In reply to: From a NY standpoint... posted by IrishApache
spouting the usual bullshit with regards to Covid policy.
Rather than jousting with the stupidity below from the peanut gallery, virtually none of whom had young kids during that bullshit, I’ll add a bit of an anecdote to support your observations.
We spent the first 3 - 4 months after the pandemic hit in Chicago locked up in our apartment 22 - 23 hours a day. Given the circumstances, it was the only option we had; we also had a very young baby boy (first of several now) that we were trying to acculturate, expose to the real world, have little other buddies to play with, etc. The Floyd riots were the last straw, and we accelerated plans we already had to get the fuck out of there and moved down South closer to family in late summer of 2020.
For work and family reasons, we spent a good deal of time in places like Montgomery, Jackson (MS and TN), Mobile, Chattanooga, Augusta, etc. in the subsequent months. For those that are unaware, these are majority African-American, impoverished, difficult places to govern that simply did not give a single fuck about following pandemic guidelines outside of the official government institutions like schools and city hall. To be 100% clear, it absolutely was not just those places and the don’t-give-a-fuck attitude was probably much stronger in places like eastern Tennessee and whatnot; I can still vividly remember, after leaving Chicago for the first time in at least 5 - 6 months, stopping at a gas station outside of Thompson’s Station, TN in late summer of 2020 and not a single person acting like they gave a shit about the pandemic - no masks, no distancing, no precautions whatsoever. It was invigorating to a degree I still can’t describe with words. The more white collar communities in Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta, and the like at least gave a passing nod through the summer of 2020 but in reality did not enforce it with any teeth past about July or August 2020. It was done for all practical purposes minus the odd hipster bar or restaurant.
Who was going to enforce pandemic guidelines in a place like Selma or Montgomery? I can assure you the local police had no interest in doing it. The Alabama state police sure as shit wouldn’t do it given the exact racial perception fears you outlined in your post.
One final, most important observation: the most heavily African-American cities in the South in states that largely stayed open barely saw any serious riot violence or uptick in criminal violence throughout that period compared to Seattle, SF, Oakland, Chicago, NYC, DC, and all the other dipshit city governments that largely shut down operations for extended periods of time. One would think that the Floyd riots would trigger serious unrest in places with actual, significant racial oppression (which places like Montgomery and Baton Rouge have no shortage of), but it was the places with the city governments that acted like the harshest tyrants that largely saw the worst results.
I realized I was stuck in some kind of 1984 liberal hellhole when it come to governmental policy. When you took off I envied you... but we had just demo'ed our house and I was stuck.
Even NYC was more sane than Chicago. When my dad passed unnecessarily in October of 2020 I flew to CT via LGA. I had to wear the mask in the airport but the second I got out into the city... no masks... anywhere. Meanwhile in Chicago, I could see neighbors wearing masks in their own homes. People in Connecticut came together to remember my dad. We kept our distance and tried to meet up outside but by and large everyone was reasonable.
When I went to Naples and Key West in December of 2020 it was as you described. There's nothing slack jawed about folks who snow bird in Naples, FL. Key West is a great balance between class and crass but again no masks in sight other than on bouncers and staff who I think were required by the state to wear them.
Finally, I know I'm a unique case in that I have business interests in Cicero and had at the time interests in the west side and little village, but NO ONE there obeyed the city. You could drive down cermack and see all of the mexican restaurants teeming with people while the white liberals on the north side locked everything down and wore their virtue signaling masks.
As you said, many people who think the measures were reasonable did not live in one of these deep blue cities and see how excessive this shit got. They certainly weren't rational with young kids living in these places. If I made a movie of our experience and showed it to someone in 2016 they would think it was made up. Hell I know many here just don't believe us when we talk about how awful it was to be in the city proper. It's sad... I used to defend this city on these boards constantly. Now I'm like "if I could invite all of you who were in charge into an octagon I would."
general wasn't great. My spouse and I missed her father's wedding (he had been widowed) because Cuomo had instituted a mandatory week long quarantine for anyone who left the tri-state area. I'm not inclined to go look it up, but that's what I remember. Her job is one that cannot be done remotely, so quarantining for a week was not a realistic option. That was just one of the many things that those in charge in NY foisted upon the little people.
I agree that everyone was trying to do their best, but also fully agree that there needs to be an open retrospective on this. Not a witch hunt, but a careful and deep analysis of what went well, what could have gone better, and what we can learn from the experience to improve when and if a similar situation arises in the future.
Call me on my bullshit.
Of the demographics of those cities and towns
Southern white folk are almost universally trumpsters.
Southern rednecks of course didn't wear masks. masks. You are a kind of Southern redneck
In my experience many African Americans were reluctant to get vaccinated and thus wore masks more than most and longer than most.
Wearing a mask was no heavy burden.
You bald southern redneck Trumpster.
I never got angry at anything but the virus.
And I support Black Lives Matter.
How dare you. My mop tops even the best of them back here. And Trumpster? The guy I've never supported nor voted for? Point out the instances there, please.
I am beginning to think you have me confused for someone else in your alcoholic-riddled mind.
unlike your pansy ass. Try again, fatty.
Has been a national phenomena. Several southern cities saw big Floyd protests including New Orleans linked below.
They also saw a big spike in murders from a baseline that puts northern cities to shame.
locked down relatively hard for a suboptimal impact. A Democratic governor in JBE moving contra to his peers nearby with a very liberal mayor in Cantrell being advised by a dipshit public health advisor (and ND grad, unfortunately) in Avegno did a terrible job there. An already incredibly violent city got even more violent thanks to them. Louisville had a similar story that had extra gas thrown on the fire by the Breonna Taylor bullshit.
And none of them sans Louisville had the scale and violence that the protests on the coastal cities and upper Midwest (Chicago and Minneapolis) had. Not even close.
Year. Red states have seen murder increase at a rate higher than blue states from 2003 to 2023. The jump immediately post Floyd was substantial and even between red and blue states.
I also recall reading about substantial disorder/protesting in the wake of Floyd in Nashville Atlanta and Miami off the top of my head.
Personally I think the rioting vs protesting levels were multifactorial including real slights over police misconduct and prevelance of leftist nutjobs (Portland being the standout there). I recall some very blue areas doing well during that period. Camden was I think a good example as they reformed their police dept. Prior to Floyd and saw fewer issues.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/6abc.com/amp/new-jersey-protest-camden-george-floyd-peaceful/6223952/
Miami. Nothing in the same universe as Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, New York, etc.
February of 2021? Because we did. It was great living on a live action set of "Iraq... but in Chicago!" for 2 years.
And seeing their headquarters mobbed in Atlanta.
This article mentions the cities I discussed.
A few flash mobs localized to protesting at CNN headquarters was a gnat compared to what happened in Chicago (where I lived for the first half of the year). A few dozen clowns in downtown Nashville tried to declare an autonomous zone similar to Capitol Hill; it lasted all of 5 hours.
Some of us actually knew by June 2020 that schools were not super spreaders. We knew that because a small few of us went back in early May 2020 and figured out how to make sure that schools weren't super spreaders. That included hybrid learning, scrubbing down desks (ha! this was silly), and ventilation (which actually worked really well, but was super uncomfortable in February).
All of the hard work that we put in allowed folks like airborne to gloat in retrospect. "The data shows..." We provided the data, when we had *no* idea what would work.
You're welcome.
would disagree. To say the older staff were all but forced to leave the professional was an understatement. The few that could not leave the profession, were forced to wear masks and face shields to not die. I am not using the team "die" loosely.
I was there in the weeds, too, from early May 2020 on. You don't have a profile, but most here know that I am also an educator (I predate Janet, so I've been here a while). I will guess that we were back in school before you were--we went back in early May 2020, and were onsite through the start of July.
We did a really great job of tracking cases throughout the pandemic, and we had no evidence of any transmission in the school (student to student or student to teacher), in large part because we had really strict protocols (which were miserable, but that's another story).Those protocols included mandatory N95/FFP2 masks for everyone, classroom windows and doors to be wide open for 5 minutes every 15 minutes, and testing everyone in the building at least three times per week, on site, first thing in the morning.
We were also really lucky in that teachers who were deemed high risk due to age or other factors were allowed to re-structure their jobs to work from home until vaccines were widely available.
I obviously don't think that we should have just thrown the doors open in May 2020 and let 'er rip. But man, the amount of damage that we did to kids by keeping them away from each other was *massive*. Massive. I still see it, every day.
You did the correct, noble, and responsible thing, and deserve tremendous credit for it. What you did, and what my son's Catholic school teachers did in 2020, was nothing short of heroic because of the leadership it demonstrated.
But it misses the larger point being made... that policy makers this side of the pond were willingly ignoring the data you provided, other public health data re: Covid and the young, and later data provided the American Catholic Schools, just to placate special interests. They put politics above science, and hurt America's children in the process.
I don't think anybody is gloating. It was infuriating then and it is infuriating now, because as BI pointed out in the original post, nobody has been held to account... and this failure diminishes regard for our public institutions. Airborne is pissed, and rightfully so.
With that broad a brush. This is an interview with Ashish Jha who Biden put in charge of COVID policy for a while. He was pushing to be more aggressive on opening schools in fall of 2020 but doing it in an evidence based way.
Normally you'd have a competent executive response and public health would provide information to balance risks vs benefits and such. Instead you had the president reject basic scientific facts and push reopening with no adjustment to the reality on the ground. Fauci had to co traditional POTUS on live TV not over policy but basic science.
That led to a false dichotomy over 100% open vs 100% lock down. A lot of governors on the left defaulted to the maximal shutdown possible instead of balancing factors like reasonable governors (examples being Polis in Colorado and Dewine in Ohio).
I fear the next time we have a pandemic (and I expect another in my lifetime) our lesson will be we should have YOLO'd the last one.