Posts tagged 'SHUTDOWNS'
No, Those Who Pushed Lockdowns Can't Hide from the Consequences Now
Reported BY: JOY PULLMANN | JANUARY 11, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/11/the-people-who-brutalized-children-to-grab-emergency-powers-are-not-experts-theyre-evil/
Americans are starting to feel the increasing collateral damage from our unprecedented, ineffective, and ill-advised Covid lockdowns. It was known before March 2020 that lockdowns would cause lifelong and avoidable damage to billions, yet the world's ruling classes who claim to have earned their place atop a "meritocracy" strenuously demanded such damage be inflicted especially on children and other vulnerable people.
This ruling class used all their massive financial, communications, and government powers to ensure these tragic outcomes, even though anyone who was an actual expert—or, like me, just someone who reads and has common sense—predicted this false "cure" would hurt worse than the disease.
Now that people are beginning to more deeply feel the foreseeable evil consequences of ruling class responses to a novel virus, that ruling class is pulling what propaganda experts call a "limited hangout." That's admitting to bits of the truth in order to re-establish yourself as a credible authority while attempting to keep the whole truth hidden.
Why are they all of the sudden simultaneously changing the narrative, and effectively admitting that they have been over-counting Covid hospitalizations? Why is it so coordinated and simultaneous? pic.twitter.com/CXpqY2G0nT
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) January 4, 2022
So we have outlets such as The Atlantic and The New York Times, which have throughout the Covid era worked as government butt-coverers, now publishing articles admitting that lockdowns and continued rolling blackouts of school instruction is irrevocably damaging Americans, especially children and even more especially the poorest. The kids, as I pointed out in April 2020 and numerous times thereafter, will never as a generation recover.
Now that the damage is done, major corporate media organizations have decided to pivot to acknowledge just enough of the truth to cover their complicity. The Atlantic, for example, last week published an article titled "America's Covid Rules Are A Dumpster Fire" (It took you two years to figure out what was apparent within the first month?).
CNN's Brian Stelter recently did a segment acknowledging the foreseeable "mental health crisis" from lockdowns that is causing suicides, ruining marriages, putting formerly perfectly normal kids into rocking fetal positions, and erasing the credibility of formerly mostly ignored "public health experts" at institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Stelter made multiple statements that have gotten numerous conservatives punished by and erased from social media, such as that "Covid zero is…an impossibility" and "the CDC has turned into a punchline."
CNN's Brian Stelter: "It's so sad, but it's true, the CDC has turned into a punchline."
When you've lost CNN's chief propagandist… you've truly, truly lost. pic.twitter.com/4hjCuh2H5g
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) January 9, 2022
Where was Stelter a year and a half ago, when data reflecting the exact same outcomes were also plentiful? Heck, Stelter was still legitimizing Covid panic one month ago, when CNN and other news organizations reinstituted lockdown measures amid omicron panic they helped inflame. Six months ago, Stelter was indicating Fox News had "blood on its hands" for reporting less hysterically than all the other major media organizations about Covid.
Clearly, Democrats are becoming ensnared by their own trap, and they're trying to get out with this public reversal of their messaging. The limited hangout is afoot.
Brave NYT truth-teller David Leonhardt also recently published an article and an accompanying tweetstorm on the topic.
"The number of E.R. visits for suspected suicide attempts by 12- to 17-year-old girls rose by 51 percent from early 2019 to early 2021, according to the CDC," he tweeted.
"Data now suggest that many changes to school routines are of questionable value in controlling the virus's spread. Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances. Other interventions, like forcing students to sit apart from their friends at lunch, may also have little benefit," he noted in the article.
No sh-t, Sherlock. So why did The New York Times run hit pieces on Trump medical advisor Scott Atlas for being one of the few scientists courageous enough to point this long-ago known data out more than a year ago, when the damage could have been mitigated? Why did Stanford University colleagues and formerly respected medical journals, boosted by corporate media attack campaigns, try to discredit Atlas and colleagues such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for saying things The New York Times, Atlantic, and CNN are admitting now?
Why did the CDC punish world-renowned vaccine scientist Dr. Martin Kulldorff for publicly disagreeing with them on vaccine safety? Why does Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook shadowban nearly every Federalist article on anything touching Covid-19, and why did they spend two years on massive information suppression campaigns against scientists, politicians, podcasters, and just ordinary citizens who had some questions, contrary data, and objections to elites' demanded Covid response?
Because it was politically expedient to sacrifice science, Americans' civil rights, human lives, and the world's future then, and it is not politically expedient to face the consequences for that choice now. And they think nobody can or will hold them accountable for their deadly and despicable lies.
All the misery these too-late admittals underscore appears to be true, but it also could have been prevented. CNN and The New York Times not only did nothing to help prevent this kind of irreversible damage, they willingly, even gleefully, participated in this completely unwarranted mass abuse of Americans. The left lied, children committed suicide.
The corporate left's morally abominable Covid propaganda operation demands justice. The people who could and should have known, and in fact likely did know, that lockdowns would harm millions of innocents while not protecting the vulnerable can never be trusted again.
Did any of these people tell the truth back when it could have saved the generation that comprises the world's future? Nope. They not only watched it happen, they cheered it on and viciously ostracized all who told the truth.
All these people have erased all their moral authority and their claims to expertise. The same goes for all the education "experts" and "leaders" who didn't spend the last two years screaming at the top of their lungs that school shutdowns are a stupid, scientifically unwarranted, and evil idea. Yes, that's basically all of them.
Experts who knowingly allow mass child abuse because they don't want to harm their careers are not experts, they are cowards. They deserve not one ounce of public trust or even to retain their jobs. They certainly should have no public funds nor authority over any portion of the upbringing of American children.
Not one parent or elected official should give these education and public health "experts" the time of day. In a time of dire need, these keepers of the nation's children and controllers of billions in public funds piled American children on a funeral pyre, lit it on fire, and cheered as it burned. Requiring that they find a more honest line of work would be an act of mercy.
These "experts" and "leaders" have shown themselves to be grossly incompetent at discharging their crucial public trust and duties. They should be relieved of those duties as soon as possible. If state lawmakers will not do it, citizens must. If they do not, they are also complicit cowards and also deserve to be sanctioned and socially shamed for their willingness to sacrifice the most vulnerable for their personal comfort.
For a long time now, American parents have registered deep dissatisfaction with the public schools they feel forced to stick their kids in. Even before lockdowns, unscientific and education-damaging forced masking in schools, ridiculous repeated quarantines of healthy kids, and rolling "brownouts" of in-person schooling, polling shows most American parents wish they didn't feel like the public schools in their ZIP code were their only option.
After all this incompetence-imposed life chaos, the current surge of parent outrage at local school board meetings is only the tip of the spear. As more evidence emerges of the unnecessary harms we knew beforehand would result from lockdowns, public anger will only grow. It won't be limited to schools, either.
If more exciting school board meetings, primaries for craven politicians, and parents yanking funding from schools that don't serve them are what it takes to run every one of these moral cretins out of every position of power they've abused throughout their careers, then go, Americans, go. Do it for the kids. Our future will remember who stood up for the truth, lives, and liberties, and who made billions of precious humans needlessly suffer.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her bestselling ebook is "Classic Books for Young Children." Sign up here to get early access to her next book, "How To Control The Internet So It Doesn't Control You." Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
Ruling Class
SCHOOL MASK MANDATES
SHUTDOWNS
Wuhan flu
Andrew Cuomo's COVID Reign Has Been Devastating, And It's Time For A Reckoning
Reported by Mike Lawler | FEBRUARY 15, 2021
Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/andrew-cuomos-covid-reign-has-been-devastating-and-its-time-for-a-reckoning-2650539894.html/
We need a full, thorough, and independent investigation with subpoenas to Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, the governor's staff, and the governor himself.
A few weeks ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, without a hint of self-awareness, said, "Incompetent government kills people. More people died than needed to die in COVID." Sadly, I couldn't agree more.
While many in corporate media glorified Cuomo's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, helping create a cult of personality for him among Democrats across the country, an examination of his decision-making reveals that he failed New Yorkers on many fronts.
Cuomo was given near-unilateral emergency powers to tackle the pandemic, with the state legislature forfeiting all decision-making and responsibility to the governor and his team. Thus, Cuomo's decisions and the repercussions of his actions fall squarely on his shoulders. First, and most jarring, is the revelation that the Cuomo administration's decided to cover up the true cost of their Department of Health order on March 25 that sent COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes. That fateful order was subsequently deleted from the state's Department of Health website in the beginning of the cover-up by the Cuomo administration.
Following that order, tens of thousands of nursing home residents lost their lives and the Cuomo administration moved into overdrive on blocking transparency efforts, shutting down inquiries at every turn, and even releasing a phony report absolving them of any responsibility. Two weeks ago, we learned in a report by New York Attorney General Tish James, a Democrat, that Cuomo's administration hid the true cost to lives of this non-scientific order, under-counting nursing home deaths by almost 50 percent. Just this weekend, we learned the Cuomo administration intentionally hid and withheld information from federal authorities.
It also speaks volumes that for months on end, the governor stonewalled transparency efforts by families that lost loved ones while mocking their efforts. His cruelty in this regard was on full display in January when he said "Who cares?" when asked about the death toll.
We care, governor. Those families deserve answers and justice.
Second, Cuomo's administration forced out many of the public health experts who should have been developing New York's vaccine plan, deciding instead to recruit expensive consulting firms. This led to an incredibly slow, ineffectual, and confusing rollout of the vaccine. My legislative office is still receiving daily calls from seniors older than 80 who simply cannot get an appointment no matter how hard they look.
While media outlets continue to sing Cuomo's praises, the reality on the ground is that his top-down, Soviet-esque management style has hampered the efficacy and speed of the vaccine rollout, tying local health departments in knots. Every county health department in New York already has a mass vaccination plan, yet the governor refused for weeks to let them use those plans, instead of forcing them into the system created by his high-priced and high-brow consulting firms, all at taxpayers' expense.
Third, Cuomo's extensive lockdowns and subsequent non-scientific decisions to limit capacity in houses of worship shut down indoor dining, and restrict in-person learning (even temporarily) have hurt millions more. Setting unconstitutional caps on houses of worship was rejected by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, a case that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. Many houses of worship, spanning all types of faiths, were already setting limits on themselves to ensure the health and safety of their worshippers. Recommending that they be shut down or capped was ludicrous, and an affront to the basic right to freedom of religion in our nation.
Another group whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by Cuomo's insatiable desire for control is restaurant owners and restaurant workers. Shutting down indoor dining in New York City made zero sense at the time, with people being infected at less than 1.5 percent (lower than the state positivity rate) when dining indoors. Now, Cuomo has reopened dining when the infection rate has climbed significantly.
These decisions are not being made based on science, but what the governor "feels" is the right move. That is a recipe for disaster that cannot be allowed to continue. Cuomo's actions are driven by his need for control, his ego, and his ability to legislate freely, as Democrats in the state legislature have completely abdicated all their duties as a co-equal branch of government.
Finally, it's clear that New York students are rapidly falling behind other students around the globe. The lack of in-person interaction and learning is having devastating impacts on our children's academic and social futures, as they are not learning the important lessons we all learned in grade school. To the governor's credit, he didn't outright ban in-person learning, but he certainly hasn't been a champion for it either. Hybrid-learning programs are still leaving our kids behind, and his silence on this subject is deafening. I'd hazard a guess he's spent more time bashing former President Trump at his press conferences than he has talked about the needs of our students.
In short, the governor's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been nothing short of disastrous for the millions of New Yorkers who call the Empire State home. While CNN, MSNBC, and other major news outlets remain busy pumping up Cuomo's ego and image to the American public, Americans need to hear that his decisions cost tens of thousands of New Yorkers their lives, hundreds of thousands of students their educational advancement, and millions of New Yorkers their livelihoods.
Mike Lawler is a member of the New York Assembly.
Twitter Is The Enemy Of The American People
JANUARY 9, 2021 By David Marcus
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/09/twitter-is-the-enemy-of-the-american-people/
On Oct. 18, 2020, Twitter banned the account of Dr. Scott Atlas for defending President Donald Trump's position on mask mandates. In his tweet, he cited scientific studies, and the tweet contained absolutely no false information.
Also in October, Twitter banned the account of The New York Post for accurately reporting on a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. Today we know these were just the first salvos in this evil company's assault on American liberty.
For all its talk about safety, community, and the health of discourse, we see today that Twitter acts in favor of one interest and one interest alone: its own, even when it means destabilizing the American people. On Friday, the company permanently banned Trump from its platform and began a purge of conservative voices. They claim this is needed to protect America from a coup. That is a farcical lie. They did it because their political enemies such as Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley are now out of power, and they mean to keep it way.
As a private company, Twitter is free to do as it pleases. And I am free to call them what they are: a shill for communist China that seeks the destruction of America. Do you doubt that? Then explain why Iran can call for Jews to be killed on Twitter's platform and China can spread propaganda about how rounding up Uyghur men and forced sterilization of Uyghur women is actually good, but Donald Trump can't tweet. It is evil. And anyone defending Jack Dorsey's death machine is complicit.
We live in two Americas right now. In Republican-led Florida and Texas, economies are open, people go to restaurants and movies, small businesses can prosper. In Democrat-led New York and California, lockdowns are crushing the people. They are not allowed to gather in person, only on big tech platforms. Guess which outcome Twitter prefers?
Now compare the effects of COVID on these two Americas. There is no rational way to argue that the lockdowns led to better results.
I want to put this as clearly as possible. Twitter attempted and largely succeeded in silencing dissent to policies that were against its own interests. They don't care about the suicides, overdoses, missed cancer screenings, or poverty caused by these actions, they only care about money and power. Blood is dripping from Jack Dorsey's hands across the globe and here at home as he counts his billions.
Feckless Democrats and faux conservatives applaud or look the other way at Twitter's actions because it serves their purposes; the poor, blind fools have no idea that they will be next. This has nothing to do with the Constitution, or laws, this has to do with Dorsey being a liar who orchestrates mass disinformation campaigns on the American people. Twitter's safety guidelines have nothing to do with safety, they have to do with profit.
I am not writing here about Section 230, or legislative approaches to rein in Big Tech. That can come later. I am writing to make it clear that Twitter has played a central role in destroying Americans' lives through lockdowns, lying to them about Hunter Biden to win an election, and enabling the world's most brutal regime to practice genocide in peace.
Twitter doesn't want to serve you; it wants to rule you. And it is well on its way.
Now Big Tech is seeking to deplatform Twitter's competitor, Parler. Politicians and journalists are cheering for censorship and suggesting that cable operators should ban conservative news outlets. You see, these people know what is good for you and what isn't. They just want to protect you from dangerous information. To them, you are a child and they are your parents, the only difference being that you pay them an allowance.
Now we Americans have no choice. Now we must convene our secret meetings in person, far from the peering eyes of Big Tech and its Chinese overlords, for whom it will do anything. Consider the fact that in many places in America meetings are literally illegal right now. Everything changed on Friday. The cards all stare up at us from the table now. Twitter's goal is to create for our children an America our parents would not recognize.
Twitter is the enemy of freedom, the enemy of liberty, and the enemy of the American people. It must be treated as such.
David Marcus is the Federalist's New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.
Dr. Scott Atlas
Small Businesses Like Mine Didn't Cause COVID, But Governments Are Making Us Pay For It
Reported By John Romano | DECEMBER 18, 2020
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/18/small-businesses-like-mine-didnt-cause-covid-but-governments-are-making-us-pay-for-it/
Back in 2000, I left my job in San Francisco working for an entrepreneur named Bruce Carlisle. From scratch, Bruce had co-founded an online advertising agency named SFInteractive, eventually growing the business to 200 employees. I successfully started his analytics department, and then flew the coop. Los Angeles was calling me, and I've never looked back. The day I left, I made a pact with myself to never work for anyone else. I saw what Bruce had created and set out to create something of my own. Outside of a short stint working for the city of Malibu and a Christmas gig at Williams Sonoma in L.A., that's exactly what I've done.
In 2003, my wife and I were expecting our first child, and we hadn't figured out how to pay for her arrival yet. We were both freelancing reading movie scripts for film companies. It was enough for the two of us, and a lot of fun, but we didn't have enough steady income to raise a family.
A wise acquaintance once said to me, "Every baby comes with its own basket of bread." Interesting idea, I thought. Sometime after, almost on cue, my old roommate from New York reached out and asked if I knew anyone who could sell French tours on the internet to Americans.
After some serious convincing on my part (I'd never worked in travel before), my roommate vouched for me and we got the contract. Our business and child arrived at virtually the same time. We were off to the races.
For almost 20 years now my wife, Laura, and I have run Link Paris, a small boutique French travel company. We've had our ups and downs, but we survived the great recession in 2008, the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris in 2015 and 2016, and the reality of giant competitors eventually moving into our niche.
On the upside, we've served more than 80,000 happy customers and in 2014 we were voted the "Best Online Tour Operator" by the French Government Tourist Office. We truly love this business and our customers.
Our No. 1 product is a day trip from Paris to visit the landing beaches in Normandy. It is a destination every American should see if he or she visits France. We are very proud to have helped so many people visit this hallowed ground.
Now, here we are, 10 months into COVID. Our revenue is down more than 99 percent. We've had a total of two clients since March — a father and daughter who were receiving medical treatment in Paris. They, and others like them, are among the very few Americans allowed abroad.
We're still standing, but how much longer can we? How much longer can any disrupted small business last? We are hurting in my industry and many others.
This is a horrible virus and I fully understand and support the fight against it. The worry is that the government is implicitly saying to us, and a million other small businesses, that we're simply collateral damage of the pandemic. "Yes, you had a decent life, but that is over now. You need to accept your limited prospects and move on. Tough break. But, you know, the virus."
Yes, there has been some aid. The Paycheck Protection Program helped, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan helped even more. But, after ten months of zero revenue, it isn't enough.
To complicate matters, the Small Business Administration lowered the maximum EIDL loan amount from $500,000 to $150,000 in April — although not before people like Rep. Ilhan Omar's husband, Tim Mynett, and others got their loans approved for the full amount.
Mynett's company made $2.2 million this year from Omar's reelection campaign. Where exactly did he suffer an "economic injury?" I'm sure there are many examples on the other side of the aisle as well. This isn't a partisan issue, but the point is the same: the well-connected aren't just barely getting by — they're thriving.
Indeed, we wouldn't have even received the EIDL loan if it hadn't been for a Reddit user who helped us, along with a thousand other people, resubmit our application. When I originally submitted, I'd had made an error, and the SBA was so overwhelmed at the time that amending an application was near impossible — until I found the EIDL subreddit and an anonymous user named Cue378. He (or she) knew exactly what to do and we got it fixed. When someone else started a GoFundMe page for this person as a thank you, more than $100,000 was raised.
In the end, we received a loan. We are grateful for it, but compare it to the $500 million credit facility that our main competitor (Trip Advisor) initiated, and it's essentially nothing. That is the unintended, or intended, consequence of all of this. The big and connected are getting much stronger, while the small are having their dreams destroyed.
No small business could've prepared for this. What started as "15 days to slow the spread" has turned into something far different. I get it — six weeks to beat the Germans in World War I turned into four long years of trench warfare. Things change.
But Washington needs to give small businesses a genuine, real chance to survive. Big business may do the heavy lifting, but we make up 45 percent of America's GDP. Small business is the lifeblood of this economy. Don't let us bleed dry.
John Romano is the co-founder and operator of LinkParis.com, a small boutique French travel company.
Business, Health, Political
coronavirus relief
COVID Relief
COVID19 Economy
California Restaurant Association CEO 'hopeful' coronavirus outdoor dining ban will be lifted by courts
Reported by Joshua Q. Nelson | Fox News
Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-restaurant-ceo-hopeful-outdoor-dining-ban-lifted
Judge wants evidence for LA's outdoor dining ban
California Restaurant Association CEO Jot Condie tells 'Fox & Friends' every day that passes restaurant owners and workers can't pay their bills. California public health officials are closing restaurants without substantial scientific evidence, California Restaurant Association CEO Jot Condie said on Tuesday.
"For nine months now, we've listened to our public health officials tell us that these shutdown orders are based on or they are guided by evidence and science, and we have an L.A. health department who has essentially targeted the restaurant industry as if we are responsible for the latest outbreak in the pandemic when the evidence proves otherwise," Condie told "Fox & Friends."
Condie will appear in court for a third time on Tuesday and expressed optimism that a judge will rule against Los Angeles County on its patio dining ban. Last week, a California judge ordered health officials in Los Angeles to show scientific evidence to justify the recently enacted three-week ban on dine-in service.
"[The judge] basically said L.A. County has a lot of holes in their justification in order for them to come back and prove that it is justified … So we're hopeful," Condie said.
The decision came a week after a judge denied the California Restaurant Association's request to block the measure until evidence was provided that showed outdoor dining at restaurants posed a risk to the public.
"We were successful in Los Angeles Superior Court today, where the judge agreed that LA County must show cause for its order to ban outdoor dining," the California Restaurant Association tweeted on Wednesday.
The CRA has fought against the measure since it was enacted on Nov. 25, limiting bars and restaurants to take-out, drive-through and delivery services only. The group had accused L.A. County of relying on a "questionable national study" rather than local data to determine that establishments — which are already reeling from the pandemic — should be shut down again, according to a video posted on YouTube.
Condie said the restaurants "just want to open back up." While indoor dining is restricted due to health concerns, "outdoor dining is their only lifeline" that they have to get through the pandemic.
"That has sort of been pulled out from under them by a health department that is essentially acting on a gut reaction," Condie said. "Last time I looked, gut reactions aren't part of a scientific method."
Fox News' Daniella Genovese contributed to this report.
Joshua Q. Nelson is a reporter for FoxNews.com. You can find him on Twitter @joshuaqnelson.
California COVID restrictions
California Judge
California Restaurant Association CEO Jot Condie
Lockdowns Have Caused More Children To Drop Out Of School Than Americans Have Died Of COVID
Reported Christopher Jacobs | DECEMBER 8, 2020
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/08/lockdowns-have-caused-more-children-to-drop-out-of-school-than-americans-have-died-of-covid/
The past nine months have seen more than a quarter-million Americans die from the coronavirus. Each and every death represents a tragedy — a life cut short, an empty place at the family table this holiday season, children mourning their parents, even parents mourning their children.
But a separate and ongoing tragedy has also struck at countless more than another quarter-million Americans: Children who have disappeared from school following last spring's COVID-19 closures. A survey conducted by CBS's "60 Minutes" found that among 78 of the largest school districts in the country, at least 240,000 students remained unaccounted for when school resumed, in many cases virtually, this fall. This number doesn't, of course, include the many other children schools have lost in other districts.
Each and every one of those cases also represents a tragedy. Indeed, it's a slow-moving crisis. Every child who doesn't return to school to complete his or her education represents dreams unfulfilled. It means diminished career prospects, lower earnings, an increased risk of trouble with law enforcement or substance misuse, more expense to society through the criminal justice and welfare systems, and on, and on, and on.
Just as these students have fallen through the proverbial cracks, however, policymakers do not seem to be doing nearly enough to solve the problem.
Obstacles to Online Learning
In their reporting on these missing children, "60 Minutes" spoke with one of them, a high school senior in Tampa, Fla. named Kiara. Kiara said she had moved around town eight or nine times since elementary school; her stepfather lost her job when the pandemic hit, and she was currently living in a motel.
A school district administrator said Kiara had been a good student before the pandemic but started failing classes when learning went virtual. Listening to her describe her situation, it's not hard to figure out why her performance suffered:
Not having that teacher to really talk to was kinda difficult and just me not having a laptop at the time was difficult doing it on my phone. Just such a small screen. …
[Doing virtual learning via her phone] was very difficult because my phone is really skinny. At the time, I didn't have glasses so I'd have to, like, slide to the left and slide to the right and slide up. So it was just really iffy. …
Definitely, I definitely come outside [to escape her crowded motel room]. I'll sit here and study. But sometimes, you know, the mosquitoes are coming, you know. It's hard.
At times, Kiara would walk a mile to a nearby park to get some peace and quiet to complete her work — but the park didn't have WiFi or an electrical outlet. She said she would "try to make it work as best I could," but it doesn't take a doctorate in education to realize why any student's performance would suffer in that environment.
In some respects, Kiara represents one of the luckier victims of the school shutdowns. She has big dreams — she wants to become a dental hygienist, and eventually a dentist — and fought through the obstacles the COVID-19 closures put in her path. But it's sadly understandable to see how some families and some children would just give up.
Enrollment Down, and It's Not All Homeschooling
Across the country, public school enrollment has declined for the current academic year. Outside D.C., Montgomery County, Maryland's public school enrollment declined by 3,300, or about 2 percent, this fall; on the other side of the Potomac River, Fairfax County, Virginia's enrollment declined by nearly 5 percent. In Missouri, public school enrollment dropped 3.2 percent statewide, with a 31 percent drop in preschool enrollment and a nearly 10 percent decline in kindergarten enrollment.
These changes represent two distinct trends — both ends of the proverbial barbell. In Montgomery County, Fairfax County, and other wealthy enclaves, the enrollment declines come from affluent families enrolling their children in private schools to escape another year of virtual or hybrid learning in public education. At the other end of the spectrum, children like Kiara in families facing financial and other logistical difficulties dropped out of virtual learning entirely.
Open the Schools
The chaos children like Kiara continue to face with virtual learning — a national scandal if there ever was one — argues for a major expansion of school choice, so that no child faces these kinds of obstacles again. Thankfully, Ohio just enacted a major expansion of school choice, giving students an early Christmas present; other states should follow suit (in the interests of full disclosure, I have worked on a variety of projects advocating for school choice; however, no clients had input into this article).
Until every parent has access to school choice, school districts should start taking steps to reopen their classrooms to in-person instruction. There are fine and valid disagreements to be had over the necessity of business closures during the pandemic, but the idea that bars should remain open yet schools remain closed runs counter to any sense of logic, not to mention good public policy.
The future of hundreds of thousands of children lies in the hands of policymakers and school officials coming up with a plan to open their doors as soon as possible, and keep them open. Kiara and students like her deserve far better than what they have received during the past nine months — and they deserve it now.
Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, "The Case Against Single Payer." He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.
Education, Political
hybrid schools
REOPEN SCHOOLS
school shutdowns
Today's TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – No Thanksgiving
A.F. BRANCO | on November 22, 2020 at 3:52 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-no-thanksgiving/
Governor Walz is very popular among life-loving turkeys this year as he tries to shutdown thanksgiving.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Broken-hearted
A.F. BRANCO | on November 23, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-broken-hearted/
Blue State Governors appear eager to kill off small businesses with the use of COVID shutdowns.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including "Fox News", MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and "The Washington Post." He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D'Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
blue states
COVID SHUTDOWNS
Governor Walz
MALL BUSINESS
Minnisota