It is really hard on these kids. They’re living in conditions not unlike wartime. This will be one of their formative experiences, and some of them will likely require longterm mental health and other interventions. Still beats dying.
Also likely beats realizing later in adolescence or in adulthood that they helped kill some of their classmates.
(We’ve got a 16-yo and a 13-yo who have gone through virtual plus masking plus distancing from everyone outside their immediate family, and there’s no question in my mind that it’s screwed them up. I hope things get better enough soon enough that they can be resilient. And definitely nowhere near how it would have screwed them up to have a parent or grandparent hospitalized or dying on them.)
Some will not change even when it hits home. Saw a news story the other day about a nurse who lost both parents to covid and still won’t get vaccinated. Maddening.
Yes, my kids are very diligent about masking, but that doesn’t mean they are unaffected by the pandemic. My elementary schooler periodically breaks down in tears “I don’t want to wear masks forever”. I don’t think it’s really about the mask - they don’t wear one very much because they don’t go anywhere- I think it’s the pandemic overall- the closures, the limitations, the constraints in everyday life
I don’t mean to diminish the impact of COVID on kids. Everyone is feeling the stress and exhaustion of facing over 18 months of a pandemic.
But that’s the thing, the stress and exhaustion is not from wearing a mask, its from the constant reminder that a deadly virus is rampaging around the world. Nobody (including kids) are going to be to avoid mental health issues when normal pre-pandemic activities, like going to school or hanging out with friends/family, could end up with you in the hospital or dead. And as has been proven time and time again, those who try to act like the pre-pandemic world end up in the hospital or dead.
This is one of the things that the Republican small-town boosters don’t get. Especially in my town. They’re always saying they want to attract highly educated young professionals, service companies, and light industry. But the things that attract the people who run those kinds of businesses and the top notch employees they need, want a place that has a high quality of life: parks and recreation places, libraries, a diversity of good restaurants, and good schools. The young professionals will immediately write off a place like Burlington, WI. They will not be moving there. So Burlington’s future is as a hotbed of meth labs and ramshackle trailer parks. Maybe not immediately, but they’re not going to become a new Silicon Valley or Boston or Pittsburgh.
A huge factor in how kids do during this upheaval is how the adults around them act. If the adults freak out and act like aggrieved adolescents, their kids will not learn how to deal with and grow through adversity. If the parents and other adults roll with it and use it as a learning experience, resilience in the kids is far more likely. Some kids will do better than others, but most kids can deal if their parents can.
As an example, my mother’s school in Holland was closed for two years in the 40’s because the Germans turned it into a hospital for wounded soldiers. There was no distance learning. I don’t know how other kids did, but my mother’s only memory was that some stuff got skipped after school resumed because they had two years to make up. She was none the worse for it.
ETA That’s not to say that the exhaustion and frustration due to the restrictions we all face aren’t real, just that there are positive and negative ways of dealing with them and kids are generally pretty resilient and will bounce back. This will hopefully not last forever.
“Government schools”? What a fucking tool. If this imbecile is so terrified of government maybe this shit-for-brains should give up his cushy government job, paid for by government money and all its government benefits like government healthcare. I sincerely wish I could kick this loser right in his useless government ass.
These tools want it both ways. They decry science education but want people educated in the sciences to come and establish companies. They want curious, inventive people to live among 19th century knuckledraggers and don’t see the problem. They want people who are outspoken and fearless to live among the dumbest, most superstitious morons the world has to offer. They live in the fucking flyover for a reason. Stay there. Let evolution take care of the problem.
Phillip Johnson once quipped that Frank Lloyd Wright was the most important architect of the 19th century. Whatever you think of Johnson, that was just such a razor sharp burn.
Well, maybe they can wear a few masks over the course of 6 hours. I don’t think I’d want to wear the same mask for 6-7 hours, especially without the ability to brush my teeth after lunch, snacks, etc. That’s a lot of bacteria buildup. I have no idea what the current mask supply is or how difficult it would be to have enough masks for each kid to have 3 or 4 each school day.
One more reason a vaccine needs to come out soon for kids under 12, and one more reason anyone older just needs to get freakin’ vaxed.
I liked Johnson until he stuck the PoMo Chippendale motif on top of the AT&T building in NY. That whole direction in American architecture, with a few exceptions, was a bad idea and faded fast.
FLW also had his influences but did design many houses that are elegant and liveable to this day. He was also a forerunner of many trends that continue today. He may have not been the greatest architect of the 20th century but he is still revered and influential in modern design. I can’t say that’s true for Johnson.
Burlington is only about 10,000 people. It sits in the midst of farmland with its historic downtown (incorporated in 1900), it’s also known as Chocolate City, USA as home to a Nestle Chocolate plant. You can tell you’re getting close by the lovely aroma.
Oh, and it’s also 93% white and home to Robin Vos - Republican speaker of the assembly. The guy who was in full PPE gear, telling everyone how safe it was to vote.
Florida is quite normal for a third-world country. It significantly under-reports case numbers and deaths from covid. As a rule of thumb, the 40,000 covid deaths reported in Florida are likely closer to 60,000 in reality. Deaths are currently running at about 40 a day which puts Florida on par with estimates of daily civilian deaths in Afghanistan at the moment. Is Florida a failed state?
Tracing 80% of contacts could be near-impossible to achieve in regions still grappling with thousands of new infections a week — and worse, even the highest case counts are likely to be an underestimate. A June preprint1 from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team in Cambridge analysing COVID-19 testing data from 84 countries suggests that global infections were 12 times higher and deaths 50% higher than officially reported (see ‘Predicting cases and deaths’). “There are many more cases out there than the data indicate. As a consequence, there’s higher risk of infection than people may believe there to be,” says John Sterman, co-author of the study and director of the MIT System Dynamics Group.
WTF is wrong with these people. One would think they would love and care for at least their own children. The GOP has degenerated into a party of lunatics.
