Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of crazy the extent to which we’ve all accepted this as normal. It may be common, but it’s definitely not normal or ok. There are reasons we as a society have chosen to do nothing about this issue. And I do mean nothing - no improved air filtration, no sane parental leave (and rollbacks of wfh), no masking requirements for sick teachers or older kids, no subsidizing in-home care, no reducing classroom ratios, literally nothing whatsoever except for letting kids suffer constantly and pumping them full of Motrin and antibiotics over and over and over. This despite the fact that there are now mountains of evidence that viral infections (particularly Covid) can have long-lasting, sometimes permanent health effects. My own kid developed reactive airways (basically a precursor to asthma, for which there is no cure) after a bout with a nasty daycare virus.
The reason we’re doing nothing is because the burdens of all this fall disproportionately on women. OF COURSE there are exceptions, involved fathers, etc., but for the most part, we’re the ones who are expected to do early pickups and stay home nursing sick kids and sacrifice our careers, health, and sanity dealing with the fallout from the shitty options we’ve been given.
Obviously none of this is going to change anytime soon and I live in reality. I know that the underlying reasons don’t really make a difference to my day-to-day. But honestly, we should all demand better.
How do you propose we fix the basic fact that kids need exposure to germs to develop their immune systems? Do you think it's better to limit their germ exposure significantly, and let every virus be a novel virus when they're 10, 11, 12 years old? And then they miss a week of school with fevers and whatnot once a month when they're 12 as opposed to 2?