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The entire pandemic felt like screaming in an empty room sometimes. My wife is a teacher in a low-SES area, and my sister-in-law is a psychologist dealing spec

The entire pandemic felt like screaming in an empty room sometimes. My wife is a teacher in a low-SES area, and my sister-in-law is a psychologist dealing specifically with at-risk youth. From the start they could see first-hand the detrimental impact lockdown had on the poorest and most vulnerable. For many of these kids, school is a sanctuary from a dysfunctional and/or abusive home life. They don't have quiet places to study, let alone the means (laptop, internet). Just a little example here, based on a close friend's upbringing. A young teen can't sleep because her degenerate father is blasting music from 11PM to 3AM. Fortunately, her grandparents live up the road, and their house has become a bit of a safe-haven. So she runs down there, and gets a good night sleep. When things are tough at home, she knows she can always stay there a few nights. In lockdown world, that option is totally removed. The father, now out of work, is verbally abusive and blasts music all night. How do you think she's going to fare with "remote learning"? 2 years cut off from their peers, stuck in toxic environments, these kids have come back terribly damaged. My wife says she has never seen so many fights at school. My sister-in-law says they are so short-staffed right now they're having to turf kids because they're not "at-risk" enough. Of course, politicians kept assuring us this was not the case, that there was no data showing any negative impact. Of course there was no data yet - it was still being collated! But talk to any person on the frontline and they could tell you. But I suppose politicians' kids go to pretty nice schools, with supportive family environments and the means to support remote learning (laptops, fast internet, a quiet place to study). A more disconnected, clueless lot, I have never seen.

alar44 5y ago
Ok, well my sister is a doctor and she got to watch bodies get shoveled out of her hospital for 2 years. Who wins? Did I do it right? Do I win?
- tastysandwich 5y ago
  That's a little fatuous, and it does disappoint me a bit how we devolve to this immediately. I guess we're all a bit on high-alert when it comes to politics? It's not really an either/or. I don't advocate for zero measures. More like, there's a range of different measures we could have taken, with varying of positive vs negative side-effects. We should of course take measures that have lots of positive side effects, and relatively few negative side effects. Things like contact tracing, and the vaccines of course. Masking early on was a good idea when we didn't know much. However it's a little silly to deny that there's some measures taken that didn't have so many clear positive benefits, but definitely had negative ones. For example, in my state they closed all the playgrounds & skate parks, even though there was no evidence of transmission there. For some kids, blowing off a little bit of steam by riding their bike at the local skate park is a huge deal, and not at all trivial. Similarly, my sister-in-law had to conduct all her appointments remotely. She's dealing with traumatised kids that struggle to maintain eye contact, let alone human connection. That face-to-face time is really crucial for establishing rapport with these kids. Not to mention the fact that many just didn't bother dialling in. These aren't kids presenting with anxiety btw. These are kids with some of the worst trauma imaginable.

alar44 5y ago

Ok, well my sister is a doctor and she got to watch bodies get shoveled out of her hospital for 2 years. Who wins? Did I do it right? Do I win?

tastysandwich 5y ago
That's a little fatuous, and it does disappoint me a bit how we devolve to this immediately. I guess we're all a bit on high-alert when it comes to politics? It's not really an either/or. I don't advocate for zero measures. More like, there's a range of different measures we could have taken, with varying of positive vs negative side-effects. We should of course take measures that have lots of positive side effects, and relatively few negative side effects. Things like contact tracing, and the vaccines of course. Masking early on was a good idea when we didn't know much. However it's a little silly to deny that there's some measures taken that didn't have so many clear positive benefits, but definitely had negative ones. For example, in my state they closed all the playgrounds & skate parks, even though there was no evidence of transmission there. For some kids, blowing off a little bit of steam by riding their bike at the local skate park is a huge deal, and not at all trivial. Similarly, my sister-in-law had to conduct all her appointments remotely. She's dealing with traumatised kids that struggle to maintain eye contact, let alone human connection. That face-to-face time is really crucial for establishing rapport with these kids. Not to mention the fact that many just didn't bother dialling in. These aren't kids presenting with anxiety btw. These are kids with some of the worst trauma imaginable.