Long tails, Delta, and disposability

[sabotabby]

All this week, I've been ruminating over September.

Our All-Knowing Overlords have made several declarations about the new school year. Vaccinations will not be mandatory for staff and students. Families will be free to kill or cripple others because God forbid we should trample on anyone's deeply held beliefs (that they acquired from reading Facebook). They're instituting a bizarre timetable for high schoolers that combines the worst parts of the semester schedule—jugging four courses at a time—with the worst parts of the quadmester system—condensed time frame and extra-long classes—with alternating weeks to maximize how confused the kids can get. I bet you're confused just reading that. Add to this that teachers will be required to simultaneously teach to the virtual kids at home and the live classes, with zero instruction as to how to do this and I'm sure zero technology to assist with it, and you've got another year where students will learn nothing. Masking is mandatory, except for the 40-minute period where students will sit in underventilated rooms and expose each other and their teachers to covid over lunch. There will also be sports and wind instruments to ensure that outbreaks happen. In theory, there's an attempt at cohorting with the alternating schedule, but in practice everyone's together for lunch, recess, extracurriculars, and the bit at the end of the day when all the kids get out of class and immediately start licking each other's faces.

The emphasis continues to be on hygiene theatre and fomite transmission. Cleaning surfaces is much cheaper than reducing class sizes, but doesn't actually make much of a difference in covid transmission.

At the same time, our new provincial chief medical officer of health has issued a call to "normalize" covid in schools.

Basically, the authorities—who, I might add, haven't set foot in a high school since their own school days, and many of them were "educated" at private schools or homeschooled—have thrown their hands up and said, "let's just infect all the kids."

I've been reading a lot of about Delta, Delta+, and especially Long Covid. Long Covid can occur in up to 2% of children, whether or not these children were asymptomatic or seriously ill. It's been linked to an average 7-point drop in IQ.* It's linked to neurological problems, lung and heart issues, chronic fatigue—and no one knows if it's permanent.

This morning, I was talking to a teacher on Facebook who contracted covid in March from a student who lied on the self-screening that is also part of the hygiene theatre we were required to perform. Five months later, they remain ill with constant headaches and exhaustion. They have no idea how they will function in September. This is not an uncommon story. It is unlikely that anyone responsible—be it the school, the board, or the government—will be held accountable for deliberately giving this person a chronic disability that they may need to manage for the rest of their lives.

It boggles my mind that workers can be injured at work, entirely due to the negligence of the employer, and have to muddle on with no compensation or support. It's not just teaching, of course, and this isn't a new issue. I believe our discussions around health and safety would be very different if every time a worker was injured by employer greed, that employer was responsible for providing for them. But workers are disposable—teachers especially, since there are more teachers than jobs—and so we'll be chewed up and tossed out.

Do parents really want to risk sending their kids to school, knowing that they may come out physically or cognitively damaged? I suspect parents are just tired, more than anything else. The US has normalized the risk of school shootings, so there's definitely precedent. Apparently it's an acceptable balance of rights. Some kids will get shot so that gun hoarders can continue to hoard guns. Some kids will be permanently disabled, and a few will die, so that anti-vaxxers can continue to peddle their conspiracy theories and the province doesn't go into deficit spending.

I want to go back in person too. I loathe teaching online and I desperately want to return to normal. But I'm terrified. Unlike the people making these decisions, I know what it's like to have your life curtailed by chronic illness and disability. It's made me unkind. It's made me wish brain fog and shortness of breath and heart palpitations and chronic pain on the government that has decreed our lives and our kids' lives to be worthless, and to their accomplices in the medical field who've provided a smoke screen for the impending atrocity.

* Obligatory reminder that IQ is a eugenics-inspired bullshit measure of intelligence. That said, normally if you take two IQ tests, you should score better on the second one, because one thing IQ tests are very good at measuring is one's ability to take IQ tests. If you do worse on the second, it's an indication of cognitive decline, which is a very real thing.

Comments

[sara]

We have decided in our household that since we are all vaccinated, the youngest is back to school in person in an N95 style mask.

Part of what we're factoring in here is that he's not going to survive another year at home. That's how bad online school is. It's not tiredness, it's that I sincerely expect him to kill himself if this continues. I also have a fairly high level of confidence in the vaccines. We've decided that's a risk we'll take, given that our other option is a dead child.

I strongly support vaccine mandates and just this week wrote in to my union to tell them that I want a vaccine mandate at work. I think that was not the tone of much of the correspondence they've been getting on the subject so I'm glad I spoke up.

[sabotabby]

That's fair. I was also horrified that our union is not pressing for a vaccine mandate.

[kore]

What I'm seeing in a LOT of places is that the mandate is "you get vaccinated, or a weekly covid test," which is just infuriating.

[minoanmiss]

Cognition is reallly interesting and I should go read up on it and se if they have created any non-bigotry-based metrics for it.

Which is a side note much like noticing a small spiral spot on Cthulhu's second-leftmost tentacle rather than trying to look at the entire beast TPTB are encouraging to rampage.

[sabotabby]

Cognition is reallly interesting and I should go read up on it and se if they have created any non-bigotry-based metrics for it.

I know there have been attempts at more culturally inclusive metrics. But I think the idea of generalized intelligence as something quantifiable and unchangeable is, in itself, problematic. It's probably more useful to measure specific skills, like short- and long-term memory, or pattern-recognition, or spatial awareness, relative to individuals over time and populations as a whole.

Which is a side note much like noticing a small spiral spot on Cthulhu's second-leftmost tentacle rather than trying to look at the entire beast TPTB are encouraging to rampage.

Oh, absolutely.

[rdi]

"...our new provincial chief medical officer of health has issued a call to "normalize" covid in schools." (a) What the fuck does that even mean? (b) What the fuck are they thinking? (Bold of me to assume they're thinking.)

While we're at it, let's "normalize" polio in schools. Let's "normalize" measles in schools.

[sabotabby]

I've never seen so many people give up so quickly. Well, that's not true. There's the same amount of surrender with climate change. Like, guess we'll all die.

Tired Exasperated Horrified

[agoodwinsmith]

I'm too tired to be angry enough. I'm tired from exasperation and horror. I'm exasperated by people who think that just because COVID 19 is old news cycle they can positive-think it away. I'm horrified how much we've "normalized" accepting friendly-fire casualties, or should I say: friendly-neglect casualties.

I don't have any useful ideas for people stuck in this horrible gumbo of out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

Re: Tired Exasperated Horrified

[sabotabby]

I mean, I've gotten used to the fact that as a person with less than peak-functional physical ability, my life is basically worthless. But it still hurts.

[joymoose]

Parents aren't tired. We're making the best decision giving the shitty options we have been given. Just like everyone else is.

[sabotabby]

I don't know what parents could do, tbh. Revolt en masse, I guess. But it won't happen.

[belleweather]

Yeah, this. We just do not have another year of virtual school in us, not us and definitely not the kids. I think we'd be forced to give up, call it a lost year and let the kids eat junkfood and play minecraft for 10 months.

[altamira16]

I live in a place where there were a lot of anti-vax folks before the pandemic. Judging by some online behavior, I am seeing some push back to the anti-vaxxers in a way that did not exist before the pandemic.

[sabotabby]

Let's hope. But while I'm angry at anti-vaxxers, I view it as a reaction to powerlessness and lack of information in many cases. There are people in charge who could be acting like grownups and aren't.

[smilingslightly]

Delta is running rampant here. There doesn't seem to be any way to convince someone who doesn't think protective measures are necessary to the contrary — whatever their motivations might be — unless it personally affects them, at which point it's too late to lessen their personal impact, and it won't help anyone else anyway. I'm vaccinated but in self-quarantine for reasons. Mask mandate comes down again tomorrow fwiw, after lifting it unnecessarily exposed a shit-ton of workers. etc.

Nothing was learned over the past 18 months because fuck if anything but short term political expediency and profits is considered, let's discard everything that's actually worked or helped people.

Your situation sounds terrible. Is terrible. I'm sorry.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, it's just so frustrating watching governments cycle through the same mistakes. We know the things we need to do but no one's willing to pay the political cost, and instead the choice has been to get us used to death and disability, with zero compensation if we are disabled through work.

My calculus would be very different if someone was like, "yes, you risk your life, but if you get long covid, we'll provide for you for the rest of your life."

[gingicat]

Apparently vaccinated people, when infected with the Delta variant, shed as much viral load as unvaccinated people. :(

So we can't achieve herd immunity any more than with the flu, and I'm terrified.

[sabotabby]

Especially with the under 12s not vaccinated. It's going to be a school-based epidemic.

[symbioid]

No mandatory vaccines for school? What the goddamned fuck.

Is there a mandatory vaccine for like polio and shit? Or is that optional too? We are going to the dark ages so hard, I'm sorry they're putting you in this shitty situation as Delta/Lambda ramp up.

I'm with you on the evil feelings in the heart for these bastards. Every time I hear these fuckers talk I desire they choke on their own filling lung fluid and struggle with every breath til they die. (but only those people not the innocent people who are trying may they heal ASAP and GTFO and be free again).

[sabotabby]

There's mandatory MMR vaccines, but for some reason people are weirder about covid vaccines. MUH FREEDUMBZ. Like we suspend kids who don't get MMR unless they have a medical exemption (no exemption for religious/conspiracy beliefs). This shouldn't be any different.

[frandroid]

I saw the plan while I was away and while I was not expecting much, somehow I expected... something more? It just sucks so much. My office is going to open up eventually, not because they want to bring us back to our desks, but because some people REALLY REALLY want to get back, due to either space or family issues, who knows. (I wouldn't be surprised if they postponed re-opening due to higher numbers though, my division has been pretty conservative (in the good sense) on this issue.) I'm a person who prefers the office to home so I'd like to go back, but I basically am going to keep an eye on the numbers and see what happens. It's amazing that I will have this luxury of choice and no children.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I expected less. I figured they were just going to throw the doors open, double our work hours, and let everyone die. At least they didn't lift the mask mandate.

People are still going to die, obviously. I'm convinced we'll get an Ontario variant out of this foolishness.

[mistersmearcase]

I have gotten the feeling at times that what motivates people more than anything is the desire not to be at home with their families.

[sabotabby]

If I had to be cooped up with anyone this long, I'd have murdered them.

[broken_record]

You know, when I was a kid I believed conspiracy theories because in the early 2000s I was just trying to find every source of information I could on the internet. There wasn't Facebook yet, but the conspiracy theories were still there and I didn't know they were just theories, I thought it was people speaking the truth and trying to spread necessary information. About false flags, like the Boston marathon bombing being a false flag. And about the government being corrupt.

So now I see kids around my neighborhood that go to the nearby middle school and I am not surprised they've been licking each other's faces. Even if they are just malicious or they don't understand germs even though they just learned about them 5 years ago, they are also more susceptible to conspiracy theories because I know I wasn't the only dumb one.

[sabotabby]

Oh, they're not malicious at all. They're just horny. I can't fault them—their brains aren't finished developing yet. I fault the adults for making poor decisions; kids are just gonna be kids.

I was really into conspiracy theories because of the X-Files, which shows my age.

[pofflewomp]

It's beyond belief.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I fully believe it.