Reply to The Urgency of Normal

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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.[/quote]

+1 well said[/quote]

+2[/quote]
+3

Solidarity.[/quote]

+4 smart![/quote]

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.[/quote]

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