If you're wondering why I'm so angry all the time...

[sabotabby]

Ont. doctor suggests cancelling March Break to prevent another COVID-19 spike

The vast majority of public health professionals bowed to political pressure to reopen schools, despite having no clue as to the long-term health impacts of covid on children. They demonstrated a homicidal variant of expertise creep, believing because they understood (poorly) epidemiology, they were experts on what went on in a school building, all the time refusing to listen to the actual experts.

Worse, they arrogantly refused to admit that they were wrong, opening schools was dangerous and irresponsible, and it is even more dangerous and irresponsible to do so now, with Turbo Covid and vastly higher rates of infection in the mix.

And now they want to take away our fucking March Break.

They could just stop non-essential travel. You want your kid in school, you don't get that vacation to Florida. Instead they want to take away our one week (which I will be using to catch up on the extra workload they've heaped on us) because the general public can't fucking follow rules.

These people are going to be the death of me. Possibly literally.

Comments

[broken_record]

So you shouldn't have large gatherings of more than 10 people which would happen on vacation while ignoring orders, but they're allowed to have large gatherings at school.

[sabotabby]

Well yes, schools are magical places where kids can't get infected, and if they get infected, it's not a big deal, and they don't have families or anything to infect either.

[annie_r]

I'm so sorry. The response to the pandemic has been a disaster everywhere, but they keep making it worse for you.

Cases are really high in my state (although not so much in my county), but deaths are shockingly high. And they won't lock things down.

[sabotabby]

The weird thing is a lot of the measures have nothing to do with safety and more to do with exploiting people's exhaustion and terror.

[altamira16]

They canceled March break for the university in our town long ago replacing it with a day off here and there. Yesterday, I received an email from the superintendent saying that they want to make longer school days that start at 7:45AM next year for the purpose of equity except Wednesday, which will be a short day. It sounds bananas, but I am sure there are not many ways to turn people against equity than to say "you have to get your kid to school by 7:45AM."

[sabotabby]

How is that equity? Fuck.

Here they are doing equity training on our PD day, which sounds great if it were a normal year when teachers had to change everything about how they taught and possibly move schools. I'm all for equity but this is making me resent it.

[altamira16]

We live in a district where every school is unique and special and can do whatever they want so different schools in the district have days of varying length and various start times. This would force all the schools onto the same seven-hour school day. My son is currently going to school a little over 6.5 hours a day, and the day starts at 8:40. I think they would make the youngest kids go to school that early due to bussing schedules, but it is wild.

[mistersmearcase]

One thing I've learned in all of this is that it is a law of physics, basically, that people should be able to travel, and we are 100% powerless to do anything about it. I suppose the problem, from one vantage, is that separating essential from not essential would get muddy, but it feels like the real reasons are 1) the airline industry is too huge a part of life to risk making it unhappy (as capitalism of course regards businesses as having feelings) and 2) people think of travel as the thing that defines them as human. I actually have a friend who took a just for the hell of it trip months ago and I just decided to know as little about it as possible. I know when covid is a relatively done deal there will be zero talk of what happens if constant, cheap, international travel makes another covid happen, because then people might have to consider not living like we did, oh, thirty years ago, when taking a trip overseas was a bigger consideration than crossing the street. TL;DR: I do not understand how people think about travel.

[sabotabby]

I miss travel so much but like. It is a want, not a need. And I can't get over people going on vacation flights when I don't even get to cross the city. Like what are they even doing besides infecting the locals?

There's a bigger conversation to be had about air travel in general but I like to think that I offset my carbon footprint by veganism, not driving, and not having kids. (Note: I like to think, I do not actually think.) It's completely a luxury though.

[mistersmearcase]

Don't get me wrong; I don't think people shouldn't travel at all. I just feel like there's a culture of collect 'em all that makes it perfectly normal to take, like, a dozen long flights a year. And yeah, right now I see people talking online about taking trips to somewhere where they can chill and I'm like wtf is wrong with you.

Also FWIW I think you do offset your carbon footprint that way. I tend to look at it the same way, though arranged differently (don't have kids, which genuinely is the biggest one, live in a dense urban area, don't fly. So I justify not being a vegetarian or whatever.)

[sabotabby]

I always think I need to do less because I'm in the first world and also because I know there are people who will never cut down their carbon footprint. But also individualized solutions to problems that are collective in scope and the fault of like 100 corporations are also silly.

[frandroid]

I'm just joshing, but you as a teacher actually have the schedule of taking a ship to your summer destinations. 🙃

I wish they'd bring back ship travel... Not decadent cruises, just some decent ship travel. Like for someone like me who can work remotely, I could work on a ship while on my way to Greece or something!

[sabotabby]

Teachers in general, sure. Miss Tabby, who spends 4/6 weeks of summer vacation taking courses and actively planning for the upcoming year, cannot. Also isn't ship travel also really environmentally destructive?

I'd like high speed trains. Doesn't help getting across the pond but it would massively cut down on intercontinental flighst.

[franklanguage]

Ships and trains…I haven't been on a plane since 1979.

[frandroid]

Have you crossed an ocean at all during that time?

[franklanguage]

I haven't had the time or the money, so I guess my answer is no.

[radiantfracture]

That's the most bizarre leverage.

[sabotabby]

They just want us to die and they're running out of ways to break us.