I'm not sure what to think of this from the article:
> 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.
> What am I supposed to say? That 23 children have died from Covid in Canada during the whole of the pandemic and she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? That kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands largely haven’t had to wear masks at school and haven’t seen outbreaks because of it? That masks are not a magic shield against the virus, and that even if she were to pass it along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule?
> I want to tell her that she can remove her mask, and socialize with her friends without being worried.
> But I am expected to enforce the rules.
While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher.
> At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play at the park or hang out with their friends.
Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks.
I think what's really missing in most situations is honest conversations about the way the world is right now, the fact that many people are afraid, others are dying and many more will die as a result of this virus.
Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering.
> While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher.
I wouldn't be so sure. I would definitely be worried about being seen as a covid denier or similar. People feel really strongly about this and has strangely turned political, and its best not to discuss politics with your students so that you don't draw the ire of parents that could label you as something you're not
> Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering.
I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age.
"I just want my children to have a relatively care-free existence in their formative years, much like I had. Children and young people are not without their own low-stake drama but they should not have this weight of forced upon them at that age."
Kids read newspapers. They know what's happening. Even high school kids are depressed by things like climate change, income inequality and the broken Canadian real estate market. I don't think encouraging the spread of disease is likely to cheer them up much.
Wearing a mask and not meeting in large groups is not stopping socialization. Acknowledging that certain behaviours spread an already virulent disease isn't callous, it's realistic and it's why the pandemic is depressing. Ignoring covid doesn't make most people feel any better, they know it exists.
> Wearing a mask and not meeting in large groups is not stopping socialization.
I'm sorry, but I can't engage in good faith when this is your opening statement. Facial cues are an essential part of socialization. Meeting in large groups is one form of socialization, one that's incredibly common among teenagers and children.
While the pandemic has certain gone on far too long my experience with teenagers is that none of them has forgotten what a human face looks like, most go unmasked around family and close friends and they're still meeting in small groups on a regular basis. I don't think regular mask wearing in school is going to result in stunted social development. And most kids are not very eager to catch covid or spread it to their teachers or parents.
I wouldn’t worry about a child’s face to face socials skills development any more than I’d worry about her horseback riding skills development. Perhaps some eccentric hobbyists will indulge, but the world where that was a universal life skill is never coming back.
Vaccines were the only plausible way out of restrictions. Since they turned out not to be, it is clear that restrictions are forever.
This is intellectually dishonest. No one pushing for mask mandates is attempting to punish people. You can argue that masks are a poor tradeoff or ineffective without willfully casting those on the opposite side as evil or malicious.
This unwillingness to acknowledge each others’ humanity and points of view is precisely why every issue is so unbearably partisan now. It’s not sufficient that we disagree. It’s but sufficient that the other side it’s just wrong. They must be actively evil for being wrong.
If you think wearing a mask in social gatherings is abuse or mass punishment I don't know what to tell you. We may as well have not come up with germ theory! Children are not the fragile little snowflakes you're making them out to be, they understand the concept of responsibility and it is our job (ostensibly) as adults to make sure they embody it.
Whining about masks in public during a viral epidemic is telling the youth that their personal whims come before the collective health. Which some of you may believe, I'm not here to argue with you if you do. Should masks and vaccines have been the only solution? No. Should families and small businesses have to deal with inconsistent public information and almost no financial support? No.
But given the reality in which we find ourselves the bare minimum would be to not act like a mask is some particular burden. If you want to talk about mass punishment we could get on the topic of what nurses, doctors, and med techs are dealing with. Or all the "essential workers" that were treated like disposable refuse.
It's especially funny when you take into account billions of people around the world regularly wear masks in public during flu season, but apparently North Americans can't handle it.
This is a great dataset because it controls for a lot of variables - it's two school districts in the same county; one optional and one mandatory. The mandatory masking county consistently has had higher rates of Covid.
Wearing a mask and not meeting in groups also won't stop COVID.
"it's realistic" it's realistic to face the fact that kids are unlikely to die from COVID so living in fear and spreading that fear is absolutely callous.
They are stastically more likely to die from tripping on a sidewalk than dying of Covid.
Telling them they are "spreading disease" when it's literally a cold/flu is irresponsible...
The problem is the fear of COVID has reached religious status and only heathens talk against the Church. The COVID Crusaders will burn witches at the stake no matter if they are spreading fear not based in facts or reality.
> it's literally a cold/flu
> they are spreading fear not based in facts or reality.
You can’t appeal to facts and reality and then also falsely claim COVID is literally a cold/flu. A cold and a flu aren’t even the same thing as each other. And COVID is certainly neither of those with over 5 million deaths worldwide. Even if you think the numbers are inflated, COVID has still killed something like an order of magnitude more people than the flu would in the same timespan.
You don’t convince others by listening by spreading your own lies. Rational thought is not built on misinformation.
"then also falsely claim COVID is literally a cold/flu" It's in the same area... the only difference is we've had those for generations and covid is new.
COVID is in effect a bad flu...
"5 million deaths" 5 million deaths FROM covid or WITH COVID?
Hint: You don't know because we don't know... those numbers are mixed, conflated and confused.
"Order of magnitude" In places like the US where hospitals get 30% more money for stamping "something" as "covid"? Hard to take numbers seriously... especially when you admit that "FROM" COVID and "WITH" COVID are different things and haven't been tracked properly.
If I have a heart attack... but I had COVID... Am I a COVID death or not? Currently, it's yes... you're a COVID death no matter what kills you. No matter that you're really not a COVID death.
"rational thought is not built on misinformation" but the fear around COVID is.
That's why kids who are statistically more likely to die tripping on a sidewalk are getting pushed to get vaccines that don't block transmition, don't stop covid and won't end the pandemic.
People aren't getting vaccinated for "rational though" because if they were then the people getting the vaccines would be the people who need the extra protection - as they also get that extra protection. Not kids or people in their 20's and younger who are proven a LONG time ago to not need to live in fear.
It's not rational thought that's driving COVID at this point. It's fear, misinformation, lies and the Holy Religion of The Vaccine.
No, it’s not. It is literally a different disease and the impact is well outsized relative to the flu.
> "5 million deaths" 5 million deaths FROM covid or WITH COVID?
> Hint: You don't know because we don't know... those numbers are mixed, conflated and confused.
This “but numbers are inflated” stuff is FUD. There is zero evidence that the real impact of COVID is lower than the reported numbers. (If you have any, please do share.) Excess deaths indicate that the official COVID death tallies are actually significant undercounting.
It’s utterly crazy that people can legitimately hold the view that COVID is no worse than the flu in the face of mass cremations happening in India or refrigerator trucks filled with corpses outside New York hospitals. This doesn’t happen in a typical flu season.
> That's why kids who are statistically more likely to die tripping on a sidewalk
This seems like an easy claim for you to provide a citation for. Where is it?
I’m totally on board with the fact that the risk to children of COVID is very low. But I’m relatively certain that sidewalks being more deadly is bullshit.
> fear, misinformation, lies and the Holy Religion of The Vaccine.
This coming from someone spreading misinformation. Why do you expect people to engage in real discussion with you when you’re spreading misinformation? Your righteous outrage is unjustified when you’re as guilty of lying to yourself as those you’re arguing with.
I didn't read the newspaper or know anything about climate change, income inequality or Canadian real estate. And I pray to god my children don't either. This wasn't a thing growing up in Northeast US in the late 90s
"i was sheltered from the realities of the world i occupied and my children should be too"? whether or not your children are aware of climate change (or any of the things you listed) isn't going to change its impact when they're adults -- if anything, you're ensuring they won't be prepared.
Everyone judges book by its cover, its just a built in mechanism in our reptilian brain.
If someone acts like antivax they are placed in a wacko conspiracy theory box immediately. It will take effort on their part to be not view through only that prism.
So its a tight rope walking situation.
Personally I changed my mind about children masks after argument that children need social cues (including facial clues) to properly respond and develop. It makes sense and I feel bit silly not to think about it in the first place.
There is a discussion to be had about how we deal with covid, and there are always trade offs, sadly as you mentioned making public safety a political issue is moving away from facts and statistics into emotional warfare
Part of the problem is that our medical science institutions in the US are 100% controlled by the executive wing of our government. The CDC and FDA currently must operate under the rules and guidelines set by the sitting president. That's completely against science, in my opinion. These two institutions should be decoupled from politics.
> the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument)
I agreed with many of the arguments in the article when I red it, but checking out the other submissions on that blog, I think there are a lot of suspicious omissions like this.
E.g. There is another post [1] about a transwoman and a transman both competing in the women's swimming team. Sounds weird and at first glance seems to confirm all the usual "trans agenda" accusations. Except, the linked original article [2] clears it up:
> Henig is eligible to compete on the women’s team as a trans man because he’s chosen not to receive gender-affirming hormones, also known as hormone replacement therapy, such as testosterone.
Any mention of that in the blog? Nope - on the contrary, she doubles down on the confusion and emphasizes it to push the "trans agenda" narrative:
> Can you ask any questions about this and whether it makes sense for women’s sports to become a free-for-all for all that leads to a man winning? Do you want to keep your job? Because by the definitions of the movement, Iszac is a male who cannot compete on a women’s team, right? This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd.
So in closing, I think the source is heavily biased to push certain outrage-generating narratives and cannot really be taken serious - even though I absolutely empathize with a lot of her observations in the OP article.
An “honest conversation” about COVID and children would treat it as a risk on the order of drowning, not something that warrants the terror people have.
This is simply blatant fear-mongering. Note the second word in the figure: "putative". If you click the associated link, you'll see that the figure is taken from a review that covers a bunch of papers that present all of these things as hypotheses. None have been shown to be true.
I'm sorry to say it, but Eric Topol is no longer a reliable source of information. He routinely mis-represents "science" in the scariest way possible, and as exemplified here, nuance and and measured communication are essential to prevent panic.
Can you please post multiple examples of how he routinely misrepresents science in the scariest way possible? I've yet to see it, but I'm certainly willing to change my mind if you present it here
Another, equally valid, way of looking at that is that half of the people in that study reporting "long Covid" have no evidence of ever having Covid.
> Using SARS-CoV-2 serology and IFN-γ ELISPOT, we found evidence of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection in 50% (15/30) of patients
See also this large (N=26k) study from France, where the only "long Covid" symptom correlated with confirmed infection was loss of smell. Nearly every other symptom was associated with belief of prior infection, but not infection itself:
Psychosomatic illness is a real problem. I understand that they don't want to mock people with it (as it's not really helpful), and post viral syndromes do exist, but the mass hysteria people are raising is even less helpful.
Completely agreed. Post-viral syndromes are real, as is psychosomatic illness.
But we're now locked in cycle of speculation about speculation -- these papers on long Covid are usually stunningly bad, and dispense with basic things like controls, or even separating the subjects by age and severity of primary illness. So you get review articles postulating complex theories of biological mechanisms for "illnesses" where the primary evidence base consists of a web survey. It's madness, and it's almost impossible to properly debunk it all, given how quickly its being churned out.
Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected.
People dismissing "Long Covid" in non-Covid patients are being blind to the fact that we had a LOT of people who had "weird" symptoms even before Covid that we allocated to "hysteria", "psychosomatic", "chronic", "Lyme disease", etc. that are going to turn out to be "Long General Virus Recovery".
Epstein-Barr has some huge correlation to multiple sclerosis. HPV vaccines have almost eliminated certain cervical cancers. Chicken pox necessitates a shingles vaccine because its so horrible.
Viruses are a lot worse than we realized, and the medical system is going to be coming to grips with this for decades.
> Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from thane we expected.
No, this is not supported by the evidence. So far, even the worst of the long Covid papers suggests that a minority of people suffer from lingering illness. And most of those papers are bad, defining "long Covid" arbitrarily, and mixing together "cough after three weeks" with far more serious symptoms experienced by a tiny set of people.
When people say "we need more research on long Covid", this is what is meant. We literally have no idea what "it" is, other than an arbitrary container into which people are dumping their worst fears and speculations.
Going from this to "viruses are much worse than we ever knew!" is both wrong (post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people) and overgeneralization.
Let's assume "minority" means 5%. Total "confirmed" cases of Covid are now north of 70 million in the US and at 20 million just before the vaccine.
At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions.
That 5% number is probably close for Covid prior to vaccines. Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover. How many people would even have mentioned anosmia after having a cold or flu? That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does.
Post-vaccine, the "Long Covid" percentage certainly drops by quite a bit.
> post-viral syndrome is a known thing, affecting a small fraction of people
The number of people who got cervical cancer from HPV is small, and yet, before the vaccine, it was one of the more common and fatal of cancers.
"Small fraction" != "unimportant"
In addition, things pile up. Carcinogenesis takes a long time with key mutations as far back as the womb and early childhood. Viruses are part of the landscape that causes those mutations.
You have provided no evidence to counteract my statement so I still stand by it: Viruses period, Covid or not, apparently do a lot more damage and require a lot longer to recover from than we expected.
> At 1 million people before the vaccine (5% of 20 million), that would make "Long Covid" one of the most common medical conditions.
...and yet, we're not seeing these waves and waves of disabled people. This should give you pause, and make you doubt the claims of prevalence, the claims of severity, or both.
By the way: "reported" infections vastly underestimate the true prevalence of disease. Up until the Omicron wave (which has tremendously increased the number) the CDC estimated that almost 150 million US citizens have had it:
Again, this should make you doubt the claims of prevalence. If even 5% of cases have this "long Covid", we're talking about 8 million cases. If claims of 20% prevalence are true, boost that number to 30 million people. The burden on the medical system would be immense; you would not be able to get appointments for even basic care. Chronically disabled people should be swamping medical clinics everywhere.
It's simply obvious nonsense. Only by conflating minor symptoms with pathology do you get to an estimate anywhere near these kinds of numbers.
> Look at the sheer number of people who had anosmia and how long it is taking them to recover.
I'm one of them. Took about a week.
> That sure goes into the "Long Covid" bucket in my book and we're not even discussing the panoply of other damage that Covid does.
We're discussing it right now. What we're not discussing is the evidence for this "panoply of other damage"...because for the vast majority of "long Covid" symptoms, the evidence simply doesn't exist. We leap from self-reports of "symptoms" directly to "panoply of damage", based on little more than speculation and quotes from doctors.
If you bother to read the papers cited within this press release, you'll see they all go on fishing expeditions to find anyone reporting symptoms, then claim that these are caused by Covid. From the headline study [1]:
> Presenting symptoms included palpitations, chronic rhinitis, dysgeusia, chills, insomnia, hyperhidrosis, anxiety, sore throat, and headache among others.
Literally anyone reporting sweating, headache, anxeity or insomnia is counted as "long Covid", if they hadn't reported it before their Covid diagnosis. Completely ridiculous. This is not research.
While I agree this isn't over, I disagree with your conclusion. We have little idea how early COVID exposure will affect us decades from now, but there's already signs of psychological strain in kids which could prove to be worse. Nobody knows.
You mean among hospitalized individuals? i.e not children
> Initial reports of neurologic syndromes accompanying COVID-19 described changes in level of consciousness or cognitive dysfunction, weakness, and headache in hospitalized patients...
> A UK-wide study of hospitalized patients identified the most common neurologic conditions...
> Direct examination of autopsy brain tissue has caveats—those who died with acute COVID-19 had severe disease that may not be representative of the majority of those infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Children spread covid to more vulnerable people just as easily as adults do.
Unless your world view is that we should all teach our children to be maximally selfish and to not care when grandma dies then thinking only of your own direct mortality during a highly contagious pandemic is a bit silly.
> Children are Infrequently Identified as the Index Case of Household SARS-CoV-2 Clusters
> In analysis of the cluster index cases, we included 43 articles, in which there were 213 SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters; only 3.8% (8/213) were identified as having a pediatric index case (Table 1 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 3). Of 611 individuals in the 213 clusters, there were 102 children. These pediatric cases only caused 4.0% (16/398) of all secondary cases, compared with the 97.8% of secondary cases that occurred when an adult was identified as the index case in the cluster (Table 1).
> Unless your world view is that we should all teach our children to be maximally selfish and to not care when grandma dies then thinking only of your own direct mortality during a highly contagious pandemic is a bit silly.
Is this really necessary? You started by saying that COVID is multiple orders of magnitude more deadly than drowning. You were shown to be wrong, so you retreated to the “gotta protect grandma” stance (which is unrelated to your original claim, and also very possibly wrong), and then for good measure you knocked down a straw man and cast wrycoder as basically just evil for disagreeing with you.
The reality is that children seem to have extremely low risk from COVID. And it appears that they aren’t particularly likely to pass it to vulnerable populations. And those vulnerable populations should be vaccinated already (as should everyone eligible).
Maybe unmasking children would increase the danger to at-risk populations. Maybe that’s selfish. Maybe it’s selfish to keep demanding children wear masks for 8 hours/day out of fear when the evidence that it’s doing anything useful seems lacking. What I know is that COVID isn’t going anywhere and “everyone wear a mask all the time until the end of time” is not an end game strategy.
As an aside, the most frustrating thing about arguments (“discussions”) is that even when people are wrong and proven so, they rarely accept it or change they claims. They go right out saying the same stuff again. Most of the people spouting misinformation on both sides of the COVID debate are pretty well informed about the reality at this point. They just willfully ignore information that didn’t fit their narrative.
This teenager has been telling me on a monthly basis since last year that "food still tastes like garbage to me." It is some kind of strange side-effect she has from holding her breath at the bottom of the deep end of the pool.
Oops, did I write, "holding her breath at the bottom of the deep end of the pool?" I meant to write "a mild case of covid."
> Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks.
Here in Santa Clara County, our public health department demanded that play structures close down during the first lockdown order and many parks closed. It is the one part of the response that I thought was really stupid and lambasted at the time.
Afterwards, many parents were still anxious and didn't let their kids out.
That’s not “shaming”. Shutting down playgrounds was a panic reaction and turned it to be useless but no one was “shaming” children. (It also went on for way too long in many places. Playgrounds were still shut down long after many things opened up for adults in many areas, which was incredibly shitty.)
There was a study I saw recently that talked about how politically and culturally, some people are negatively motivated by shame (loosely on the right), and some are not (loosely on the left).
It's related to an overall value on "Purity" as a moral virtue.
I think what happens is that people like the author are very influenced by shame and therefore project the intent to shame on situations when they FEEL shame.
If I do something and someone tells me not to, I don't feel "shame", regardless of whether I agree with the direction or not.
That's not the case with some people.
I believe it's also associated with narcissism. If you are powerfully negatively impacted by shame you will do everything possible not to feel it including intense denial gaslighting and narcissism.
No playgrounds have been closed due to covid since the very early days of the pandemic when noone had any idea how infectious or deadly the disease was.
At that point, since you didn't know any more about the epidemiology of covid than the experts, I should hope you had another reason to stay away not just arbitrary rule following or social pressure.
I was exceptionally careful during early COVID. And I thought many restrictions: closing hiking trails, small playgrounds... benches! were exceptionally stupid. Most localities did not go that far. Mine did.
You can think that, and you were right, but it was a justifiable perspective in the absence of better data.
BTW, if you start tracking the current spread of Omicron, there is strong evidence that Omicron is contageous enough through close proximity even outdoors for short periods of time: Benches, ski chair lifts, playgrounds, hiking trail bottlenecks.
The original COVID variants weren't that contagious, but if they were equally threatening and as infectious as Omicron, it would have been a completely correct policy.
> You can think that, and you were right, but it was a justifiable perspective in the absence of better data.
A weakly justifiable perspective that was away from the consensus view at the time and caused harm (probably reduced compliance with the reasonable measures, in addition to all the secondary harms).
I had cops threaten to give me a massive ticket for standing in the middle of a field with a telescope by myself. Said cops were 100% of my human contact outside my household in March. This probably wasn't our best enforcement bet.
> there is strong evidence that Omicron is contageous enough through close proximity even outdoors for short periods of time
I don't buy this. I'm in a test-100%-weekly environment and this happening any more than rarely isn't compatible with our observations.
> The original COVID variants weren't that contagious, but if they were equally threatening and as infectious as Omicron, it would have been a completely correct policy.
We already had a decent estimate of R0 as 2.0-3.5 even in dense environs, and consensus was already forming around a 2.4 "best guess". We also knew that indoor was the vast majority of that 2.4.
This is extremely anecdotal, but I have a friend group who are all extremely careful (no socialization; grocery delivery only; other measures that many would consider too extreme)
But we're in a mountainous region and it's winter, and we all ski. I know 3 people that got Omicron and the only close proximity to people they had in the time period was chair lift lineup and the chair lift itself.
Many things we did early on were of dubious value. I used to wear gloves in the grocery store. Totally pointless. I still know people who are anxious about getting takeout, so they microwave / reheat all their food, "just in case" it has covid.
>Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks.
They are somewhere in Canada. Regulations and attitudes differ depending on the location and phase of the pandemic.
>The City of Ottawa said Tuesday that an Orléans man confronted by a bylaw officer while kicking a soccer ball with his four-year-old autistic son in an empty field was given a warning, but not fined $700.
I hope people aren't forgetting what we went through and how the public and officials reacted to it. It would be hard to improve unless we remember what happened.
"overzealous municipal bylaw officer" isn't exactly some sort of mass oppression. I'm pretty sure bylaw officers writing dumb tickets existed before covid.
In March of 2020 when pretty much everything in North America closed and they reopened in May of that year. I didn't notice at first that the ticket was issued at that time. The understanding of covid was significantly less then and some of the measures were unnecessary in retrospect. This all has little to do with an essay penned this year about schools.
I was similarly confused with the contradiction of her kids having spent ‘one third of their lives in lockdown’ and mentions of going out to restaurants and seeing friends at their houses. Is that lockdown?
IMO, as a teacher: The kids are alright. For elementary kids, the rules are no big deal. For middle school, where I mostly teach... the rules are OK, but the unpredictability of what they're looking forward to happening (sports, dances, get-togethers, travel) is not great. Two years of indefinite uncertainty about everything good happening, with no end in sight, is crushing to adults, let alone kids with 13 years of experience in life.
In high school, it's a source of anxiety for some students. They don't want to bring a dangerous virus home or to their grandparents. Others refuse to comply with restrictions in normal adolescent defiance. Asking for the courtesy of wearing a mask is often a very "OK boomer" moment.
All of these things suck. But the students I work with are resilient and are working through it and making the best of it all.
I do think we should "call our shot" -- name some endpoints and acceptable levels of risk a priori, rather than making judgments heavily influenced by feelings and sentiments of the moment. This isn't enough to make the restrictions predictable, but they'll be more predictable than they are now-- right now we have to predict both the virus and how most other people will react to it to know what we'll be allowed to do.
> 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.
> What am I supposed to say? That 23 children have died from Covid in Canada during the whole of the pandemic and she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? That kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands largely haven’t had to wear masks at school and haven’t seen outbreaks because of it? That masks are not a magic shield against the virus, and that even if she were to pass it along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule?
> I want to tell her that she can remove her mask, and socialize with her friends without being worried.
> But I am expected to enforce the rules.
While I can sympathize with how the student is feeling, the author seems to be forgetting (intentionally ignoring for the sake of their argument) that having a conversation with a student isn't breaking the rules. That explaining the facts to a young woman, nearly an adult, is what is expected of a teacher.
> At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play at the park or hang out with their friends.
Who was shaming children? local parents? government officials? I didn't see any of this shaming. In fact, where I live, more children were at the parks.
I think what's really missing in most situations is honest conversations about the way the world is right now, the fact that many people are afraid, others are dying and many more will die as a result of this virus.
Young adults should be encouraged to think about this situation, it's the world they are entering.