The Australia piece is instructive. People who support vaccine mandates tend to see draconian lockdown measures as the inevitable consequence of covid cases, as unavoidable as night following day. In reality, these measures are active choices made by individuals in government. There is nothing inevitable about them.
The Australia piece is instructive. People who support vaccine mandates tend to see draconian lockdown measures as the inevitable consequence of covid cases, as unavoidable as night following day. In reality, these measures are active choices made by individuals in government. There is nothing inevitable about them.
People who buy the fallacy that we will get our freedoms back through ever more willingness to comply have a mental illness. We lost our freedoms because everyone complied - the only thing that changed in relation to the virus as a result of our compliance was the goal posts to get our freedom back. People will get there freedoms back when they start taking them back. Government will never willingly grant them back - the best we can hope for is that they acknowledge we are taking them back. Mask mandates will end when people stop wearing them, and destroying their children by forcing them to wear them. Freedom ends where government begins
If that were true we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is not, and for some time has not been, a pandemic. There is an endemic respiratory virus still circulating, but there are also treatments and available vaccines. Definitionally, this is not a pandemic.
Government has not met the high bar that is the burden for collective action. Big Tech has censored alternative medicative courses of action, big media continues to carry water for government - and done so fraudulently, besides. Have we already forgotten last weekend's horse paste fraud in Oklahoma? or the dozens of cookie-cutter articles published in so many newspapers across the land?
The inventor of this drug won the Nobel Prize. Others called it the third miracle drug, only penicillin and aspirin thought to save more lives. Four billion doses prescribed worldwide, with only sixteen deaths being reported.
14,000 deaths estimated due to vaccination worldwide. Possibly many more.
Horse paste? Really. What part of this don't you understand?
What we're fighting for each individual's right to make his own choices. For that choice to be uncoerced, each of us needs accurate information about alternative treatments in order to do so. Good luck getting that, with the deck so heavily stacked. Has there ever been a heavier thumb put on the scale?
If you wish to get vaxxed, no one is stopping you. Your vax protects you.
Stop the coercive campaigns against the rest of us.
Never before has it been more starkly evident that a free society cannot exist without virtue in its people (James Madison).
That so many in the media have been controlled and driven by hate (for Trump) for so long that requires abandoning their self-respect and the sanctity of a free press that investigates and reports the news with sufficient impartiality, is not just pathetic. It's a sign something has been going on in this country under our noses for a very long time, like since those people were in K-6.
It's just too anti-American in every way for so many members of subsequent generations to be behaving and thinking as they do . . . emotional and superficial thinking sans reason and geared toward our destruction rather than elevation . . . for something not to have caused this.
Could it be it's just a combination of the influences of technology, movie and television content, and underdeveloped cognitive skills from the failed reforms in post-1966-70 public education? Or has something intentionally sinister been going on?
Fox aired only a small portion of the 1984 interview of a defecting Russian journalist who described the four steps it takes to destroy a country from the inside without firing a single shot. They aired only the first . . . a step that takes about 20 yrs. b/c it requires indoctrinating children through their schools . . . but we all need to see the whole interview.
Keep telling yourself that while failing to recognize kids don't have the agency to complain. Are you proud of the lessons you are teaching them? It's the same exact one the Taliban teaches women by choice. How are you going to explain to them when they are 25 or 35, and they knw there was never a scientific basis for them to wear masks, and they know that no other western countries masked young children for an extended period of time, that you said "get your shoes, socks, AND masks"?
Or do you not really care what you will tell them when they are 25 or 35 while expecting them to still believe they were your priority?
Actually I am very careful to tell them (and they have no trouble complaining) that I think most of these things are nonsense, particularly that dumb form that the older one brings to school. I tell them to listen to their teachers but always ask us if they have questions and not accept things without questioning the premises.. I love them very much.
I get that, but what are you doing to demonstrate to them how to stand up for themselves? And is long term acceptance of ridiculous and harmful mandates really a great lesson for them to learn?
IтАЩm not pretending I can answer those for you, I canтАЩt. But when these kids grow up they are going to want answers, and compliance for the sake of compliance seems just as illogical of the mandates themselves. As is accepting the false premise that the only way to go to school in person is in a mask. The rest of the western world pulled it off without masking 9 year olds, much less 2 year olds.
Engage their thinking. The virus cannot be eradicated b/c it's carried by animals, domestic and otherwise. A mask now means a mask for the rest of one's life.
A 1995 mental health intake worker, presumably college educated, was actually denying treatment to potential patients on the basis that they cannot be traumatized by divorce because it's so common in our society. For that to be true, it must also be true that she can't be traumatized by rape and murder b/c they are so common in her urban neighborhoods.
Get the kids involved in the same analysis and reasoning.
So, since more children die from drowning than from Covid, doesn't the reason for the masks, to protect children's lives, also require that we close all pools and beaches and never let children near the water?
More children die in car accidents than from Covid. Doesn't this reasoning also require us to now keep them out of cars until age 18 or 21?
Pose questions like this to the children. With the absence of sentence diagramming in K-6 and the obsession with homework instead of playing, their cognitive and comprehension skills are not being developed to their fullest. We had zero homework in K-6 and more recess and playing after school and dinner so most are better thinkers for it than too many in subsequent generations.
Being able to analyze, deduce, and reason through and around what others tell them will ease or eliminate their fears.
No. I think it is a political charade. I have made it pretty clear what I think of the "universal" mandate, after somewhat obsessively pointing out that "universal" excludes most of the universe.
Alas, I live in New York City. The kids get funny looks walking around OUTSIDE without masks on.
Pose the question I noted above. They can then pose the same questions to other kids. Give them the facts and the ability to analyze and reason their way through what they're being told and maybe all the kids will revolt.
The masks are stupid, pointless and damaging to kids. They're pointless for all of us. Do we wear them for the common cold? For other flu? Covid is no different. It might be more easily transmitted to others, but it's carried by animals so it can't be eradicated. They're trying to avoid the unavoidable.
Yes, I do. Someone having the courage to point out to me that I will (hopefully) one day need to explain my decisions to my then adult children, and I better consider that reality, made me a better mom and a better person even if it wasn't easy to hear at the time. It was facing an incredible difficult choice about my husband and I enrolling our then toddler daughter into a dangerous peanut oral immunotherapy study. That made us actually THINK for ourselves about our decision. We faced a similar choice with our son a few years later.
How is protecting parents from questions they WILL face from their children down the road inappropriate? It's the very idea that tough comments can't be made, or tough conversations had, that has lead to the biggest set of policy disasters in a millennia - and the youngest generation is being harmed with near indifference. These conversations will and should happen, and no, I do not feel guilty for pointing it out.
I know of tons of parents of small children masking them despite knowing they don't work, despite knowing the virus doesn't respect lunch breaks or kids being kids, despite knowing they personally couldn't wear a mask all day 5 days a week, despite knowing inhaling particles as a young kid for over 18 months is probably terrible for their lungs. I imagine Anne knows all of this, so all she has left today is decide to fight for her kids, or dismiss the concerns as "not really bothering them." Its easy to take the path of least resistance and dismiss children who "seem ok" without acknowledging they lack the agency and vocabulary to stand up for themselves. What happens when one day those children ARE adults who demand, and deserve, answers from the adults subjecting to this. If a parent can't admit at this point that they were wrong to mask their young child, what will that look like to that child in a decade or two? Will that conversation be as easy to dismiss as their wellbeing and healthy development is today?
Thank you for your courage to articulate these things. We are trying so hard to avoid masks on the kids, I hope I can at least tell them we were opposed and they will forgive me for not being able to stop the oppression.
I am concerned. I am dreadfully concerned that the nine year old was absolutely terrified to go outside his home or my home into stores and museums. I resent what the "authorities" have done to him. I told him that the chance of him getting sick was astronomical. That the school was vastly exaggerating his danger.
But we went to all these places ( I carried hand sanitizer in my pocket for him) and he realized that we were still here a year later!
But what are you DOING to stand up for them? We live in a county so preoccupied with masking kids that they wrote the order to specifically include kids at private religious schools (actually my kids school because the academics are excellent as is the character education so there is also a long waiting list the county despises since those of us that can afford to pay for our children, fund our crap public schools, and pay for children who canтАЩt afford it to attend our kidsтАЩ school). My kids still arenтАЩt in a mask because we fought for them to not wear it.
Not everyone has the same leeway, but by doing nothing but accepting what is happening we are condemning children to a bleak future of illogical authoritarian controls. If every parent who feels as you do would stand up for their kid, an entire generation wouldnтАЩt be getting destroyed. It is our obligation as parents to stand up for our children - if you wonтАЩt stand up for them today, how do you expect them to learn to stand up for their basic human rights tomorrow?
I know it sounds harsh, but in my upper middle class/ wealthy enclave I see maskless adults everyday. These same adults simply refuse to make actual sacrifices to stand up for their kidтАЩs rights. They have increasingly treated them more like accessories than human beings.
My primary obligation is to my own children, as yours is to yours, and the consequences of our decisions we must live with.
Personally, I couldnтАЩt allow my kids to wear a mask because I couldnтАЩt explain why I would go along with that to my kids when they are adults. If you can explain your choices to yours thatтАЩs great, but donтАЩt dismiss the reality that they are likely surviving and not thriving in a dehumanized society that considers their needs last and uses their bodies as a source of adult virtue signaling.
Now get a march on the Capitol in D.C. or every state capital. The squeaky wheel gets the attention. Just ask Maxine Watters, the Squad, Stacey Abrams and leaders of BLM.
Why aren't people following their lead? It seems Conservatives are too polite and considerate. Then there's that American optimism that prevents the defining and addressing of real problems b/c "it will all work out." Grrrr. My generation protested the war in Vietnam. Now, unfortunately, our children and grandchildred are burdened with a big issue of their own.
We protested peacefully without incident amongst ourselves for civil rts. and against the war. I don't know how the progeny of Woodstock --- 300,000-500,000 crammed together for three days without a major incident . . . one girl is on film having a meltdown --- ended up so divided in their thinking, but, then, our K-6 education was much different, and, honestly, much better.
Approximately 350 children nationwide have died from Covid. Reportedly, more than half of these unfortunate individual had serious pre-existing health concerns. Approximately 75 million under age 18 in America. How many of them will suffer side effects later in life? Let Each Parent Decide.
For sure and should not be tolerated for one minute, no matter what sacrifices we have to make to prevent this authoritarian takeover. We'll lose America if we don't stop this. Hope voters are real happy for buying into the anti-Trump lies (now confirmed as such) and voting with hate instead of intellectually separating offensive personality and ego from policies and pro-American beliefs.
The Australia piece is instructive. People who support vaccine mandates tend to see draconian lockdown measures as the inevitable consequence of covid cases, as unavoidable as night following day. In reality, these measures are active choices made by individuals in government. There is nothing inevitable about them.
People who buy the fallacy that we will get our freedoms back through ever more willingness to comply have a mental illness. We lost our freedoms because everyone complied - the only thing that changed in relation to the virus as a result of our compliance was the goal posts to get our freedom back. People will get there freedoms back when they start taking them back. Government will never willingly grant them back - the best we can hope for is that they acknowledge we are taking them back. Mask mandates will end when people stop wearing them, and destroying their children by forcing them to wear them. Freedom ends where government begins
"Government will never willingly grant them back"
That doesn't jive with past government pandemic responses. When the pandemic ended so did the restirctions
If that were true we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is not, and for some time has not been, a pandemic. There is an endemic respiratory virus still circulating, but there are also treatments and available vaccines. Definitionally, this is not a pandemic.
Government has not met the high bar that is the burden for collective action. Big Tech has censored alternative medicative courses of action, big media continues to carry water for government - and done so fraudulently, besides. Have we already forgotten last weekend's horse paste fraud in Oklahoma? or the dozens of cookie-cutter articles published in so many newspapers across the land?
The inventor of this drug won the Nobel Prize. Others called it the third miracle drug, only penicillin and aspirin thought to save more lives. Four billion doses prescribed worldwide, with only sixteen deaths being reported.
14,000 deaths estimated due to vaccination worldwide. Possibly many more.
Horse paste? Really. What part of this don't you understand?
What we're fighting for each individual's right to make his own choices. For that choice to be uncoerced, each of us needs accurate information about alternative treatments in order to do so. Good luck getting that, with the deck so heavily stacked. Has there ever been a heavier thumb put on the scale?
If you wish to get vaxxed, no one is stopping you. Your vax protects you.
Stop the coercive campaigns against the rest of us.
Never before has it been more starkly evident that a free society cannot exist without virtue in its people (James Madison).
That so many in the media have been controlled and driven by hate (for Trump) for so long that requires abandoning their self-respect and the sanctity of a free press that investigates and reports the news with sufficient impartiality, is not just pathetic. It's a sign something has been going on in this country under our noses for a very long time, like since those people were in K-6.
It's just too anti-American in every way for so many members of subsequent generations to be behaving and thinking as they do . . . emotional and superficial thinking sans reason and geared toward our destruction rather than elevation . . . for something not to have caused this.
Could it be it's just a combination of the influences of technology, movie and television content, and underdeveloped cognitive skills from the failed reforms in post-1966-70 public education? Or has something intentionally sinister been going on?
Fox aired only a small portion of the 1984 interview of a defecting Russian journalist who described the four steps it takes to destroy a country from the inside without firing a single shot. They aired only the first . . . a step that takes about 20 yrs. b/c it requires indoctrinating children through their schools . . . but we all need to see the whole interview.
Yeah, the influences of technology, movie and television, exacerbated by social media.
I found much to agree with here. Thanks for posting.
Most of the kids that I know are no where near as bothered by them as I am. Now when they leave we hunt for socks, shoes AND masks.
Keep telling yourself that while failing to recognize kids don't have the agency to complain. Are you proud of the lessons you are teaching them? It's the same exact one the Taliban teaches women by choice. How are you going to explain to them when they are 25 or 35, and they knw there was never a scientific basis for them to wear masks, and they know that no other western countries masked young children for an extended period of time, that you said "get your shoes, socks, AND masks"?
Or do you not really care what you will tell them when they are 25 or 35 while expecting them to still believe they were your priority?
Actually I am very careful to tell them (and they have no trouble complaining) that I think most of these things are nonsense, particularly that dumb form that the older one brings to school. I tell them to listen to their teachers but always ask us if they have questions and not accept things without questioning the premises.. I love them very much.
However, they go to public school....in NYC.
I get that, but what are you doing to demonstrate to them how to stand up for themselves? And is long term acceptance of ridiculous and harmful mandates really a great lesson for them to learn?
IтАЩm not pretending I can answer those for you, I canтАЩt. But when these kids grow up they are going to want answers, and compliance for the sake of compliance seems just as illogical of the mandates themselves. As is accepting the false premise that the only way to go to school in person is in a mask. The rest of the western world pulled it off without masking 9 year olds, much less 2 year olds.
Engage their thinking. The virus cannot be eradicated b/c it's carried by animals, domestic and otherwise. A mask now means a mask for the rest of one's life.
A 1995 mental health intake worker, presumably college educated, was actually denying treatment to potential patients on the basis that they cannot be traumatized by divorce because it's so common in our society. For that to be true, it must also be true that she can't be traumatized by rape and murder b/c they are so common in her urban neighborhoods.
Get the kids involved in the same analysis and reasoning.
So, since more children die from drowning than from Covid, doesn't the reason for the masks, to protect children's lives, also require that we close all pools and beaches and never let children near the water?
More children die in car accidents than from Covid. Doesn't this reasoning also require us to now keep them out of cars until age 18 or 21?
Pose questions like this to the children. With the absence of sentence diagramming in K-6 and the obsession with homework instead of playing, their cognitive and comprehension skills are not being developed to their fullest. We had zero homework in K-6 and more recess and playing after school and dinner so most are better thinkers for it than too many in subsequent generations.
Being able to analyze, deduce, and reason through and around what others tell them will ease or eliminate their fears.
Great posts, BTW. Thank you.
No. I think it is a political charade. I have made it pretty clear what I think of the "universal" mandate, after somewhat obsessively pointing out that "universal" excludes most of the universe.
Alas, I live in New York City. The kids get funny looks walking around OUTSIDE without masks on.
And they all want to go to school.
Pose the question I noted above. They can then pose the same questions to other kids. Give them the facts and the ability to analyze and reason their way through what they're being told and maybe all the kids will revolt.
The masks are stupid, pointless and damaging to kids. They're pointless for all of us. Do we wear them for the common cold? For other flu? Covid is no different. It might be more easily transmitted to others, but it's carried by animals so it can't be eradicated. They're trying to avoid the unavoidable.
NCmom. Do you really think this is any way to talk to other people? Seriously.
Yes, I do. Someone having the courage to point out to me that I will (hopefully) one day need to explain my decisions to my then adult children, and I better consider that reality, made me a better mom and a better person even if it wasn't easy to hear at the time. It was facing an incredible difficult choice about my husband and I enrolling our then toddler daughter into a dangerous peanut oral immunotherapy study. That made us actually THINK for ourselves about our decision. We faced a similar choice with our son a few years later.
How is protecting parents from questions they WILL face from their children down the road inappropriate? It's the very idea that tough comments can't be made, or tough conversations had, that has lead to the biggest set of policy disasters in a millennia - and the youngest generation is being harmed with near indifference. These conversations will and should happen, and no, I do not feel guilty for pointing it out.
I know of tons of parents of small children masking them despite knowing they don't work, despite knowing the virus doesn't respect lunch breaks or kids being kids, despite knowing they personally couldn't wear a mask all day 5 days a week, despite knowing inhaling particles as a young kid for over 18 months is probably terrible for their lungs. I imagine Anne knows all of this, so all she has left today is decide to fight for her kids, or dismiss the concerns as "not really bothering them." Its easy to take the path of least resistance and dismiss children who "seem ok" without acknowledging they lack the agency and vocabulary to stand up for themselves. What happens when one day those children ARE adults who demand, and deserve, answers from the adults subjecting to this. If a parent can't admit at this point that they were wrong to mask their young child, what will that look like to that child in a decade or two? Will that conversation be as easy to dismiss as their wellbeing and healthy development is today?
Thank you for your courage to articulate these things. We are trying so hard to avoid masks on the kids, I hope I can at least tell them we were opposed and they will forgive me for not being able to stop the oppression.
I am concerned. I am dreadfully concerned that the nine year old was absolutely terrified to go outside his home or my home into stores and museums. I resent what the "authorities" have done to him. I told him that the chance of him getting sick was astronomical. That the school was vastly exaggerating his danger.
But we went to all these places ( I carried hand sanitizer in my pocket for him) and he realized that we were still here a year later!
But what are you DOING to stand up for them? We live in a county so preoccupied with masking kids that they wrote the order to specifically include kids at private religious schools (actually my kids school because the academics are excellent as is the character education so there is also a long waiting list the county despises since those of us that can afford to pay for our children, fund our crap public schools, and pay for children who canтАЩt afford it to attend our kidsтАЩ school). My kids still arenтАЩt in a mask because we fought for them to not wear it.
Not everyone has the same leeway, but by doing nothing but accepting what is happening we are condemning children to a bleak future of illogical authoritarian controls. If every parent who feels as you do would stand up for their kid, an entire generation wouldnтАЩt be getting destroyed. It is our obligation as parents to stand up for our children - if you wonтАЩt stand up for them today, how do you expect them to learn to stand up for their basic human rights tomorrow?
I know it sounds harsh, but in my upper middle class/ wealthy enclave I see maskless adults everyday. These same adults simply refuse to make actual sacrifices to stand up for their kidтАЩs rights. They have increasingly treated them more like accessories than human beings.
My primary obligation is to my own children, as yours is to yours, and the consequences of our decisions we must live with.
Personally, I couldnтАЩt allow my kids to wear a mask because I couldnтАЩt explain why I would go along with that to my kids when they are adults. If you can explain your choices to yours thatтАЩs great, but donтАЩt dismiss the reality that they are likely surviving and not thriving in a dehumanized society that considers their needs last and uses their bodies as a source of adult virtue signaling.
Now get a march on the Capitol in D.C. or every state capital. The squeaky wheel gets the attention. Just ask Maxine Watters, the Squad, Stacey Abrams and leaders of BLM.
Why aren't people following their lead? It seems Conservatives are too polite and considerate. Then there's that American optimism that prevents the defining and addressing of real problems b/c "it will all work out." Grrrr. My generation protested the war in Vietnam. Now, unfortunately, our children and grandchildred are burdened with a big issue of their own.
We protested peacefully without incident amongst ourselves for civil rts. and against the war. I don't know how the progeny of Woodstock --- 300,000-500,000 crammed together for three days without a major incident . . . one girl is on film having a meltdown --- ended up so divided in their thinking, but, then, our K-6 education was much different, and, honestly, much better.
Approximately 350 children nationwide have died from Covid. Reportedly, more than half of these unfortunate individual had serious pre-existing health concerns. Approximately 75 million under age 18 in America. How many of them will suffer side effects later in life? Let Each Parent Decide.
Bravo, NCmom.
Yeah. Also history has shown that governments rarely, if ever, cede powers once danger has passed.
And that is what scares me. These are not even debatable laws, they are authoritarian "mandates"
For sure and should not be tolerated for one minute, no matter what sacrifices we have to make to prevent this authoritarian takeover. We'll lose America if we don't stop this. Hope voters are real happy for buying into the anti-Trump lies (now confirmed as such) and voting with hate instead of intellectually separating offensive personality and ego from policies and pro-American beliefs.
The plebes are starting to fight back in Australia. Good for them.
Let's not forget that the damage done to the economy was not caused by Covid. It was government mandated shutdowns that did it.
This is not correct. Studies have shown that the decrease in economic activity started before the lockdowns.
Most people don't want to go to a crowded bar, or cruise ship etc during a pandemic.