7 ms·

I'm not sure what to think of this from the article: > She told me that she didn’t want to get anyone sick or kill anybody. She was worried she would be held r

by RayVR 5y ago

I'm not sure what to think of this from the article: > She told me that she didn’t want to get anyone sick or kill anybody. She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying. > What am I supposed to say? That 23 children have died from Covid in Canada during the whole of the pandemic and she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? That kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands largely haven’t had to wear masks at school and haven’t seen outbreaks because of it? That masks are not a magic shield against the virus, and that even if she were to pass it along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule? > I want to tell her that she can remove her mask, and socialize with her friends without being worried. > But I am expected to enforce the rules. While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher. > At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play at the park or hang out with their friends. Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks. I think what's really missing in most situations is honest conversations about the way the world is right now, the fact that many people are afraid, others are dying and many more will die as a result of this virus. Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering.

bko 5y ago
> While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher. I wouldn't be so sure. I would definitely be worried about being seen as a covid denier or similar. People feel really strongly about this and has strangely turned political, and its best not to discuss politics with your students so that you don't draw the ire of parents that could label you as something you're not > Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering. I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  > relatively care-free existence I don’t know about you but I watched people on television jump to their deaths from the burning twin towers my freshman year of high school.
  - mancerayder 5y ago
    Followed by years of unemployment as the dotcom bubble burst, and wars in the Middle East commenced. But if you hear modern day discourse, you'd think that the 'collective traumas' have never been so great for folks in their early-mid 20's.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > People feel really strongly about this and has strangely turned political How do you think that that happened?
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Part of the problem is that our medical science institutions in the US are 100% controlled by the executive wing of our government. The CDC and FDA currently must operate under the rules and guidelines set by the sitting president. That's completely against science, in my opinion. These two institutions should be decoupled from politics.
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      At least there’s some correction when administrations change. Otherwise, you get two more massive, unaccountable bureaucracies laying down and enforcing their own regulations.
- guyzero 5y ago
  "I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age." Kids read newspapers. They know what's happening. Even high school kids are depressed by things like climate change, income inequality and the broken Canadian real estate market. I don't think encouraging the spread of disease is likely to cheer them up much.
rayiner 5y ago
An “honest conversation” about COVID and children would treat it as a risk on the order of drowning, not something that warrants the terror people have.
- beebmam 5y ago
  There's more to worry about than only Mortality. The Morbidity of COVID-19 is something we'll be dealing with for decades: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164 https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
    While I agree this isn't over, I disagree with your conclusion. We have little idea how early COVID exposure will affect us decades from now, but there's already signs of psychological strain in kids which could prove to be worse. Nobody knows.
  - wisty 5y ago
    Long Covid is quite a worry, especially as it seems to even happen quite a lot to people who appear to have never even caught it - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w
    - timr 5y ago
      Another, equally valid, way of looking at that is that half of the people in that study reporting "long Covid" have no evidence of ever having Covid. > Using SARS-CoV-2 serology and IFN-γ ELISPOT, we found evidence of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in 50% (15/30) of patients See also this large (N=26k) study from France, where the only "long Covid" symptom correlated with confirmed infection was loss of smell. Nearly every other symptom was associated with belief of prior infection, but not infection itself: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
99_00 5y ago
>Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks. They are somewhere in Canada. Regulations and attitudes differ depending on the location and phase of the pandemic. >The City of Ottawa said Tuesday that an Orléans man confronted by a bylaw officer while kicking a soccer ball with his four-year-old autistic son in an empty field was given a warning, but not fined $700. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/orleans-man-stung-with-700-fine-for-letting-his-autistic-son-play-in-empty-field https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/orleans-man-stung-... Seems like parks being closed happened in the US too. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/closing-parks-ineffective-pandemic-theater/609580/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/closing-p... I hope people aren't forgetting what we went through and how the public and officials reacted to it. It would be hard to improve unless we remember what happened.
- guyzero 5y ago
  "overzealous municipal bylaw officer" isn't exactly some sort of mass oppression. I'm pretty sure bylaw officers writing dumb tickets existed before covid.
  - drekipus 5y ago
    > isn't exactly some sort of mass oppression Tell that to BLM
  - 99_00 5y ago
    The point is that kids were barred from parks and fields.
  - doubled112 5y ago
    They closed parks in Ottawa, Canada... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ncc-path-closed-open-covid19-1.5512498 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ncc-path-closed-open-c...
    - guyzero 5y ago
tchock23 5y ago
I was similarly confused with the contradiction of her kids having spent ‘one third of their lives in lockdown’ and mentions of going out to restaurants and seeing friends at their houses. Is that lockdown?
- mlyle 5y ago
  It's all hyperbole, but there's truth behind it. IMO, as a teacher: The kids are alright. For elementary kids, the rules are no big deal. For middle school, where I mostly teach... the rules are OK, but the unpredictability of what they're looking forward to happening (sports, dances, get-togethers, travel) is not great. Two years of indefinite uncertainty about everything good happening, with no end in sight, is crushing to adults, let alone kids with 13 years of experience in life. In high school, it's a source of anxiety for some students. They don't want to bring a dangerous virus home or to their grandparents. Others refuse to comply with restrictions in normal adolescent defiance. Asking for the courtesy of wearing a mask is often a very "OK boomer" moment. All of these things suck. But the students I work with are resilient and are working through it and making the best of it all. I do think we should "call our shot" -- name some endpoints and acceptable levels of risk a priori, rather than making judgments heavily influenced by feelings and sentiments of the moment. This isn't enough to make the restrictions predictable, but they'll be more predictable than they are now-- right now we have to predict both the virus and how most other people will react to it to know what we'll be allowed to do.
  - robhunter 5y ago
    Where are you located?
xg15 5y ago
Slightly OT: > the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) I agreed with many of the arguments in the article when I red it, but checking out the other submissions on that blog, I think there are a lot of suspicious omissions like this. E.g. There is another post [1] about a transwoman and a transman both competing in the women's swimming team. Sounds weird and at first glance seems to confirm all the usual "trans agenda" accusations. Except, the linked original article [2] clears it up: > Henig is eligible to compete on the women’s team as a trans man because he’s chosen not to receive gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, such as testosterone. Any mention of that in the blog? Nope - on the contrary, she doubles down on the confusion and emphasizes it to push the "trans agenda" narrative: > Can you ask any questions about this and whether it makes sense for women’s sports to become a free-for-all for all that leads to a man winning? Do you want to keep your job? Because by the definitions of the movement, Iszac is a male who cannot compete on a women’s team, right? This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd. So in closing, I think the source is heavily biased to push certain outrage-generating narratives and cannot really be taken serious - even though I absolutely empathize with a lot of her observations in the OP article. [1] https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-the-pope-is-with-us https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-the-pope-is-with-us [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-athlete-debate-penns-lia-thomas-loses-trans-yale-swimmer-rcna11622 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-athlete-debat...
mlyle 5y ago
> Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks. Here in Santa Clara County, our public health department demanded that play structures close down during the first lockdown order and many parks closed. It is the one part of the response that I thought was really stupid and lambasted at the time. Afterwards, many parents were still anxious and didn't let their kids out.
- icedchai 5y ago
  Many things we did early on were of dubious value. I used to wear gloves in the grocery store. Totally pointless. I still know people who are anxious about getting takeout, so they microwave / reheat all their food, "just in case" it has covid.
- dpark 5y ago
  That’s not “shaming”. Shutting down playgrounds was a panic reaction and turned it to be useless but no one was “shaming” children. (It also went on for way too long in many places. Playgrounds were still shut down long after many things opened up for adults in many areas, which was incredibly shitty.)
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    There was a study I saw recently that talked about how politically and culturally, some people are negatively motivated by shame (loosely on the right), and some are not (loosely on the left). It's related to an overall value on "Purity" as a moral virtue. I think what happens is that people like the author are very influenced by shame and therefore project the intent to shame on situations when they FEEL shame. If I do something and someone tells me not to, I don't feel "shame", regardless of whether I agree with the direction or not. That's not the case with some people. I believe it's also associated with narcissism. If you are powerfully negatively impacted by shame you will do everything possible not to feel it including intense denial gaslighting and narcissism.
    - 5y ago

by RayVR 5y ago

bko 5y ago

> While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher. I wouldn't be so sure. I would definitely be worried about being seen as a covid denier or similar. People feel really strongly about this and has strangely turned political, and its best not to discuss politics with your students so that you don't draw the ire of parents that could label you as something you're not > Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering. I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age.

kevinventullo 5y ago
> relatively care-free existence I don’t know about you but I watched people on television jump to their deaths from the burning twin towers my freshman year of high school.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  Followed by years of unemployment as the dotcom bubble burst, and wars in the Middle East commenced. But if you hear modern day discourse, you'd think that the 'collective traumas' have never been so great for folks in their early-mid 20's.
mcphage 5y ago
> People feel really strongly about this and has strangely turned political How do you think that that happened?
- beebmam 5y ago
  Part of the problem is that our medical science institutions in the US are 100% controlled by the executive wing of our government. The CDC and FDA currently must operate under the rules and guidelines set by the sitting president. That's completely against science, in my opinion. These two institutions should be decoupled from politics.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    At least there’s some correction when administrations change. Otherwise, you get two more massive, unaccountable bureaucracies laying down and enforcing their own regulations.
guyzero 5y ago
"I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age." Kids read newspapers. They know what's happening. Even high school kids are depressed by things like climate change, income inequality and the broken Canadian real estate market. I don't think encouraging the spread of disease is likely to cheer them up much.

rayiner 5y ago

An “honest conversation” about COVID and children would treat it as a risk on the order of drowning, not something that warrants the terror people have.

beebmam 5y ago
There's more to worry about than only Mortality. The Morbidity of COVID-19 is something we'll be dealing with for decades: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164 https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1484239554517340164
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  While I agree this isn't over, I disagree with your conclusion. We have little idea how early COVID exposure will affect us decades from now, but there's already signs of psychological strain in kids which could prove to be worse. Nobody knows.
- wisty 5y ago
  Long Covid is quite a worry, especially as it seems to even happen quite a lot to people who appear to have never even caught it - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00484-w
  - timr 5y ago
    Another, equally valid, way of looking at that is that half of the people in that study reporting "long Covid" have no evidence of ever having Covid. > Using SARS-CoV-2 serology and IFN-γ ELISPOT, we found evidence of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in 50% (15/30) of patients See also this large (N=26k) study from France, where the only "long Covid" symptom correlated with confirmed infection was loss of smell. Nearly every other symptom was associated with belief of prior infection, but not infection itself: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

99_00 5y ago

>Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks. They are somewhere in Canada. Regulations and attitudes differ depending on the location and phase of the pandemic. >The City of Ottawa said Tuesday that an Orléans man confronted by a bylaw officer while kicking a soccer ball with his four-year-old autistic son in an empty field was given a warning, but not fined $700. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/orleans-man-stung-with-700-fine-for-letting-his-autistic-son-play-in-empty-field https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/orleans-man-stung-... Seems like parks being closed happened in the US too. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/closing-parks-ineffective-pandemic-theater/609580/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/closing-p... I hope people aren't forgetting what we went through and how the public and officials reacted to it. It would be hard to improve unless we remember what happened.

guyzero 5y ago
"overzealous municipal bylaw officer" isn't exactly some sort of mass oppression. I'm pretty sure bylaw officers writing dumb tickets existed before covid.
- drekipus 5y ago
  > isn't exactly some sort of mass oppression Tell that to BLM
- 99_00 5y ago
  The point is that kids were barred from parks and fields.
- doubled112 5y ago
  They closed parks in Ottawa, Canada... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ncc-path-closed-open-covid19-1.5512498 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ncc-path-closed-open-c...
  - guyzero 5y ago

tchock23 5y ago

I was similarly confused with the contradiction of her kids having spent ‘one third of their lives in lockdown’ and mentions of going out to restaurants and seeing friends at their houses. Is that lockdown?

mlyle 5y ago
It's all hyperbole, but there's truth behind it. IMO, as a teacher: The kids are alright. For elementary kids, the rules are no big deal. For middle school, where I mostly teach... the rules are OK, but the unpredictability of what they're looking forward to happening (sports, dances, get-togethers, travel) is not great. Two years of indefinite uncertainty about everything good happening, with no end in sight, is crushing to adults, let alone kids with 13 years of experience in life. In high school, it's a source of anxiety for some students. They don't want to bring a dangerous virus home or to their grandparents. Others refuse to comply with restrictions in normal adolescent defiance. Asking for the courtesy of wearing a mask is often a very "OK boomer" moment. All of these things suck. But the students I work with are resilient and are working through it and making the best of it all. I do think we should "call our shot" -- name some endpoints and acceptable levels of risk a priori, rather than making judgments heavily influenced by feelings and sentiments of the moment. This isn't enough to make the restrictions predictable, but they'll be more predictable than they are now-- right now we have to predict both the virus and how most other people will react to it to know what we'll be allowed to do.
- robhunter 5y ago
  Where are you located?

xg15 5y ago

Slightly OT: > the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) I agreed with many of the arguments in the article when I red it, but checking out the other submissions on that blog, I think there are a lot of suspicious omissions like this. E.g. There is another post [1] about a transwoman and a transman both competing in the women's swimming team. Sounds weird and at first glance seems to confirm all the usual "trans agenda" accusations. Except, the linked original article [2] clears it up: > Henig is eligible to compete on the women’s team as a trans man because he’s chosen not to receive gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, such as testosterone. Any mention of that in the blog? Nope - on the contrary, she doubles down on the confusion and emphasizes it to push the "trans agenda" narrative: > Can you ask any questions about this and whether it makes sense for women’s sports to become a free-for-all for all that leads to a man winning? Do you want to keep your job? Because by the definitions of the movement, Iszac is a male who cannot compete on a women’s team, right? This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd. So in closing, I think the source is heavily biased to push certain outrage-generating narratives and cannot really be taken serious - even though I absolutely empathize with a lot of her observations in the OP article. [1] https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-the-pope-is-with-us https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-the-pope-is-with-us [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-athlete-debate-penns-lia-thomas-loses-trans-yale-swimmer-rcna11622 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-athlete-debat...

mlyle 5y ago

> Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks. Here in Santa Clara County, our public health department demanded that play structures close down during the first lockdown order and many parks closed. It is the one part of the response that I thought was really stupid and lambasted at the time. Afterwards, many parents were still anxious and didn't let their kids out.

icedchai 5y ago
Many things we did early on were of dubious value. I used to wear gloves in the grocery store. Totally pointless. I still know people who are anxious about getting takeout, so they microwave / reheat all their food, "just in case" it has covid.
dpark 5y ago
That’s not “shaming”. Shutting down playgrounds was a panic reaction and turned it to be useless but no one was “shaming” children. (It also went on for way too long in many places. Playgrounds were still shut down long after many things opened up for adults in many areas, which was incredibly shitty.)
- deanCommie 5y ago
  There was a study I saw recently that talked about how politically and culturally, some people are negatively motivated by shame (loosely on the right), and some are not (loosely on the left). It's related to an overall value on "Purity" as a moral virtue. I think what happens is that people like the author are very influenced by shame and therefore project the intent to shame on situations when they FEEL shame. If I do something and someone tells me not to, I don't feel "shame", regardless of whether I agree with the direction or not. That's not the case with some people. I believe it's also associated with narcissism. If you are powerfully negatively impacted by shame you will do everything possible not to feel it including intense denial gaslighting and narcissism.
  - 5y ago