Then suddenly we’ll be told “trade offs need to be made” and “the vaccines provide enough protection to relax restrictions”.
The fact that we’re 2 years into it and with a population that is mostly vaccine and at a much reduced risk yet the restriction seem to be the same or worse?
Ontario, Canada just cranked up restrictions.
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures
Quebec now has curfew, primary schools closed. All public events canceled.
https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Pr...
Wait, how does that work?
Do people get arrested just because they are out past curfew? Random ID checks?
Fined if outside during certain hours without an approved reason.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron...
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.
Sadly, fear porn still has concerned parents forcing their kids to mask up, outdoors - even in Texas. My heart breaks for them.
Glad you made the move and it sounds like you're enjoying it.
Are you in the Austin area?
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?
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.
It's 19F outside right now. I wear a mask outside because it keeps my face warm. No idea why people haven't been doing this all along. That you just assume everyone wearing a mask outdoors is a rube says more about you than them. Your post isn't being downvoted by fools and cowards, it's being downvoted because it's rude and condescending.
Wearing surgical masks outdoors in normal temperatures is not based in science. It's theoretical at best, but there's never been any data to refute the fact that almost all transmission occurs within households and enclosed public places. It's just fearful people calming their anxiety with something that does as much good as a copper bracelet or a crystal amulet. It's a great way for politicians to "show action", by mandating them outside in large cities after they have imposed indoor masks mandates, but still have rising cases.
Sorry I offended you by criticizing a superstitious ritual to appease the pagan god of covid.
And yes I have no business assuming that people wearing surgical masks on hiking trails in 70° weather are doing it because of the virus. I'm sure many of them are wearing it to keep their faces warm, because that totally makes sense. /s
Regardless I'd be willing to tolerate this stupidity if the schools were kept open. A little performative superstition is a price I'm willing to pay to keep kids in school. I'll wear copper bracelet, turquoise necklaces, crucifixes, whatever it takes to keep kids in school.
Kids sitting indoors isolated from their peers in front of computer screens is not a good thing. You didn't comment on that at all.
> Kids sitting indoors isolated from their peers in front of computer screens is not a good thing. You didn't comment on that at all.
In my experience as a teacher, some of my students flourished in this setting, others did not. It's not a good thing in some ways, it's a good thing in other ways (hence this article). If you want to see more of my thoughts on this see my other post I just wrote.
I think you are not understanding that it's not a bias if I see people wearing mask outdoors in completely mild weather and assume it's for the virus. Do you really think that people need to keep their faces warm when it's 65° and sunny? If I was walking around in freezing cold temperatures complaining about this you would have some fair point although a cloth mask is a grossly inferior way to keep your face warm compared to a gator where a ski mask.
Do you wear your mask outdoors when it's 70°? If you saw someone wearing a mask outdoors and 70° weather wouldn't you assume it's for disease protection?
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.
it's not a bias if I see people wearing mask outdoors in completely mild weather and assume it's for the virus.
Other possible explanations people wear masks outdoors other than being gullible fools:
- they forgot to take it off. That happens to me sometimes when I'm deep in thought.
- they have a cold sore and want to hide that.
- they came from indoors and their hands are full so they can't take it off.
- they came from indoors and are going indoors into another building.
etc.
Did you ever consider any of these alternatives? Or actually, have you asked any of these people why they wear a mask outdoors?
I find it odd that you are expecting me to have a null hypothesis that the masks that have become widely worn in large cities in the midst of a pandemic are not related to the pandemic.
If it was remotely common to see people wearing face coverings 2 years ago I would understand your point. It wasn't as we all know. It became a thing as a result of the pandemic.
That being said all of the explanations you offered are reasonable although the cold sore one was rather amusing to me. I haven't had one in many years but I'm sure by the time I get my next one the masks Will be long gone and I will wish they were a thing again.
The aspect of it that does bug me is the performative nature of explicitly putting on masks in outdoor situations. President Biden came to my area yesterday due to the recent wildfires we experienced. He was outdoors the entire time wearing a mask along with his entire team. He's sitting there trying to connect with people who have lost their homes but they can't see each other's faces at all. For no reason at all based on science. The performative nature of this is rather obvious because you frequently see scenes where they are not wearing a mask of any sort until a camera shows up in which case they immediately put a mask on before posing for the picture.
My primary complaint is not people incidentally wearing a mask as they come out of a building but people who are fairly aggressive and demanding that others wear face coverings outdoors whenever they are near them. I had to go to LA for work several months ago and discovered that it is common to have people yell out their car windows at you if you were walking around on a horse trail in a suburban neighborhood (I was somewhere not too far from Brentwood on this trail) without a mask on. My coworker was laughing when I looked at him with an incredulous face. His response was "that's how it is out here."
Anyway you make a good point that I should not be so quick to judge in the case of the exceptions above. Fair. I will concede. That being said requiring people legally to wear them outdoors is stupid and nonsensical and not in line with any form of science.
It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
2. The adverse effects of mental and physical heath are irreversible,
3. The tanking of the economy and the debt (until 2048 for France) is irreversible,
4. You didn’t even solve Covid.
However, the question is do lockdowns help against a pandemic? I don't see how anyone can argue with that. The downsides are indeed significant and need to be taken into account, but it's just a fact that lockdowns severely limit the spread of an airborne virus like COVID-19.
We don’t have the figures yet, that’s why we think lockdowns helped. But cholesterol doesn’t kill immediately. Alcohol doesn’t kill immediately. Loneliness doesn’t kill immediately, it slowly settles as friendships got destroyed in anger during the pandemic, and new meetups didn’t arrive, and the guy becomes homeless 5 years later. It may take years, but a lot of human misery will have been triggered by choosing lockdowns. We don’t even have the figures yet.
> severely limits the spread of an airborne virus
Yes, while we’re locked, and then it just takes weeks to recirculate as normal. It took >1 year to get the vaccines, only a 1 year lockdown would have solved us, therefore it is …not a solution to anything to lock people down.
Not a secret that solitary confinement in prisons is used to destroy someone. Lockdowns made a lot of people completely crazy, particularly the people you don’t notice immediately. But who cares, we’ve solved Covid! Wait, we didn’t.
Edited to add: furthermore, in most countries deaths not related to Covid fell drastically compared to previous years, including suicides. Yes, the fallout medium-long term is still to come, but you can't deny that it did stop the immediate very dangerous impact. In countries like Italy and France military hospitals had to be deployed, and many in intensive care were transferred to neighbouring countries. You can't just dismiss this and say people stuck alone at home had it worse than those on the ventilators.
Furthermore, it's from October 2020, more than a year ago. We have vaccines now and they're helping, but not stopping the virus fully. Hospitals are still filling up in some places, and for that various stages of restrictions up to lockdown are the main ways stop it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSK...