Where lockdowns apparently lasted a year longer than almost everywhere else in the country. So I’m not sure how much disagreement there actually is between the majority of folks here.
Them: “Sure, an immediate lockdown made sense, but we should have been allowing outside gatherings fairly soon and opening schools by Jan 21 at the latest, not like those crazy pro-lockdown people!”
Everyone not from IL or CA: “Umm, isn’t that what happened?”
Previous Message
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-bethany-mclean-book-excerpt.html “By 2022, journalists, academics, and even some public-health officials were finally coming to grips with the enormous damage done to children — especially disadvantaged children — because of remote learning. A lengthy analysis by two professors in The Atlantic toted up some of the issues. First, millions of kids simply gave up on learning. In New York, even after schools had reopened, the chronic absentee rate was 40 percent — up from 26 percent before the pandemic. Studies showed that public-school children got less exercise (no recess) and ate more junk food (no free hot meals) during the pandemic. According to a CDC survey, during the first six months of 2021, nearly half the high-school students surveyed “felt persistently sad or helpless.” Parental emotional abuse was four times higher than in 2013, and parental physical abuse nearly doubled, The Atlantic reported. A study by three major research institutions, including Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, showed that the longer a school relied on remote learning, the further behind their students were. “In high-poverty schools that were remote for more than half of 2021, the loss was about half of a school year’s worth of typical achievement growth,” said Thomas Kane, the director of the Harvard center.”