What Grade Would You Give Americans in Handling the COVID-19 Crisis?

If you want your kid in school five days a week, you take their class size from past years, multiply that by the percentage of students opting for virtual school in your district, and there is your class size.

If 25% of the students go virtual, then your 25-person class just went to 20 students. 50% would be 12.

Now, what will your kid’s day look like? They will enter a classroom for 7 hours and only leave to piss or shit. Teachers will come to them. There will not be a lunch room. There will not be PE. There will not be sports or band. There will not be socializing in the hallways. There will be a teacher stationed to the front of the room talking. You will be wearing a mask. There will not be group work. You’ll be heads down on a computer in most classes - just like virtual school. There will not be a social aspect of school. It will look like Orwell’s wet dream.

Does that sound better than virtual? Sure, you will have someone else telling your kid to work and you won’t have to worry about childcare. Mazel Tov.

And when schools get shut down in a hot second in September, if your kid chooses virtual, they will have a prepared teacher. In class teacher? Best of luck.

I realize some parents don’t have a choice. I also realize some parents don’t have wifi at their homes (this is a huge problem in America). If America would have devoted six months to getting broadband and wifi to more Americans, I’m looking at you pillbilly Trumpers, then maybe the push to go back to school wouldn’t be so strong.

 

I disagree with you on most things but generally consider you to be a reasonable person who tries to argue in good faith. This, however, is beyond absurd.

 

If 100 people are posting about schools going back and none of them are asking about what the school day will look like or the educational setting, then you know why you they want their kids in school.

 

No, it’s not. You’re going to see unions nationwide have very similar stances on this.

 

That's not the part I disagree with. You calling that pouting is what's beyond absurd. The basic purpose of any union is to look out for its members. Public school teachers in general put up with a lot more bullshit for little benefit than most. The New York Police Benevolent Association president with an $11 billion budget holding a press conference to say "Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect" is pouting. Trying to protect teachers who make jack shit from catching a deadly disease is not.

 

Medical profession: A
(EDIT) Grocery stores and supply chains: B
General public: Incomplete
Mangement: F

 

I think I already know the answer to this but if Trump wasn't looking to get re-elected in November would the response from him and his government be different?

 

Agree. No matter how much you hate unions (you do) and especially the teachers' unions, this time, they're on the side of right. Teachers will be at risk this fall.. not of losing their jobs or some benefit.. but their health and potentially life.

 

I think it will be fascinating to see just how many people show up.

Will also depend on what numbers are like in 6 weeks or so.

 

That will be for the first week or so until many start getting comfortable and then act careless.

 

There's enough evidence now to support the following thesis. The American people, as a whole, did and are doing a pretty good job of following instructions in this pandemic. Alas, this applies to bad instructions as well as good ones. When mask wearing is mandated by authorities, the percentage of those wearing masks goes way up. People stayed home, in some states for months, when told to do so. But when authorities re-opened states, cities and towns to any extent, and as we've seen in some cases most prematurely, many if not most people took it as an indication it was safe to resume their prior behaviors and did so. I don't think this was "selfish," just overoptimistic. What has been asked of ordinary folks during the pandemic was and is hard, as in contrary to human nature hard. So if I had to give we citizens a letter grade, something like a B-minus or B seems fair.