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One year ago today the COVID-19 panic hit full stride when schools closed.
Fittingly, the paralyzing news came on Friday the 13th, three days previous. For perhaps the first time of hundreds or thousands of monotonous repetitions, the local school authorities announced the all-too-common rationale: “Under an abundance of caution, we are ‘temporarily’ closing schools to all in-person attendance, effective immediately”. It meant my college student and middle schooler would both be receiving their instruction at home, commencing the next school day. Then, additional word came that my wife would also be working remotely until further notice.
“Cool,” was my initial thought, figuring one, I wouldn’t have to make the school run every morning and a pick-up errand in the afternoon. And plus, I’d always wanted to see how home schooling would work for my son, who happens to be very social -- perhaps a bit too much so. Having the proposition forced on us wasn’t the most ideal of situations, but it was supposed to only last a couple weeks or a month at most, right? Neighborhood buzz held that the closures would likely persist until after Easter, so at least we had the end in sight.
No harm, no foul. Certainly, the teachers would’ve prepared for such a contingency and the adjustment to “online learning” would be a seamless one when the inevitable bugs were ironed out. All I had to do was work at the dining room table with the boy, “temporarily” transitioning from my office to keep an eye on the lad (to ensure he wasn’t playing video games or watching fifteen episodes of “Last Man Standing” from the DVR instead).
Needless to say, events didn’t work out as planned. The schools weren’t ready -- at all -- to flip the switch to remote classes. Businesses shut down along with everything else. Supermarkets remained open but you didn’t dare go there without a resolve to forego much of your food wish-list and willingness to avoid times designated for older patrons. It felt like wartime. No bombs fell from the sky, yet around every corner aisle there possibly lurked an invisible enemy inside a stranger waiting to kill you (or so the government science people lectured).
The panic was nuts. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and then the school brains elected to ditch the whole second semester -- and then to not reconvene in the fall. What about all the stuff the children were supposed to learn? Sure, the teachers (purportedly) did their best and the kids reportedly were fed the requisite amount of knowledge for their grade levels. But the assertion was fishy to say the least.
Our tourist destination hometown was a shadow of its former self last summer. Visitation was down considerably in practically every discernible way, but the defund-the-police protest groups didn’t seem to mind COVID-19. People resented each other.
What had we done to ourselves? What now? Julie Kelly addressed the subject at American Greatness:
“What’s truly alarming is how many Americans want this cruelty to persist despite its proven ineffectiveness at ‘stopping’ the spread of the virus. According to a new Pew Research poll, 74 percent of Democrats would keep restaurants closed to in-person dining and 66 percent of Democrats would keep schools closed. The ‘party of science’ continues to defy science, common sense, and compassion.
“The only upside to the lockdown catastrophe is that the depravity of our ruling class has been fully exposed. Their crimes against Americans won’t be litigated in any courtroom, unfortunately, but we can hope the untold number of surviving victims will have the final word in the next election.
“One year ago, the overwhelming majority of Americans acted in good faith to do what we were told was in the best interest of our country. That faith has been abused and squandered by people who didn’t deserve it in the first place. This must never happen again.”
Yes, indeed (or would it be no, indeed?). A year’s worth of turmoil, lives being upturned, ended, kicked sideways and sent reeling provided all the perspective we’d ever need to make value judgments. Depending on who you talk with, COVID has either been the most tragic event of our lifetimes (for the lockdowns as much as the sickness) and/or the biggest farce of all time. There have been deaths, but hardly anyone I know trusts the way the statistics were presented. First-hand accounts of the China flu have ranged from nothing at all to a mild inconvenience, with colds and “regular” flus typically hitting much harder.
The experts and their political enablers would disagree. But there would be an awful lot of rear ends on the line if they didn’t keep up the scare to a sufficient magnitude.
Most tragic stories have an epilogue, but as Kelly alluded to in her piece, there’s no sign of when this sorry tale ends. For the full after-effects of Americans passively allowing the political class to lock them in place have not yet begun to be realized. The legendary rock group “The Who” famously performed a song called, “The Kids are Alright,” but we won’t know if it’s true until we see what was lost over the past 365 days. Here’s guessing lots of young folks won’t be alright.
Sounding strangely triumphant and not the least bit unsure of himself over the ongoing lockdowns, President Grampa Joe spoke to the nation last Thursday night on the one-year-anniversary of some important date. What he said wasn’t as striking as what he didn’t say, purposely neglecting to mention China at all in the twenty-plus minute teleprompter-delivered speech. Further, the doddering chief executive didn’t allude to the thousands of COVID infected illegal aliens that are streaming across the southern border each day, practically unmolested by the overwhelmed federal law enforcement entities, which are all-but powerless to stop them.
Many of the unwelcome newcomers board buses headed for destinations all over the country, where they bring their contagion and need for services with them. Biden spent the balance of his talk hailing the miracle nature of the vaccines (developed under Donald Trump’s administration, no credit advanced) and the need to get everyone to accept the shots. Grampa Joe also pleaded with the increasingly unreceptive public to keep wearing masks as some sort of patriotic duty.
On the high school playground the more obnoxious kids would’ve described such demands for submission as “Bend over.” But Democrats make it sound more like a religious duty to your fellow man (or is it woman, transgender, bisexual, gay man, lesbian or whatever is the designation of the hour?) to don the face diaper.
Long gone is the common-sense notion that citizens should decide for themselves what is safe and what’s not. A year ago, could anyone imagine that the president of the United States would go on TV and beg people to give up their liberties until he and Dr. Anthony Fauci give the green light to resume living? Grampa Joe said he hopes everyone can get together -- only in small groups though -- by Independence Day. What an ambitious goal!
My son is now in a private, in-person school. Remote schooling proved unreliable and ineffective. It didn’t work. We’re lucky, however. He -- and us -- are doing well. We acknowledge that the rest of the country isn’t nearly so fortunate. Will anyone trust the elites ever again?
COVID lockdowns
Joe Biden
school closures
Democrats
2020 election
Donald Trump
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