Not a lot to be cheerful about in the headlines today. I went to the Washington Post homepage this morning. The first two stories I saw:
1. 15 women accuse then-Redskin employees of sexual harassment
2. Officials criticized as protesters tell of being detained by agents in unmarked vans
Then, as I was reading these, a breaking news banner ran across the top of my screen: "Justice Ginsberg Being Treated For Cancer Recurrence."
Fantastic.
Oh, and also, plenty of sidebar information about how Covid-19 is still terrorizing the population. We are actually worse off now than we were before shutdown in many places, which is an awful indictment of our current president and his anti-science worshipers. A lot of places are even shutting down again, which is the appropriate response. It's one that was sadly predictable. Here's what I wrote on this blog about two months ago:
And now we have the Sword of Damocles hanging over us with school set to reopen in the fall. If we do open schools, it's going to be disaster; if we don't, it's also going to be a disaster. There is no way to win. There is only a way to lose the least. I mean, maybe we could win if we (a) shut down everything again; (b) send people money so that they can scrape by once we shut down everything again; (c) social distance and/or wear masks everywhere, especially indoors. But even then, it's still too late to safely open up schools as scheduled in many places. And we are not going to do those three things anyway.
Here in DC, we've actually been managing things reasonably well (or getting lucky). We only had 39 new cases today and only have 89 people currently hospitalize with coronavirus, which isn't terrible, relatively speaking, for a city of about 600K. Our trend line is well below its peak and not moving much in either direction. It seems, at the very least, we've flattened the curve.
For this reason, I was pretty staunchly in favor of sending kids back to school full-time, as scheduled, a few weeks ago when I took a survey on the matter. I thought the risks of infection were outweighed by the risks of shuttering schools (of which there are many). However, I've changed my tune quite a bit since then. Mainly, it's because the virus is still completely out-of-control in other parts of the country. I mean, we can't wall off our city. We are one of the most transient regions in the country. It would be so easy to let our guard down and get slammed again because of it. It might happen even with our guard up. That's the thing about exponential growth. It doesn't take long to completely blow up. If you take a piece of paper and you fold it over itself repeatedly, so that you double its thickness each time, you know how many times you have to fold it until it stretches from Earth to the Moon? 40. That's it: 40.
So, I'm no longer in favor of sending kids back to school full-time in the fall. The most likely scenario is a hybrid, two-days-in-class, three-days-remote schedule, which I guess is fine. At this point, I'd almost rather just go full-time remote for at the least the first few months, but that might be an unbearable burden for some families. S and I are very fortunate in that we both have decent paying jobs that allow us a lot of flexibility. We have time and resources to home-school our children (as much as it sucks, we can do it), and after this is all over, we can hire independent tutors to catch our kids up if they fall behind. Many parents don't have this luxury and would be devastated if schools shut down. Not to mention, some children don't have parents or any other accountable adults in the their lives and need school for some semblance stability.
Here's an idea that just popped into my head. What if we just had in-class instruction for the families who really need it and everybody else did it remotely? Would that work? Would it be possible to create workable criteria for "really need it"? Would teachers go for it? Would other parents go for it? I would, but I'm pretty selfless in that way. I'm perfectly fine paying for public services I don't need. I'm not saying that to brag or anything like that. It's just how I am. I'm plenty selfish in other ways: Don't fuck with my leisure time.
And speaking of leisure time, this session has come to an end. I need to wrap it up, and help S put the kids to bed. Then, hopefully we will have a chance to watch an episode or two of our new favorite show: Indian Matchmaking. It's not exactly world-class TV, but it's fun enough, and it's something we can watch together. At the very least, it's a distraction from morbid and unsettling news, which is what I want at night. When it comes to media consumption, the way I stay informed and sane, in times like these, is with my "mullet strategy": news in the morning, entertainment in the evening.
Until next time...
1. 15 women accuse then-Redskin employees of sexual harassment
2. Officials criticized as protesters tell of being detained by agents in unmarked vans
Then, as I was reading these, a breaking news banner ran across the top of my screen: "Justice Ginsberg Being Treated For Cancer Recurrence."
Fantastic.
Oh, and also, plenty of sidebar information about how Covid-19 is still terrorizing the population. We are actually worse off now than we were before shutdown in many places, which is an awful indictment of our current president and his anti-science worshipers. A lot of places are even shutting down again, which is the appropriate response. It's one that was sadly predictable. Here's what I wrote on this blog about two months ago:
In general, my hunch is that everywhere is going to open up too early, from a public health standpoint, and then places are going to shut back down piecemeal if they are hotspots of resurgence. This won’t really work, because the damage will already be done by the time one area decides to shut down again, and the virus will already be passed on to the next place. We are going to carry on in this way -- flare-ups and shutdowns -- until we develop a treatment/vaccine or we build up herd immunity, neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon. The result is going to be a lot of unnecessary death and sickness.Lo and behold...
And now we have the Sword of Damocles hanging over us with school set to reopen in the fall. If we do open schools, it's going to be disaster; if we don't, it's also going to be a disaster. There is no way to win. There is only a way to lose the least. I mean, maybe we could win if we (a) shut down everything again; (b) send people money so that they can scrape by once we shut down everything again; (c) social distance and/or wear masks everywhere, especially indoors. But even then, it's still too late to safely open up schools as scheduled in many places. And we are not going to do those three things anyway.
Here in DC, we've actually been managing things reasonably well (or getting lucky). We only had 39 new cases today and only have 89 people currently hospitalize with coronavirus, which isn't terrible, relatively speaking, for a city of about 600K. Our trend line is well below its peak and not moving much in either direction. It seems, at the very least, we've flattened the curve.
For this reason, I was pretty staunchly in favor of sending kids back to school full-time, as scheduled, a few weeks ago when I took a survey on the matter. I thought the risks of infection were outweighed by the risks of shuttering schools (of which there are many). However, I've changed my tune quite a bit since then. Mainly, it's because the virus is still completely out-of-control in other parts of the country. I mean, we can't wall off our city. We are one of the most transient regions in the country. It would be so easy to let our guard down and get slammed again because of it. It might happen even with our guard up. That's the thing about exponential growth. It doesn't take long to completely blow up. If you take a piece of paper and you fold it over itself repeatedly, so that you double its thickness each time, you know how many times you have to fold it until it stretches from Earth to the Moon? 40. That's it: 40.
So, I'm no longer in favor of sending kids back to school full-time in the fall. The most likely scenario is a hybrid, two-days-in-class, three-days-remote schedule, which I guess is fine. At this point, I'd almost rather just go full-time remote for at the least the first few months, but that might be an unbearable burden for some families. S and I are very fortunate in that we both have decent paying jobs that allow us a lot of flexibility. We have time and resources to home-school our children (as much as it sucks, we can do it), and after this is all over, we can hire independent tutors to catch our kids up if they fall behind. Many parents don't have this luxury and would be devastated if schools shut down. Not to mention, some children don't have parents or any other accountable adults in the their lives and need school for some semblance stability.
Here's an idea that just popped into my head. What if we just had in-class instruction for the families who really need it and everybody else did it remotely? Would that work? Would it be possible to create workable criteria for "really need it"? Would teachers go for it? Would other parents go for it? I would, but I'm pretty selfless in that way. I'm perfectly fine paying for public services I don't need. I'm not saying that to brag or anything like that. It's just how I am. I'm plenty selfish in other ways: Don't fuck with my leisure time.
And speaking of leisure time, this session has come to an end. I need to wrap it up, and help S put the kids to bed. Then, hopefully we will have a chance to watch an episode or two of our new favorite show: Indian Matchmaking. It's not exactly world-class TV, but it's fun enough, and it's something we can watch together. At the very least, it's a distraction from morbid and unsettling news, which is what I want at night. When it comes to media consumption, the way I stay informed and sane, in times like these, is with my "mullet strategy": news in the morning, entertainment in the evening.
Until next time...
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