I'm not anti mask but people are way too dismissive of the damage done to children who have to wear masks all the time. Especially when it comes to socializing, learning facial cues, and being able to express emotions.
We really have dropped the ball and turned valid concerns by parents into a political finger pointing shit storm.
> Especially when it comes to socializing, learning facial cues, and being able to express emotions.
Maybe if we raise a generation that doesn't rely on facial cues to recognize emotions as much we'll end up with a society that's more open and understanding to people who struggle with interpreting facial and other non-verbal cues for other reasons, such as autism?
> I'm not anti mask but people are way too dismissive of the damage done to children who have to wear masks all the time
I take you don't have children? I have, and they do regularly socialize, and none of the families I've ever talked with, mentioned any form of damage due to this.
Social isolation during the first wave - that was a real problem; there was concrete suffering.
I actually have an alternative take on this: if society is not able to do something as simple as consistently use a mask, there's no hope to do something that requires concrete sacrifice as mitigating global warming.
> I actually have an alternative take on this: if society is not able to do something as simple as consistently use a mask, there's no hope to do something that requires concrete sacrifice as mitigating global warming.
Let me frame this positively: Covid as a whole did increase the chances that humanity will actually do something as against global warming, and actually survive the next 200 years or so.
Honestly compared to the 1918 pandemic we have actually done an amazing job with covid. Not only have we gotten a new vaccine out for it in record time but mask wearing is also really high by per capita percentages in the vast majority of the world.
I really am baffled that people don't see things with more positivity.
Conditional on these advances in science, technology, and medicine it's quite obvious how badly many Western democratic societies have done (that's not to say there aren't also positive outcomes, and it varies a lot by nation).
Take the US as an example: Would you have guessed that the 'most pandemically prepared country' would lead Western democratic nations in terms of death count? How ready do you view US society to combat future threats like climate change, an even deadlier pandemic, or non-democratic state actors? What does that mean for the Western model of democracy?
The effects of climate change are mostly natural disasters that come and go as normal which the United States deals with regularly. That entire argument is tired and irrelevant. The United States for all it's faults is also likely keeping the most accurate statistics on the whole thing and gave the the mRNA vaccine to the world.
2 out of 3 of what you brought up has nothing to do with covid.
History doesn't stop just cause there's a pandemic.
This argument works both ways: parents who wanted to politicize mask wearing made a far bigger deal of it and over-exaggerated the impacts. I know a fair number of people with small children, including those born during the pandemic, and the only ones who allegedly had problems uncoincidentally have parents who get their “news” from Facebook or Fox. Everyone else barely even mentions it because it’s no harder than all of the other things kids have to get used to, like toilet training or the oppression of wearing clothes.
Eh I'm on the opposite side of it seeing my future mother in law raise a 5 to 7 year old through this whole thing and at first she liked it cause he's more of an introverted quiet kid so it seemed like it helped him at first but then we started to see small social issues with him start to come out and likely due to him basically missing his entire first and second grade. Kid is probably irrevocable fucked up now. The mask thing is just more icing on the cake.
Working from home the most I had to wear the mask is flying somewhere and I fucking haaaate it. And I say this as a trans person that enjoyed for once not being misgendered in public. The truth is me and my very liberal girlfriend are fucking over it and we don't care anymore. We're triple vaxed and fuck it. We've been going clubbing at maskless down town LA parties for months now and haven't caught it yet.
The fact that kids have to do more than I do as an adult is baffling to me. I legitimately feel bad for them.
My wife is a teacher, and we know a bunch of other teachers, and I'd like to say please do not give up on this kid — they're more resilient than adults often think, and family support is really important, even if it might not seem like it's doing anything now. The problems you described sound like they're more due to other pandemic-related disruption rather than wearing a mask and whatever you can do to be there for him is going to make a difference.
> The fact that kids have to do more than I do as an adult is baffling to me. I legitimately feel bad for them.
I completely agree. Our national policy has basically been to write off children to keep high-risk businesses open for adults and I would in a heartbeat take a blanket vaccination mandate and other risk mitigation measures for high-risk businesses explicitly based on the goal of keeping normal schooling open (e.g. link high-risk activities like indoor dining or drinking being open to community spread rates).
Gonna go with everyone. Every day I see some parent go "my kids have no problem wearing masks".
Thing is I realized recently that as a kid with a bpd mother one reason I grew up as a shy nerdy shut in was because any time I did anything it would cause a giant fight with my mom so I just gave up and stopped trying. Now I realize it fucked me up in multiple ways being like that. I imagine it's much the same with a lot of these kids. They have zero agency to go against it.
Regardless of how you or I feel about the usefulness of masks this is a side benefit to many parents and schools. Schools want kids that just bend over and take whatever flavor of capricious BS they're producing on a given week. Few parents want kids with agency and critical thinking skills because you can't just lie to them to get them to do what you want. Everyone says they want critical thinking but look at their actions.
Honestly one reason I don't want kids is that I don't want to deal with schools, parents, and the whole infrastructure of child rearing in today's day. Even five generations ago you had 5 kids and just fed and clothed them..maybe sent them to school if you could but generally they helped you out at home and then went to work and got married and became largely independent by age 20. In today's era the entire concept of raising children is exhausting and not really sustainable. Society wants you to put in literally 10x the amount of hours into child rearing in contrast to what my great grandmother had to deal with.
And everyone acts so insanely self righteous and judgy about it.
We really have dropped the ball and turned valid concerns by parents into a political finger pointing shit storm.