@@ August Covid

[Velar Fricative]

How Some Parents Changed Their Politics During the Pandemic (gift link)

In interviews, 27 parents who called themselves anti-vaccine and anti-mask voters described strikingly similar paths to their new views. They said they had experienced alarm about their children during pandemic quarantines. They pushed to reopen schools and craved normalcy. They became angry, blaming lawmakers for the disruption to their children’s lives.



Many congregated in Facebook groups that initially focused on advocating in-person schooling. Those groups soon latched onto other issues, such as anti-mask and anti-vaccine messaging. While some parents left the online groups when schools reopened, others took more extreme positions over time, burrowing into private anti-vaccine channels on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.



Eventually, some began questioning vaccines for measles and other diseases, where inoculations have long been proven effective. Activists who oppose all vaccines further enticed them by joining online parent groups and posting inaccurate medical studies and falsehoods.

I'm so tired of these idiots. But, they're also loud and scary and have a lot of influence on politicians. I believe this may be why suddenly there's less (or zero) talk at the city and state level here about mandating covid vaccinations for all non-homeschooled students once it's fully approved for each age group. Hochul's running for her first full term as governor in November so at best, we may see talk of this again for 2023-24. Yes, NY is blue but I don't think it will be a cakewalk for Hochul because of timing with midterms and overall frustrations with inflation, crime, etc.

Also, NYC reopened schools in a hybrid manner starting in October 2020 but the local anti-science people here make it seem like schools just reopened yesterday or something. 

[Patsy Baloney]

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

[pugz]

how is it August already

[Velar Fricative]

Aug 1, 2022 9:44:08 GMT -5 pugz said:

how is it August already

I'm so happy it is. July is usually such a longass month. I mean, August is 31 days too but today makes me feel like we are finally on the other side of summer and I can start having pumpkin spice shit again.

[fortnightlily]

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

This isn't true everywhere, though. It highly depends where you live. I am in the MD 'burbs of DC. Overall a pretty blue area. High vaccine uptake, mask mandates for a time and high mask compliance (for a while) even when mandates were lifted. 

My son did not return to in person schooling for a year. April 2020 - March 2021 (end of K through end of first grade) was completely virtual. March 2021-June 2021 was hybrid. He was in a classroom with a teacher 2 days a week, in a classroom with a para with his teacher live-streamed on the whiteboard while she taught the classroom next door 2 days a week, and home with 'asynchronous' assignments 1 day a week.

This past year, 2nd grade was all in person, though with several mitigation efforts like mask mandates Sept-March (including when outdoors for recess and PE), opt-in pool testing, quarantines for exposures (test-to-stay was kind of implemented kind of not). 

I think where I live is an outlier on the other extreme compared to the rest of the country, but I've seen two groups of vocal-minority parents emerge. There is a definite contigent of Covid-Zero folks who wanted to see the entire school system go virtual again during last Jan/Feb's Omicron wave, who pushed against lifting mask mandates, who are sending their kids to school with CO2 monitors to play ventilation 'gotcha' with the facilities department, who foretell doom and gloom with staffing and bus driver shortages, who decry parents who want schools open as people who are just looking for free babysitting.   

And then there's the 'return to normalcy' anti-mask-adjacent folks who aren't quite anti-vax, anti-mask (except for one or two crazies) but are against making masking and vaccinating mandatory and also want to get rid of any pool testing, etc.

And when I told my doctor friend in Tennessee about what's going on here she's like, "Lol, I can't even convince our school district to test symptomatic students". 

[Velar Fricative]

fortnightlily , that's why I specifically mentioned NYC and why people are still complaining here. I know other large cities and/or blue areas waited much longer to allow any in-person school. It's hard to question decisions made during a crazy time because we didn't know or have as much then as we do now, but OTOH, in hindsight that just allowed some of these groups to thrive in many areas. Not to mention, I believe some of San Francisco's school board members were recalled for this reason.

[fortnightlily]

Aug 1, 2022 9:51:09 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

fortnightlily , that's why I specifically mentioned NYC and why people are still complaining here. I know other large cities and/or blue areas waited much longer to allow any in-person school. It's hard to question decisions made during a crazy time because we didn't know or have as much then as we do now, but OTOH, in hindsight that just allowed some of these groups to thrive in many areas. Not to mention, I believe some of San Francisco's school board members were recalled for this reason.

Yeah, despite our flavor of Covid-crazy here, I'm definitely grateful we haven't seen a large rise in people going all-in on the anti-vax stuff. But man, so much of anything is just pushback, isn't it? One thing takes hold and then here come the reactionaries and everyone else gets caught in the tug-of-war.

[Patsy Baloney]

Right, I get that fortnightlily. I gave my experience for my area and it’s why I think these folks in my area need to get a fucking hobby that isn’t making shit up.

[plutosmoon]

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

I am very pro vaccine, and have no patience for most anti vaxxers, but I can see how parents get sucked in. I don't think it's wise to ignore how and why people are getting sucked in. Some can be brought back, but ignoring those who went down the anti vax path after being rational vaccinators isn't a good answer.

In my area we lost almost half of the 19-20 school year, we had an early case in my rural region. We shut down like 2 weeks into quarter 3 and very little was done for the remainder of the year. For 20-21 we were not in person for a good chunk of the year, and remote school was an absolute mess for those of us with special needs kids and in low income areas. My DD just finished 3rd grade with kids who still haven't caught up, kids who can still barely read. Not all schools and kids were as minimally impacted, we didn't return to full in person school untill April of 2021. It wasn't years, but it was a long time to miss services.

The other piece is a lot of unvaccinated kids got covid before they were vaccine eligible. For many of them cases were mild, so a lot of parents second guessed the need for the precautions that were taken. They couldn't see past their own personal case. I know that even happened with some of my vaccinated friends.

[fortnightlily]

I also think The NY Times has a tendency to find some people or fall for the 'Twitter is real life' and extrapolate things into trends/movements that are mostly just media echo-chamber creations and don't end up being backed up by data and analysis after the narrative is established and damage is done. See: all profiles of people in diners in rural red areas, Trump 'economic anxiety' voters, the 'Great Resignation'.

People are sick of Covid, but yeah, even in my very-Covid-cautious area I will be shocked if things like mask and vaccine mandates are ever really on the table again. Feels like a pretty transient thing to become a single-issue voter on for this coming November.

[Velar Fricative]

plutosmoon, I do think we need to better understand why people fall into these disinformation black holes, no doubt. But it's so frustrating and I know I vent out of frustration. Like, I'm still shocked at how much that Plandemic video circulated on social media when it did. Yes, I want to understand why perfectly reasonable people fall for this shit, but now that they're talking about going after ALL childhood vaccinations I just want to throw my hands up.

[eddy]

I thought the article did a good job of explaining how people got to these insane ideology places. It really speaks to how scary echo chambers can be when you start seeking out information. I imagine each one of those groups was just constant with posts and articles that just chipped away at people's sensibilities.  Scary stuff

[karinothing]

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

I mean here kids did lose a lot. Maybe your kids were back. We lost March-June 2020 (our kids go to school until the end of june). My kids had zero school during that time there was no new learning. Nothing sent home.

Then we were virtual until April 2021 (and it was a mess) and then the finally had 2 days of school after April. In which my kid got to see his teacher for 30 mins total a day because they were broken up in multiple groups. He had recess 6 times a day in spring of 2021. So great for him but my kids did largely lose 1.5 years of school.

So while I am not part of these parents I am very sympathetic and our school and children as a whole have not recovered. Last year was extremely hard and I don't think it is right to just dismiss all of that. 

ETA: I just want to ditto plutosmoon . We literally had kids who had NO education from early March 2020 until Sept 2021. We did not require kids to attend virtual classes (because sschools knew it was impossible for some families). There was no requirement to do work. No grades. Then we take kids who may have stopped school in the first half of 2nd grade and threw them into 4th barely being able to read. It has been horrible. 

ETA2: Sorry I didn't notice that the comments were focused on NYC only.

[Velar Fricative]

Aug 1, 2022 12:47:22 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

I mean here kids did lose a lot. Maybe your kids were back. We lost March-June 2020 (our kids go to school until the end of june). My kids had zero school during that time there was no new learning. Nothing sent home.

Then we were virtual until April 2021 (and it was a mess) and then the finally had 2 days of school after April. In which my kid got to see his teacher for 30 mins total a day because they were broken up in multiple groups. He had recess 6 times a day in spring of 2021. So great for him but my kids did largely lose 1.5 years of school.

So while I am not part of these parents I am very sympathetic and our school and children as a whole have not recovered. Last year was extremely hard and I don't think it is right to just dismiss all of that. 

ETA: I just want to ditto plutosmoon . We literally had kids who had NO education from early March 2020 until Sept 2021. We did not require kids to attend virtual classes (because sschools knew it was impossible for some families). There was no requirement to do work. No grades. Then we take kids who may have stopped school in the first half of 2nd grade and threw them into 4th barely being able to read. It has been horrible. 

ETA2: Sorry I didn't notice that the comments were focused on NYC only.

Mine was, but other people here cited other places. And the article didn't just cover NYC, though there was at least one NYC parent featured and that's who annoyed me in particular. 

[hermione]

Aug 1, 2022 12:47:22 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and homeschool, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

I mean here kids did lose a lot. Maybe your kids were back. We lost March-June 2020 (our kids go to school until the end of june). My kids had zero school during that time there was no new learning. Nothing sent home.

Then we were virtual until April 2021 (and it was a mess) and then the finally had 2 days of school after April. In which my kid got to see his teacher for 30 mins total a day because they were broken up in multiple groups. He had recess 6 times a day in spring of 2021. So great for him but my kids did largely lose 1.5 years of school.

So while I am not part of these parents I am very sympathetic and our school and children as a whole have not recovered. Last year was extremely hard and I don't think it is right to just dismiss all of that. 

ETA: I just want to ditto plutosmoon . We literally had kids who had NO education from early March 2020 until Sept 2021. We did not require kids to attend virtual classes (because sschools knew it was impossible for some families). There was no requirement to do work. No grades. Then we take kids who may have stopped school in the first half of 2nd grade and threw them into 4th barely being able to read. It has been horrible. 

ETA2: Sorry I didn't notice that the comments were focused on NYC only.

The bolded is particularly challenging because 4th grade is when kids are expected to make the huge leap from learning to read to reading to learn. It is why if a kid isn't reading at grade level by the end of third grade,, they will likely fall behind in other subjects the following year.

[karinothing]

Aug 1, 2022 13:17:22 GMT -5 hermione said:

Aug 1, 2022 12:47:22 GMT -5 karinothing said:

I mean here kids did lose a lot. Maybe your kids were back. We lost March-June 2020 (our kids go to school until the end of june). My kids had zero school during that time there was no new learning. Nothing sent home.

Then we were virtual until April 2021 (and it was a mess) and then the finally had 2 days of school after April. In which my kid got to see his teacher for 30 mins total a day because they were broken up in multiple groups. He had recess 6 times a day in spring of 2021. So great for him but my kids did largely lose 1.5 years of school.

So while I am not part of these parents I am very sympathetic and our school and children as a whole have not recovered. Last year was extremely hard and I don't think it is right to just dismiss all of that. 

ETA: I just want to ditto plutosmoon . We literally had kids who had NO education from early March 2020 until Sept 2021. We did not require kids to attend virtual classes (because sschools knew it was impossible for some families). There was no requirement to do work. No grades. Then we take kids who may have stopped school in the first half of 2nd grade and threw them into 4th barely being able to read. It has been horrible. 

ETA2: Sorry I didn't notice that the comments were focused on NYC only.

The bolded is particularly challenging because 4th grade is when kids are expected to make the huge leap from learning to read to reading to learn. It is why if a kid isn't reading at grade level by the end of third grade,, they will likely fall behind in other subjects the following year.

Right. Honestly school was a mess this last year. I am surprised any teachers decided to continue. Not only were there great learning challenges but emotionally and behaviorally the kids were a mess. I honestly think they should have made every kid repeat the grade they did the year before. I say this as a parent whose kid is designated gifted and had the ability to stay home and hire tutors and really focus on working with him. He is still behind where he would have been otherwise and I worry about my now 2nd grader every day. We can't just catch these kids up by forcing them to the next grade and acting like nothing happened.

[Patsy Baloney]

Yeah, just to reiterate again, I understand that school districts handled covid different and there will be gaps in learning due to that. Folks in my area have literally nothing to complain about but lies.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to minimize anyone’s experience and I’m sorry that I did.

[suburbanzookeeper]

My youngest was in 1st for the 19-20 school year, his teacher was stuck out-of-the-country visiting in-laws over spring break and couldn't get a flight home for the last two months of the school year. She traveled an hour 2 days a week to do "virtual school" check-ins at a net café. Myself and another parent took over her virtual classroom, setup software, helped fill in on Zoom meetings, etc.

We didn't return to any in-person learning until late March 2021 which was modified half class, half day learning. His teacher couldn't cope with kids who were falling behind. He was diagnosed with Dyslexia and ADHD in January 2021. It had been an absolute TRIP trying to catch him up and find a way through all of this. He was on modified quarantine by the third week of school last year with masks required up until March of this year.

He starts 4th grade in two weeks. In non-COVID years, our classroom size jumps from 25 to 35 in 4th grade. I don't know what's going to happen this year.

[magpie]

I'm interested in this thread! H and I were just talking this morning about the way school closures have changed people's politics a lot. I think it is something to pay attention to. I don't think you have to be an antivaxxer or a covid denier to be angry or disagree with what happened to schools (and parents and children in general) during the pandemic.

We were sort of lucky in my area to be in a district that was fairly in the middle with closures. We had no learning other than some very disorganized social/emotional virtual meetups for the last two months of school in 2020. Then we were virtual until about mid-February 2021. As a teacher, that was just about when I was a little less than terrified to go back into the building (and I had my first shot by then and got my second the second or third day back, though I had to jump through hoops to make that happen), but as a parent I think it was really hard. My kid had gaps, though I think that they have recovered. Last year, we were back fully in-person and it was a struggle as a teacher. Kids were all over the place socially, emotionally and academically. We're still working so, so hard to get back to "normal" and, as a public school in a huge city district, it's not like "normal" was the easiest place.

Overall, it was extremely frustrating for me, as a parent, to see things like bars and dine-in restaurants open in my city while schools were closed. It really felt like kids were put dead last in priority. Also, private schools were up and running (and people who could afford it flocked to them in droves) while public schools were still virtual only. I can see why that made people angry.

[pumpkincat]

My oldest just tested positive. Her first day of freshman year of highschool was supposed to be Wednesday. I am sad for her.

[fortnightlily]

Interestingly there are a few people going after the author on Twitter saying that she misrepresented their views and painting anti-mandate and antivaxxer with the same broad brush.

I still think this is a poor topic to prognosticate the midterms on, because it is so local.

[SusanBAnthony]

Add me to the "really pissed that my kids and all kids in my area lost 18 months of schooling" camp.

#helpful

[Velar Fricative]

There is a lot people can be pissed about. Still, I don’t get how being pissed about covid policies suddenly made some people think all childhood vaccinations are bad (just one example).

[devonpow]

I see it’s been covered but school was a mess here for well over a year. I’m right outside Boston in a very liberal/high vaccine area. My older son wasn’t back in school full time for over a year, and then he was only allowed to be with a 7 kid cohort (him and 6 girls, lovely girls but no friends) for 3 months. No socializing at all outside of that cohort. This was 7th and 8th grade for him - it led to a lot of issues, including depression and social anxiety. We are still feeling the effects with him. My younger son (in 2nd and 3rd grade then) was also out of full time school for almost a year. I luckily had the resources to hire a “teacher” to sit with him through online schooling. It would have been a disaster otherwise and wasn’t great even with that. He already had social anxiety and bring separated from peers really pushed back his progress and therapy.

I’m PTO chair and talk to my principal every day. The behavior issues are out of control. There are 1st and 2nd graders having bathroom accidents. Teachers are dealing with SO MUCH and the behavior issues caused by the pandemic are just too much. They are so burned out.

A lot of bad decisions were made with good intentions behind them. Parents in my town have been bitterly divided over masks (we still has mask mandates through late spring this year) and we lost about 20% of our overall student body mostly to private schools (also due to losing international students) This has has a huge effect on our district and needing to lay off teachers. As a parent I have been SO ANGRY and felt so out of control for my kids the last few years that I do understand how some latch on to these ideas. You want to feel in control in some way, and you want to lash out- but screaming into the void doesn’t give you much satisfaction. I’m not agreeing with anti vaxxers or any of the conspiracy theories people are drawn to these days, but the psychology behind it is definitely easier for me to understand these days.

[erbear]

We didn't lose that much school (we were virtual from April - June 2020 -- and that was rough) but most kids were back full time in person by fall 2020 (I think maybe 10 of my 45 kids were virtual through winter break -- all came back by spring 2021). Those kids for sure lost out -- it was impossible to teach hybrid and they definitely got the short end of the stick since my attention had to be on the shitshow that was in person school. Last year was awful -- much worse than 21-22. Easily the worst year of my teaching life, and that includes my 1st year. I would really really like for this year to be chill but the kids and teachers are struggling so much.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Aug 1, 2022 18:24:12 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

Add me to the "really pissed that my kids and all kids in my area lost 18 months of schooling" camp.

#helpful

NGL I'd have been pissed off if I was in your district too.

[eddy]

I still can’t allow myself to linger in the despair, anger and helplessness I felt in fall 2020. People try to talk about it in s joking manner and I am, nope too soon.

This place was the community I sought out. And thankfully it is a reasonable place, most days. :-)

[chickadee77]

Well, we were in FL, so covid never happened there amiright? And we did switch to homeschooling because there were almost no precautions in our district past spring of 2020. So I guess maybe it worked the opposite on us? We became even more adamantly pro-mask/pro-vax/pro-science - since the govt/district wouldn't protect our kids, we figured it was up to us. Yes, very privileged to be able to do this, I know, but after all the other crap happening with education in that state, I can't say I regret it.

ETA: I have the UTMOST respect and sympathy for those working in the schools - especially teachers. I don't know how they're doing it - between politics and just that virtual school seems to have turned parents into thinking they get to dictate their needs/desires to, well, everyone, since they had an ear into the classroom. I seriously don't know how they're doing it with so little pay and respect.

[macmars45]

Aug 1, 2022 9:24:58 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

I’m getting tired of the narrative that kids have been locked out of schools for years and years. It is happening here, too.

Nope. We lost April and May of 2020.

August of 2020, kids were back in schools on a modified schedule, almost back to normal in winter/spring 2021, fully normal 2021/2022.

Shut the fuck up and home school, Janet, I’m tired of your shit.

This varies state to state and city to city. In my city they went back to school on a modified schedule in Oct 2020 and back to regular schedule by January 2021. In western WA they did virtual school until March/April (ish) 2021 or longer.

[hermione]

Aug 2, 2022 8:02:50 GMT -5 chickadee77 said:

Well, we were in FL, so covid never happened there amiright? And we did switch to homeschooling because there were almost no precautions in our district past spring of 2020. So I guess maybe it worked the opposite on us? We became even more adamantly pro-mask/pro-vax/pro-science - since the govt/district wouldn't protect our kids, we figured it was up to us. Yes, very privileged to be able to do this, I know, but after all the other crap happening with education in that state, I can't say I regret it.

COVID impacted us in ways I could never have imagined. We are not at all religious but COVID's long winding road has us going into our second year of parochial school. If anyone had told me in early March 2020 that we'd be a private school family, I would have laughed at how absolutely wrong they were. But here we are.