Never have I been happier to have our kids (5/8yo) in private schools (in person school since Jun 2020). Before 2020, it was a nice thing. Since covid started, it has been life saving, for both myself and the kids. They're young enough I don't care about what they're learning, but they would've gone insane (and almost did even during the 2 months of remote "learning" in April/May) without seeing other kids.
I just watched a video of a school performance recorded back in December. The school is an NYC middle school. The performance by the students consisted of singing about half a dozen songs. The video included an animated story in between the songs.
They're in an auditorium, they're all wearing masks, tho to varying degrees of success, especially over the entire length of the performance, and almost all of them were very loosely fitting surgical masks.
They're 'distanced', tho that was, at most, a distance of one seat in each row, and there were students in each of the adjacent rows.
I was talking to a parent of one of the students and mentioned that the school staging the performance didn't make sense – given all of the other precautions the school claims to have implemented generally. The parent responded that 'masks work'. Given the large number, and increasing frequency, of 'exposures' that have been reported, I can't even understand, at maximum charity, what they meant by that. Also, given the number of times that that parent's child has been sick, tho apparently always negative for COVID-19 (per tests), it seems clear to me that their child, and themself, almost certainly have been exposed, and 'infected', by SARS-CoV-2 too.
Ironically, one of the songs was about how some of the video narrative characters (frogs) were scared of bats drinking their blood – needlessly! – because of "misinformation" and "fake news". I can _kinda_ see the point they were trying to make (maybe), i.e. that (most) bats don't attack people. But, in the real world, there _are_ vampire bats, they _do_ feed on the blood of animals, even humans, and, because of ubiquitous vaccination of dogs for rabies, they're now a more common means by which people are infected with rabies than dogs. And, of course, if a non-vampire bat _does_ interact with people, they should definitely seek treatment for rabies as that's one of the reasons why they _would_ interact with people.
And then of course the very next part of the narrative is a crocodile trying to similarly persuade the frogs that it isn't a danger to them and they have no reason to fear it! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the implicit message is probably just 'trust your teachers'.
And similarly, some people, including this specific student's parent, seem to implicitly trust whatever authorities claim is true, or that any policies they 'implement' are effective.
Never have I been happier to have our kids (5/8yo) in private schools (in person school since Jun 2020). Before 2020, it was a nice thing. Since covid started, it has been life saving, for both myself and the kids. They're young enough I don't care about what they're learning, but they would've gone insane (and almost did even during the 2 months of remote "learning" in April/May) without seeing other kids.
Thank you for this article Zvi. Moral clarity is in short supply these days, and harder to calibrate for than numerical clarity.
I just watched a video of a school performance recorded back in December. The school is an NYC middle school. The performance by the students consisted of singing about half a dozen songs. The video included an animated story in between the songs.
They're in an auditorium, they're all wearing masks, tho to varying degrees of success, especially over the entire length of the performance, and almost all of them were very loosely fitting surgical masks.
They're 'distanced', tho that was, at most, a distance of one seat in each row, and there were students in each of the adjacent rows.
I was talking to a parent of one of the students and mentioned that the school staging the performance didn't make sense – given all of the other precautions the school claims to have implemented generally. The parent responded that 'masks work'. Given the large number, and increasing frequency, of 'exposures' that have been reported, I can't even understand, at maximum charity, what they meant by that. Also, given the number of times that that parent's child has been sick, tho apparently always negative for COVID-19 (per tests), it seems clear to me that their child, and themself, almost certainly have been exposed, and 'infected', by SARS-CoV-2 too.
Ironically, one of the songs was about how some of the video narrative characters (frogs) were scared of bats drinking their blood – needlessly! – because of "misinformation" and "fake news". I can _kinda_ see the point they were trying to make (maybe), i.e. that (most) bats don't attack people. But, in the real world, there _are_ vampire bats, they _do_ feed on the blood of animals, even humans, and, because of ubiquitous vaccination of dogs for rabies, they're now a more common means by which people are infected with rabies than dogs. And, of course, if a non-vampire bat _does_ interact with people, they should definitely seek treatment for rabies as that's one of the reasons why they _would_ interact with people.
And then of course the very next part of the narrative is a crocodile trying to similarly persuade the frogs that it isn't a danger to them and they have no reason to fear it! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the implicit message is probably just 'trust your teachers'.
And similarly, some people, including this specific student's parent, seem to implicitly trust whatever authorities claim is true, or that any policies they 'implement' are effective.
LAUSD said there wasn’t school based transmission because they hadn’t gone back to school yet.