I see a lot of praise and ‘thank you’ in the comment section… my sincerest apologies for not indulging.
Where was this two years ago when we needed it? We’ve known for a fact all of the negative consequences you’re writing about back when the pandemic began. We already had the studies. We knew that children were not at serious risk to COVID from the very beginning. We knew it. But it was more important to the elites, Democrats, and teachers to turn COVID into a political power grab than do what was best for our children. Anyone who had the audacity to question the elites was castigated as not caring about children dying, not believing in science, and was shunned from polite society. Anyone who dared to question the infallible and omniscient Supreme Fauci was portrayed as uneducated rubes who didn’t believe ‘The Science.’
This is the predictable result of decades of granting authority—political, expert, and moral—to a consolidated few. And there’s still a major effort to consolidate the flow of information through censorship. If you engage in outside mainstream information you’re deemed fringe or conspiratorial.
While it’s appreciated that the the truth most of us knew all along be spoken, it’s a little late to receive much applause since the damage is done. We need to stop electing politicians and stop supporting public unions that want to consolidate power. Let’s have an essay about that.
I will never forgive those in government (and the teachers' unions) for inflicting this on the youth. The disregard for and willingness to sacrifice the youth for everyone else (which is dubious, at best) is criminal.
I certainly appreciate this article - but I wonder why there is such silence amongst the millions and millions of teachers around the world who must be witnessing this destruction each day. So in answer to the question of "What am I supposed to say?", you are supposed to present facts and data and honesty instead of towing the company line.
I live in Florida. None of that happened here, except for the beginning of the pandemic. We quickly got our kids back to normal. Time will tell who was right and who was wrong, but I think we all know the answer already.
This should NEVER have happened. This is the GREATEST public health disaster in history. Truth: masks are MARGINALLY efficacious if helpful at all; children have a very low risk from this disease. This has been a travesty and we are LONG overdue to end it
Thank you Bari for publishing Stacey's words and experiences. I'm a college professor and so am a part of the same environment Stacey speaks of...only with older humans. What I can't seem to understand for the LIFE of me is WHY WHY WHY more of these young people aren't standing up and saying something? They thought nothing of calling me or other teachers out nine times a day if they have to, citing various micro-aggressions and whatnot these past couple years. I think the answer to my own question is what Stacey talked about...they have been fed this line of very dangerous HORSE SHIT that they will kill someone or risk someone's life if they take their mask off.
I'm begging my fellow colleagues tho to start standing with me and speaking out against this.
At some point-hopefully SOON-we as sane adults have to grow some backbones and start SPEAKING UP. Not only in schools (even tho this is definitely one of the most crucial) but in restaurants, grocery stores and theatres...where Mask Nazi's (formerly Ushers) hold up paddles that say MASK UP! and apparently tap/hit you if you stray from this rule....
I think this represents the results of a fundamental change in American culture and to some extent Western civilization over the past two generations.
The power has shifted in the US from citizens with common sense to an administrative class of lawyers and finance people. Neither group has any incentives or training to make informed decisions outside of their areas of competence. In spite of this they wield unaccountable and undeserved power and decision making.
The end result is the cheapest solution and the solution with the lowest possible risk. A summarization is contained within the phrase: "Cover your ass as cheaply as possible".
I live is Utah, USA. My son is 5 now and was in preschool when the pandemic started. He goes to a private school. They closed for about three months when everything started and did an online version that we didn’t participate in because trying to get a 3 year old to engage was pointless. His school returned to in person schooling in June of 2020. They requested masks but I could tell that the mask policy wasn't being enforced because his bag of reusable masks wasn’t getting smaller. I was appreciative of that fact. Utah stopped the mask mandate for non-public entities at some point in 2020 and then the teachers stopped wearing them as well. My son is almost 6 and doesn’t have a really clear understanding of Covid at all. His teachers don’t talk about it with the kids. He’s heard about it and some of his friends got the vaccine. There has not been one outbreak in his school that I am aware off.
We just got Covid on Monday. I’m sure it’s the lesser omi version because while it is not fun, it’s not horrible. The risk to kids is so minuscule. On day 4 we’ve only heard him cough three times. I’m so happy my sons school didn’t engage in these stupid scare tastics and fill him with fear. I worried enough for both of us.
Thank you for this; it's good to hear a Toronto teacher express frustration and alarm for students' mental wellbeing. We yanked our three children from school this month in Toronto because they (and we) had finally had enough of the backpedaling, the uncertainty around school closures, the torture of remote schooling (anyone who tries to defend Zoom school as a legitimate educational tool for 6-year-olds is not a serious person). But more than that, we were disheartened by the staunch religiosity that teachers enforcing covid rules have adopted. There is something fundamentally different about a teacher like you enforcing rules because she has to and one who truly believes that a plexiglass barrier put up at lunchtime is all that's standing between them and imminent death. Or one who hectors students and tells them that they literally will kill other people if their paw patrol mask isn't pulled above the nose or who tries to enforce social distancing in a classroom of 30 students. The rules are cruel precisely because they are irrational, unscientific, yes, but also impossible to follow. We finally realized we could step off this crazy wheel but it hasn't come without its costs to us personally. I can only imagine what the costs to society at large will be. The future will not be kind to those who treated our children and youth so terribly.
Thank you , thank you, thank you! I too am a teacher of high school students, although teaching in the United States, and this is exactly what I am seeing and working with every day. It is good to know that it's not just me and the few colleagues who are brave enough to admit it when we talk over drinks. What the "experts" did to these children and are still doing will rank among the worst domestic policy decision's of the last one hundred years. I want an apology from the CDC and short of that, get these kids back to a normal school, no masks, no distancing asap.
We live in Maine, which can be a very depressing place much of the year. Early on, we understood that our daughter, then 16, was at little to no risk from the virus and allowed her to continue any activities that were not canceled, as well as maintain her social life and work. Although my husband and I took the vaccines, we did not choose to vaccinate her. She and I both contracted what we believe was Delta in August. We were both sick for two weeks, but she bounced back quicker than I despite our vaccination status. She has largely come through the pandemic ok, despite some initial anxiety when not wearing a mask in public. Lately she has expressed some other unusual anxieties which we are seeking help for her to deal with. I am left to wonder if they are related to the general amount of elevated anxiety in our culture, especially among teenage girls. I believe she will be fine, but my heart breaks for the kids whose parents are uninvolved or exceedingly fearful themselves. We have only just seen the tip of the iceberg, as yesterday's heartbreaking interview illustrated..
Bari, we agree on little politically, but I listen eagerly to every one of your podcasts. Your interviews and the subjects you choose are interesting, fair and thoughtful. I really appreciate your forthrightness in confronting what can be uncomfortable subjects for many journalists. You are bold. Thank you for being unafraid to ask tough questions that sometimes reveal difficult truths. We don't have to agree. We just need to be able to be respectfully honest.
Isn't it perfectly clear by now that we live in an" idiocracy?" A society ruled by idiots. Based on a fierce ideology of guilt, shame and stupidity. And inhabited by a far-too-large segment of servile idiots who refuse to think for themselves and hang on every momentary edict that is contradicted by the next foolish rule. We have mandates and identity cards for vaccines that don't protect against the virus. We have anti-human nature and vastly unconstitutional lockdown mandates that did more harm than good, enforced by authoritarian twits without any jurist having the guts and brains to strike them down. We have destroyed our economies and, worst of all, harmed children. And who are the biggest proponents of this masked insanity. Let's admit it. The woke. And their vast media apparatus that propagates their lies. The vicious fools lifted the health care workers as "heroes" then turned on them when they demurred vaccination. These people are the existential threat. They are no longer to be mocked. They are to be punished and crushed for the damage they have done. To our nation. To our communities and most of all, to our children.
“She told me that she didn’t want to get anyone sick or kill anybody. She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying.”
——————————————
As I was jogging, a 13ish-year-old girl saw me coming and walked 40 feet off the sidewalk onto the grass, towards a wooded area. But I had seen her coming first so I had already moved off of the sidewalk into the road to give her easily 15 feet of space. This is happening outdoors.
Permanent psychological damage. PERMANENT.
Which reminds me of when Joe Biden saw an 11-year-old girl sitting in the front row at a town hall and he said
“Look at her sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed. She looks like she’s 19!!”
😳😳😳
Okay it didn’t really remind me of that, I just bring that up as often as possible. Told the Wendy’s drive thru guy about it yesterday.
I urge everyone to listen to James Lindsay on this issue. Just because ‘communist plot’ sounds conspiratorial, that doesn’t mean *nothing* is a communist plot.
The goal is to destabilize children all the way down to their identity. That’s because destabilized victim groups are easier to convert into revolutionaries.
The people who did this need to be dealt with in the most extreme way that is allowed by law. And this is important by the way. If thousands of people are dragged off to prison that provides clear tangible evidence to the children that they were in fact systematically abused. If nothing happens to the perpetrators the kids will just blame themselves.
My 12th grade teenaged son finally had enough yesterday. Just said "no" to the teacher when asked to put his mask on. The teacher told him he was being disrespectful of others and could spread disease and then walked away. My son left his mask off.
I told my son I supported him and this nonsense is over now. If he's suspended or expelled, so be it. We're finished with the craziness.
In my NJ town, the 2 private schools have been opened and functioning pretty much the entire pandemic with the exception of the first few months of lockdown in spring 2020. The public schools here have been closed mostly with remote learning for almost 2 years! The Teacher's Union in this country should be ashamed of themselves.
Thanks for taking the GUTS to write this heartfelt story.
Unfortunately the facts are pretty much irrelevant. Sane people understood all of this from the start, and still understand it. The insane psychopaths in charge of public "health" departments also understand the facts, even though they've been lying through the media. Their goal is torture and ruination, not health. This is delicious porn for Public "Health" monsters.
I see a lot of praise and ‘thank you’ in the comment section… my sincerest apologies for not indulging.
Where was this two years ago when we needed it? We’ve known for a fact all of the negative consequences you’re writing about back when the pandemic began. We already had the studies. We knew that children were not at serious risk to COVID from the very beginning. We knew it. But it was more important to the elites, Democrats, and teachers to turn COVID into a political power grab than do what was best for our children. Anyone who had the audacity to question the elites was castigated as not caring about children dying, not believing in science, and was shunned from polite society. Anyone who dared to question the infallible and omniscient Supreme Fauci was portrayed as uneducated rubes who didn’t believe ‘The Science.’
This is the predictable result of decades of granting authority—political, expert, and moral—to a consolidated few. And there’s still a major effort to consolidate the flow of information through censorship. If you engage in outside mainstream information you’re deemed fringe or conspiratorial.
While it’s appreciated that the the truth most of us knew all along be spoken, it’s a little late to receive much applause since the damage is done. We need to stop electing politicians and stop supporting public unions that want to consolidate power. Let’s have an essay about that.
I will never forgive those in government (and the teachers' unions) for inflicting this on the youth. The disregard for and willingness to sacrifice the youth for everyone else (which is dubious, at best) is criminal.
I certainly appreciate this article - but I wonder why there is such silence amongst the millions and millions of teachers around the world who must be witnessing this destruction each day. So in answer to the question of "What am I supposed to say?", you are supposed to present facts and data and honesty instead of towing the company line.
I live in Florida. None of that happened here, except for the beginning of the pandemic. We quickly got our kids back to normal. Time will tell who was right and who was wrong, but I think we all know the answer already.
This should NEVER have happened. This is the GREATEST public health disaster in history. Truth: masks are MARGINALLY efficacious if helpful at all; children have a very low risk from this disease. This has been a travesty and we are LONG overdue to end it
Thank you Bari for publishing Stacey's words and experiences. I'm a college professor and so am a part of the same environment Stacey speaks of...only with older humans. What I can't seem to understand for the LIFE of me is WHY WHY WHY more of these young people aren't standing up and saying something? They thought nothing of calling me or other teachers out nine times a day if they have to, citing various micro-aggressions and whatnot these past couple years. I think the answer to my own question is what Stacey talked about...they have been fed this line of very dangerous HORSE SHIT that they will kill someone or risk someone's life if they take their mask off.
I'm begging my fellow colleagues tho to start standing with me and speaking out against this.
At some point-hopefully SOON-we as sane adults have to grow some backbones and start SPEAKING UP. Not only in schools (even tho this is definitely one of the most crucial) but in restaurants, grocery stores and theatres...where Mask Nazi's (formerly Ushers) hold up paddles that say MASK UP! and apparently tap/hit you if you stray from this rule....
We have lost our minds.
I think this represents the results of a fundamental change in American culture and to some extent Western civilization over the past two generations.
The power has shifted in the US from citizens with common sense to an administrative class of lawyers and finance people. Neither group has any incentives or training to make informed decisions outside of their areas of competence. In spite of this they wield unaccountable and undeserved power and decision making.
The end result is the cheapest solution and the solution with the lowest possible risk. A summarization is contained within the phrase: "Cover your ass as cheaply as possible".
I live is Utah, USA. My son is 5 now and was in preschool when the pandemic started. He goes to a private school. They closed for about three months when everything started and did an online version that we didn’t participate in because trying to get a 3 year old to engage was pointless. His school returned to in person schooling in June of 2020. They requested masks but I could tell that the mask policy wasn't being enforced because his bag of reusable masks wasn’t getting smaller. I was appreciative of that fact. Utah stopped the mask mandate for non-public entities at some point in 2020 and then the teachers stopped wearing them as well. My son is almost 6 and doesn’t have a really clear understanding of Covid at all. His teachers don’t talk about it with the kids. He’s heard about it and some of his friends got the vaccine. There has not been one outbreak in his school that I am aware off.
We just got Covid on Monday. I’m sure it’s the lesser omi version because while it is not fun, it’s not horrible. The risk to kids is so minuscule. On day 4 we’ve only heard him cough three times. I’m so happy my sons school didn’t engage in these stupid scare tastics and fill him with fear. I worried enough for both of us.
My 11 year old starts therapy next week. I have tried everything I can think of to help his anxiety. What have we done to our kids?
Thank you for this; it's good to hear a Toronto teacher express frustration and alarm for students' mental wellbeing. We yanked our three children from school this month in Toronto because they (and we) had finally had enough of the backpedaling, the uncertainty around school closures, the torture of remote schooling (anyone who tries to defend Zoom school as a legitimate educational tool for 6-year-olds is not a serious person). But more than that, we were disheartened by the staunch religiosity that teachers enforcing covid rules have adopted. There is something fundamentally different about a teacher like you enforcing rules because she has to and one who truly believes that a plexiglass barrier put up at lunchtime is all that's standing between them and imminent death. Or one who hectors students and tells them that they literally will kill other people if their paw patrol mask isn't pulled above the nose or who tries to enforce social distancing in a classroom of 30 students. The rules are cruel precisely because they are irrational, unscientific, yes, but also impossible to follow. We finally realized we could step off this crazy wheel but it hasn't come without its costs to us personally. I can only imagine what the costs to society at large will be. The future will not be kind to those who treated our children and youth so terribly.
Thank you , thank you, thank you! I too am a teacher of high school students, although teaching in the United States, and this is exactly what I am seeing and working with every day. It is good to know that it's not just me and the few colleagues who are brave enough to admit it when we talk over drinks. What the "experts" did to these children and are still doing will rank among the worst domestic policy decision's of the last one hundred years. I want an apology from the CDC and short of that, get these kids back to a normal school, no masks, no distancing asap.
We live in Maine, which can be a very depressing place much of the year. Early on, we understood that our daughter, then 16, was at little to no risk from the virus and allowed her to continue any activities that were not canceled, as well as maintain her social life and work. Although my husband and I took the vaccines, we did not choose to vaccinate her. She and I both contracted what we believe was Delta in August. We were both sick for two weeks, but she bounced back quicker than I despite our vaccination status. She has largely come through the pandemic ok, despite some initial anxiety when not wearing a mask in public. Lately she has expressed some other unusual anxieties which we are seeking help for her to deal with. I am left to wonder if they are related to the general amount of elevated anxiety in our culture, especially among teenage girls. I believe she will be fine, but my heart breaks for the kids whose parents are uninvolved or exceedingly fearful themselves. We have only just seen the tip of the iceberg, as yesterday's heartbreaking interview illustrated..
Bari, we agree on little politically, but I listen eagerly to every one of your podcasts. Your interviews and the subjects you choose are interesting, fair and thoughtful. I really appreciate your forthrightness in confronting what can be uncomfortable subjects for many journalists. You are bold. Thank you for being unafraid to ask tough questions that sometimes reveal difficult truths. We don't have to agree. We just need to be able to be respectfully honest.
Isn't it perfectly clear by now that we live in an" idiocracy?" A society ruled by idiots. Based on a fierce ideology of guilt, shame and stupidity. And inhabited by a far-too-large segment of servile idiots who refuse to think for themselves and hang on every momentary edict that is contradicted by the next foolish rule. We have mandates and identity cards for vaccines that don't protect against the virus. We have anti-human nature and vastly unconstitutional lockdown mandates that did more harm than good, enforced by authoritarian twits without any jurist having the guts and brains to strike them down. We have destroyed our economies and, worst of all, harmed children. And who are the biggest proponents of this masked insanity. Let's admit it. The woke. And their vast media apparatus that propagates their lies. The vicious fools lifted the health care workers as "heroes" then turned on them when they demurred vaccination. These people are the existential threat. They are no longer to be mocked. They are to be punished and crushed for the damage they have done. To our nation. To our communities and most of all, to our children.
“She told me that she didn’t want to get anyone sick or kill anybody. She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying.”
——————————————
As I was jogging, a 13ish-year-old girl saw me coming and walked 40 feet off the sidewalk onto the grass, towards a wooded area. But I had seen her coming first so I had already moved off of the sidewalk into the road to give her easily 15 feet of space. This is happening outdoors.
Permanent psychological damage. PERMANENT.
Which reminds me of when Joe Biden saw an 11-year-old girl sitting in the front row at a town hall and he said
“Look at her sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed. She looks like she’s 19!!”
😳😳😳
Okay it didn’t really remind me of that, I just bring that up as often as possible. Told the Wendy’s drive thru guy about it yesterday.
I urge everyone to listen to James Lindsay on this issue. Just because ‘communist plot’ sounds conspiratorial, that doesn’t mean *nothing* is a communist plot.
The goal is to destabilize children all the way down to their identity. That’s because destabilized victim groups are easier to convert into revolutionaries.
The people who did this need to be dealt with in the most extreme way that is allowed by law. And this is important by the way. If thousands of people are dragged off to prison that provides clear tangible evidence to the children that they were in fact systematically abused. If nothing happens to the perpetrators the kids will just blame themselves.
My 12th grade teenaged son finally had enough yesterday. Just said "no" to the teacher when asked to put his mask on. The teacher told him he was being disrespectful of others and could spread disease and then walked away. My son left his mask off.
I told my son I supported him and this nonsense is over now. If he's suspended or expelled, so be it. We're finished with the craziness.
In my NJ town, the 2 private schools have been opened and functioning pretty much the entire pandemic with the exception of the first few months of lockdown in spring 2020. The public schools here have been closed mostly with remote learning for almost 2 years! The Teacher's Union in this country should be ashamed of themselves.
Thanks for taking the GUTS to write this heartfelt story.
Unfortunately the facts are pretty much irrelevant. Sane people understood all of this from the start, and still understand it. The insane psychopaths in charge of public "health" departments also understand the facts, even though they've been lying through the media. Their goal is torture and ruination, not health. This is delicious porn for Public "Health" monsters.