The long term cost of lock downs

[Anonymous]

Happy New Year, First Reading readers! We're afraid the leading Canadian political story for the first week of 2022 is a fresh wave of new COVID-19 lockdowns ...



The most notable Canadian lockdown of the Omicron wave is Quebec's reintroduction of a curfew. Starting on New Year's Eve, anyone found outside their home after 10 p.m. without a reasonable explanation faces fines of up to $6,000.

Quebec also appears to be set to shut off government liquor stores to the unvaccinated. Under a proposed policy, anyone without a vaccine card will be barred entry to locations of Société des Alcools du Québec – the Quebec equivalent of B.C. Liquor Stores or Ontario's LCBO.

On Tuesday, Ontario announced that it is once again closing indoor dining, and closing schools for at least the next two weeks. This is in addition to blanket closures on theatres and gyms.



While prior Canadian lockdowns were relatively uncontroversial measures opposed mostly by the anti-vaxxer fringe, these latest ones are spawning some pretty mainstream public anger ...



All three Quebec opposition parties have opposed the province's most recent curfew. The policy has also attracted an open letter signed by public health experts deeming it "a punishment on individuals to mask the negligence and systemic inaction in managing the pandemic."

Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business recently told The Evan Solomon Show that Ontario's new lockdowns would lead to the "financial ruin of thousands and thousands of people." "At this point, I'm more afraid of the government than Omicron," Johnny Bonney, a restaurant manager in Ottawa's ByWard Market, told CTV.

Ontario's decision to close schools, in particular, has attracted criticism by everyone from parent's groups to teachers unions to social justice organizations to public health experts. "It is almost impossible to enumerate the harms associated with closing schools, and many will only be discovered years from now in economic and social harms that will take generations to recover," infectious diseases physician Jennifer Grant wrote in an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/first-reading-mild-variant-meet-draconian-lockdown">https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ ... n-lockdown">https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/first-reading-mild-variant-meet-draconian-lockdown



As gyms, bars, resaurants, movie theatres, casinos and schools close again, that people are finally reaching their tolerance limits. I too fear the government more than COVID.

[Frood]

Not much... less than if nothing was done at all from the start...

There were things that could have been done that would not have cost a fortune, destroyed global supply chains, and crushed civil liberties. Isolating vulnerable groups instead of the healthy would have been a good start.

So it seems it was intentional to me.



Right from the start, JIT shipping collapsed because of panic buying. It is still collapsing 2 years later because of short term covid tested lay-offs and permanent firings because of the 5-45% of people who said "go fuck yourself"...which filtered down to the oil and gas industry then back up in EVERY industry.



I spent 10 years working for a TPS provider.



This was nuts from the start of 2020. All the 2pl and 3pl providers are fucked, but supermarkets and DC's urge calm again now in 2022.



The trucking association (union) here reckons that upwards of 50% of workers are either in quarantine or could be in quarantine in the next days. Coles Supermarket has reinstituted a two pack limit on beef mince, sausages, and other cheap cuts/blends. Brisbane supermarkets are getting photos uploaded of empty produce shelves.



People are rushing out to buy RAT'S from retail desks and there is a similar parallel to the toilet paper squeeze in that.



Last week I went up to the main counter which sells cigarettes and phone cards, only to witness a very chubby man pleading to the cashier to sell him 20 RAT test boxes. She explained that she could only sell two to each customer, but she rang up three.... at a cost of 90 bucks, because I was watching the screen.



The panic here is stupid....yet the number of people not wearing masks is crazy too... but they're in work digs, so they got the 1st and 2nd jabs....and somehow show defiance by not wearing mask.



We, our family, never got a single jab but we mostly wear a mask at our local supermarkets so they don't get in the shit for not posting people on the doors to check us in.



We have never downloaded a single check in app and make up crazy names and 1 800 numbers if we have to write in a ledger. If we don't need something bad enough, we say no thanks and walk out.... and if it's a bitchy millennial demanding it, I usually instruct them to go fuck themselves with their soy based genitals then walk out.

[Anonymous]

Despite what Joe Biden says, it will take at least another year for global supply chains to return to something resembling what they were before. With silicone chips it will take longer than that. And sorry Mr President, but inflation is not transitory.

[Frood]

It's probably not going to return to pre-covid levels in our forseeable future.



They'll do it for the big ticket items and car components in SE Asia, but the days of getting 40 cent cans of tomatoes or baked beans from Asia, or even pickles from Asia Minor is coming to a quick end.



JIT, TPS, and Min/Max through WPS like SAP or the lessers don't work well unless economies and seas are free.



The future is regionally sourced shit and foreign luxury goods if you can afford them.



A lot of people are going to curse the fact that their mothers or grandmothers never showed them how to can vegetables, meats, or fish.... or that they never showed an interest in it when it was happening.

[Anonymous]

One benefit of school closures is that the Dems are worried voters will punish them for it.

[Anonymous]

This was a letter that appeared in the Atlantic. It was written by a Democrat who opposes her party's unscientific support for school closures.



Why I Soured on the Democrats

COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.



I kept hoping that someone in our all-Democratic political leadership would take a stand on behalf of Cleveland's 37,000 public-school children or seem to care about what was happening. Weren't Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids? Instead, our veteran Democratic mayor avoided remarking on the crisis facing the city's public-school families. Our all-Democratic city council was similarly disengaged. The same thing was happening in other blue cities and blue states across the country, as the needs of children were simply swept aside. Cleveland went so far as to close playgrounds for an entire year. That felt almost mean-spirited, given the research suggesting the negligible risk of outdoor transmission—an additional slap in the face.



Things got worse for us in December 2020, when my whole family contracted COVID-19. The coronavirus was no big deal for my 3- and 5-year-olds, but I was left with lingering long-COVID symptoms, which made the daily remote-schooling nightmare even more grueling. I say this not to hold myself up for pity. I understand that other people had a far worse 2020. I'm just trying to explain why my worldview has shifted and why I'm not the same person I was.



By the spring semester, the data showed quite clearly that schools were not big coronavirus spreaders and that, conversely, the costs of closures to children, both academically and emotionally, were very high. The American Academy of Pediatrics first urged a return to school in June 2020. In February 2021, when The New York Times surveyed 175 pediatric-disease experts, 86 percent recommended in-person school even if no one had been vaccinated.



But when the Cleveland schools finally reopened, in March 2021—under pressure from Republican Governor Mike DeWine—they chose a hybrid model that meant my son could enter the building only two days a week.



My husband and I had had enough: With about two months left in the academic year, we found a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction. It was difficult to give up on our public school. We were invested. But our trust was broken.



Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own "team." Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that "take the virus seriously," which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn't care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of "they're just mad they're missing yoga and brunch."



Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as "fucking white parents" in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.



Obviously, Republicans have been guilty of politicizing the pandemic with horrible consequences, fomenting mistrust in vaccines that will result in untold numbers of unnecessary deaths. I'm not excusing that.



But I've been disappointed by how often the Democratic response has exacerbated that mistrust by, for example, exaggerating the risks of COVID-19 to children. A low point for me was when Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe inflated child COVID-hospitalization numbers on the campaign trail. It was almost Trumplike. (If I lived in Virginia, I admit I probably would have had to sit out the recent gubernatorial election, in which the Republican candidate beat McAuliffe.)



Less extreme, but perhaps just as harmful to social cohesion, was the widespread refusal among rank-and-file Democrats to seriously wrestle with the costs of pandemic-mitigation efforts. Beyond the infuriating nonresponse to school closures—"kids are resilient"—the discussion regarding masks has also been oblivious at times. Research shows that good masks worn correctly can slow the spread of the coronavirus, but it's silly to suggest that they have no drawbacks. They are uncomfortable and a barrier to communication—and that's just for adults.



Because masks took on symbolic importance, however, simply attempting to add nuance to the debate—cloth masks versus KN95s, masking adults versus masking toddlers—was treated like vaccine skepticism: beyond the pale.



Generally speaking, the left-leaning rhetorical response to the pandemic seems out of line with stated Democratic values. Even when my kids returned to school, for example, I had no option for paid sick leave to care for them when they got sick. Why did I hear so little about that immense social problem and so much shaming of the women who dared to complain about having their kids stuck at home? All in all, the party that supposedly focused on "systemic" issues was obsessed with demanding personal sacrifice. And the burden fell most heavily on mothers of young children, essential workers, and low-income children. (Conversely, they fell lightly on one very vocal, core Democratic constituency: college-educated office workers.)



Many liberals and institutional leaders thought that no one could fault them for being too cautious, especially when it came to children. But I can, and I do. The University of Oxford medical ethicist Euzebiusz Jamrozik said recently on a podcast that ethical public-health responses must rely on a few key principles. One of those is "proportionality," meaning that the intervention must be proportionate to the risk. A Bloomberg article noted in March that children in the U.S. were about 10 times as likely to be killed in a car crash as by COVID-19. Closing school for more than a year was disproportionate the same way that forbidding parents to drive would have been.



Jamrozik also said that reciprocity and equity and fairness are supposed to guide public-health strategies. Policy makers must identify not just the benefits and harms of particular strategies, but also the distribution of those benefits and harms.



Read: COVID parenting is reaching a breaking point



None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I've lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve. How can I get excited about universal pre-K proposals, for example, when K–12 is in shambles?



I keep hoping that Democrats will wake up to the full range of health and social needs Americans are trying to balance right now, but that doesn't seem likely. A friend now refers to herself as "politically homeless," and more and more, that's how I feel as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/

[Frood]

This was a letter that appeared in the Atlantic. It was written by a Democrat who opposes her party's unscientific support for school closures.



Why I Soured on the Democrats

COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.



I kept hoping that someone in our all-Democratic political leadership would take a stand on behalf of Cleveland's 37,000 public-school children or seem to care about what was happening. Weren't Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids? Instead, our veteran Democratic mayor avoided remarking on the crisis facing the city's public-school families. Our all-Democratic city council was similarly disengaged. The same thing was happening in other blue cities and blue states across the country, as the needs of children were simply swept aside. Cleveland went so far as to close playgrounds for an entire year. That felt almost mean-spirited, given the research suggesting the negligible risk of outdoor transmission—an additional slap in the face.



Things got worse for us in December 2020, when my whole family contracted COVID-19. The coronavirus was no big deal for my 3- and 5-year-olds, but I was left with lingering long-COVID symptoms, which made the daily remote-schooling nightmare even more grueling. I say this not to hold myself up for pity. I understand that other people had a far worse 2020. I'm just trying to explain why my worldview has shifted and why I'm not the same person I was.



By the spring semester, the data showed quite clearly that schools were not big coronavirus spreaders and that, conversely, the costs of closures to children, both academically and emotionally, were very high. The American Academy of Pediatrics first urged a return to school in June 2020. In February 2021, when The New York Times surveyed 175 pediatric-disease experts, 86 percent recommended in-person school even if no one had been vaccinated.



But when the Cleveland schools finally reopened, in March 2021—under pressure from Republican Governor Mike DeWine—they chose a hybrid model that meant my son could enter the building only two days a week.



My husband and I had had enough: With about two months left in the academic year, we found a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction. It was difficult to give up on our public school. We were invested. But our trust was broken.



Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own "team." Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that "take the virus seriously," which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn't care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of "they're just mad they're missing yoga and brunch."



Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as "fucking white parents" in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.



Obviously, Republicans have been guilty of politicizing the pandemic with horrible consequences, fomenting mistrust in vaccines that will result in untold numbers of unnecessary deaths. I'm not excusing that.



But I've been disappointed by how often the Democratic response has exacerbated that mistrust by, for example, exaggerating the risks of COVID-19 to children. A low point for me was when Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe inflated child COVID-hospitalization numbers on the campaign trail. It was almost Trumplike. (If I lived in Virginia, I admit I probably would have had to sit out the recent gubernatorial election, in which the Republican candidate beat McAuliffe.)



Read: The CDC's flawed case for wearing masks in school



Less extreme, but perhaps just as harmful to social cohesion, was the widespread refusal among rank-and-file Democrats to seriously wrestle with the costs of pandemic-mitigation efforts. Beyond the infuriating nonresponse to school closures—"kids are resilient"—the discussion regarding masks has also been oblivious at times. Research shows that good masks worn correctly can slow the spread of the coronavirus, but it's silly to suggest that they have no drawbacks. They are uncomfortable and a barrier to communication—and that's just for adults.



Because masks took on symbolic importance, however, simply attempting to add nuance to the debate—cloth masks versus KN95s, masking adults versus masking toddlers—was treated like vaccine skepticism: beyond the pale.



Generally speaking, the left-leaning rhetorical response to the pandemic seems out of line with stated Democratic values. Even when my kids returned to school, for example, I had no option for paid sick leave to care for them when they got sick. Why did I hear so little about that immense social problem and so much shaming of the women who dared to complain about having their kids stuck at home? All in all, the party that supposedly focused on "systemic" issues was obsessed with demanding personal sacrifice. And the burden fell most heavily on mothers of young children, essential workers, and low-income children. (Conversely, they fell lightly on one very vocal, core Democratic constituency: college-educated office workers.)



Many liberals and institutional leaders thought that no one could fault them for being too cautious, especially when it came to children. But I can, and I do. The University of Oxford medical ethicist Euzebiusz Jamrozik said recently on a podcast that ethical public-health responses must rely on a few key principles. One of those is "proportionality," meaning that the intervention must be proportionate to the risk. A Bloomberg article noted in March that children in the U.S. were about 10 times as likely to be killed in a car crash as by COVID-19. Closing school for more than a year was disproportionate the same way that forbidding parents to drive would have been.



Jamrozik also said that reciprocity and equity and fairness are supposed to guide public-health strategies. Policy makers must identify not just the benefits and harms of particular strategies, but also the distribution of those benefits and harms.



Read: COVID parenting is reaching a breaking point



None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I've lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve. How can I get excited about universal pre-K proposals, for example, when K–12 is in shambles?



I keep hoping that Democrats will wake up to the full range of health and social needs Americans are trying to balance right now, but that doesn't seem likely. A friend now refers to herself as "politically homeless," and more and more, that's how I feel as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/

So in a nutshell... she's angry at the party actions enough to speak out about, but she's not ever changing parties...





Ok, die Karen...

[Anonymous]

This was a letter that appeared in the Atlantic. It was written by a Democrat who opposes her party's unscientific support for school closures.



Why I Soured on the Democrats

COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.



I kept hoping that someone in our all-Democratic political leadership would take a stand on behalf of Cleveland's 37,000 public-school children or seem to care about what was happening. Weren't Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids? Instead, our veteran Democratic mayor avoided remarking on the crisis facing the city's public-school families. Our all-Democratic city council was similarly disengaged. The same thing was happening in other blue cities and blue states across the country, as the needs of children were simply swept aside. Cleveland went so far as to close playgrounds for an entire year. That felt almost mean-spirited, given the research suggesting the negligible risk of outdoor transmission—an additional slap in the face.



Things got worse for us in December 2020, when my whole family contracted COVID-19. The coronavirus was no big deal for my 3- and 5-year-olds, but I was left with lingering long-COVID symptoms, which made the daily remote-schooling nightmare even more grueling. I say this not to hold myself up for pity. I understand that other people had a far worse 2020. I'm just trying to explain why my worldview has shifted and why I'm not the same person I was.



By the spring semester, the data showed quite clearly that schools were not big coronavirus spreaders and that, conversely, the costs of closures to children, both academically and emotionally, were very high. The American Academy of Pediatrics first urged a return to school in June 2020. In February 2021, when The New York Times surveyed 175 pediatric-disease experts, 86 percent recommended in-person school even if no one had been vaccinated.



But when the Cleveland schools finally reopened, in March 2021—under pressure from Republican Governor Mike DeWine—they chose a hybrid model that meant my son could enter the building only two days a week.



My husband and I had had enough: With about two months left in the academic year, we found a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction. It was difficult to give up on our public school. We were invested. But our trust was broken.



Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own "team." Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that "take the virus seriously," which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn't care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of "they're just mad they're missing yoga and brunch."



Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as "fucking white parents" in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.



Obviously, Republicans have been guilty of politicizing the pandemic with horrible consequences, fomenting mistrust in vaccines that will result in untold numbers of unnecessary deaths. I'm not excusing that.



But I've been disappointed by how often the Democratic response has exacerbated that mistrust by, for example, exaggerating the risks of COVID-19 to children. A low point for me was when Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe inflated child COVID-hospitalization numbers on the campaign trail. It was almost Trumplike. (If I lived in Virginia, I admit I probably would have had to sit out the recent gubernatorial election, in which the Republican candidate beat McAuliffe.)



Read: The CDC's flawed case for wearing masks in school



Less extreme, but perhaps just as harmful to social cohesion, was the widespread refusal among rank-and-file Democrats to seriously wrestle with the costs of pandemic-mitigation efforts. Beyond the infuriating nonresponse to school closures—"kids are resilient"—the discussion regarding masks has also been oblivious at times. Research shows that good masks worn correctly can slow the spread of the coronavirus, but it's silly to suggest that they have no drawbacks. They are uncomfortable and a barrier to communication—and that's just for adults.



Because masks took on symbolic importance, however, simply attempting to add nuance to the debate—cloth masks versus KN95s, masking adults versus masking toddlers—was treated like vaccine skepticism: beyond the pale.



Generally speaking, the left-leaning rhetorical response to the pandemic seems out of line with stated Democratic values. Even when my kids returned to school, for example, I had no option for paid sick leave to care for them when they got sick. Why did I hear so little about that immense social problem and so much shaming of the women who dared to complain about having their kids stuck at home? All in all, the party that supposedly focused on "systemic" issues was obsessed with demanding personal sacrifice. And the burden fell most heavily on mothers of young children, essential workers, and low-income children. (Conversely, they fell lightly on one very vocal, core Democratic constituency: college-educated office workers.)



Many liberals and institutional leaders thought that no one could fault them for being too cautious, especially when it came to children. But I can, and I do. The University of Oxford medical ethicist Euzebiusz Jamrozik said recently on a podcast that ethical public-health responses must rely on a few key principles. One of those is "proportionality," meaning that the intervention must be proportionate to the risk. A Bloomberg article noted in March that children in the U.S. were about 10 times as likely to be killed in a car crash as by COVID-19. Closing school for more than a year was disproportionate the same way that forbidding parents to drive would have been.



Jamrozik also said that reciprocity and equity and fairness are supposed to guide public-health strategies. Policy makers must identify not just the benefits and harms of particular strategies, but also the distribution of those benefits and harms.



Read: COVID parenting is reaching a breaking point



None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I've lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve. How can I get excited about universal pre-K proposals, for example, when K–12 is in shambles?



I keep hoping that Democrats will wake up to the full range of health and social needs Americans are trying to balance right now, but that doesn't seem likely. A friend now refers to herself as "politically homeless," and more and more, that's how I feel as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/

So in a nutshell... she's angry at the party actions enough to speak out about, but she's not ever changing parties...





Ok, die Karen...

The good news is that she might not vote in the Novermber elections. So, I hope her disillusionment with the Dems lasts at least ten more months.

[Frood]

I hope that she gets a better clue about the Democrats and the Republicans.



Neither party gives a shit about her personal issues. They both want to win further terms and do jack shit for their constituencies.

[Anonymous]

I hope that she gets a better clue about the Democrats and the Republicans.



Neither party gives a shit about her personal issues. They both want to win further terms and do jack shit for their constituencies.

I want the Dems gone this year and in 24. They have beccome dangerously extreme.

[Anonymous]

This was a letter that appeared in the Atlantic. It was written by a Democrat who opposes her party's unscientific support for school closures.



Why I Soured on the Democrats

COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.



I kept hoping that someone in our all-Democratic political leadership would take a stand on behalf of Cleveland's 37,000 public-school children or seem to care about what was happening. Weren't Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids? Instead, our veteran Democratic mayor avoided remarking on the crisis facing the city's public-school families. Our all-Democratic city council was similarly disengaged. The same thing was happening in other blue cities and blue states across the country, as the needs of children were simply swept aside. Cleveland went so far as to close playgrounds for an entire year. That felt almost mean-spirited, given the research suggesting the negligible risk of outdoor transmission—an additional slap in the face.



Things got worse for us in December 2020, when my whole family contracted COVID-19. The coronavirus was no big deal for my 3- and 5-year-olds, but I was left with lingering long-COVID symptoms, which made the daily remote-schooling nightmare even more grueling. I say this not to hold myself up for pity. I understand that other people had a far worse 2020. I'm just trying to explain why my worldview has shifted and why I'm not the same person I was.



By the spring semester, the data showed quite clearly that schools were not big coronavirus spreaders and that, conversely, the costs of closures to children, both academically and emotionally, were very high. The American Academy of Pediatrics first urged a return to school in June 2020. In February 2021, when The New York Times surveyed 175 pediatric-disease experts, 86 percent recommended in-person school even if no one had been vaccinated.



But when the Cleveland schools finally reopened, in March 2021—under pressure from Republican Governor Mike DeWine—they chose a hybrid model that meant my son could enter the building only two days a week.



My husband and I had had enough: With about two months left in the academic year, we found a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction. It was difficult to give up on our public school. We were invested. But our trust was broken.



Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own "team." Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that "take the virus seriously," which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn't care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of "they're just mad they're missing yoga and brunch."



Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as "fucking white parents" in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.



Obviously, Republicans have been guilty of politicizing the pandemic with horrible consequences, fomenting mistrust in vaccines that will result in untold numbers of unnecessary deaths. I'm not excusing that.



But I've been disappointed by how often the Democratic response has exacerbated that mistrust by, for example, exaggerating the risks of COVID-19 to children. A low point for me was when Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe inflated child COVID-hospitalization numbers on the campaign trail. It was almost Trumplike. (If I lived in Virginia, I admit I probably would have had to sit out the recent gubernatorial election, in which the Republican candidate beat McAuliffe.)



Less extreme, but perhaps just as harmful to social cohesion, was the widespread refusal among rank-and-file Democrats to seriously wrestle with the costs of pandemic-mitigation efforts. Beyond the infuriating nonresponse to school closures—"kids are resilient"—the discussion regarding masks has also been oblivious at times. Research shows that good masks worn correctly can slow the spread of the coronavirus, but it's silly to suggest that they have no drawbacks. They are uncomfortable and a barrier to communication—and that's just for adults.



Because masks took on symbolic importance, however, simply attempting to add nuance to the debate—cloth masks versus KN95s, masking adults versus masking toddlers—was treated like vaccine skepticism: beyond the pale.



Generally speaking, the left-leaning rhetorical response to the pandemic seems out of line with stated Democratic values. Even when my kids returned to school, for example, I had no option for paid sick leave to care for them when they got sick. Why did I hear so little about that immense social problem and so much shaming of the women who dared to complain about having their kids stuck at home? All in all, the party that supposedly focused on "systemic" issues was obsessed with demanding personal sacrifice. And the burden fell most heavily on mothers of young children, essential workers, and low-income children. (Conversely, they fell lightly on one very vocal, core Democratic constituency: college-educated office workers.)



Many liberals and institutional leaders thought that no one could fault them for being too cautious, especially when it came to children. But I can, and I do. The University of Oxford medical ethicist Euzebiusz Jamrozik said recently on a podcast that ethical public-health responses must rely on a few key principles. One of those is "proportionality," meaning that the intervention must be proportionate to the risk. A Bloomberg article noted in March that children in the U.S. were about 10 times as likely to be killed in a car crash as by COVID-19. Closing school for more than a year was disproportionate the same way that forbidding parents to drive would have been.



Jamrozik also said that reciprocity and equity and fairness are supposed to guide public-health strategies. Policy makers must identify not just the benefits and harms of particular strategies, but also the distribution of those benefits and harms.



Read: COVID parenting is reaching a breaking point



None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I've lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve. How can I get excited about universal pre-K proposals, for example, when K–12 is in shambles?



I keep hoping that Democrats will wake up to the full range of health and social needs Americans are trying to balance right now, but that doesn't seem likely. A friend now refers to herself as "politically homeless," and more and more, that's how I feel as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cy/621183/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/

Everything I've read from pediatricians in the USA and Canada is that school closures have a negative affect on children.

[Frood]

I hope that she gets a better clue about the Democrats and the Republicans.



Neither party gives a shit about her personal issues. They both want to win further terms and do jack shit for their constituencies.

I want the Dems gone this year and in 24. They have beccome dangerously extreme.

I want society to collapse.





I'm tired of these double standard rules. Drop the fucking veil and get on with life...

[Anonymous]

The government of Quebec is seriously considering a tax on unvaccinated people in the province who refuse to be vaccinated, but don't have a medical exemption.

[Bricktop]

This was mentioned elsewhere.



It is an obscenity.

[Anonymous]

This was mentioned elsewhere.



It is an obscenity.

I just got home last night..



My husband remarked, taxation is a very Canadian approach.