Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

According to the Supreme Court when it comes to campaign donations, corporations are people, so differentiating them is unnecessary, right?  Anyway, getting past that sour grape, here's a thing:

Since the 1970s, Big Food has colonized the school cafeteria. From signing lucrative food service contracts to promoting their corporate brands and dishing out chicken nuggets and other mass-produced, heat-and-serve items, the food industry has done quite well for itself by selling goods and services to schools across the United States, including the 95% of public schools that participate in the government-subsidized National School Lunch Program (NSLP). 

In recent years, Big Food companies — and their industry associations — have spent millions of dollars lobbying the federal government to weaken or change its nutritional standards, and these efforts have paid off handsomely. It happened in 2014, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) caved to industry pressure and made it easier for schools to serve French fries and pizza. It happened in 2018, when the USDA loosened restrictions on the amount of sodium, flavored milk, and refined grains that could be served in school meals. And it is happening again with the Trump administration’s latest proposal to make the rules more “flexible” (as Thompson, 2020, recently described in these pages).

The mortality rate of H1N1--while highly infectious--was miniscule. They estimate there were 60M cases in the US, and only 12-13K deaths. It was significantly less fatal than the flu, which is why all the concern and media uproar died down so quickly.

COVID-19 was highly infectious and significantly higher mortality than the flu, which coupled with the fact that it was novel, meant that the impact would be orders of magnitude higher. We didn't have solid numbers (still don't), but much of the estimates are somewhere between 0.5% and 1% mortality, probably on the lower end of that range. That means it's ~5x higher mortality than seasonal flu, we didn't have a vaccine for it, and we had no natural immunity. That's a bad combination...

H1N1 never would have resulted in the lockdowns, because H1N1 was a completely different beast. As for difference in media attention? I'll readily admit that the media made this about Trump and his response; ever since he announced his candidacy, everything in the United States has been about Trump. But the entire media effort would have fizzled out in a month if this thing was anything like H1N1.
Looking into it further, I can give Trump some credit on this. Apparently the big contracts where the gov't agreed in advance to buy millions of doses of the vaccines if they were successful appear to be an executive branch action.

Not to say another President or administration wouldn't have done the same, but I'll call a spade a spade on this one. Kudos to him and his administration for doing it.

"School choice" as it's been labeled, is about one thing and one thing only - white flight. 

How is a school/district supposed to improve when their best/most concerned students/families leave? 


I'm also afraid teacher's unions are an antiquated boogeyman, too.  Over half the states are 'right to work' and don't have bloated, draconian teacher unions.  And it's hard for parents to have a voice in their local school if they're busy choosing another school.  I'm not even sure how we got to this, as I - a teacher - am advocating for better food for students. 
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A school in a poor neighborhood isn't going to have parents advocating for quality school food because they're not providing quality food at home.  Because they're poor. 

That's why I want to cancel as many administrators as possible. It's bloated.

In Chicago, there are 32K teachers and 6K administrators. Average teacher pay is around $70K and the average (do nothing) admin is payed around $150K.

That's $900 Million on administrators and $2.2 Billion on teachers.

There are 350K students.

Absolutely. Did you catch that hit piece 60 Minutes tried to run on Governor DeSantis? Blew up in their freaking faces. Both the Democratic Mayor of Palm Beach County and the head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management- another Democrat- publicly bashed 60 Minutes and said the entire story was complete bullshit- their actual words- not mine. And then the entire video of DeSantis' press conference just came out- and showed 60 Minutes edited the FK out of the video and completely distorted DeSantis' response. It was such an egregious attempt at misinformation- that reporter who works for CBS and the editor on that story should both be fired- and CBS should be fined heavily by the FCC.

At the very beginning of the entire crisis- media tried to make DeSantis out to be the worst governor in the country handling the crisis while fellating Nipple Rings Sex Predator Cuomo and Michelin French Laundry Douche Newsome out to be heroes. Whoops. Turns out DeSantis has done a way better job than either of those corrupt pieces of shits in NY and CA. When that failed- they just tried to run a hit piece on him that blew up in their faces- and now the guy is more popular in Florida and across the country than ever. LOL.

I see you responded already, but I think you're confusing swine flu (H1N1) with other things.

I believe the original SARS was more deadly, but not as transmissible. The same is true with MERS, I believe, but I'm less familiar with that one.

But H1N1 was both highly transmissible and relatively benign, which is why it didn't merit responses anywhere near COVID, which is highly transmissible and significantly more deadly than the flu.