Anyone else think schools will be virtual after Winter Break?
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Anonymous
Doctor here. How would you suggest emergency rooms receiving Covid patients in need of urgent, life saving care, evaluate expectations for "legitimate, medical reasons" when they come in? Minutes matter in life and death scenarios. There's no "universal system" that would give every hospital access to this information, so I'd love to know your thoughts on the process. What about religious exemptions (which are also legitimate). Who gets to evaluate those and judge the legitimacy? There's a very slippery slope here that you and others +1ing this must know nothing about. Do I want everyone vaccinated? Of course. But the assertion that doctors or nurses should start denying care is not only abhorrent, but also an insult to the profession and the oaths we all took when we chose this profession. |
Anonymous
You are brainwashed and can’t see that it’s you who is selfish. This is NOT a communist country. At least not yet. There are plenty of good reasons to delay or reject the vaccine. So should we deny medical assistance to anyone with illness or injury based on a decision you don’t agree with? You are sickly cruel. And self righteous. |
Anonymous
Thank you. I have so much respect for you for coming out and saying this. I don't know what is happening to people but it is really concerning. My spouse is a medical professional and shares your views. |
Anonymous
Your practical objections aside (which could be dealt with by way of exemption cards or similar)…is it an insult? Is it though? I’m a doctor in a family of doctors. It makes us sick that after a year of vaccines being available, we’re still doing this. We’re providing subpar care to those with other conditions, if they’re even getting in. We’re closing our lives down again, and we’re more likely to have additional variants that grow among the unvaccinated. Is it an insult to keep our hospitals functioning for things besides unvaccinated covid? An insult to keep hospitals functioning so we can keep schools open in order to help abate the serious mental health issues we’re seeing with kids after 2 years of this? An insult to run our medical facilities in ways that treat the community mental and emotional and physical health needs, not just the immediate needs of someone who has refused medical prevention that most of the world would kill for? An insult? No. |
Anonymous
What’s happening to people? What’s happening to people is they are watching millions in the developing world die because they do not have access to vaccines that many here turn their noses at. What’s happening to people is they are seeing their kids struggle with depression and suicidal ideations and withdrawal and who now face another threat that schools will close YET AGAIN because hospitals will fill up again—this time not because no one’s protectable, not because there was no alternative, but because people are so selfish that they won’t do the bare minimum to help keep the hospitals from filling up. What’s happening to people is that their service or performance art or other front-facing jobs are being eliminated YET AGAIN because covid spread still means tons of hospitalizations—not because it had to mean that, but because we still have a high percentage of people who are unvaccinated running around. What’s happening to people is that they are hearing about countries like Germany and Austria decide that the unvaccinated may not participate in society, but waking up in America where everyone—including *our kids*—apparently must continue to pay an untold price to preserve the unfettered “freedom” of the willingly unvaccinated, who must of course be allowed to do whatever they damned well please. What’s happening to people is that they are watching folks who will not spend even five minutes at a CVS to get vaccinated literally SUE hospitals in order to get them to provide horse dewormer to their unvaccinated loved ones, while at the same time learning that people with other medical emergencies LITERALLY DIED because there were no beds for them thanks to the hordes of unvaccinated. What’s happening to people is that they are losing what little was left of their last shred of faith in humanity, as they watch countless Americans continue to refuse to do a simple, small, free thing that would help everyone get back on their feet. That. That’s what’s happening to people. P.S. Since you’re at it, how about you ask your question of people who won’t get vaccinated. What’s happening to them? What’s happening to them that they are STILL willing to cripple our healthcare system? Willing to risk pushing kids farther behind academically, socially, and psychologically? Willing to increase the risk of mutations? Willing to place the medically vulnerable at continued, but now long preventable, risk of severe disease and death? God forbid we ever ask what’s happening to THEM that would make them be so cruel. God forbid. |
Anonymous
| No - ours knows what we are paying for is in person education. |
Anonymous
No this is not a Communist country, if it were we would all be vaccinated and our lives would start getting back to normal. Here, our "liberties" make us free; free to kill each other with guns, lack of vaccines and mental health oblivion. Way to go Land of the Free... |
Anonymous
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Of the DC Schools:
Based on past practice, most likely to be virtual after the break: GDS and Sidwell Least likely to be virtual: Cathedral schools, WIS RE: the related discussion about vaccines, kids should be prioritized over just about everything, including but not limited to keeping our healthcare system running by rationing care if needed. They keep doing their part—wearing masks even when Bowser (stupidly) dropped the mask mandate, getting vaccinated when eligible, switching in and out of remote—and they’ve gotten the short end of the stick this entire time. |
Anonymous
This THIS is 100% dead on. Thank you poster for articulating it PERFECTLY. And no, religious exemptions are NOT valid, not this time when they put million of others at risk. Get the vaccine if you are medically allowed or GTFO. |
Anonymous
Sanity Check: You can vaccinate the entire population of the US but if you don’t vaccinate sub-Saharan Africa or South Africa, these pesky variants are still going to make it here and stress our healthcare system because, newsflash, the vaccine is less effective against some variants. It’s not all about your small bubble of the DMV. Yes, people hold strong religious views and have body autonomy. Other people’s choices and views effect your life daily and sometimes in extremely risky ways. It’s called “civilization” and living in one. Get a vaccine. Get boosted. Wear a mask. Stop going to echo chambers which harden your views without different perspectives. Maybe research how the US giving boosters and 3rd shots to their population and not selling the vaccine at a discount to less wealthy countries contributed to this mess and will continue to do so. Omicron is actually not a bad variant to catch. Compared to the others. If you are alive in 2022 and breathing air, you will eventually catch a variant of Covid19 in your lifetime. It’s a reality everyone needs to face. It’s about severity and the strain. When you feel like your view and opinion is so right that you would deny a human right of healthcare to someone because of the feeling of being justified, it’s no longer a belief that can be justified itself. Empathy is waning in most people but it’s something to strive for versus being less empathetic and less human chasing a mythical world where we eradicate Covid19. It will be endemic by 2025 to all countries on the entire earth. Everywhere. The lack of civility and empathy may kill us all long before then. |
Anonymous
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Efforts are being made to vaccinate "the entire world" - though a sysphean task as there will be boosters, and more boosters etc. In the meantime, we need a functioning country. I agree there is an ethical and practical dilemma in asking doctors and nurses to give unvaccinated persons a lower triage status, but I don't see one in asking them to pay more for their care in insurance premiums up front or after the fact reimbursements for their expensive and intensive care. Ultimately, they are asking others to pick up their costs currently, no?
Last, the vaccination rate would go up over night if we required vaccines to fly, travel by train etc. To participate in the conveniences and the pleasures (concerts etc) of civic life. The fact that we don't "mandate vaccine passports" for these privileges tells me we - policy-wise- don't actually want to "solve" having a large, unvaccinated population . Could be achieved quite quickly with these types of measures. |
Anonymous
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Sidwell’s outbreak before the break likely started with the boys and girls basketball games. The Friday boys game at maret was packed, mostly massless affair and the weekend girls basketball tournament had kids and fans from all over the country. Many players tested positive afterwards
If Sidwell is even considering going virtual they should first cancel all indoor winter sports. Academics must be the priority, even though at Sidwell they are increasingly not |
Anonymous
| I agree. The outbreaks at other schools also started with the athletic teams. Those need to be shutdown before the academics. Still, I'm okay with a few days of virtual learning right after the break, just to reset. |
Anonymous
Sidwell has the best girls basketball team in the country. That's an important thing. The kids shouldn't have to keep paying the price. Their academics, their extracurriculars, their friendships--all of that matters. The grownups need to do their part. Wear masks. Get vaccinated. Stop having*their* parties. And to the sub-Saharan Africa pp: be quiet with your what-about-know-it-all-ism. We're all well aware that vaccination has to be a global effort. That fact changes absolutely nothing about the reality that Americans who have easy access to vaccines need to get them, and that their failure to do so, here in America, threatens American hospitals and by extension American school openings. |
Anonymous
You're "agreeing" with a different point. PP said source was athletic *events* which is very different. A packed Maret gym and a packed Sidwell gym with teams/parents from out of state may have precipitated an "outbreak" (~10 positives in SFS HS). But that doesn't mean the problem originated with the teams themselves. Easy enough to say "no fans" or "students only" or limit the number of fans all while allowing the kids to continue to play sports. |