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https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ I'm terribly sorry for what happened to you. It shouldn't have happened. After the first few months the

by JPKab 5y ago

https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ I'm terribly sorry for what happened to you. It shouldn't have happened. After the first few months the data was very clear that schools were safe to open. They absolutely shouldn't be closed right now. You are a victim of cowardly bureaucrats and powerful and wealthy elderly people who desperately want to cling to more years of their lives despite already being at the end. They don't care at all if they rob you of your future. They tell themselves little lies like "kids are resilient" to make themselves feel better. They were wrong to tell people they couldn't go to playgrounds and ignore the early science that showed that the virus didn't spread outdoors. They've never apologized for that mistake. When you see people walking around outside wearing masks, know that they have bought into a foolish lie completely removed from any form of science. Your teachers were all too happy to have the schools closed despite being in age groups where they were also not majorly at risk especially after being vaccinated. I live in Colorado, and we are now at a point in this state where omicron is the dominant strain. Everyone here is catching it and waking up to the fact that it's a cold and very little more. Your schools are being shut for no reason other than cowardice. Don't be afraid to call it what it is. You are surrounded by cowards. Cowards are always quick to call the brave foolish and reckless. It's how they make themselves feel better. Look around you and learn. You are witnessing a reality that I was naive to for far too long: Most people would rather do what is popular than what is right. Education is not inoculation to groupthink. Rather, it often is paired with brainwashing and a propensity to outsource critical thinking to central authority figures. If you add up all of the deaths from this virus under the age of 40, they make up less than 1% of the total. Your education was sacrificed to protect a population of people that are no longer working or paying taxes. In Japan when the nuclear accident at Fukushima happened, older plant workers stepped up to walk into the radiation to spare younger generations. In our society we did the opposite. I hope you have a good home life because that would make you one of the more fortunate victims of these foolish lockdowns. I grew up in an abusive home in the rural southern United States. There were weeks where I begged for Monday morning to come as soon as possible so I could escape. School was a refuge for me. And and there are many many children with far worse homes than I had who were forced to be shut into them with abusive parents who were put into an even worse mood then they were typically in before the pandemic. The statistics on child abuse show this as well. Like the fools in my nation who rushed us into the Iraq war on false pretenses, the people who are wrong now will never admit it. As the years go by and it becomes more clear that this was utter foolishness, many will pretend that they were opposed to the lockdowns and these other ridiculous policies. They will be lying. I have two children of my own. My wife works as a kindergarten teacher. The children she is seeing in her classroom now are incredibly stunted. Every day she comes home with new stories about how bad it is. They have been locked in their houses for 2 years, given iPads as babysitters by lazy or tired or emotionally exhausted parents. It's an utter horror what the cowards have done to our children. I know this comment will be downloaded to oblivion by the cowards. They are the majority of the people on this website. They're the majority in tech now. Most will never start companies. They just follow the path laid out for them, study algorithm interview books, and go get a desk at Google working on a widget in a product that nobody cares about it or will ever see. They all owe you an apology but they will never apologize or admit they were wrong. On behalf of them I am sorry. Many of us tried to stop them but we were censored, we were ridiculed, we were mocked, we were fired. There were many who would raise questions about the lockdowns in private, but in public they would go along with the crowd like the cowards they were. Never be one of those. They are the worst of us. The fact that you're on this website is a good sign so I'm sure you're going to be alright. But you're at a good age to recognize how foolish many of the adults around you are. I was in that place when I was your age.

seoulbran 5y ago
Could not agree more... strong post. Moved from Chicago to Texas in 2020 and have been grateful for in-person schooling from the onset of the move. Watching my son's 60 year old 1st grade teacher stumble through hours of zoom was what did it for me. Sadly, fear porn still has concerned parents forcing their kids to mask up, outdoors - even in Texas. My heart breaks for them.
- JPKab 5y ago
  Having been to various parts of Texas in the summertime on numerous occasions, I can't imagine what it's like to have to wear a mask outdoors as a child. Glad you made the move and it sounds like you're enjoying it. Are you in the Austin area?
  - seoulbran 5y ago
    It's humid. It can't be comfortable in a mask while outdoors. Will be interesting to see the science on the impact of not being able to communicate with facial expression for a chunk of your developmental years. Maybe it will be nothing, but probably not Yes, I'm in Austin. Love it. Knew I'd love it. Was just a matter of time before we got here. Yes, there's a broad political spectrum with people here, but by and large, people are kind and friendly. Glad I bought a house 1.5 years ago. Can't see things slowing down any time soon. Thinking about a move?
    - JPKab 5y ago
      Funny enough in 2014 I almost moved to Austin. I had an offer from a local startup. Thankfully I picked up some bad vibes in the interviews and said no. A couple of months later it turned out that the company had been fraudulently winning contracts from the state with shady connections. I would have been unemployed 3 months after moving there. My wife and I have talked about moving to Texas but we wouldn't be very close to Austin. We would probably get a big piece of land in a decidedly less hip part of the state. I love the Hill Country, and if you haven't had a chance you should go check out San Antonio. The Riverwalk is a tourist trap that's fun for kids, but the restaurants in other parts of San Antonio phenomenal. Tejano culture/food is amazing. I really like New Braunfels too. Colorado as a state is a pretty great place. Our governor has been very good in the pandemic and in my opinion has probably been one of the best Democratic governors. He has a pretty strong background in business and from the very beginning of the pandemic was engaging routinely with business leaders including executives at the company I was working at then. He has that perfect mix of classic liberal values with a dash of libertarianism. Unfortunately the county we live in has gone a little off the rails when it comes to public health. Although I am an atheist, my wife works at a Christian school and my kids get a big tuition discount, so I enrolled both of them in that school. The academics at the school are top-notch and it's pretty cool that my son's calculus and computer science teacher graduated from MIT a few years ago. The public high school doesn't compare. The fact that it was barely open last year is a whole separate issue. One of the first things I noticed is that the county health department has routinely harassed this school. They never have set foot on the public schools that my kids were at previously. I know some of the principals and confirmed that they have never had a single inspection from the county health department. I have a strong suspicion but obviously can't prove, that the current county health director doesn't like Christians. I suspect that she has a lot of emotional scars since she is a lesbian and likely spent decades wanting to get married and having people who claim to represent Christianity preventing her from doing so. I don't fault her for that, but I do fault her for allowing her emotional feelings to clearly create a bias that influences her very much targeted and selective enforcement. Another aspect of her that I really dislike is the fact that she is a PhD in sports injuries, but acts as if this education is remotely related to viral epidemiology. She really doesn't appear to know what she's talking about and has aggressively complained in some leaked emails about the governor not "being strict enough because of his libertarian streak". She requires that student athletes wear masks while playing sports. This is insanity to me. The idea that cloth masks are effective pretty much became out of date once Delta hit. With omicron it's just absurd. We are talking about measles level transmissibility and it's been known for decades that cloth masks aren't effective for that kind of virus. The county requires that all of the athletes be vaccinated as well, so the mask requirement on top of that is a bit hard to swallow. None of this foolishness is going to age well. My subjective opinion after reading the leaked emails is that she has definitely allowed the power to go to her head. The language she uses is very aggressive and indicates a big us versus them mentality when it comes to religious schools. These kinds of local government officials have increasingly made Texas look good to us. Have you traveled recently? It's a bit of a shock to go from a place where people are relatively unpanicked and show up on the west coast and realize that people are grossly overestimating their risk and acting out from that. They don't seem to be aware of how normal life is in most of the country. They have this picture of Florida as being a place where body bags are being piled up outside of hospitals. It must be painful for the minority of those folks who stop and look at the data and realize that most of the sacrifices they have made in their lives have been for nothing. Florida is spiking in new cases like many states, but the number per 100,000 is less than New York's is. That really must bother people in NY.

by JPKab 5y ago

seoulbran 5y ago

Could not agree more... strong post. Moved from Chicago to Texas in 2020 and have been grateful for in-person schooling from the onset of the move. Watching my son's 60 year old 1st grade teacher stumble through hours of zoom was what did it for me. Sadly, fear porn still has concerned parents forcing their kids to mask up, outdoors - even in Texas. My heart breaks for them.

JPKab 5y ago
Having been to various parts of Texas in the summertime on numerous occasions, I can't imagine what it's like to have to wear a mask outdoors as a child. Glad you made the move and it sounds like you're enjoying it. Are you in the Austin area?
- seoulbran 5y ago
  It's humid. It can't be comfortable in a mask while outdoors. Will be interesting to see the science on the impact of not being able to communicate with facial expression for a chunk of your developmental years. Maybe it will be nothing, but probably not Yes, I'm in Austin. Love it. Knew I'd love it. Was just a matter of time before we got here. Yes, there's a broad political spectrum with people here, but by and large, people are kind and friendly. Glad I bought a house 1.5 years ago. Can't see things slowing down any time soon. Thinking about a move?
  - JPKab 5y ago
    Funny enough in 2014 I almost moved to Austin. I had an offer from a local startup. Thankfully I picked up some bad vibes in the interviews and said no. A couple of months later it turned out that the company had been fraudulently winning contracts from the state with shady connections. I would have been unemployed 3 months after moving there. My wife and I have talked about moving to Texas but we wouldn't be very close to Austin. We would probably get a big piece of land in a decidedly less hip part of the state. I love the Hill Country, and if you haven't had a chance you should go check out San Antonio. The Riverwalk is a tourist trap that's fun for kids, but the restaurants in other parts of San Antonio phenomenal. Tejano culture/food is amazing. I really like New Braunfels too. Colorado as a state is a pretty great place. Our governor has been very good in the pandemic and in my opinion has probably been one of the best Democratic governors. He has a pretty strong background in business and from the very beginning of the pandemic was engaging routinely with business leaders including executives at the company I was working at then. He has that perfect mix of classic liberal values with a dash of libertarianism. Unfortunately the county we live in has gone a little off the rails when it comes to public health. Although I am an atheist, my wife works at a Christian school and my kids get a big tuition discount, so I enrolled both of them in that school. The academics at the school are top-notch and it's pretty cool that my son's calculus and computer science teacher graduated from MIT a few years ago. The public high school doesn't compare. The fact that it was barely open last year is a whole separate issue. One of the first things I noticed is that the county health department has routinely harassed this school. They never have set foot on the public schools that my kids were at previously. I know some of the principals and confirmed that they have never had a single inspection from the county health department. I have a strong suspicion but obviously can't prove, that the current county health director doesn't like Christians. I suspect that she has a lot of emotional scars since she is a lesbian and likely spent decades wanting to get married and having people who claim to represent Christianity preventing her from doing so. I don't fault her for that, but I do fault her for allowing her emotional feelings to clearly create a bias that influences her very much targeted and selective enforcement. Another aspect of her that I really dislike is the fact that she is a PhD in sports injuries, but acts as if this education is remotely related to viral epidemiology. She really doesn't appear to know what she's talking about and has aggressively complained in some leaked emails about the governor not "being strict enough because of his libertarian streak". She requires that student athletes wear masks while playing sports. This is insanity to me. The idea that cloth masks are effective pretty much became out of date once Delta hit. With omicron it's just absurd. We are talking about measles level transmissibility and it's been known for decades that cloth masks aren't effective for that kind of virus. The county requires that all of the athletes be vaccinated as well, so the mask requirement on top of that is a bit hard to swallow. None of this foolishness is going to age well. My subjective opinion after reading the leaked emails is that she has definitely allowed the power to go to her head. The language she uses is very aggressive and indicates a big us versus them mentality when it comes to religious schools. These kinds of local government officials have increasingly made Texas look good to us. Have you traveled recently? It's a bit of a shock to go from a place where people are relatively unpanicked and show up on the west coast and realize that people are grossly overestimating their risk and acting out from that. They don't seem to be aware of how normal life is in most of the country. They have this picture of Florida as being a place where body bags are being piled up outside of hospitals. It must be painful for the minority of those folks who stop and look at the data and realize that most of the sacrifices they have made in their lives have been for nothing. Florida is spiking in new cases like many states, but the number per 100,000 is less than New York's is. That really must bother people in NY.