Today's morbid thought

[sabotabby]

Are there meetings where the Ontario government sits around debating exactly how many dead kids and teachers (and EAs, and office support staff, and caretakers, but no one is talking about any of them) are acceptable before it jeopardizes their re-election prospects? Or are they just not thinking at all?

I'm guessing dead kid numbers need to stay in the single digits but are fine as long as all the kids who die have underlying conditions or aren't white. Teacher numbers can go up higher; probably as long as it's under about 300 or so. Caretakers won't even get counted other than by their union.

Comments

[redbird]

They're probably giving themselves a figleaf of deniability by talking about "if this policy proves to be too unpopular we'll change it" -- because hey, elected officials are supposed to care about what the public thinks

[sabotabby]

But like...

what's the number

I need to know what the acceptable number is

[ltmurnau]

There is no acceptable number, there is only an acceptable limit to the reaction to whatever the number is.
The popular reaction to 300 dead children will not be 300 times more than the reaction to one dead child; it's unpredictable.
If it were, politics would be far more of an exact science.
As you say below, the USA has a fairly high tolerance for numbers of dead school kids and it's probably quite a bit less up here.
And the tolerances are very different for teachers and staff, since the government has already worked hard to vilify them for the last few years.

But I know what you're getting at, and Cabinet would just love to know just how far they could push it, but they would like to know that for every political move they make, about anything.
Because I think they understand that just about anything they do decide, about anything significant, ends up affecting people strongly... but whether they care more about that, or more about their necks being on the line, varies too.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I know. And much depends on the colour of the children.

I just want to corner every politician, trustee, staffer, and loudmouth parent, and demand that they give me a price. How many deaths before the experiment wasn’t worth it?

[minoanmiss]

I hear you. I'm waiting to hear from Betsy Devos about the numbers she picked for the US educational system.

[sabotabby]

The US has a super high tolerance for dead kids, though. School shootings illustrate that. I'd say it's in the thousands, probably. I put our numbers as lower, though not as low as they were before everyone got locked up with their kids and had to spend time with them.

[minoanmiss]

That's grimly true, yes.

[dewline]

And now the resentment's been trained into the parents. Subconscious or not.

[sabotabby]

I'm an introverted enough person that the idea of being trapped with any person for a long period of time is hell. And among the destructive lies of our civilization is the idea that all parents must love their children completely, fully, and selflessly at all times.

Thing is, most kids are annoying at times. Most adults are annoying at times. But kids don't self-regulate. There's a reason why we split up the task of child-rearing and spread out that labour.

Just like all these couples have learned that their love is not, in fact, strong enough to withstand prolonged sheltering-in-place, a lot of parents were learning that the teacher was right about Precious Little Bobby, and now they'd risk his life to have just a few hours away from him.