Reply to COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure.

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a liberal voter but trying to argue that virtual school wasn't a mistake is ridiculous. And I am a teacher! [/quote]

This. I don't teach but my parents, sister, and SIL are all teachers (in a blue state that isn't on a coast). They all taught virtually in spring 2020 and then went back in person in August 2020 (hybrid in the fall and then full time in person by February when vaccines were available.

They all hate Trump and believe in science, and every one of them think how we handled it in the DMV is insane. My mom still advocates for us to move there because she worries for my youngest who did kindergarten remotely, and worries they'll close the schools again here. They hated teaching virtually and embraced hybrid (which also sucked but at least allowed for social distancing in person), masking, testing, etc., to be able to teach in person. My dad is a HS science teacher with a heart condition, and he would have retired if they stayed virtual any longer because he hated being out of the lab and trying to engage HS kids on Zoom.

DC is a huge outlier on this, but I think many people here don't have enough experience with other places to understand how much.[/quote]

Why does she think they would close schools again? WTF.  I wouldn't want to listen to someone thinking like that, either.[/quote]

Because there could be another pandemic or emergency and she feels that the politicians and districts here showed that they don't prioritize the needs of kids or families in making policy decisions. The fact that bars and restaurants opened well before schools here astonishes her. It was the opposite where they are (Colorado) -- many restaurants stayed take out only for a full year, but they found a way to get schools open part-time in August, and that primed them to switch to full-time once vaccines happened. Part of what happened in DC is that the choice to do ZERO in person in August meant that it got harder and harder to open at all. Momentum was lost and people fought for status quo because it all felt unknown and scary. But if we'd just attempted to do some form of in person earlier, we could have built from there as vaccines came available.

The idea that you think there's no way they'd do the exact same thing again is surprising to me. That's the model we've established and no one in a position of power has acknowledged thatistakes were made. [/quote]

How big are the schools there?  It's far easier to reopen with smaller schools or schools able to social distance.  We would not able to social distance or much else which was the issue.  A small private with 100 kids and tons of space can far more easily do that than a public with 3000 kids.[/quote]

Their schools are as big or bigger! Suburban schools in Denver are just as big as the ones around here. And schools in DCPS are tiny -- many of the elementaries have just a few hundred kids. Some of the charters even less.

I mean, do you hear yourselves? There's always an excuse as to why schools elsewhere reopened much earlier than here, but the are all BS. The DMV is not substantially different from any other large metropolitan area in terms of demographics, school size and resources, etc. In fact, much of the DMV is significantly richer than other places which should have made reopening more likely, not less.

The biggest thing the DMV lacked in terms of getting kids back in school? Will. The places that reopened schools, whether you are talking about Germany or Des Moines or Mexico City, did so because they view school as a fundamental part of a functional society, and knew kids and families would struggle mightily without it. So they found ways to do it, whether it was hybrid schedules, shortened school days, opening windows and having kids where winter coats to class, aggressive quarantine policies, etc. And then when vaccines came they were able to relax some of those restrictions but didn't have to change much else because schools were already open.

In the DMV, we adopted this attitude excuse-making and elaborate explanations for why we're different than other places. It was hubris, this unchangeable belief that we are smarter and more conscientious than all other people. We're not. We just care less about kids and families, I guess.[/quote]

Do you and others like you on this thread really believe that?  Are you so traumatized that you actually believe the motivation was to hurt kids?  Or lack of care about kids?

I am not arguing for keeping kids out of school or that kids shouldn't have gone back earlier than they did; far from it.  But every time I read a post like yours that ends with a statement about hating kids or not caring, I just wonder what the F is wrong with you that this is your takeaway.  That you actually believe that this was the motivation or that people you are arguing with online don't love their kids or don't care about kids.  WTF.  You need to get a grip.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics