Unintended Consequences of Covid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes I’ve read deaths in young people are up also for drug over doses. I always knew there were going to be consequences to closing things down. . It’s not rocket science. Just common sense.

What BS you’re spouting.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Kids have been back in school in person for two years except a select few. So, if numbers continue to rise (and last reports were saying it was down), then is covid to blame or something else?

You’re saying pulling kids out of school and significantly disrupting their lives for 18+ months isn’t likely to have long-term effects?

Liar. Kids were not “out of school” for 18 months.

MCPS didn’t resume full-time until fall 2021.

They were not out of school. They had school but it looked different. What’s going on at home that things were so bad it caused your kids mental health issues?

A lack of peers for one. Surely you get that, don’t you?

If your kids had “a lack of peers” beyond mid-2020, you failed at parenting.

You realize that schools didn't reopen fully until the fall of 2021, right?

You realize that schools aren’t the only places your children can have contact with peers, right?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain to me the rigid resistance to reflecting on how covid was managed?

It is infuriating. It stems from a refusal to acknowledge that the pandemic itself and measures to manage it had any negative consequences. There is so much more to examine than just schools. However, when it comes to schools, potential harm was completely downplayed in closure discussions, so any acknowledgment whatsoever of widespread struggles looks bad for all of those, including teachers' union officials and school board members, who said that everything would be fine.

2020: We can address problems closures create, but we can't bring the dead back to life.

2023: Be happy you and your family aren't dead. We can't be bothered to help with your problems (or acknowledge them in any way).

The closures came with a promise that we would all come together to compassionately deal with the fallout. That broken promise, not the restrictions or closures themselves, will continue to cause harm unless it is acknowledged and examined.

The unmasking came with a promise that as an immune-compromised person, I’d be able to mask in public (which doesn’t work as well, but put that aside for a moment) without people venting their spleen about the pandemic and how it was handled at me on the daily. That also happens, though.

Nobody says this to you “on the daily.” You go out of your way to find it written on the internet.

I’m a (different) person who masks indoors in public in 2023 and I get ignorant, nasty, COVID-minimizing comments from at least one person about 50-75% of the time when I go out for any length of time. So no, sorry, it’s not “going out of your way to find it written on the internet.”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:There is a well know DC non-profit that I've been volunteering with since the mid 90's. This organization deals with homelessness, didnt shutdown during covi and from March 2020 through October 2021 I went there approximately 2 to 3 times a week. In many emails during this time to the volunteer group, I was routinely recognized as a top volunteer in terms of hours. For a number of reasons I was never vaccinated and when the mandatory vaccination was put into place, I was removed from the opportunity to volunteer, which remains to this day.

Ok. Unfortunately had the whole pandemic and vaccines not been politicized, I think this would have been a better experience for all. I blame Trump and the GOP in Congress for the completely unnecessary politicization of it all.

I blame Biden. Trump was on his way out when we were at the hight of it and he did nothing but blame shift to Trump.

Trump said he wasn't going go mandate the vaccine. Biden took it to another level... fact!

100%. It was always a choice under trump. It was not a choice under Biden for SO many people. Losing jobs over silly vaccine mandates, when the vax did nothing to “stop the spread”. When you chose between your livelihood and getting a vax you didn’t want, THAT IS NOT A CHOICE.

severe winter of death and illness….remember that line of crud? Never panned out.

Someone needs to pay for this.

You are a tantruming overgrown adolescent and nobody is going to “pay for this” whatsoever. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't know this until the other day as it relates to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.

You know RFK junior is an ignorant anti-vax kook, right?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Didn't know this until the other day as it relates to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.

Robert Kennedy is a moron.

That moron was spot on when it came to this video. If you lost a family member like I did when the doctor wouldn't prescribe these drugs, you may think differently.

He is not “spot on.” He’s ignorant and a liar.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:There is a well know DC non-profit that I've been volunteering with since the mid 90's. This organization deals with homelessness, didnt shutdown during covi and from March 2020 through October 2021 I went there approximately 2 to 3 times a week. In many emails during this time to the volunteer group, I was routinely recognized as a top volunteer in terms of hours. For a number of reasons I was never vaccinated and when the mandatory vaccination was put into place, I was removed from the opportunity to volunteer, which remains to this day.

Ok. Unfortunately had the whole pandemic and vaccines not been politicized, I think this would have been a better experience for all. I blame Trump and the GOP in Congress for the completely unnecessary politicization of it all.

I blame Biden. Trump was on his way out when we were at the hight of it and he did nothing but blame shift to Trump.

Trump said he wasn't going go mandate the vaccine. Biden took it to another level... fact!

100%. It was always a choice under trump. It was not a choice under Biden for SO many people. Losing jobs over silly vaccine mandates, when the vax did nothing to “stop the spread”. When you chose between your livelihood and getting a vax you didn’t want, THAT IS NOT A CHOICE.

severe winter of death and illness….remember that line of crud? Never panned out.

Someone needs to pay for this.

Honestly, I don’t remember because I was in the first round of vaccinated as a Senate employee. I still don’t understand why folks didn’t want to get vaccinated. But whatever, clearly you’re still triggered by it. SMH. Covid is over. Move on. There is something for everyone to be upset about the pandemic. It was a pandemic and it sucked.

Yeah, shove it all under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. This was a compete injustice, and I, for one, won't let it go. Something like this NEVER should happen again.

It can and it will. Cope.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I don't really understand what people seek to gain from continuing to harp on this. I'd much rather put time and energy into mental health funding.

Yes, lockdown sucked. Yes, I wanted my kids back in school and I advocated for that. No, I am not going to spend the rest of our lives being upset about decisions that were made during a once in a century pandemic.

If we are lucky, we won't live through anything worse. If we are unlucky, COVID will look like a cakewalk and at least we will understand what a lockdown means.

I want a 911 style commission to learn from mistakes.

Agreed.

Fauci and the rest of our federal public health officials threw out kids and young adults under the bus during Covid. And they will never be held responsible.

See - this is the problem, right here. A commission to learn from mistakes is NOT the same as throwing public health officials under the bus and holding them "responsible"
If you GENUINELY want to learn from mistakes so we can do better in the future, then I'm 100% on board with that.
If you want a kangaroo court to own the libs, then you're an idiot and worse than any well-intentioned, if ultimately wrong, public health official.

+1 I've posted several times in this thread and have a kid whose life was set back in multiple ways during the pandemic. We don't need second guessing or "accountability;" all that does is create more division. We should, however, scrutinize decisions, study the effectiveness of various interventions, study and track outcomes, and figure out how we could have done better.

And, what did you do to help them through it?

A huge amount of time, effort, money, compassion, support, and therapy (out-of-network) continuing through the present has gone into supporting my kid, which is why I am passionate about learning from past mistakes so that others don't have to go through what my child did. I have the resources to help, but not everyone does.

However, if, earlier in the pandemic, I had a better understanding of the significant harm that prolonged isolation can cause and just how unhealthy it is for an adolescent to be deprived of in-person interactions and experiences, I would have made different decisions rather than listening to the voices cautioning against activities like outdoor sports, gatherings of any sort, etc. During the pandemic, I did everything I was asked - limited activities, wore masks, didn't travel, encouraged my child to interact with friends online, had him join online enrichment activities, monitored school work, spend time as a family - you name it, we did it. Turns out, that doesn't prepare an already shy and introverted teen to return to in-person activities in a world that pretends as though insolation was normal and blames kids and parents for not meeting developmentally necessary needs (that are impossible to satisfy within the family).

Oof I feel you - and f-u to the PP suggesting it was your fault. I also wish more than anything we could turn the clock back and take steps to ensure our son wasn’t isolated. Seriously, I would have just moved to Florida. The only bright side is that I understand better now how important it is to fight against isolation.

Your child wasn't isolated except if you didn't make an effort socially. You'd rather blame others and covid when it was your responsibility to make sure he gets the socialization he needs as clearly he cannot get what he needs at home.

Oh f off. There’s a place children are supposed to socialize - school. It was closed, remember? I wanted to send my child but the teachers union wouldnt let me. And of course playdates were supposed to be limited. And people (like you maybe) were also whining that pods were inequitable. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/28/896334963/pandemic-pods-raise-concerns-about-equity

So, basically you see no responsibilities for your child in terms of mental health and socialization. Maybe that is why your kids are struggling so much. You can take them to a playground, you can sign them up for activities, you can invite other kids or families over, lots of things you can do.

My kids have been in virtual school for three years now and are ok. We never did a pod. We very much limited social interactions till recently and still don't do much indoors. Kids sometimes develop mental health issues and as a parent you need to change your lifestyle and get them the mental health they need. But, it's far easier to lame others. Teachers had zero say, and it was closed for health and safety reasons. Many people died from covid. Be blessed you did not lose anyone.

This is a parenting issue, not a covid or school issue.

My responsibility is to send my child to school. During covid I was working FT and couldn’t afford a FT nanny. Teachers literally went on strike to keep my kid from returning to school.

Your responsibility was to get your kid socialization if they needed it during DL. You stomped your foot, were lazy and refused to do that. Cool, but don’t come crying about your own failed choices now.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain to me the rigid resistance to reflecting on how covid was managed?

It is infuriating. It stems from a refusal to acknowledge that the pandemic itself and measures to manage it had any negative consequences. There is so much more to examine than just schools. However, when it comes to schools, potential harm was completely downplayed in closure discussions, so any acknowledgment whatsoever of widespread struggles looks bad for all of those, including teachers' union officials and school board members, who said that everything would be fine.

2020: We can address problems closures create, but we can't bring the dead back to life.

2023: Be happy you and your family aren't dead. We can't be bothered to help with your problems (or acknowledge them in any way).

The closures came with a promise that we would all come together to compassionately deal with the fallout. That broken promise, not the restrictions or closures themselves, will continue to cause harm unless it is acknowledged and examined.

The unmasking came with a promise that as an immune-compromised person, I’d be able to mask in public (which doesn’t work as well, but put that aside for a moment) without people venting their spleen about the pandemic and how it was handled at me on the daily. That also happens, though.

Nobody says this to you “on the daily.” You go out of your way to find it written on the internet.

I’m a (different) person who masks indoors in public in 2023 and I get ignorant, nasty, COVID-minimizing comments from at least one person about 50-75% of the time when I go out for any length of time. So no, sorry, it’s not “going out of your way to find it written on the internet.”

I cannot imagine you get that many comments. I have gotten one at a grocery store and that's it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:^^^ And, I’ll add that there are people who don’t want to look back and evaluate the errors that were made.

Why is that? Why would you not want to learn from our mistakes for the next time something like this happens? Our public health officials deserve some scrutiny. Fauci and the rest screwed up royally.

I would love for us to look back and learn real lessons for the future.

But unfortunately, that won't happen, because of angry a-hats like you, who don't *really* want to learn anything, you just want to punish someone. Maybe you think it will make you feel better. Maybe you have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old. I don't really care. Stupid idiots like you won't really want to hear what the lessons are, because if they don't all jibe with your "public officials were all awful people who conspired to destroy my children" narrative, and if no one ends up with their head on the chopping block, you'll ignore the lessons anyway and waste everyone's time with your angry nonsense in your quest for blood.

People are morons. We never learn from things like this and just repeat our mistakes. Like the PPs on this and other threads going on about how you'll never listen to public officials again and how you *know* so much about how things should go. If there is another pandemic in our lifetimes (God, I hope not), you'll put people's lives at risk, because of what you think you "know".

Or the GOP will take any grain of truth from the lessons that they can possibly twist and use it to further dismantle public school systems.

I would love for us to look back earnestly and try to learn real lessons for the future. I would love for us to come together to try and work on ways to help our children going forward. But none of that will happen because people suck.

The big mistakes were not catching it quick enough and doing a real lockdown and making it last much longer so we could have saved more lives. You aren't thinking of or care about the kids who lost parents, grandparents and other loved ones who lost their lives way to early. The kids who are orphaned because of this. The kids who were in the ICU because of severe covid. The kids who have long term health issues because of it or their parents. All you care about is ranting about how your kids, like many were in virtual school and you couldn't handle them being home with you which is so odd given you have to care for them all summer or are they at sleep away camp or relatives?

Our officials failed in in not taking this more seriously early on and how they behaved during it by setting a bad example.

Is this satire?

Yes. This is a coocoo repeat poster who still has her kids in virtual. As recently as 2022 she & people like her were still influencing covid policy.

Also, she blames parents for not "socializing" their kids, yet ranted at anyone who left their house for the first two years of the pandemic. Selfish! And she has younger kids. Her kids are thriving in virtual. Absolutely love it. Only slacker parents have kids who have any desire to leave their house and be out in the world. Outdoor supervised masked playdates for 17-year-olds are the best!

My kids have never had playdates. That's some made up non-sense for parents. We made it work. You are a parent and should have made it work too. Plenty of activities were open. School has been in person for the last two years. Most people have taken no precautions for over two years so continuing to blame covid for the issues is absurd.

Lady, you are nuttier than a fruitcake.

She is correct, and you’re immature and defensive, so all you have is namecalling. It’s very telling about you.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:^^^ And, I’ll add that there are people who don’t want to look back and evaluate the errors that were made.

Why is that? Why would you not want to learn from our mistakes for the next time something like this happens? Our public health officials deserve some scrutiny. Fauci and the rest screwed up royally.

I would love for us to look back and learn real lessons for the future.

But unfortunately, that won't happen, because of angry a-hats like you, who don't *really* want to learn anything, you just want to punish someone. Maybe you think it will make you feel better. Maybe you have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old. I don't really care. Stupid idiots like you won't really want to hear what the lessons are, because if they don't all jibe with your "public officials were all awful people who conspired to destroy my children" narrative, and if no one ends up with their head on the chopping block, you'll ignore the lessons anyway and waste everyone's time with your angry nonsense in your quest for blood.

People are morons. We never learn from things like this and just repeat our mistakes. Like the PPs on this and other threads going on about how you'll never listen to public officials again and how you *know* so much about how things should go. If there is another pandemic in our lifetimes (God, I hope not), you'll put people's lives at risk, because of what you think you "know".

Or the GOP will take any grain of truth from the lessons that they can possibly twist and use it to further dismantle public school systems.

I would love for us to look back earnestly and try to learn real lessons for the future. I would love for us to come together to try and work on ways to help our children going forward. But none of that will happen because people suck.

The big mistakes were not catching it quick enough and doing a real lockdown and making it last much longer so we could have saved more lives. You aren't thinking of or care about the kids who lost parents, grandparents and other loved ones who lost their lives way to early. The kids who are orphaned because of this. The kids who were in the ICU because of severe covid. The kids who have long term health issues because of it or their parents. All you care about is ranting about how your kids, like many were in virtual school and you couldn't handle them being home with you which is so odd given you have to care for them all summer or are they at sleep away camp or relatives?

Our officials failed in in not taking this more seriously early on and how they behaved during it by setting a bad example.

There is no analysis in which “do a real lockdown earlier” would have prevented what has happened (and will keep happening to 1200 people a week—plus a significant number of people getting long COVID and post-COVID diagnoses of other kinds—until we have a sterilizing vaccine, do something real about indoor air quality to prevent it, or both).

This is just nuttiness and does not contribute to a rational evaluation of this interval.

For frame of reference, I wear a mask all of the time indoors, unless there is a medical need not to.

You’re correct, stopping the spread was never possible. It was already in multiple European countries before the first cases were reported in China. Not sure what wearing a mask for the rest of your life has to do with anything.

My point is that even someone who continues to take COVID dead serious—delusionally so according to others in this very thread—can recognize that analysis as off the wall.

Hopefully those who think COVID is now “just a cold for the vaccinated” and yet are still enraged by various social distancing measures (including school closures) that took place at least 2 years ago can step back and take a deep breath about the nutso things said on their side of this as well.

Covid now is just a serious cold for most as it’s finally mutated enough to be less severe and it’s killed off the majority it could, sadly. But, some of us learned from that experience to know basic precautions can go a long way in keeping healthy.

A closer comparison regarding severity would be influenza, which we take some precautions for, but certainly aren't masking or broadly shutting down activities every winter.

Deaths from COVID have not yet declined to match a bad flu year in most of our lifetimes. Let alone the level of death and disability from post-COVID complications.

What public officials say about all of this does matter. The continued excess deaths in this decade will eventually tell on them—history won’t look kindly on them for having led the acceptance of it as “urgently normal.”

Either way most people only care about themselves so all you can do at this point is continue caution and mask.

Why is completely shutting down the economy, isolating children and the elderly, caring about others? It’s not. The fact is, the crazed zero-coviders are the ones making it all about themselves and their extreme anxiety.

Yawn.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The bottom line is that the pandemic proved that teachers are ESSENTIAL to the health and well-being of children. Lack of in person school has had detrimental, potentially life long impacts on kids.

As such, teachers should be in the same category as healthcare workers. Must work. The excuses given for why teachers didn't have to show up could be given to healthcare workers, grocery workers, daycare workers. But they worked. I worked. The entire time.

There is mo excuse. Teachers and schools and IN PERSON learning are vitally important to kids. We must not stop schools, but find a way to keep them open in the next pandemic.

Actually, no not really. Parents are far more important. Kids are still struggling and struggled prior to covid. Test scores are down, behavior is worse, so in person may not be the solution to everything. Parents need to step up and be more involved.

The issue wasn't teachers working. They were working. The issue was bringing large groups of kids in a large school and transmitting a potentially deadly illness to their families and their communities. If you work in health care and don't understand this, you need a new profession. And, you need to suck it up and pay for child care.

Test scores are down and behavior is worse BECAUSE we stopped in person learning.

Bringing kids into schools didn't mean not having precautions. We could have and should have done a to make in person learning happen.

Also, while I did pay for childcare for a 2nd kid in daycare, you seem clueless and like a rich bubble person if you have the audacity to say all people should just "suck it up" and pay for childcare like everyone has the money and privilege to do so. FFS. Don't say that comment to me, go say that to a minimum wage single parent working at a grocery store through the pandemic while watching their kid fall behind because they can't afford a fancy teaching "pod" amd because in person learning was a complete sh*t show.

PS, that isn't to say teachers are babysitters, obviously what they provide is much more than that - which is why they should have been deemed essential workers.

That's not why test scores are down. Test scores are down because of the current teaching styles, lack of homework for reinforcement, lack of textbooks, lack of teaching the basics - like math facts as now they use strategies, and they don't teach things like spelling and grammar. My kids in MS had at best 2 novels a school year. They did work a lot on writing skills but that was about it.

Perhaps if you are financially struggling with two kids, you should have stopped at one or made different lifestyle choices such as your housing, cars and vacations.

Clearly you are pretty comfortable but for those grocery workers MCPS did offer "pods." They were called Equity Hubs. So, while you are ranting, clearly you weren't paying attention.

MCPS put in very few precautions and even if they did the school sizes are so big it would have been impossible to contain a big outbreak.

And, we are far from rich, but we live within our means and make the money we have stretch. You should try it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bottom line is that the pandemic proved that teachers are ESSENTIAL to the health and well-being of children. Lack of in person school has had detrimental, potentially life long impacts on kids.

As such, teachers should be in the same category as healthcare workers. Must work. The excuses given for why teachers didn't have to show up could be given to healthcare workers, grocery workers, daycare workers. But they worked. I worked. The entire time.

There is mo excuse. Teachers and schools and IN PERSON learning are vitally important to kids. We must not stop schools, but find a way to keep them open in the next pandemic.

You can use all the caps you want. Teachers aren’t in the military and this isn’t happening. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I don't really understand what people seek to gain from continuing to harp on this. I'd much rather put time and energy into mental health funding.

Yes, lockdown sucked. Yes, I wanted my kids back in school and I advocated for that. No, I am not going to spend the rest of our lives being upset about decisions that were made during a once in a century pandemic.

If we are lucky, we won't live through anything worse. If we are unlucky, COVID will look like a cakewalk and at least we will understand what a lockdown means.

They are desperate to play the victim and make excuses. It’s laughably dull.

It was never a lockdown. We were asked to stay home and some schools went virtual. However, test scores are down even in schools that stayed open in person so screaming it was covid, when it wasn't for kids who were engaged and participated in learning were ok. It would be nice if school systems now showed how the virtual vs. in-person students compared.

We've been through some pretty bad stuff. Covid was no big deal in comparison except losing one family member.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain to me the rigid resistance to reflecting on how covid was managed?

It is infuriating. It stems from a refusal to acknowledge that the pandemic itself and measures to manage it had any negative consequences. There is so much more to examine than just schools. However, when it comes to schools, potential harm was completely downplayed in closure discussions, so any acknowledgment whatsoever of widespread struggles looks bad for all of those, including teachers' union officials and school board members, who said that everything would be fine.

2020: We can address problems closures create, but we can't bring the dead back to life.

2023: Be happy you and your family aren't dead. We can't be bothered to help with your problems (or acknowledge them in any way).

The closures came with a promise that we would all come together to compassionately deal with the fallout. That broken promise, not the restrictions or closures themselves, will continue to cause harm unless it is acknowledged and examined.

The unmasking came with a promise that as an immune-compromised person, I’d be able to mask in public (which doesn’t work as well, but put that aside for a moment) without people venting their spleen about the pandemic and how it was handled at me on the daily. That also happens, though.

Nobody says this to you “on the daily.” You go out of your way to find it written on the internet.

I’m a (different) person who masks indoors in public in 2023 and I get ignorant, nasty, COVID-minimizing comments from at least one person about 50-75% of the time when I go out for any length of time. So no, sorry, it’s not “going out of your way to find it written on the internet.”

I cannot imagine you get that many comments. I have gotten one at a grocery store and that's it.

You can’t imagine it? Neat. It happens regularly.

I live in the DMV, but have been working away from home on assignment outside the DMW for several months. It happens. Sorry.