDC's "Number Needed to Vaccinate" (to prevent one hospitalization) number from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-19/06-COVID-Oliver-508.pdf (p37 I think), and I can't see any working on that. Anyone know how they get that figure?
I'm assuming some part is first-order protection of the vaccinated individual, and some part is "downstream infections" prevented by reducing transmissibility/infection?
On sugar rush data:
A meta-study finds no sugar rushes, but does find sugar crashes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30951762/
Mothers who (falsely) believe their kids have consumed sugar perceive them as more hyperactive:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7963081/
I am actually quite interested in seeing a good explanation of why the data seems to so consistently reject sugar rushes, despite the support from subjective experience. Are the studies measuring something different from what we feel?
Manifold may disagree with you on sugar rushes.
https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/are-sugar-rushes-real