Is this emoji the laugh of insanity? |
| Can’t wait till 3/1 when the city drops its mask mandate. DC schools will follow I think when the under 5 group gets approval for the vaccine which will hopefully be in a few months. |
I do wish this were true but given they haven’t dropped mask mandates for middle and high schools I just don’t see this happening. It’s more likely that some staff and students just start being defiant and stop wearing masks all the time. |
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NYC is dropping *outdoor* mask mandates: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nyc-schools-drop-outdoor-mask-mandate-with-cdc-poised-to-ease-fed-guidelines/3571856/
Hopefully DCPS follow; we need to start somewhere. |
| Does anyone else think that if this situation in Ukraine continues to escalate and be the focus of the news, the mask debate will pretty much go away? My DC said that yesterday, a large group of kids were in a senior lounge watching the news on CNN. DC looked around and at one point realized that none of the kids were wearing masks, even after eating lunch. They were having a serious discussion about the situation and no one even noticed. |
This would make me happy both because I would love for my kid to be able to run around a playground with her friends without a mask, and because it would be a step towards finally recognizing that w can of course have different rules for different settings based on risk. One reason this debate frustrates me, as others have noted, is that there is an all-or-nothing quality to the debate that doesn't reflect what we know about Covid. I think there was a time when people believed we needed to have "consistent" rules about masking because kids wouldn't be able to understand or adjust to different rules. But anyone with a kid has learned that actually kids adjust pretty easily, and when in doubt they just keep their mask on, and that works too. I do not think at this point that it would be hard to implement rules that required masks indoors but not outdoors, or that required masks during surges but not the rest of the time. I don't think we'd run into much resistance from kids doing this, and I also think allowing them to go mask-free when it's not really required would help them acclimate to this "new normal" a bit where we have a new public health concern that we need to be responsive to and will be living with for some time. Masks-all-the-time is not really a sustainable approach for long term and contributes to this sense that we are still mid-crisis. We aren't. We continue to deal with a hard thing but we have lots of practice and far more tools than we once did, and we should be able to incorporate it into our daily lives without having to completely shape our lives around the issue. So yes, letting kids take masks off on the playground (and parents and teachers take masks off during outdoor drop off and pick up) would be a step in that direction that I think would benefit everyone in the long run. The virus really does not spread in outdoor settings other than very tightly packed large events (soccer games, festivals) and I think most kids realize that by now. It about time we started being more honest with them about all this and trusting them to handle it. |
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Letter to Bowser from Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The letter request her response no later than March 3.
https://www.scribd.com/document/561100814/Letter-to-Bowser#download&from_embed |
I cannot believe I am thankful for House Republicans. |
+ 1000 They detail most of what has been discussed on this thread. Waiting for her response! |
It's really a shame that Democrats have left it to Republicans to be the advocates of children. I have never understood this during this whole pandemic. You'd think it would be the Left who would uphold the rights of children, who are indisputably one of the most vulnerable groups of the population. You know, in the way the social democracies of northern Europe have done. But no, they have put the elderly first, a primarily Republican constituency. It just doesn't make any political sense, not to mention the ethics of it are all screwed up. |
LOL that they "put the elderly first." Did you not follow former NY Governor Cuomo's behavior with regard to people in nursing homes in NY? Democrats protected the teachers' unions first; their donations got Biden elected (and many other Dems). They are one of the most powerful special interest groups in the nation and outspend many of the special interest groups the left loves to hate ("AFT is the 17th most generous funder of outside groups. Both teachers unions rank ahead of one of their top bogeymen, the Koch Brothers") https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-how-much-nea-and-aft-are-spending-on-the-2020-campaign-and-where-they-are-spending-it/ Several studies show that the areas where schools remained closed the longest were the places where teachers unions were the strongest, and demanded it. Democrats put their special interest groups first, not the elderly, and certainly not children. They should pay the price at the polls for that, and anyone who care about children should actively fight teachers unions. |
I...I....agree with them? And this is well-written and not hysterical? Christ. Well, hopefully Hogan runs for President. |