The Urgency of Normal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

And yet the studies cited above suggest they have no measurable positive impact and may have negative impacts on education.

Look, I know that we liberals are supposed to poop on anyone that suggests that masking could stop, but we should really stop if the evidence isn’t on our side. If we are the party of evidence, science, experts, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Kids do lots of things their parents do, it’s normal to do that, even if parents are abusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

And yet the studies cited above suggest they have no measurable positive impact and may have negative impacts on education.

Look, I know that we liberals are supposed to poop on anyone that suggests that masking could stop, but we should really stop if the evidence isn’t on our side. If we are the party of evidence, science, experts, etc.

Covid panic is over.

People are just pretending, as they walk with a mask to their table on a restaurant and then laugh and talk for an hour close to four or five friends. Just going along even as they attend parties and chat maskless with coworkers if the office snitch isn’t nearby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Selfish, self absorbed and stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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!

While I agree with all of this and consider myself a progressive Democrat, sadly the party's take on childcare and schools in COVID did not come as a surprise to me. For many years that party has been losing touch with working and middle class voters. Many of its pandemic policies treated public health bureacrats as gods and have total disregard for the realities of the kitchen table issues facing working families. The pandemic policies including around childcare and schools have been a lot easier on UMC people with Zoom jobs. When I discuss these issues with other supposedly liberal friends their response is often that the US should have universal income and childcare. Yeah that would be great but that's not the reality today and we have deal with today's problems. It's just a punt to absolve of responsibility for the pain the policies have and continue to cause.

[Anonymous]

Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but some other pretty reputable scientists have torn apart this #urgencyofnormal toolkit, even pointing out what seem like either purposeful or negligent misstatements of studies/facts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

For a compilation of the issues:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMCarpiano/status/1486307145112961026

Re equity:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Lakshmi_RKG/status/1486195421156368388

One more from someone who hasn’t really been of them doom and gloom side:

https://mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1486319939837259778?cxt=HHwWhMCjyYiHvKApAAAA

She suggests this toolkit should be ignored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but some other pretty reputable scientists have torn apart this #urgencyofnormal toolkit, even pointing out what seem like either purposeful or negligent misstatements of studies/facts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

For a compilation of the issues:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMCarpiano/status/1486307145112961026

Re equity:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Lakshmi_RKG/status/1486195421156368388

One more from someone who hasn’t really been of them doom and gloom side:

https://mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1486319939837259778?cxt=HHwWhMCjyYiHvKApAAAA

She suggests this toolkit should be ignored.

Idk. I just read all those threads, and they seem about as well sourced as the toolkit. Not that I believe the toolkit blindly, but the criticism is not as rock solid as you imply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ugh "off ramping" why are these loons so transparent.

Lol are you that person from the other thread who thinks commonly-used phrases are all anti-vax dog whistles?

It’s stupid, meaningless corporate-speak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1,000

[Anonymous]

Really? In 4 minutes you read all of them including the embedded tweets on the studies, like the Racine one?

They are a lot more solid than McBride, et. al.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but some other pretty reputable scientists have torn apart this #urgencyofnormal toolkit, even pointing out what seem like either purposeful or negligent misstatements of studies/facts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

For a compilation of the issues:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMCarpiano/status/1486307145112961026

Re equity:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Lakshmi_RKG/status/1486195421156368388

One more from someone who hasn’t really been of them doom and gloom side:

https://mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1486319939837259778?cxt=HHwWhMCjyYiHvKApAAAA

She suggests this toolkit should be ignored.

Tyler Black is also an attention-seeking, hyperbolic twitter persona with some sort of agenda (I don't know what, but he seems to need to put things like "hospital associations" in scare quotes), so probably shouldn't be casting around aspersions of attention-seeking.
And let's look at the critique that he is blasting as an "outright lie." The UoN slide said 2400 suicides, and was corrected to 2200 suicides. Obviously, a sign of a conspiracy and not a typo (which, notably was corrected).

Also he wants to review slides on twitter -- dude just WRITE IN A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL. He does all of this, instead, on twitter, so it just seems like he's not serious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but some other pretty reputable scientists have torn apart this #urgencyofnormal toolkit, even pointing out what seem like either purposeful or negligent misstatements of studies/facts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

For a compilation of the issues:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMCarpiano/status/1486307145112961026

Re equity:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Lakshmi_RKG/status/1486195421156368388

One more from someone who hasn’t really been of them doom and gloom side:

https://mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1486319939837259778?cxt=HHwWhMCjyYiHvKApAAAA

She suggests this toolkit should be ignored.

Tyler Black is also an attention-seeking, hyperbolic twitter persona with some sort of agenda (I don't know what, but he seems to need to put things like "hospital associations" in scare quotes), so probably shouldn't be casting around aspersions of attention-seeking.
And let's look at the critique that he is blasting as an "outright lie." The UoN slide said 2400 suicides, and was corrected to 2200 suicides. Obviously, a sign of a conspiracy and not a typo (which, notably was corrected).

Also he wants to review slides on twitter -- dude just WRITE IN A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL. He does all of this, instead, on twitter, so it just seems like he's not serious.

Yes to say a lack of increase in suicides in Canada debunks mental health concerns from the pandemic is not very honest to say the least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to rain on everyone’s parade here, but some other pretty reputable scientists have torn apart this #urgencyofnormal toolkit, even pointing out what seem like either purposeful or negligent misstatements of studies/facts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

For a compilation of the issues:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMCarpiano/status/1486307145112961026

Re equity:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Lakshmi_RKG/status/1486195421156368388

One more from someone who hasn’t really been of them doom and gloom side:

https://mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1486319939837259778?cxt=HHwWhMCjyYiHvKApAAAA

She suggests this toolkit should be ignored.

Tyler Black is also an attention-seeking, hyperbolic twitter persona with some sort of agenda (I don't know what, but he seems to need to put things like "hospital associations" in scare quotes), so probably shouldn't be casting around aspersions of attention-seeking.
And let's look at the critique that he is blasting as an "outright lie." The UoN slide said 2400 suicides, and was corrected to 2200 suicides. Obviously, a sign of a conspiracy and not a typo (which, notably was corrected).

Also he wants to review slides on twitter -- dude just WRITE IN A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL. He does all of this, instead, on twitter, so it just seems like he's not serious.

Yes to say a lack of increase in suicides in Canada debunks mental health concerns from the pandemic is not very honest to say the least.

DP, but he recently published an article using hospital visits as a proxy for mental health concerns, so it's hard to take him seriously. That's like saying incidence of breast cancer declined and using number of concerning mammogram findings as your sole outcome measure. We KNOW that people reduced healthcare visits for all kinds of things, regardless of their actual health.

The second person (Carpiano) also uses oddly hyperbolic and unprofessional language. Bizarre, for a tenured professor. The equity-related post isn't wrong, but the problem is that there are also health disparities in the negative consequences of no school. The fourth person (Rasmussen) also resorts to ad hominem attacks.

These twitter links mostly can be summed up as "when insecure academics attack," which is not uncommon, if embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Also, didn't Tyler Black have some twitter thread recently where he was arguing that CANADIAN suicides went down during lockdown, and therefore there was no mental health crises among children? I get that he's a "suicidologist" so maybe he can ONLY see things through the lens of completed suicides, but he ignores the findings of suicide ATTEMPTS (that may or may not have led to hospital intervention). As well as allllllll of the other literature on mental health impacts that aren't related to suicide.

[Anonymous]

And to respond to the poster above who suggests that panic language is no longer happening, the responses to that toolkit on twitter include people saying it is a "suicide pact", that the authors "want children to be sick," calling it a "death kit", etc