The Urgency of Normal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone complaining about all the big sporting events like the Super Bowl. Those are super spreader events that reverberate back down to the community and increase the amount of time until we return to normal.

Schools get their money regardless of how well they are doing by children.

People won’t pay to attend a Big splashy event where they would have to wear a mask after they’ve already gotten two or three shots. They are going to party hard with free faces laughing and smiling.

School boards don’t care about the kids.

[Anonymous]

Good to see. More blue state governors need to start doing this. And politicians need to go out there advocating it for it to be normal now.

There are too many Democrats desperately clinging to rules/restrictions. It is important that elected Democrats start moving everyone towards normalcy.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully the blue state dominoes will start to fall.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Plus, I really don't understand all these democrats arguing for more anti-covid measures when it's largely republicans that are dying.

Maybe they aren't sociopaths who discount a person's death based on their voting habits?

But those people have the ability to get vaccinated. Demanding anti-covid measures to protect people who decided not to get vaccinated is nonsensical.

People who are double vaccinated, have had a booster, and wear a high quality mask are at extremely low risk even if they encounter unvaccinated people. It is not necessary to continue with a bunch of restrictions.

Perhaps under normal circumstances. Perhaps not if, as teachers say, they are crowded 25-35 people in a room with 30 of those people who are unvaccinated. I don't want my kid in that mix unmasked, either.

You have every right to tell your kid to wear a mask. However, it's not reasonable to force everyone else to do it as well.

Actually it is because it is for the common good. However, I have a feeling that you don't value the common good ...

Forcing everyone into various restrictions indefinitely is not promoting the common good.

People who are boosted and wear a high quality mask are very low risk.

Soooooo...you take that risk. There is no way you can force someone else, namely a teacher, to take that risk for you. See how that works? If you're willing to take the risk, then go teach. If you're not willing to take the risk, then don't tell others what risk level is acceptable for them. I'm a teacher. Your "low risk" level is too high for me. Try to force me to teach in a classroom without every student masked, and watch me walk out the door.

Perhaps that is the solution? The idea that a class of children should be obligated to wear masks indefinitely to accommodate you is nonsense.

Darling, there are not swaths of eager teachers waiting in the wings to take her place. Enjoy your incompetent serial subs.

Some might see this as a feature which would permit / add momentum to a radical rethinking of schooling. If teachers are invested in the status quo, they need to keep the ship afloat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Vaccinated kids are not stuffing hospitals. Shaming vaccinated people is counter productive.

This. And also: unvaccinated kids aren't stuffing hospitals either. We are vaccinating our kids (one already and the other will be vaccinated when they turn 5) but we know a lot of people who are "waiting" for their young kids especially, and we were worried about it originally but... it's been fine. Teachers are vaccinated, all these kids parents are vaccinated. I have reached the point where it's just very obvious to me that kids and especially young kids, are not a major vector for this virus.

We also have friends in red states where the unvaccinated rate is much higher than here, and where at different point they have actually banned masking in schools. And while I have zero interested in living somewhere where people won't vaccinate at all and where the governor will tell schools they aren't allowed to mask, it's notable to me that none of these friends have experienced rampant Covid spread in those schools, even during Omicron. And they don't quarantine like we do here either. They get notified of positive cases in the school and in theory could keep their kids home, but when it became clear that these cases were not going to lead to outbreaks, why?

I'm a bleeding heart liberal but I think a lot of liberals have lost their minds on this issue and become detached from reality. I will never vote GOP but I'm sure not going to vote for the party of virtual school and permanent masking of kindergarteners either. I think some people need to get treatment for their anxiety and take a step back on this one because we are not headed in a good direction at the moment. A course correction is needed.

[Anonymous]

How do you know that there hasn't been covid outbreaks in those schools if they haven't been testing? No, i doubt that the schools you discribe test adequetly.

Everybody I know who had it only knew so because they had a lateral flow or PCR test though workplace routine screening when they had common cold/flu symptoms. The odd few had no sympoms at all and tested at the right time though dumb luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you know that there hasn't been covid outbreaks in those schools if they haven't been testing? No, i doubt that the schools you discribe test adequetly.

Everybody I know who had it only knew so because they had a lateral flow or PCR test though workplace routine screening when they had common cold/flu symptoms. The odd few had no sympoms at all and tested at the right time though dumb luck.

You're missing the point, which isn't that no one has COVID ever again, but that people don't get super sick and die. So if we don't test as much, and most people don't get super sick and die, we're good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Good to see. More blue state governors need to start doing this. And politicians need to go out there advocating it for it to be normal now.

There are too many Democrats desperately clinging to rules/restrictions. It is important that elected Democrats start moving everyone towards normalcy.

Good we need leadership from the blue states. Someone has to rip the bandaid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know that there hasn't been covid outbreaks in those schools if they haven't been testing? No, i doubt that the schools you discribe test adequetly.

Everybody I know who had it only knew so because they had a lateral flow or PCR test though workplace routine screening when they had common cold/flu symptoms. The odd few had no sympoms at all and tested at the right time though dumb luck.

You're missing the point, which isn't that no one has COVID ever again, but that people don't get super sick and die. So if we don't test as much, and most people don't get super sick and die, we're good.

Yes, the US dosen't have the highest covid death rate of rich countries, oh wait.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:How do you know that there hasn't been covid outbreaks in those schools if they haven't been testing? No, i doubt that the schools you discribe test adequetly.

Everybody I know who had it only knew so because they had a lateral flow or PCR test though workplace routine screening when they had common cold/flu symptoms. The odd few had no sympoms at all and tested at the right time though dumb luck.

You're missing the point, which isn't that no one has COVID ever again, but that people don't get super sick and die. So if we don't test as much, and most people don't get super sick and die, we're good.

Yes, the US dosen't have the highest covid death rate of rich countries, oh wait.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html

Sigh.

This is a DC area website. This area is overall, very highly vaccinated. It's also full of hyperanxious people who seem to think that the absence of COVID is the sole health outcome of relevance (it's not). So, in *this area*, yes, we need to start moving towards relaxing restrictions to account for allll those other important health outcomes that are impacted by being super careful about COVID, all the time.

It's really not that hard.

[Anonymous]

I was responding to a post about schools in RED districts!

Lax covid mitigation measures in schools in those areas likely is contributing to spread unvaxed, high risk adults the kids and staff interact with out of school.

[Anonymous]

I think if Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom come out and recommend lifting mask mandates we'll be good! Add JB Pritzker to the mix and even better.

It's important for Democratic governors to refuse to give cover to the extremist faction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Some might see this as a feature which would permit / add momentum to a radical rethinking of schooling. If teachers are invested in the status quo, they need to keep the ship afloat.

We don't particularly need a radical re-thinking of schooling. There are plenty of school systems around the world that are getting better results than what we have in the U.S. (E.g. Finland, Singapore, Ontario, Alberta, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Shanghai, and Taiwan). We don't need to re-invent the wheel, we just need to copy what's working elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Dominoes falling!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I was responding to a post about schools in RED districts!

Lax covid mitigation measures in schools in those areas likely is contributing to spread unvaxed, high risk adults the kids and staff interact with out of school.

I'm the PP who brought this up, and I was comparing our experience in DC (very blue area, lots of Covid restrictions) with friends who live in a Southern red state. We literally just had dinner with the friends, who are themselves very liberal, pro-mask, pro-science (they are in fact scientists). When the pandemic started, they were terrified of living where they lived because people were very anti-mask and skeptical of Covid. They barely left their house for a year, and did not even do take out or similar things because they were so concerned. Their kids did virtual school from home.

But the second year of the pandemic was very different and they were both actually required to go to work in-person, and their kids schools ended virtual. They were the people yelling about this. And then... nothing. Many people in their community actually did get vaccinated, and their overall vaccination rating is actually pretty close to DCs. Schools opened there full time in person, without issues. Especially at the elementary level, it just does not appear that Covid is a concern there. Teachers who wanted to be vaxed could vaccinate. For a time they even weren't allowed to wear masks because their GOP governor wouldn't allow it (now they are back in masks but likely to drop them before school is out this year). But they just haven't seen the crisis that was predicted. Not in the schools and not in the surrounding areas. There is just no indication that school was a dangerous place for kids OR that kids in school was leading others to get it. I have to assume masks and vaccines helped but it was 100% use either.

It's just very hard to justify the burden on kids and families in blue states when you see these experiences elsewhere. Is Covid still killing people? Yes, it is. But not kids. And not their vaccinated teacher or parents either.

You need to start being wiling to accept some counter evidence against some of your assumptions. Again, I'm liberal. I think Republicans are mostly either cynical or deluded. But increasingly a lot fo the liberals I know are similar, just on different issues. We can't "win" Covid as an issue. It's an apolitical virus. Forcing children to mask in schools indefinitely doesn't sound like a liberal position to me. It sounds like an anti-Trump position. I think we need to start separating these things out.