Sam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
l33tminion) wrote2022-01-30 02:48 pm
l33tminion) wrote2022-01-30 02:48 pm
Big Blizzard and COVID Thoughts
Yesterday it snowed a whole lot. Waded to the park with Eris yesterday, then spent some time today digging out our door/garage. Our condo pays for snow removal, but like last time our snow removal service (functional last year) had big problems.
The COVID wave here seems to be waning.
It really frustrates me to see the lack of unity on pandemic mitigation. Like I read Angie Schmitt's stuff on Twitter, she's a person who writes a lot about pedestrian safety, really gets how bad health outcomes that are caused by doing things "the normal way" just get swept under the rug. But she's become a person whose number-one priority is having hard precomitments about when we can just stop trying re pandemic mitigation. Like I get it, I'm very glad schools are open here. "Schools closed, bars open" is insane, children shouldn't (and can't) do pandemic mitigation alone, it's terribly unfair just to cease the inexpensive public gatherings. But I'm glad that the kids are expected to try to help with pandemic mitigation here along with everyone, it seems like the right thing to do given that the pandemic is still ongoing and the long-term effects of COVID, even on kids specifically, are still unknown. It seems insane to me the degree to which people play up the mental-health impact of things as relatively innocuous as masking, while downplaying the mental-health impact of the pandemic itself. And the fact is, children's mental health wasn't all sunshine and roses pre-pandemic. Just insisting everything is normal now isn't a quick fix.
The COVID wave here seems to be waning.
It really frustrates me to see the lack of unity on pandemic mitigation. Like I read Angie Schmitt's stuff on Twitter, she's a person who writes a lot about pedestrian safety, really gets how bad health outcomes that are caused by doing things "the normal way" just get swept under the rug. But she's become a person whose number-one priority is having hard precomitments about when we can just stop trying re pandemic mitigation. Like I get it, I'm very glad schools are open here. "Schools closed, bars open" is insane, children shouldn't (and can't) do pandemic mitigation alone, it's terribly unfair just to cease the inexpensive public gatherings. But I'm glad that the kids are expected to try to help with pandemic mitigation here along with everyone, it seems like the right thing to do given that the pandemic is still ongoing and the long-term effects of COVID, even on kids specifically, are still unknown. It seems insane to me the degree to which people play up the mental-health impact of things as relatively innocuous as masking, while downplaying the mental-health impact of the pandemic itself. And the fact is, children's mental health wasn't all sunshine and roses pre-pandemic. Just insisting everything is normal now isn't a quick fix.