The Urgency of Normal

[Anonymous]

Very true -- the extreme positions have been driving the discussion here and that's unfortunate. It shouldn't be a choice between being an antix-vaxxing Covid isn't real Trumper or masking and SD forever. Most people are somewhere in the middle. Some of the most extreme "cautious" people have been trying to shut down any discussion on how some of these measures (while necessary at some point) have been harmful to children -- I don't want to hear any more about how "school isn't childcare" or "it's just a piece of cloth" or "you are such snowflakes, other generations went to war and you whine about staying home". We have been diligent about complying with all restrictions and getting shots, but at some point we need to find a way out of this and this denial that there is harm is not helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

The problem is simple. In March 2020 Trump and Republicans (wrongly) downplayed the pandemic and so Democrats took the opposite position. Unfortunately, now that the situation has changed--we have more data about the low risk among children, vaccines, etc.--the most far left (including many of our leaders in the DMV) continues to dig in their heels as expression of political affiliation. We have weak leaders. We cannot fear being shamed for asking reasonable questions about whether certain mitigation strategies are doing more harm than good given what we now know. It is unfortunate that pandemic policies have become political weapons. The lunacy of it frustrates me to no end and I'm not sure how we break free of it. Just because some extremists were anti-mask in 2020 does not mean we should be shamed into having mask optional policies. People are stuck in their ways.

DP, and I don't think it's as simple as you claim. I completely agree with the PP above you about the deep misogyny on the left. I admit to being truly shocked by how misogynist so many of my "feminist" friends are. I'm also a lifelong Democrat, and realizing how many other "liberals" truly despise working mothers continues to be painful. I mean, I know those on the right thought we were garbage, but I didn't know how many on the "left" agree with them. That's not an easy problem to solve, in part because so many of these people see liberalism as their identity, and aren't willing to confront the inconsistencies between said liberal identity and the policies they support ("school is not daycare!").

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

Why is this terrible? The truth always comes out in the end, and in this case, so-called "red states" are on the side of truth. Is that so hard for you to bear?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

The problem is simple. In March 2020 Trump and Republicans (wrongly) downplayed the pandemic and so Democrats took the opposite position. Unfortunately, now that the situation has changed--we have more data about the low risk among children, vaccines, etc.--the most far left (including many of our leaders in the DMV) continues to dig in their heels as expression of political affiliation. We have weak leaders. We cannot fear being shamed for asking reasonable questions about whether certain mitigation strategies are doing more harm than good given what we now know. It is unfortunate that pandemic policies have become political weapons. The lunacy of it frustrates me to no end and I'm not sure how we break free of it. Just because some extremists were anti-mask in 2020 does not mean we should be shamed into having mask optional policies. People are stuck in their ways.

DP, and I don't think it's as simple as you claim. I completely agree with the PP above you about the deep misogyny on the left. I admit to being truly shocked by how misogynist so many of my "feminist" friends are. I'm also a lifelong Democrat, and realizing how many other "liberals" truly despise working mothers continues to be painful. I mean, I know those on the right thought we were garbage, but I didn't know how many on the "left" agree with them. That's not an easy problem to solve, in part because so many of these people see liberalism as their identity, and aren't willing to confront the inconsistencies between said liberal identity and the policies they support ("school is not daycare!").

+1

The realization that the left is as virulently misogynist as I traditionally have considered the right is painful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

Why is this terrible? The truth always comes out in the end, and in this case, so-called "red states" are on the side of truth. Is that so hard for you to bear?

PP here. Sorry, that was badly phrased. What I meant was that it was terrible that so many blue state kids have been irrevocably and deeply harmed by blue state pandemic education policies. I didn't mean that it was terrible that the truth is coming out. I think that's a good thing. But I wasn't very clear in my wording.

[Anonymous]

It is a relief to read these comments from people who are progressive, pro-science, pro-vaccine. It's a relief to not feel like I'm the only one who feels this way or like I can't talk about this in public for fear of being branded anti-teacher, anti-vac, anti-science.

I think reading these comments is galvanizing me to be more vocal about what I think should be a more reasonable approach. I do feel like I've been walking on eggshells for months because for a long time I wanted to be respectful of people who I do think had reasonable fears and concerns earlier in the pandemic -- teachers, immunocompromised people, even people who I don't have a higher exposure or mortality risk but simply were very anxious. I have had empathy throughout the pandemic and still do, and recognize that my position is privileged in many ways (and not in others, it must be said -- we cannot afford in home childcare, full stop, and we have to work).

But it's time to be forward looking, and it's definitely time to account for the basic childcare, mental health, and academic needs of working families and their kids. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want anyone to die. But it seems clear to me that we could do practical things like minimize quarantines, change the tenor of discussion about Covid in schools, and even dropping masks when cases are low, without jeopardizing anyone's life. I certainly don't see why we should maintain a mask mandate that relies on ineffectual cloth masks and masking very young children, even though neither of those things is likely to do anything but make some people feel better.

Basically, if a situation doesn't call for K95s, it probably shouldn't call for masks at all. And while I'm all for masking through this Omicron surge, we absolutely should be looking to remove the mandate when cases are lower, and look at other stressful precautions as well and consider if they are worth the impact on kids (overzealous asymptomatic testing, quarantines, etc.). It is time to synthesize what we know about Covid and Covid precautions with everything we ALREADY know about children, development, mental health, etc. It's not either or. We have to do both. There's no reason we can't -- I'd argue many other countries without the political divide over Covid we have in the US have been doing it the entire pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a relief to read these comments from people who are progressive, pro-science, pro-vaccine. It's a relief to not feel like I'm the only one who feels this way or like I can't talk about this in public for fear of being branded anti-teacher, anti-vac, anti-science.

I think reading these comments is galvanizing me to be more vocal about what I think should be a more reasonable approach. I do feel like I've been walking on eggshells for months because for a long time I wanted to be respectful of people who I do think had reasonable fears and concerns earlier in the pandemic -- teachers, immunocompromised people, even people who I don't have a higher exposure or mortality risk but simply were very anxious. I have had empathy throughout the pandemic and still do, and recognize that my position is privileged in many ways (and not in others, it must be said -- we cannot afford in home childcare, full stop, and we have to work).

But it's time to be forward looking, and it's definitely time to account for the basic childcare, mental health, and academic needs of working families and their kids. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want anyone to die. But it seems clear to me that we could do practical things like minimize quarantines, change the tenor of discussion about Covid in schools, and even dropping masks when cases are low, without jeopardizing anyone's life. I certainly don't see why we should maintain a mask mandate that relies on ineffectual cloth masks and masking very young children, even though neither of those things is likely to do anything but make some people feel better.

Basically, if a situation doesn't call for K95s, it probably shouldn't call for masks at all. And while I'm all for masking through this Omicron surge, we absolutely should be looking to remove the mandate when cases are lower, and look at other stressful precautions as well and consider if they are worth the impact on kids (overzealous asymptomatic testing, quarantines, etc.). It is time to synthesize what we know about Covid and Covid precautions with everything we ALREADY know about children, development, mental health, etc. It's not either or. We have to do both. There's no reason we can't -- I'd argue many other countries without the political divide over Covid we have in the US have been doing it the entire pandemic.

+1 well said

[Anonymous]

I am no fan of Chait (the author) but I thought this was reasonable:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/progressives-must-reckon-with-the-school-closing-catastrophe.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

The problem is simple. In March 2020 Trump and Republicans (wrongly) downplayed the pandemic and so Democrats took the opposite position. Unfortunately, now that the situation has changed--we have more data about the low risk among children, vaccines, etc.--the most far left (including many of our leaders in the DMV) continues to dig in their heels as expression of political affiliation. We have weak leaders. We cannot fear being shamed for asking reasonable questions about whether certain mitigation strategies are doing more harm than good given what we now know. It is unfortunate that pandemic policies have become political weapons. The lunacy of it frustrates me to no end and I'm not sure how we break free of it. Just because some extremists were anti-mask in 2020 does not mean we should be shamed into having mask optional policies. People are stuck in their ways.

DP, and I don't think it's as simple as you claim. I completely agree with the PP above you about the deep misogyny on the left. I admit to being truly shocked by how misogynist so many of my "feminist" friends are. I'm also a lifelong Democrat, and realizing how many other "liberals" truly despise working mothers continues to be painful. I mean, I know those on the right thought we were garbage, but I didn't know how many on the "left" agree with them. That's not an easy problem to solve, in part because so many of these people see liberalism as their identity, and aren't willing to confront the inconsistencies between said liberal identity and the policies they support ("school is not daycare!").

+1

The realization that the left is as virulently misogynist as I traditionally have considered the right is painful.

+2, though I'm not hugely surprised. What has amazed me is how quickly people on the left decided to paint middle class working mothers as the enemy in this debate. I think 10-20 years from now people will recognize there is little difference between how many on the left talk about moms who "hate their kids" and "just want free childcare" and the "welfare queen" rhetoric of the 1980s and 90s. It's the same BS -- using mothers (specifically mothers, not just women, not just parents) as examples of selfishness and greed in order to paint your proposed policies as reasonable. But just as Reagan conservatives (and later, infuriatingly, Clinton dems) wanted to use welfare queens to deny basic social services to most Americans, today's liberals want to use working moms as a scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong with their Covid policy. And yes, to drive women out of the workforce and strip even the existing family social supports away.

I swear, if this whole thing ends with public education no longer being a guaranteed right, I am doing to try to emigrate back to my ancestral homeland. I'm not raising my daughter in a country where if she gets pregnant, she'll have conservatives denying her access to abortions, pre and post natal care, and parental leave, and the liberals denying her access to public schools. What the hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a relief to read these comments from people who are progressive, pro-science, pro-vaccine. It's a relief to not feel like I'm the only one who feels this way or like I can't talk about this in public for fear of being branded anti-teacher, anti-vac, anti-science.

I think reading these comments is galvanizing me to be more vocal about what I think should be a more reasonable approach. I do feel like I've been walking on eggshells for months because for a long time I wanted to be respectful of people who I do think had reasonable fears and concerns earlier in the pandemic -- teachers, immunocompromised people, even people who I don't have a higher exposure or mortality risk but simply were very anxious. I have had empathy throughout the pandemic and still do, and recognize that my position is privileged in many ways (and not in others, it must be said -- we cannot afford in home childcare, full stop, and we have to work).

But it's time to be forward looking, and it's definitely time to account for the basic childcare, mental health, and academic needs of working families and their kids. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want anyone to die. But it seems clear to me that we could do practical things like minimize quarantines, change the tenor of discussion about Covid in schools, and even dropping masks when cases are low, without jeopardizing anyone's life. I certainly don't see why we should maintain a mask mandate that relies on ineffectual cloth masks and masking very young children, even though neither of those things is likely to do anything but make some people feel better.

Basically, if a situation doesn't call for K95s, it probably shouldn't call for masks at all. And while I'm all for masking through this Omicron surge, we absolutely should be looking to remove the mandate when cases are lower, and look at other stressful precautions as well and consider if they are worth the impact on kids (overzealous asymptomatic testing, quarantines, etc.). It is time to synthesize what we know about Covid and Covid precautions with everything we ALREADY know about children, development, mental health, etc. It's not either or. We have to do both. There's no reason we can't -- I'd argue many other countries without the political divide over Covid we have in the US have been doing it the entire pandemic.

+1 well said

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the things I most appreciated about this document is the idea that we need to think critically about how both Covid precautions and, importantly, the way we implement them, impacts kids mental health and ability to learn and function.

So much of the conversation around Covid precautions in schools is divisive, angry, reactionary. This is so stressful for kids. And yes, I am aware there are conservative jerks who drive a lot of this. But I live in a very blue area where there is basically no resistance among school families to things like masking and testing. People get frustrated with the way certain things are implemented, but there is no meaningful opposition to Covid precautions.

Rather, where I live, most of the combative, disruptive behavior is coming from people on the left (I'm on the left! I really disagree with how these people are handling things). And their behavior is really harmful to kids. It's really awful to be telling kids "If you get Covid, you die." When it's not even true! Kids and vaccinated + boosted adults have lower or equal risk from Covid than the flu or, in some cases, car accidents and other threats to safety. Think how damaging it is for kids to communicate this message to them. We should instead be emphasizing the effectiveness of vaccines, showing them how great it is that our society came together to develop these vaccines so quickly. Talk about how kids are at lower risk of Covid so they don't have be stressed or live in fear of the virus, and how that's such a relief to adults to know that kids are less vulnerable to this virus.

I just think a lot of people have become so addicted to doom, and are constantly fighting an imaginary war with Trump or anti-maskers or anti-vaxers


(whether they are in your community or not, which, they are not in my community) that they have lost sight of how their behavior is negatively impacting kids. It's like parents who have become so caught up in the conflict with one another during a contentious divorce that they are fighting over custody without every recognizing that the best possible thing they could do for their kids is chill the heck out.

So true.

DP and yup. I agree entirely. I live in a very blue part of deep blue MoCo, and I'm still not sure why so many of my educated, self-described progressive neighbors think that "school isn't daycare" is a progressive position. These are people who wear KN95s outside, all the time, and glare at anyone who doesn't, so their contact with the reality of COVID-related risk is tenuous. It's very harmful to kids to see both the anger AND the disconnect from science and evidence.

What I have learned from the pandemic is that the progressive left is deeply misogynist. The position of the left on childcare and education in this pandemic was appalling.

History is going to show that children did better in red states in the pandemic, and that is terrible. And I'm a lifelong Democrat.

The problem is simple. In March 2020 Trump and Republicans (wrongly) downplayed the pandemic and so Democrats took the opposite position. Unfortunately, now that the situation has changed--we have more data about the low risk among children, vaccines, etc.--the most far left (including many of our leaders in the DMV) continues to dig in their heels as expression of political affiliation. We have weak leaders. We cannot fear being shamed for asking reasonable questions about whether certain mitigation strategies are doing more harm than good given what we now know. It is unfortunate that pandemic policies have become political weapons. The lunacy of it frustrates me to no end and I'm not sure how we break free of it. Just because some extremists were anti-mask in 2020 does not mean we should be shamed into having mask optional policies. People are stuck in their ways.

DP, and I don't think it's as simple as you claim. I completely agree with the PP above you about the deep misogyny on the left. I admit to being truly shocked by how misogynist so many of my "feminist" friends are. I'm also a lifelong Democrat, and realizing how many other "liberals" truly despise working mothers continues to be painful. I mean, I know those on the right thought we were garbage, but I didn't know how many on the "left" agree with them. That's not an easy problem to solve, in part because so many of these people see liberalism as their identity, and aren't willing to confront the inconsistencies between said liberal identity and the policies they support ("school is not daycare!").

+1

The realization that the left is as virulently misogynist as I traditionally have considered the right is painful.

+2, though I'm not hugely surprised. What has amazed me is how quickly people on the left decided to paint middle class working mothers as the enemy in this debate. I think 10-20 years from now people will recognize there is little difference between how many on the left talk about moms who "hate their kids" and "just want free childcare" and the "welfare queen" rhetoric of the 1980s and 90s. It's the same BS -- using mothers (specifically mothers, not just women, not just parents) as examples of selfishness and greed in order to paint your proposed policies as reasonable. But just as Reagan conservatives (and later, infuriatingly, Clinton dems) wanted to use welfare queens to deny basic social services to most Americans, today's liberals want to use working moms as a scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong with their Covid policy. And yes, to drive women out of the workforce and strip even the existing family social supports away.

I swear, if this whole thing ends with public education no longer being a guaranteed right, I am doing to try to emigrate back to my ancestral homeland. I'm not raising my daughter in a country where if she gets pregnant, she'll have conservatives denying her access to abortions, pre and post natal care, and parental leave, and the liberals denying her access to public schools. What the hell.

Yeah, I applied for my kids' birthright citizenship in another country after watching Democrats gleefully trash public education. I already didn't trust the right, but now I don't trust the left as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a relief to read these comments from people who are progressive, pro-science, pro-vaccine. It's a relief to not feel like I'm the only one who feels this way or like I can't talk about this in public for fear of being branded anti-teacher, anti-vac, anti-science.

I think reading these comments is galvanizing me to be more vocal about what I think should be a more reasonable approach. I do feel like I've been walking on eggshells for months because for a long time I wanted to be respectful of people who I do think had reasonable fears and concerns earlier in the pandemic -- teachers, immunocompromised people, even people who I don't have a higher exposure or mortality risk but simply were very anxious. I have had empathy throughout the pandemic and still do, and recognize that my position is privileged in many ways (and not in others, it must be said -- we cannot afford in home childcare, full stop, and we have to work).

But it's time to be forward looking, and it's definitely time to account for the basic childcare, mental health, and academic needs of working families and their kids. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want anyone to die. But it seems clear to me that we could do practical things like minimize quarantines, change the tenor of discussion about Covid in schools, and even dropping masks when cases are low, without jeopardizing anyone's life. I certainly don't see why we should maintain a mask mandate that relies on ineffectual cloth masks and masking very young children, even though neither of those things is likely to do anything but make some people feel better.

Basically, if a situation doesn't call for K95s, it probably shouldn't call for masks at all. And while I'm all for masking through this Omicron surge, we absolutely should be looking to remove the mandate when cases are lower, and look at other stressful precautions as well and consider if they are worth the impact on kids (overzealous asymptomatic testing, quarantines, etc.). It is time to synthesize what we know about Covid and Covid precautions with everything we ALREADY know about children, development, mental health, etc. It's not either or. We have to do both. There's no reason we can't -- I'd argue many other countries without the political divide over Covid we have in the US have been doing it the entire pandemic.

+1 well said

+2

+3

Solidarity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a relief to read these comments from people who are progressive, pro-science, pro-vaccine. It's a relief to not feel like I'm the only one who feels this way or like I can't talk about this in public for fear of being branded anti-teacher, anti-vac, anti-science.

I think reading these comments is galvanizing me to be more vocal about what I think should be a more reasonable approach. I do feel like I've been walking on eggshells for months because for a long time I wanted to be respectful of people who I do think had reasonable fears and concerns earlier in the pandemic -- teachers, immunocompromised people, even people who I don't have a higher exposure or mortality risk but simply were very anxious. I have had empathy throughout the pandemic and still do, and recognize that my position is privileged in many ways (and not in others, it must be said -- we cannot afford in home childcare, full stop, and we have to work).

But it's time to be forward looking, and it's definitely time to account for the basic childcare, mental health, and academic needs of working families and their kids. I don't want to make anyone sick and I don't want anyone to die. But it seems clear to me that we could do practical things like minimize quarantines, change the tenor of discussion about Covid in schools, and even dropping masks when cases are low, without jeopardizing anyone's life. I certainly don't see why we should maintain a mask mandate that relies on ineffectual cloth masks and masking very young children, even though neither of those things is likely to do anything but make some people feel better.

Basically, if a situation doesn't call for K95s, it probably shouldn't call for masks at all. And while I'm all for masking through this Omicron surge, we absolutely should be looking to remove the mandate when cases are lower, and look at other stressful precautions as well and consider if they are worth the impact on kids (overzealous asymptomatic testing, quarantines, etc.). It is time to synthesize what we know about Covid and Covid precautions with everything we ALREADY know about children, development, mental health, etc. It's not either or. We have to do both. There's no reason we can't -- I'd argue many other countries without the political divide over Covid we have in the US have been doing it the entire pandemic.

+1 well said

+2

+3

Solidarity.

+4 smart!

[Anonymous]

Masks aren't really that much of a burden. Bit of an inconvenience. The way people complain about them though. Yikes. My sister likes to hold forth on "tyranny" and "bigotry" against the "unmasked."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Masks aren't really that much of a burden. Bit of an inconvenience. The way people complain about them though. Yikes. My sister likes to hold forth on "tyranny" and "bigotry" against the "unmasked."

I know, right!?! It is a mask. No big deal. Kids wear them easily and without complaint unless they see their parents acting like toddlers about it.