This is an amazing article.
I mean, there's just so much information here. As a parent of a child "on the spectrum," it's quite refreshing.
At the Free Press:
"Autism? We had hardly heard the term growing up, and we had nothing remotely like it up our family trees. Yet here we were, handed a devastating diagnosis. All around us grew a rapidly rising tide of autism."
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) July 20, 2023
An enormously powerful piece by @JillEscher:https://t.co/il9qv9HKhN
There's too much death.
Day after day we're subsumed by "senseless" acts of violence. Damn. What next? Car control?
At the Los Angeles Times, "Driver intentionally hit Westlake High students, killing 1, after Walmart stabbing, authorities say."
The poor kid.
This makes me cry.
Baby Kyler's obituary is here.
At ABC News 5 Cleveland, "Father, 19, charged with murder after allegedly confessing to leaving 1-year-old son in hot car deliberately."
And at the New York Post, "Ohio dad, 19, admits he left his infant son to die in 130-degree car":An Ohio dad reportedly confessed to leaving his baby son to die in a blazing-hot car as outside temperatures soared, after initially claiming the 14-month-old was alone just briefly. Landon Parrott, 19 — who first said he’d left the infant alone during a short bathroom trip — allegedly copped to the heinous move after cops showed footage of him leaving the boy in the car at 8:30 a.m. and not returning until 1:50 p.m., more than five hours later. “The child passed away after being left in the car unattended for approximately 5 hours, with an outside temperature of 87 degrees,” New Philadelphia Police Chief Michael Goodwin said in a statement posted on Facebook. “It appears that this was not a matter of forgetting the child but was a deliberate act so as the child would not be a disturbance while in the house.” Temperatures reached into the upper 80s on Thursday when the incident occurred. Police official Ty Norris told Fox affiliate WJW the car was likely as hot as 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Norris said Parrott had admitted to cops he knew about the dangers of hot cars for kids. “We estimate that would’ve made the interior of the car about 130 degrees and this child was in there strapped into a car seat with no fluids, no air conditioning, nothing,” Norris told the station. “It’s heartbreaking to see this unfold before your eyes.” Parrott has been charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and two counts of endangering children, police said. He is being held in custody on $250,000 bond...
Holy shit wtaf?!!
The records are "highly embarrassing" to the Police Department, causing the police chief and officers severe "emotional/mental distress" from fear of losing everything, hence for all of those who fucked on May 24th, the actual truth of events is "not of legitimate concern to the public."
Now if the city wins the case, this is one summer of urban rioting, right there at Uvalde City Hall, the Police Department, and Robb Elementary, that I could support. Damn.
I dread this, as mentioned previously. If my college imposes a mask mandate again this fall I'll be teaching completely online once again. Arghh!
At Time, "Mask Mandates Are Returning to Schools as COVID-19 Cases Surge":
On April 11, public schools in Providence, R.I, made face masks optional instead of mandatory for students and teachers—celebrating the move as a “positive milestone” brought about by declining COVID-19 cases among students and community support for a more lenient policy. Just over a month later, Providence is one of several school districts requiring masks again in response to rising COVID-19 cases, part of a nationwide spike attributed to the highly contagious Omicron subvariants. The Providence school district tracked about 60 COVID-19 cases per day last week among staff and students—a dramatic increase from a low of about 10 cases per day in March and early April, according to district data. “The additional mitigation layer of masking will help us manage this new COVID surge and keep more students in the classroom where they learn best,” Javier MontaƱez, superintendent of Providence schools, said in a statement on Monday. Philadelphia schools also resumed a mask mandate “to help protect everyone’s health and well-being as COVID-19 case counts continue to rise in the Philadelphia area,” superintendent William Hite said in a statement. And Brookline, Mass. reinstated an indoor mask mandate in all town-owned buildings, including public schools. The decision came after public health officials compared COVID-19 cases in Brookline public schools to cases in other Massachusetts school districts that had maintained mask requirements and concluded that “a temporary reinstatement would be an important mitigation measure to limit disease spread and reduce disruptions due to student and staff absenteeism.” Boston public schools, for example, have maintained a mask requirement. City health officials said they would recommend lifting the school mask mandate once daily COVID-19 cases in the city fall to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate currently stands at 54.5 new cases per 100,000 residents. But overall, a small percentage of schools have reinstated mask requirements thus far...
Good. Let's hope it stays that way.
From Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Incoming White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked onboard Air Force One Wednesday afternoon about the ongoing baby formula shortage rattling American parents."
"The shelves are wiped out," CBS News' @CHueyBurns says on the baby formula shortage in the U.S., calling it an "urgent need for families right now."
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 9, 2022
"You're starting to see pressure applied in terms of government accountability...A lot of questions about the supply chain." pic.twitter.com/hTju1wJbLS
As noted just now on Twitter, "This is what we should be talking about. Want a campaign issue, Republicans? You might as well be stepping on a rake, with the mental health crisis ready to smash you in the face."
At the New York Times, "‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens":
Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising among American adolescents. For M, a 13-year-old in Minnesota, the despair was almost too much to take. One evening last April, an anxious and free-spirited 13-year-old girl in suburban Minneapolis sprang furious from a chair in the living room and ran from the house — out a sliding door, across the patio, through the backyard and into the woods. Moments earlier, the girl’s mother, Linda, had stolen a look at her daughter’s smartphone. The teenager, incensed by the intrusion, had grabbed the phone and fled. (The adolescent is being identified by an initial, M, and the parents by first name only, to protect the family’s privacy.) Linda was alarmed by photos she had seen on the phone. Some showed blood on M’s ankles from intentional self-harm. Others were close-ups of M’s romantic obsession, the anime character Genocide Jack — a brunette girl with a long red tongue who, in a video series, kills high school classmates with scissors. In the preceding two years, Linda had watched M spiral downward: severe depression, self-harm, a suicide attempt. Now, she followed M into the woods, frantic. “Please tell me where u r,” she texted. “I’m not mad.” American adolescence is undergoing a drastic change. Three decades ago, the gravest public health threats to teenagers in the United States came from binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking. These have since fallen sharply, replaced by a new public health concern: soaring rates of mental health disorders. In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm. And for people ages 10 to 24, suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decline in mental health among teenagers was intensified by the Covid pandemic but predated it, spanning racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural areas and the socioeconomic divide. In December, in a rare public advisory, the U.S. surgeon general warned of a “devastating” mental health crisis among adolescents. Numerous hospital and doctor groups have called it a national emergency, citing rising levels of mental illness, a severe shortage of therapists and treatment options, and insufficient research to explain the trend. “Young people are more educated; less likely to get pregnant, use drugs; less likely to die of accident or injury,” said Candice Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. “By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression and suicide that stop us in our tracks.” The crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time. Federal research shows that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide. This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now? Historical comparisons are difficult, as some data around certain issues, like teen anxiety and depression, began to be collected relatively recently. But the rising rates of emergency-room visits for suicide and self-harm leave little doubt that the physical nature of the threat has changed significantly. that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide. This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now? Historical comparisons are difficult, as some data around certain issues, like teen anxiety and depression, began to be collected relatively recently. But the rising rates of emergency-room visits for suicide and self-harm leave little doubt that the physical nature of the threat has changed significantly. As M descended, Linda and her husband realized they were part of an unenviable club: bewildered parents of an adolescent in profound distress. Linda talked with parents of other struggling teenagers; not long before the night M fled into the forest, Linda was jolted by the news that a local girl had died by suicide...
More at the link.
The Times says, "the findings are nuanced..."
Right.
See this at CNN, "Their teenage children died by suicide. Now these families want to hold social media companies accountable":
(CNN) — Christopher James Dawley, known as CJ to his friends and family, was 14 years old when he signed up for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Like many teenagers, he documented his life on those platforms. CJ worked as a busboy at Texas Roadhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He loved playing golf, watching “Doctor Who” and was highly sought after by top-tier colleges. “His counselor said he could get a free ride anywhere he wanted to go,” his mother Donna Dawley told CNN Business during a recent interview at the family’s home. But throughout high school, he developed what his parents felt was an addiction to social media. By his senior year, “he couldn’t stop looking at his phone,” she said. He often stayed up until 3 a.m. on Instagram messaging with others, sometimes swapping nude photos, his mother said. He became sleep deprived and obsessed with his body image. On January 4, 2015, while his family was taking down their Christmas tree and decorations, CJ retreated into his room. He sent a text message to his best friend – “God’s speed” – and posted an update on his Facebook page: “Who turned out the light?” CJ held a 22-caliber rifle in one hand, his smartphone in the other and fatally shot himself. He was 17. Police found a suicide note written on the envelope of a college acceptance letter. His parents said he never showed outward signs of depression or suicidal ideation. “When we found him, his phone was still on, still in his hand, with blood on it,” Donna Dawley said. “He was so addicted to it that even his last moments of his life were about posting on social media.” Now, the Dawleys are joining a growing number of families who have filed recent wrongful death lawsuits against some of the big social media companies, claiming their platforms played a significant role in their teenagers’ decisions to end their lives. The Dawleys’ lawsuit, which was filed last week, targets Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The suit accuses the two companies of designing their platforms to addict users with algorithms that lead to “never-ending” scrolling as part of an effort to maximize time spent on the platform for advertising purposes and profit. The lawsuit also said the platforms effectively exploit minor users’ decision-making and impulse control capabilities due to “incomplete brain development.” Donna Dawley said she and her husband, Chris, believe CJ’s mental health suffered as a direct result of the addictive nature of the platforms. They said they were motivated to file the lawsuit against Meta and Snap after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, including some that showed the company was aware of the ways Instagram can damage mental health and body image. In public remarks, including her testimony before Congress last fall, Haugen also raised concerns about how Facebook’s algorithms could drive younger users toward harmful content, such as posts about eating disorders or self-harm, and lead to social media addiction. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a 1,300-word post on Facebook at the time claiming Haugen took the company’s research on its impact on children out of context and painted a “false picture of the company.”) “For seven years, we were trying to figure out what happened,” said Donna Dawley, adding she felt compelled to “hold the companies accountable” after she heard how Instagram is designed to keep users on the platform for as long as possible. “How dare you put a product out there knowing that it was going to be addictive? Who would ever do that?” Haugen’s disclosures and Congressional testimony renewed scrutiny of tech platforms from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. A bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate in February that proposes new and explicit responsibilities for tech platforms to protect children from digital harm. President Joe Biden also used part of his State of the Union address to urge lawmakers to “hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.” Some families are now also taking matters into their own hands and turning to the courts to pressure the tech companies to change how their platforms work. Matthew Bergman, the Dawleys’ lawyer, formed the Social Media Victims Law Center last fall after the release of the Facebook documents. He now represents 20 families who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against social media companies...
Both of my sons have gone through social-media linked depression. My youngest son has received long-term, extensive, residential treatment as part of his therapy for autism spectrum disorder. (My older son just kept everything boxed inside; he went through this, as a high schooler, a decade or so ago, and the manifestations of the scale of the dangers were still becoming known).
I've been to more "group" therapy sessions with my youngest than I can count. Literally, over a couple of years of my son being sent away for "long-term care," including an eight month stay at a facility in Texas. Almost every parent I met? Their biggest worry was their kids' social media addictions, and how they could keep them safe.
It's not nuanced.
If you're around it enough, especially if you have kids who're being damaged be the entire "influencer" culture --- which more than ever comes with the enormous pressure to be as beautiful and fantastic as these astonishing luxe young bombshells they see on Instagram, etc. --- you will know for a fact that this is *the* epidemic of our age and it's past time to do something serious about it. Very serious. Like shutting down some of these motherfucking vanity hate sites once and for all.
A cancer on our people, gawd.
One of the big culture war stories of the moment.
Governor DeSantis is a fighter.
At the Los Angeles Times, "The speed at which the legislature has acted against Disney reflects the growing tension between the company’s outwardly progressive stance on social issues and Florida’s conservatives":
For more than half a century, Walt Disney World has effectively operated as it own municipal government in central Florida. A 1967 state law established the Reedy Creek Improvement District, giving Walt Disney Co. extraordinary powers in an area encompassing 25,000 acres near Orlando where the sprawling themed resort now sits. The law grants Disney a wide range of abilities, including the power to issue bonds and provide its own utilities and emergency services, such as fire protection. The law is partly what convinced Disney to come to Florida in the first place and allowed it to flourish and become the state’s largest private employer, with nearly 80,000 jobs. Now, though, that special designation is under serious threat as Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican legislators wage an escalating culture war against Disney over the Burbank-based entertainment giant’s opposition to legislation that it considers to be anti-gay. The Florida House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that would dissolve Walt Disney World’s private government. The action came a day after the Florida Senate passed the bill that would dissolve all independent special districts established before 1968, including Reedy Creek. State senators voted 23 to 16 in favor of the bill during a special session of the state Legislature. “Disney is a guest in Florida,” Republican Rep. Randy Fine, who sponsored the bill, tweeted on Tuesday before the vote. “Today, we remind them.” DeSantis, who had previously backed legislative efforts to revoke Disney’s special privileges, on Tuesday expanded the special session to consider the elimination of the district. The bombshell announcement dropped just hours before the special session that was originally intended to focus on congressional redistricting, which has also been controversial. The lawmakers also approved DeSantis’ redistricting map that favors Republicans. DeSantis and conservative commentators have spent weeks blasting Disney for its opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which the governor signed last month. Disney has said its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.” The company also pledged to “pause” all political donations in the state as it reevaluates its approach to advocacy. Disney’s Chief Executive Bob Chapek first voiced opposition to the bill, nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay” by its opponents, after receiving blowback from employees. Chapek, who initially resisted getting involved to avoid Disney becoming a political football, spoke out only after the bill passed the state Legislature. The Parental Rights law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through Grade 3 “or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” LGBTQ activists say the law amounts to a homophobic attack on queer youth. The speed at which the legislature has acted against Disney reflects the growing tension between the company’s outwardly progressive stance on social issues and Florida’s conservatives, particularly DeSantis, who many observers believe will mount a presidential run in 2024. Some observers had seen the rhetoric as mere grandstanding. But proving a point against Disney may matter more now to DeSantis’ base than the traditional business-friendly aims of economic conservatives, analysts told The Times. “I thought that this was an effort to shoot across the bow and cause Disney to steer in a slightly different direction, and that wiser minds would prevail,” said Richard Foglesong, author of “Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando.” “That could still happen. But what’s really behind this is the culture war. Things have changed. This is not the Republican Party of the Bushes.” But aspects of how the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Improvement District would work are still unclear...
Disney's making a big mistake, and they'll lose, badly.
Our society’s completely FUBAR.
When Jula Anderson joined TikTok at age 16, her first video featured her family’s home renovations. It got five likes. After seeing others post risquĆ© videos and get more likes, she tried it, too. “I wanted to get famous on TikTok, and I learned that if you post stuff showing your body, people will start liking it,” Jula, now an 18-year-old high-school senior near Sacramento, Calif., said. Sudden TikTok fame is catching teens off guard, leaving many girls unprepared for the attention they thought they wanted, according to parents, therapists and teens. In some cases, predators target girls who make sexually suggestive videos; less-dangerous interactions can also harm girls’ self-esteem and leave them feeling exploited, they say. Mental-health professionals around the country are growing increasingly concerned about the effects on teen girls of posting sexualized TikTok videos. Therapists say teens who lack a group of close friends, and teens with underlying mental health issues—especially girls who struggle with disordered eating and body-image issues—are at particular risk. “For a young girl who’s developing her identity, to be swept up into a sexual world like that is hugely destructive,” said Paul Sunseri, a psychologist and director of the New Horizons Child and Family Institute in El Dorado Hills, Calif., where Jula began receiving treatment last year for anxiety and depression. “When teen girls are rewarded for their sexuality, they come to believe that their value is in how they look,” he said. He said approximately a quarter of the female patients at his clinic have produced sexualized content on TikTok. Carter Barnhart, co-founder of Charlie Health, a virtual mental-health care provider, said a growing number of teens she treats report their self-esteem is dependent on the quantity of likes they get on TikTok. “Many of them have figured out that the formula for that is producing more sexual content,” she said. Videos just ‘for you’
Teens’ dependence on TikTok for social validation has risen as the app has become their favored platform. TikTok overtook Instagram in popularity among teens last year—and became the most visited site on the internet. TikTok’s algorithm regularly propels virtual nobodies onto millions of viewers’ For You pages. TikTok weighs whether viewers show strong interest in a particular type of content, measured by whether they finish watching videos, the company says. Its recommendation engine then chooses videos to send to those viewers, regardless of the creator’s follower count or past video virality. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Twitter work differently, serving content to users based on search terms and friend connections, so developing a sizable following—and going viral—on those sites can take longer. “We think carefully about the well-being of teens as we design our safety and privacy settings and restrict features on TikTok by age,” a TikTok spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’ve also worked with youth safety experts to develop resources aimed at supporting digital safety and literacy conversations among parents and teens.” A company fact sheet says “content that is overtly sexually suggestive may not be eligible for recommendation.” The spokeswoman said content from users who state they are under 16 isn’t eligible for promotion via the recommendation engine, nor would it appear in search results. Teens are known to lie about their age when creating social-media accounts. Users must be 13 to create a TikTok account, and it is company policy to suspend the accounts of kids the safety team believes to be underage. At Newport Academy’s outpatient treatment program in Atlanta, 60% of the girls treated since the program started last summer have posted sexually inappropriate videos on TikTok, said Crystal Burwell, the program’s director of outpatient services. One 16-year-old girl Dr. Burwell is treating made progressively more suggestive videos. “The more likes she had, the more revealing her outfits became,” she said. The girl ended up chatting with a man who urged her to take their conversation off TikTok and into a messaging app. The girl sent the man partially nude photos of herself and the two were making plans to meet in person when her parents discovered the texts, according to Dr. Burwell. “When you combine human behavior and algorithms, things get messy,” Dr. Burwell said. “We’re trying to clean it up, one client at a time.” TikTok famous A few months after she joined the app in the summer of 2019, Jula Anderson’s wish for TikTok fame came true. A video of her wearing a tightfitting tank top and lip-syncing the pop song “Sunday Best” blew up. For reasons Jula and her mother, Shauna Anderson, still don’t understand, TikTok’s algorithm pushed the video to viewers’ For You pages. More than a million people viewed the video and nearly 500,000 people liked it, they both said. Jula’s following went from a few hundred to more than 200,000. There was nothing overtly sexual about the video, she and her mother said, but her video’s comments were inundated with boys and men saying how hot she looked. Buoyed by the success, Jula made her videos more risquĆ©, including by lip-syncing lyrics about sex and getting more revealing in her wardrobe choices. “I’d wear clothes that I wouldn’t wear to school but that I felt good in,” she said. “I didn’t view them as that sexual, but other people did.” By then, she was constantly checking her likes. “It was my whole world,” she said. Her parents weren’t aware of how suggestive the videos had gotten until Jula’s grandparents, tipped off by cousins, alerted them. “To us, she’s this sweet girl, so it’s almost like this split personality between who she really is and how she portrayed herself on TikTok,” Ms. Anderson said. “When we confronted her about it, she was like, ‘Mom, that’s what everyone is doing.’” Ms. Anderson said that her daughter didn’t have a close group of friends, and she thinks the isolation of the pandemic intensified her need to find connection. “She thought this was a way to be liked and have friends,” Ms. Anderson said. “I struggled with what to do, because the thing I love about TikTok is that kids can be really creative, and we encouraged that as a family.” Worried about dangers that might arise from publicly viewable videos, Jula’s parents asked her to delete the suggestive ones. They also discussed the issue in family and individual therapy sessions. Jula, who said she had a history of anxiety before joining TikTok, said the widespread attention and creepy comments from men had become difficult to handle. Comments critical of her appearance also stung. Following the intervention, she chose to step away from TikTok for a few months. She said it was hard. In the middle of last year, she returned to the app but created a new account that she set to private. She has just a few followers—people she knows in real life. She said she rarely posts now. Jula said she ultimately decided that the suggestive videos weren’t how she wanted to portray herself to the world, or to younger girls who might see them. She has four younger sisters and said she doesn’t want them to seek or receive attention the way she did. “I think I tried growing up a lot faster than I should have,” Jula said...
The political winds have changes, showing --- once again --- just how craven is the progressive left.
See Michelle Goldberg, at the New York Times, "Let Kids Take Their Masks Off After the Omicron Surge":Perfect example of medical professionals NOW admitting their "professional" advice since the beginning of the lockdown was bull. šš·š #BacktoSchool https://t.co/ceCPy4IiVc
— Donald Douglas š (@AmPowerBlog) January 30, 2022
Elissa Perkins, the director of infectious disease management in the emergency department of the Boston Medical Center, told me she spent most of 2020 “imploring everybody I could in every forum that I could to mask.” In the beginning, she said, this was to flatten the curve, and later to protect the vulnerable. But masking, she said, “was intended to be a short-term intervention,” and she believes we haven’t talked enough about the drawbacks of mandating it for kids long-term. “If we accept that we don’t want masks to be required in our schools forever, we have to decide when is the right time to remove them,” she said. “And that’s a conversation that we’re not really having.” At least, people in deep blue areas weren’t having it until recently. But as the Omicron wave begins to ebb, that conversation — sometimes tentatively and sometimes acrimoniously — has begun. This week Perkins co-wrote a Washington Post essay calling for schools to make masking optional. The Atlantic published an article titled, “The Case Against Masks at School.” “Coming off the Omicron surge, I think there’s going to be a tipping point with more and more people questioning does this need to continue in schools,” said Erin Bromage, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Bromage worked with the governor of Rhode Island to reopen schools there, and later helped schools in southern Massachusetts reopen. He believes in the importance of Covid mitigations, but his views on school masking have evolved in recent months. There comes a point, he said, “at which the reduction in risk that comes from the mask is balanced or begins to be outweighed by the detrimental side of things that come with masking.” The debate about masks in schools can quickly turn vicious because it pits legitimate interests against one another. Many people who are immunocompromised, or live with those who are, understandably fear that getting rid of mandates will make them more vulnerable. But keeping kids in masks month after month also inflicts harm, even if it’s not always easy to measure. “I think it would be naĆÆve to not acknowledge that there are downsides of masks,” said Perkins. “I know some of that data is harder to come by because those outcomes are not as discrete as Covid or not-Covid. But from speaking with pediatricians, from speaking with learning specialists, and also from speaking with parents of younger children especially, there are significant issues related to language acquisition, pronunciation, things like that. And there are very clear social and emotional side effects in the older kids.” That’s why I believe that mandatory school masking should end when coronavirus rates return to pre-Omicron levels. I fully accept that, in future surges, masks might have to go back on, but that’s all the more reason to get them off as soon as possible, to give students some reprieve. Otherwise, I fear that, at least in very liberal areas, a combination of extreme risk aversion and inertia means that school masking will persist indefinitely. The chief executive of the Prince George’s County public schools in Maryland recently downplayed the idea of a future without masks, saying: “The only off-ramp I want is the one where Covid no longer exists. I don’t think that that off-ramp will exist.” I hope this attitude isn’t widespread, but if it is, it will be incumbent for progressive parents desperate for an off-ramp to push back. There’s some question about how well masks in school really work; many studies are confounded, since communities with school mask mandates tend to adopt other Covid mitigation measures as well. Much of The Atlantic’s “The Case Against Masks at School” is devoted to reviewing studies either conducted or cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it concludes that the “overall takeaway from these studies — that schools with mask mandates have lower Covid-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates — is not justified by the data that have been gathered.” The fact that experts can poke holes in some studies of masking does not mean that masks don’t make a difference...
My youngest boy's on the spectrum, which makes this story even sadder for me.
At KUTV Salt Lake City:
Developments in hot car death: Boy had autism, state investigating, center on notice https://t.co/g6WL2mRz5i
— Heidi Hatch KUTV (@tvheidihatch) July 23, 2021
Well, if poorer minority communities are less likely to open schools for in-person instruction, who's fault is that? Certainly not the kids'.
I don't think California's as bad as Chicago, Illinois, but our state could certainly be doing a better job, and the blame can certainly be placed right at Governor Newsom's feet, who's likely to be facing recall, if those signature petitions, now circulating statewide, gain enough valid signatures.
We'll see. We'll see.
Meanwhile, at LAT, "Schools in more affluent areas move faster to reopen than those in low-income communities":
South Whittier schools Supt. Gary Gonzales works seven days a week to move his elementary schools closer to reopening. But the barriers are significant: He’s looking for ways to get vaccines to teachers, negotiating with the union and closely monitoring coronavirus case numbers that show that the virus is still ravaging his community, even as case numbers fall countywide. Gonzales knows his district’s students, almost all of whom are Latinos from low-income families, are struggling under remote learning. And he knows his community is hurting — the pandemic has claimed 118 lives in tiny South Whittier. A date for bringing students back to the classroom is unclear. “It’s all kind of wait and see,” he said. Thirty miles away, Supt. Wendy Sinnette of the La CaƱada Unified School District, which has among the lowest coronavirus rates in the county and few students from low-income families, has been focused on reopening as many classrooms as possible since November, when students in transitional kindergarten through second grade returned to campus. Third-graders will be welcomed back on Tuesday. Sinnette spends her days ensuring desks are socially distanced, teachers have KN-95 masks and acrylic plastic dividers are installed. “When I go on campus and see the in-person instruction that’s happening, it really makes you understand why you’re doing all of this,” she said. “Kids need the structure, to be in school.” A Times survey of more than 20 school districts throughout Los Angeles County in the past two weeks has found that districts in wealthier, whiter communities such as La CaƱada are more likely to be moving full steam ahead to reopen elementary schools and have plans in place to welcome students back as soon as permitted — within as little as two weeks if coronavirus infection rates continue to decline. They were among the first to bring back their youngest students under waivers and guidelines allowing in-person instruction for high-needs students. These districts are building on that momentum to quickly expand their reopening. Districts serving less affluent Latino and Black communities — some of the hardest hit by the pandemic — are further behind. Their leaders spoke of the suffering and fears of their families in the darkest months of the pandemic. School officials, measuring the hardships within their communities, largely did not use waivers to bring back young students. Their teachers and staff, too, harbor ongoing worries about the trajectory of the virus in the neighborhoods they serve. Although they want to bring students back to school, many said their reopening date was uncertain...
Well, maybe if we change some of the names of schools around the state that will make everything all better?
Still more, in any case.
A beautiful, wonderful short post, from Phyllis Chesler:
I can still remember the exact moment of his birth, how small and wet he was, and how unexpectedly blonde. He was gasping for air, needed oxygen, and I was completely worn down by a 32 ½ hour labor. But, within an hour, I was up and filled with the most incredible joy. Giving birth to life is a unique rite of passage, both divine and yet incredibly human, the stuff of mortal beings, the way of female flesh. I was so overcome by it all that I wrote a book With Child: A Diary of Motherhood, which some publishers turned down because, as one editor said: “You can write about important things, why waste your time on this?” Another editor said: “You will not be a normal mother, other women will not be able to relate to your experience.” Arnold Dolin, a wonderful man and a wonderful editor, published it. When my son was eighteen, he wrote the Introduction to the book. He is a beautiful writer and I will forever admire his words. But oh, how quickly his childhood was over. One minute it was here—diapers and Barbar-the Elephant King, Paddington Bears, and Cabbage Patch Kids, and all those little action figures (I called them boy dolls), and then it was all gone in only an eye-blink of eternity...
A great thread, via Instapundit (click through), "A DELIGHTFUL THREAD FROM MARY KATHARINE HAM: Christmas surprises and OpSec failures."
I’ve watched this a hundred times. His little innocent face! And his sweater says “GENIUS!” So unbelievably adorable. pic.twitter.com/OjiMVVE3n0
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 21, 2018
The 911 call came in at 6 a.m. Sunday. A teenage girl was on the line with an unsettling tale.And note as well:
She had managed to escape from her family's home in Perris, where her parents had been holding her captive. Her brothers and sisters were still locked inside — 12 of them. Some were chained to their beds, she said.
Riverside County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to find the 17-year-old girl. When they saw her, they were struck by her small size and emaciated appearance. She looked to be only 10, according to the sheriff's account released Monday.
The nightmarish scene deputies discovered when they entered the house on Muir Woods Road was as bad as the girl had described. They found "several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings," the statement said.
The parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, "were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner," deputies wrote. The couple were arrested on suspicion of torture and child endangerment and each was being held Monday night in lieu of $9-million bail.
The youngest child was 2. At first deputies assumed from their frail and malnourished appearance that all in the group were minors, but they later determined that seven of them were adults ages 18 to 29, the sheriff's statement said.
It was not clear from the statement how many of the children were found locked to their beds.
Deputies provided food and drinks to the children, who "claimed to be starving," before they were admitted to hospitals.
Public records show the couple own the tract house where the children were found. Its address is also listed in a state Department of Education directory as the location of the Sandcastle Day School, a private K-12 campus. David Turpin is listed as the principal.
During the last school year, the school was listed in state records as a non-religious and co-ed institution. There were six students enrolled — one each in the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.
David Turpin's parents, James and Betty Turpin of West Virginia, told ABC News they were "surprised and shocked" at the allegations. They said their grandchildren are home-schooled, and that they had not seen their son and daughter-in-law in four or five years.
Public records indicate the couple have lived at the address for several years and lived in Texas for many years before coming to California. They declared bankruptcy twice, public records show...
Ivan Trahan, an attorney who represented the couple in their latest bankruptcy in 2011, said Monday he was shocked at news of the arrests....Trahan said that David Turpin, who worked as an engineer at Northrop Grumman, an aeronautics and defense technology company, had a "relatively high" income, but had trouble keeping up with his expenses because he had so many children.Well, one would think two or three kids would be sufficient, although I'm not one to impose mandatory family size like leftists, heh.
