A thought exercise

[sabotabby]

I want people to do a mental exercise. Imagine you're 6, 12, 16 years old. You go back to school. You see your friends. One of them gives you covid, but you're an asymptomatic carrier. You give it to your mom. Your mom dies. You are the person who infected her, you're the reason she died. And now you need to live with that for the rest of your life.

This is going to happen to someone in the fall. Imagine being that kid before making any decisions about whether schools should reopen.

Comments

[dewline]

Getting to be both Joe Chill and Bruce Wayne in the same body...

[sabotabby]

I'm thinking that we'll get a lot of both costumed superheroes and villains out of this.

[dewline]

We already have the supervillains - minus the costuming - in the new fascist international. One of their just got re-elected president of Poland, sad to report...

[gingicat]

Yeah.

I think about this with MM taking public transit to work, too. Especially since we both have sore throats this week.

(Daughter's school notified us that there are evening visit slots this week, and I was regretfully honest.)

[sabotabby]

I've had a sore throat for weeks now. But the moral calculus is much more severe come September. I don't want to be the one who kills someone either.

[mistersmearcase]

I have no say of course and also don't have to think about the logistics of it but it seems insane that schools are opening anywhere, especially in these here united states where we are in free fall infection-wise. I forget if it's you that I told this already but a friend posted about how her moppet needed social interaction so people without kids, please stop posting that the schools shouldn't open (she's convinced that SF has a plan for making this happen safely) and I was like nope, I have lungs and I get an opinion.

[sabotabby]

They don't have a plan. I can assure you that there's no plan.

Where there is a plan, it heavily restricts or eliminates social interaction between moppets. Her moppet is going to sit at a desk for six hours, six feet away from friends, and do sheet work. Or her moppet is going to be a disease vector.

[dewline]

I just flashed back to the Star Trek: TOS episode "Miri". A planet of pre-teens forced to cope on their own in a world without grownups - "grups" - knowing as a certainty that puberty will be death for them, until Kirk and company happen along...

[redbird]

What seems insane is that schools and other things are reopening. It's too late to do what the mayor of Somerville suggested, which is don't open bars (or casinos!), don't have indoor dining, keep capacity limits on stores, and try to open schools. What we've got instead seems to be "school won't start for three months, so we'll do this other stuff first and squander whatever we gained this spring."

[lydamorehouse]

Believe me, Mason (who is 17 soon) is very aware of this VERY scenario, since his mother is prone to blood clots and I have asthma. He would be MORTIFIED to hurt either of us... OR ANYONE ELSE.

When he developed Covid Toes (a real thing), he self-isolated in our household WAY beyond what we (the parents) thought was strictly necessary because he REFUSED to not take responsibility for keeping EVERYONE (including our pets) safe from the infection he otherwise never felt.

It's easy to imagine teens as willfully irresponsible, but most of the teens I know are often HIGHLY conscious of their role to play. They grew up reading books where heroes have to make tough choices and they are ready to prove that they can be heroes too. Obviously, this is as much a generalization as anything else, but I do think that there are kids out there who would prefer to keep everyone safe too.

This could pass.

This could be a temporary hold on "business as usual."

But I worry that, in my country in particular, we are just going to cycle through worse and worse numbers until there is a vaccine... and by then, the cost in human lives will have been astronomical.

[sabotabby]

Mason is a good kid.

Most of mine are good kids too, but they have very poor risk assessment. I've only had a handful of kids get pregnant, but pregnancy isn't contagious. It just takes one kid who doesn't have the self-regulation skills to sit in their desk all day and not touch anyone else or deposit wads of Kleenex for the next student to touch (which is the majority of my students) to create a superspreader event, especially in an environment with poor ventilation.

[lydamorehouse]

OMG, I was not trying to imply that schools aren't a petri dish of cesspool hell for this virus! Of course you're absolutely right. My only point is that some kids (though possibly just mine) would feel bad about it??

You should not have to go back and face death.

Your kids should not have to go back to face infection, spreading, or death. Because we are learning that 20-somethings can die from it. I would not be surprised to discover that kids can too. Of any age.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I know!

My kids’ issue is primary not lack of intelligence or empathy. When their behaviour leads to unfortunate consequences, they feel awful about it. The problem with them is that they lag developmentally in terms of predicting consequences. I can easily imagine a scenario where a kid’s mask is uncomfortable so they take it off, and while intellectually they might understand that this is a bad idea, by the time they connect this action to their mom getting sick, it’s too late.

And they have no control. The biggest threats are our HVAC or lack thereof and the government’s class size increases.

The news I just read out of Italy is horrific. We will have a generation with brain damage, breathing issues, mobility issues, and shortened life spans.

[belleweather]

This was good to hear. I've been gearing up to have a conversation with my 14 year old who desperately, desperately wants to go back to school to be around kids his age and have friends, where I would have to tell him that because of the risk profile in our house I can't let him do that. I feel terrible about this, mostly because I'm taking away his agency in doing it -- but he's got a mom with asthma and a brother with a clotting disorder and a dad who nearly died of flu and has reduced lung function from scarring... so as much as I hate it, he's got to take one for the greater good right now. I hope he looks at it with the maturity your son did.

(I may yet get out of the conversation entirely since it looks like the school district is walking back their plan to do a hybrid model and going to 100% distance learning in fall).

[sabotabby]

All the re-opening plans have the kids sitting in desks for 6 hours a day. No touching, no hugging, no hanging out. I don't think they've thought about how kids will eat or use the bathroom. It's not like he's going to get to socialize; it's all the bad things about distancing learning with far more risk.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah. :(

[sabotabby]

They don’t care. We don’t matter or it’s a plus if we die.

[smhwpf]

It's horrible. England seems to be going the same way - they were trying to open schools in June, but the schools weren't playing ball, so they thankfully had to abandon that, but they're opening in September, and the way things are going they will not be in a good place to do so, because it is Tories in charge and particularly corrupt and incompetent ones as well. Guess that sounds pretty familiar.

There are some places that have re-opened schools and it doesn't seem to have led to an increase in infections, but that's because they have competent and vaguely human governments who have got the case levels down sufficiently low and actually worked with schools and teachers instead of announcing this is going to happen and then assuming that making it actually work is somebody else's problem.

I'm sorry you're being put through this hell. I think the odds of you and your mum getting out of it alive are a lot better than your worst fears imagine, but even if that's so, the point is, as your post implies, it is going to be some teacher, and some kid. and some kid's mum.

Perhaps the best hope is that it's all such a mess that the schppö opening plans have to be completely junked because none of the plans can be made to work. I don't know. And it's just ridiculous your union won't actually fight for you, what the fuck is wrong with them?

[sabotabby]

I'm really hoping that the bar re-openings will cause a spike that makes reopening untenable. Because while I don't want bar patrons to die, if I have to choose between them and children, I'll choose children every time.

[smhwpf]

Fair.