I think, once all the data is analyzed, there will be some stark, sad realities for our kids. I know of 10 families in the last 1.5 years dealing with a child who has or tried to commit suicide. My college age son shared how very depressed many of his friends became during all the lockdowns/online learning.
2 Likes
My S went on antidepressants after freshman year of online classes and a lot of time alone in his room. His roommate left after first semester it was so bad. 
2 Likes
My kidâs school had a crazy rule that you could meet up with one other person for up to an hour if you were walking outside in Spring 2021. Some days she spent up to 9 hours walking with successive friends. She did get in really good physical shape, I suppose.
1 Like
IMO, it is such things which donât pass common sense which has given a lot of folks reason to not trust the government and other officials in charge.
7 Likes
Not trusting the government seems to be a rational reaction to the last 2 years. There is very little in the governmentâs handling of the crisis which inspires trust.
6 Likes
It sucked big time, and it was difficult for kids.
But then again, so was the Blitz. But we didnât see politicians demanding âGet Rid Of The Shelter Mandate!!â, âPoliticians are killing our kids by sending them to the shelters!!â, âThere was a blackout every night, even though London wasnât bombed 95% of the nights during the war, on 99.5% of the population of London survived the bombing raids!!!â, âPeople died in the bomb shelters, so our kids shouldnât sleep in the shelters!!â, âThe Blitz isnât real, itâs all faked, and nobody has died!!â.
Life didnât go back to normal once the Blitz was over. Until the end of the war people behaved as though there would be a raid that night. Even after the Allied air forces crippled the Luftwaffe, they still were able to launch a series of air raids on London in 1944, âthe little Blitzâ. Then they had the V1 and V2 attacks.
Kids suffered widespread PTSD from both the raids and staying in the shelters. That didnât mean that they should have been allowed to run around freely outside when there was an air raid going on.
We should be worried about our kidâs mental health. We should also use our brains to figure out ways to help them that donât include exposing people to a deadly virus.
PS. There was also extensive war profiteering, and people who built shoddy shelters using government money. There was government incompetence (âthe war will be over by Christmasâ and other such gems) That didnât mean that the bombs werenât falling and that hiding in shelters or evacuating to the country werenât the only ways that people could protect themselves.
If this is the first time youâve seen a government fail at dealing with a crisis, you must be pretty young.
In my life time, I have seen the USA government fail at dealing with 1, Vietnam, 2, the energy crisis, 3, the crisis of growing violence , 4, the gun violence epidemic, 5, three separate drug epidemics, 6, failing infrastructure, 7, the war in Iraq - a crisis which the government created themselves, 8, the climate crisis, 9, multiple economic crises, and now 10, Covid
The governments of the USA are hampered by the fact that there are far too many politicians who keep power by denying that there is a crisis, and if there is, itâs the fault of some minority, and âoh, look, they want to destroy the American Way Of Life, and They are the REAL problem!â.
For Covid it was a mix of them all. So itâs A, Covid doesnât exist, B. It exists, but itâs not so bad, C, itâs so bad, but instead of wearing a mask, letâs take horse anti-parasite medicine, and D, Itâs bad, and itâs all Chinaâs fault (or the fault of Jewish Space Lasers). You can hear the same people actually use all of these arguments in a single day.
The government failed mostly because of politicians who saw an opportunity to increase their power and influence by pushing or supporting one or more of these narratives, and making them part of their political platform. Even the most effective government would have difficulty dealing with a crisis when half the population doesnât believe that there is a crisis, and a substantial number of members of congress push that as their legislative agenda.
10 Likes
Even at its worst, covid was never the Blitz. And England manages to keep schools open mostly, both then and now. It is actually quite disrespectful to those who endured WW2 to compare them. I am offended, honestly, for those who endured that, that you would presume to compare them. Over a million housing units were destroyed in London at a time when the population was 8.5 million. Near 50k dead, twice that many wounded in over 50 consecutive nights of bombing which killed thousands of children in their own homes, with a very real possibility that it could start again at anytime. Perhaps you do not know many who endured WW2. At no point has covid posed an existential threat to societyâs survival, so donât go there.
13 Likes
My point was, and is, that sometimes the trauma of a crisis has to do with the crisis itself, not from the efforts taken to mitigate them.
You are pretty optimistic, you know? We would be in a far better position today if people were indeed as smart as those dogs.
Of course, if the dogs chose their own musher, and were really reluctant to admit making a mistake, they may follow the musher until they drop of exhaustion.
On the other hand (paw?), dogs are smarter than people.
3 Likes
The deaths of 62 people for any reason are very sad. I took a look at the entire list of deceased employees and have some observations. I noticed that almost all of the deaths are for school employees outside of metro Atlanta (~ 60% of the stateâs population is in Metro Atlanta) in a state with a bottom 10 vaccination rate (53% fully vaccinated). We will never know how many of those 62 people were fully vaccinated (and I have not heard of vaccine mandates for school district employees anywhere outside of Metro Atlanta although I could be wrong about that).
My wife works in the largest school district in the state (13th largest nationally) which had 2 of the deaths (1 contracted Covid before school started) and a startling number of the 62 deaths listed were bus drivers (It looks like they have the highest risk).
I think that everyone has a different risk tolerance and profile, but my fully vaccinated and boosted educator wife continues to take precautions while also seeing the truly minuscule death rates for someone with her profile.
4 Likes
Comparing this to WWII bombings and the Blitz! Really? And then you wonder why people arenât listening and have no trust.
6 Likes
Itâs a frequent comparison made in the UK itself. Both as regards the lack of âblitz spiritâ (ie a combination of community spirit and dour endurance in keeping to the rules) and as regards the death toll, which is much higher for covid.
6 Likes
Didnât know - thanks!
I donât think itâs comparing it to the Blitz. I think itâs saying, if kids can survive something as bad as the Blitz, they can also survive Covid precautions if adults frame it in ways that make the kids stronger rather than feeling like victims.
Iâve felt the same way after looking at many of our refugee kids (well before Covid) and what they were able to endure - and still do well - and how easily some of our domestic born and bred kids (and adults) can break down because âsomethingâ didnât go right in their lives.
Life isnât perfect and never will be. The first key to surviving is recognizing that and moving on instead of getting stuck with what âmight have been.â
3 Likes
If I had survived the London blackouts, which led to many auto accidents and drownings when people fell into the water at night, I would be appalled at how wimpy Americans are acting during the COVID restrictions. Youâre right, the Blitz was much worse than COVID, but so were the restrictions. I hate to think how we would respond to a crisis as big as those bombings. 
11 Likes
I had not realized the death toll of Covid in the UK was greater than in the Blitz, though. True, Iâd give horror and trauma and physical destruction of their world over to the Blitz, but I would also have assumed it had a greater death toll. Probably shouldnât be that surprised, but I still was to read that above.
1 Like
Thereâs lots of research out there about how childhood traumas severely impact adult outcomes ranging from disease, mental health, earning capacity, etc.
Hereâs one, just from a quick google search:
Multi-decade Study Found Childhood Trauma Exposure Common, Raising Health Risks in Adulthood | Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
Basic gist of the collective body of research: more trauma, more lifelong impacts. Sure people survive and move on, but not unscathed. Minimizing the harm is important. Look, I think the pandemic posed unique challenges and the strict lockdown places like where I live did it for good reason. But hopefully we have learned and can do better for our kids in the future.
You can ask my mom about being a child through WWII bombing in England. The ptsd is real to this day. But my impression was they did prioritize children over other groups - shipping them to the country, keeping schools going, etc.
4 Likes
And more children died in the Blitz than from covid. Bombs killed the young just as frequently as the old, unlike covid
3 Likes
This!
5 Likes
That rule doesnât seem so crazy. They were outside, chances of infection were minimal pre-Omicron.