Thread by @Loretta_Torrago

Some people look at unprotected adults and think, "Why are they risking the adverse outcomes of Covid merely to go maskless?
@ProfEmilyOster looks at the same adults and thinks, "Why not take chances with kids too?" 🧵
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

After noting that pandemic restrictions are being relaxed, Oster says, “Politicians are generally pushing for .. normalcy.”

This might seem nit-picky since this is now an accepted use of “normal,” but it would be remiss not to point out: There is nothing normal about pretending there is no pandemic!

But I digress. Back to Oster who is pondering the privilege of adult recklessness in the face of protections, like masks & testing, for children. Oster says, “My burning questions is simply: Why?”

Because the world is topsy-turvy, we are to pretend this is a deep question, not a silly one with obvious answers like, “Do you really want kids to role model the worst of adult behavior?’

Oster suggests there are three possible answers. She then goes on to consider four. Truth be told, all of them are nonstarters.

First, Oster considers whether kids are being protected while adults aren’t because kids need more protection than adults. I did warn you Oster’s answers are nonstarters.

After laying out the statistics establishing kids are lower risk than adults, Oster lights on something: vulnerable children. She tells us “society owes [them] special attention..”

Naturally, Oster isn’t going to give them any attention. She just brings it up as a way of saying somebody should. But this is to pass over an answer that’s staring Oster right in her face. How can she not see?

Protections are in place in schools because vulnerable children (& adults) exist in schools. To pass this over as an answer is to consent to the creation of classrooms hostile to vulnerabilities. That’s not just ableist and morally wrong, but illegal should any care to notice.

Oster doesn’t notice. Instead she tells us “it doesn’t follow that Covid restrictions for children ought to stay uniformly in place after they’ve been removed for their parents.”

What? Of course, it doesn’t follow. Oster’s just changing the subject from vulnerable kids back to those pesky restrictions and the adults who exist unencumbered the way firefighters exist in flames unencumbered by safety gear. Oh, wait; they don’t. That would be stupid.

It’s odd, this moth-like behavior from Oster: flitting around from one thing to another. But, having established nothing, it’s apparently time for the second possible answer: Kids are protected in schools because protections work better in schools.

Though there’s a sense in which this is obviously wrong, that’s only because of the way Oster has framed it. It’s not that protections work better in schools, but that protections are enforceable in schools.

School boards, sometimes in defiance of mandate bans, have refused to toss kids into the pandemic stew Oster so badly craves. Unlike Oster, most people don’t want to be caught holding the bag that opened to let Covid out.

I’d ask why Oster insists on the nonsense answer when a perfectly good answer is so close by, but we know the answer: Oster doesn’t want an answer.

Which brings us to the third response to: Why can’t kids be as reckless as adults? Oster’s answer is: well, incoherent. She first says vaccination rates are low amongst kids, which means case rates might be high, which means we ought to protect the vulnerable.

This doesn’t work, Oster says, because case rates have been “fairly similar across all age groups.”

I have news for Oster: case rates being similar is compatible with case rates being high. Seriously, is anyone at @TheAtlantic paying attention? Oster is running amok in your journal adding more obtuseness to straw men. Also, and for the second time, so much for the vulnerable.

Embarking on logical free-fall, Oster begins with an observation: places with high vaccination rates have many restrictions while places with low vaccination rates have few.

This, she tells us, is “geographically mismatched.” It is the mismatch, coming every so coyly at the end, that is “the more important point.”

That important point is: a Northern kid in an N95 is not protecting an unvaccinated Southern adult.

You might say, “No kidding” but there is something even more nonsensical at play; namely, the illusion that vax rates & restrictions aren’t inextricably intertwined. On the contrary, places with high vax rates have strict rules because both are symptoms of taking Covid seriously.

Places with low vax rates have lax rules because those are symptoms of not taking Covid seriously.

The surprising thing is, for all its fallaciousness, there is actually no point here. Oster has simply mischaracterized an observation and then posed it as an imperative to get rid of Northern restrictions because restrictions in the South are already gone.

Maybe you have noticed this too: the world of Covid downplaying has shifted. The new goal is to find the place that is doing the absolute worst. This very, very bad place is then exalted to the status of role model.

Here I am reminded of my father, who grew up listening to baseball outside Dodger’s stadium, a venue he could not afford, and who would ask me: "If everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?"

Emily Oster’s answer is “yes” & she wants us to follow… unless we are scared. Oster’s final explanation for why kids are still in protections while adults aren’t is: parents are scared. Emily Oster wants us to know, she isn’t.

In my imagination, I visualize Oster: She is standing fearless at the Brooklyn Bridge, banishing pages of the “Kids Last” policy to the churning waters below. “This is a new day”, I imagine her saying as the wind whips her hair “Kids first!”
That’s scary.
End.

This thread from @justthefacts85 is 🔥. My approach to Oster's article was to look at how Oster's claims were independent of the conclusions she drew from them. @justthefacts looks at whether those claims are even true. They are not. @theatlantic