When I compare the "free-range" childhood of my generation with today's helicopter parenting, I see adults who are unable to control their fears about their children, and who therefore impose their neuroses not only on their own children, but on everyone else's children.
We lost our oldest daughter in infancy to severe heart and liver defects. So I am painfully aware of what it feels like to lose a child. But I knew it would be psychologically unhealthy for my other children if I protected them from *everything* for fear of losing them. I had to use self-control--a quality that seems to have gone by the wayside--to reject the temptation to shelter my kids too carefully.
The reality is that no matter how careful we are, we cannot prevent all dangers. A look at freak accidents will show that. There is a very real risk, though, of making ourselves and our children mentally sick by refusing to live in the effort to protect our lives.
Excellent article, but data and science have never been as influential as emotion. Fear is effective and viral. Critical thinking is not.
Ever since I saw that surgical masks were being promoted widely rather than the airtight N95 masks that actually stop viruses, it was clear the masking was not about science. Surgical masks are for surgery, not disease control.
So why did the health administrators all unanimously change their guidance on masking with no basis in evidence?
Masks are dehumanizing. They distinguish the subservient from the uncompliant. They train the children to follow orders regardless of any scientific rationale. The message is, "be afraid of ghosts, treat your fear by covering your face, and judge those who do not."
I remember seeing videos of China in a respiratory viral scare from the early 2000s and thinking it was comical that they thought surgical masks protected them. I never imagined it would happen here, but as the USA evolves towards "socialism with Chinese characteristics" itself, it's critical to condition the spirits of the people, especially the children, to achieve that model of governance. This is why none of our leaders feel the need to mask themselves, only you and your children.
We must remain the land of the free and the home of the brave. The world needs our example.
I just keep thinking back to 2014-2016, when my then-elementary schooler had cancer and was immunocompromised. No one - not even her team of world-renowned oncologists - suggested we “mask up” outside the hospital.
“If pediatric beds are what’s in short supply, federal reimbursement should pay for pediatric beds. This would entice hospitals to expand capacity where it is needed.”
--------------------------------------
KID: “I have a respiratory virus.”
GOVERNMENT FUNDED HOSPITAL: “I’m sorry, did you say you want a sex change? Right this way.”
Think about this for a second: there are doctors quoted as saying that if you don’t mask, children will get sick and die. Before the Great Panic-demic of 2020, that would have been shocking news. Now, at least half the country doesn’t pay a lick of attention (including myself).
Out of all the consequences of 2020, I think the erosion of trust in the medical institutions may be one of the most deleterious, if not the saddest.
Also (and slightly unrelated to this article), labeling every statistical disparity as “racist” seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in the medical field. If you tell all the black/brown people that healthcare is “institutionally racist”, then they’re probably less likely to come in for mammograms or colonoscopies.
Getting sick is the price of having a functioning society. But the Non Cons (non contributors), Democrats, think we can all just stay home and muse and speculate and emote, because that’s what they do, and they are adolescent narcissistic simpletons so they actually cannot grasp the concept that there are real human beings doing the things that keep us afloat.
I was fortunate enough to be able to isolate for quite some time and I wore N95s to the store for longer than I would care to admit. I never got anything. Then when I thought the coast was clear I went to a bar to watch football and immediately got COVID which is identical to the flu except easier to catch.
If you really want to isolate and avoid COVID it is super easy. Closing society is the plan a 9-year-old would come up with. Actually, scratch that, most 9-year-olds aren’t scumbags. It’s the plan a dickhead with the intellect of a 9-year-old would come up with.
Nice to have a place to go where common sense and reality exists.
Thanks
As an aside I am a grandparent and my grandkids had to wear mask at school. Rarely do they wear them correctly and at one point my grandson came home wearing someone else’s mask. So this is helping how?
This effort to push precautionary measures to this degree appears to come from an irrational belief that humans can control nature if they just try hard enough, if we just all work together. What is forgotten is that no matter how much we separate ourselves from natural events, there will always be a limit to our control. We can’t stop earthquakes, we can’t stop tsunamis, we can’t stop contagions. Although we are the “pinnacle species” on the planet, we will always be subject to Natural Selection in some way.
Through our technology we have been so successful in staving off medical problems with medications and surgery that we have become delusional about how much power we really have over biology. We are victims of our own success.
Has anyone collected data on RSV in school systems that were shutdown more than systems that stayed open? Or is the level of RSV and its severity roughly the same as it would have been before the pandemic.
BTW - it may get tiresome to hear this - But Thank you to the Free Press for reporting on important, useful subjects.
First, "tripledemic" is an entirely made up term that did not exist before the Fall of 2022. It was coined primarily by the media and has been adopted by those pushing the orthodoxy. It is irresponsible of the media and health institutions to use the term, even informally. Though, obviously, it's used to try scare people into behaving a certain way.
Second, I live adjacent to a self-described "progressive" city. Most of the people I see wearing masks are people I reckon to be in their 20s-30s. Granted, some may very well be compromised in some way, but I suspect most are just doing what they're being told. It would be easy to ridicule them, but I won't. What I am angry about, though, are the institutions that are continuing to frighten people and push interventions, such as mask-wearing, that are not effective. It makes me worry about what the response will be to the next health crisis.
I never realized the efficacy of shame in a culture. Shame for skin color: bad. Shame for walking around in a full-body safety suit: good. One or our top military brass reviewing troops in a get-up like Darth Vader because of a relatively mild virus: a disgrace to a nation. We have broken the glass ceiling on being fools and abominations and it seems that when Pandora's box is open all manner of ills spill out.
Unfortunately we have a media driven by clicks and dwindling subscriptions that found COVID fear to be just the antidote to drive up numbers. That is now receding and they are hoping to find different ways to return to 2020. Fortunately, most of us are just going back to normal and not soon enough. Thanks Vinay.
The time is long past for consenting adults to agree to be governed by the authoritarian whims of pseudo-science practitioners. What strikes me in particular is that we have such cognitive dissonance in, and conflict between, so many government policies and dicta. We must be “safe” at the cost of personal choice and liberty; we must be protected from every potential harm; yet we must also be free to kill the most vulnerable in the womb. And there is a growing--and dangerous--advocacy lobby for the right to end one’s own life for vague reasons. And let’s be clear: it isn’t Republicans pushing the authoritarian safety police: it;s “liberal” Democrats. One of the most recent examples of Democrat-driven governmental insanity is the proposal to ban gas stoves because of potential health hazards. It used to be a joke that Democrats want us to freeze to death in the dark. Now it seems to be their mantra.
When I compare the "free-range" childhood of my generation with today's helicopter parenting, I see adults who are unable to control their fears about their children, and who therefore impose their neuroses not only on their own children, but on everyone else's children.
We lost our oldest daughter in infancy to severe heart and liver defects. So I am painfully aware of what it feels like to lose a child. But I knew it would be psychologically unhealthy for my other children if I protected them from *everything* for fear of losing them. I had to use self-control--a quality that seems to have gone by the wayside--to reject the temptation to shelter my kids too carefully.
The reality is that no matter how careful we are, we cannot prevent all dangers. A look at freak accidents will show that. There is a very real risk, though, of making ourselves and our children mentally sick by refusing to live in the effort to protect our lives.
Excellent article, but data and science have never been as influential as emotion. Fear is effective and viral. Critical thinking is not.
Ever since I saw that surgical masks were being promoted widely rather than the airtight N95 masks that actually stop viruses, it was clear the masking was not about science. Surgical masks are for surgery, not disease control.
So why did the health administrators all unanimously change their guidance on masking with no basis in evidence?
Masks are dehumanizing. They distinguish the subservient from the uncompliant. They train the children to follow orders regardless of any scientific rationale. The message is, "be afraid of ghosts, treat your fear by covering your face, and judge those who do not."
I remember seeing videos of China in a respiratory viral scare from the early 2000s and thinking it was comical that they thought surgical masks protected them. I never imagined it would happen here, but as the USA evolves towards "socialism with Chinese characteristics" itself, it's critical to condition the spirits of the people, especially the children, to achieve that model of governance. This is why none of our leaders feel the need to mask themselves, only you and your children.
We must remain the land of the free and the home of the brave. The world needs our example.
It's the cowardly cult of safetyism, which seeks to have our children live for 150 years without enjoying a single day.
I just keep thinking back to 2014-2016, when my then-elementary schooler had cancer and was immunocompromised. No one - not even her team of world-renowned oncologists - suggested we “mask up” outside the hospital.
“If pediatric beds are what’s in short supply, federal reimbursement should pay for pediatric beds. This would entice hospitals to expand capacity where it is needed.”
--------------------------------------
KID: “I have a respiratory virus.”
GOVERNMENT FUNDED HOSPITAL: “I’m sorry, did you say you want a sex change? Right this way.”
Think about this for a second: there are doctors quoted as saying that if you don’t mask, children will get sick and die. Before the Great Panic-demic of 2020, that would have been shocking news. Now, at least half the country doesn’t pay a lick of attention (including myself).
Out of all the consequences of 2020, I think the erosion of trust in the medical institutions may be one of the most deleterious, if not the saddest.
Also (and slightly unrelated to this article), labeling every statistical disparity as “racist” seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in the medical field. If you tell all the black/brown people that healthcare is “institutionally racist”, then they’re probably less likely to come in for mammograms or colonoscopies.
It’s just sad, really.
Getting sick is the price of having a functioning society. But the Non Cons (non contributors), Democrats, think we can all just stay home and muse and speculate and emote, because that’s what they do, and they are adolescent narcissistic simpletons so they actually cannot grasp the concept that there are real human beings doing the things that keep us afloat.
Excellent article. Thanks.
The money quote: "Caring for children is not a major moneymaker for hospitals, and often earns less than adult hospitalization."
Bingo. At this point, I have exactly zero trust in the medical establishment, and I used to be an ER nurse.
I was fortunate enough to be able to isolate for quite some time and I wore N95s to the store for longer than I would care to admit. I never got anything. Then when I thought the coast was clear I went to a bar to watch football and immediately got COVID which is identical to the flu except easier to catch.
If you really want to isolate and avoid COVID it is super easy. Closing society is the plan a 9-year-old would come up with. Actually, scratch that, most 9-year-olds aren’t scumbags. It’s the plan a dickhead with the intellect of a 9-year-old would come up with.
Nice to have a place to go where common sense and reality exists.
Thanks
As an aside I am a grandparent and my grandkids had to wear mask at school. Rarely do they wear them correctly and at one point my grandson came home wearing someone else’s mask. So this is helping how?
This effort to push precautionary measures to this degree appears to come from an irrational belief that humans can control nature if they just try hard enough, if we just all work together. What is forgotten is that no matter how much we separate ourselves from natural events, there will always be a limit to our control. We can’t stop earthquakes, we can’t stop tsunamis, we can’t stop contagions. Although we are the “pinnacle species” on the planet, we will always be subject to Natural Selection in some way.
Through our technology we have been so successful in staving off medical problems with medications and surgery that we have become delusional about how much power we really have over biology. We are victims of our own success.
Has anyone collected data on RSV in school systems that were shutdown more than systems that stayed open? Or is the level of RSV and its severity roughly the same as it would have been before the pandemic.
BTW - it may get tiresome to hear this - But Thank you to the Free Press for reporting on important, useful subjects.
Two comments--
First, "tripledemic" is an entirely made up term that did not exist before the Fall of 2022. It was coined primarily by the media and has been adopted by those pushing the orthodoxy. It is irresponsible of the media and health institutions to use the term, even informally. Though, obviously, it's used to try scare people into behaving a certain way.
Second, I live adjacent to a self-described "progressive" city. Most of the people I see wearing masks are people I reckon to be in their 20s-30s. Granted, some may very well be compromised in some way, but I suspect most are just doing what they're being told. It would be easy to ridicule them, but I won't. What I am angry about, though, are the institutions that are continuing to frighten people and push interventions, such as mask-wearing, that are not effective. It makes me worry about what the response will be to the next health crisis.
I never realized the efficacy of shame in a culture. Shame for skin color: bad. Shame for walking around in a full-body safety suit: good. One or our top military brass reviewing troops in a get-up like Darth Vader because of a relatively mild virus: a disgrace to a nation. We have broken the glass ceiling on being fools and abominations and it seems that when Pandora's box is open all manner of ills spill out.
Unfortunately we have a media driven by clicks and dwindling subscriptions that found COVID fear to be just the antidote to drive up numbers. That is now receding and they are hoping to find different ways to return to 2020. Fortunately, most of us are just going back to normal and not soon enough. Thanks Vinay.
The time is long past for consenting adults to agree to be governed by the authoritarian whims of pseudo-science practitioners. What strikes me in particular is that we have such cognitive dissonance in, and conflict between, so many government policies and dicta. We must be “safe” at the cost of personal choice and liberty; we must be protected from every potential harm; yet we must also be free to kill the most vulnerable in the womb. And there is a growing--and dangerous--advocacy lobby for the right to end one’s own life for vague reasons. And let’s be clear: it isn’t Republicans pushing the authoritarian safety police: it;s “liberal” Democrats. One of the most recent examples of Democrat-driven governmental insanity is the proposal to ban gas stoves because of potential health hazards. It used to be a joke that Democrats want us to freeze to death in the dark. Now it seems to be their mantra.