[sanedigital]

You have your groups backwards. Those of us who homeschool (or whose children attend small, alternative private schools) understand fully that it takes a village. That's why we went to great pains to keep that village active, pandemic or no pandemic. Our specific community has accepted the additional risk to us adults in order to keep some level of normalcy for our children.

This article is about the other kids. The kindergartners who haven't seen a teacher's face in 24 months. The grade schoolers forced to eat outside in the cold. The high schoolers who unofficially "dropped out" when their schools closed and will never return to receive their diploma. Those kids have suffered greatly in the name of reducing risk to adults.

[ctyc]

So Perfectly said. We are in the exact same situation with our children. I would happily accept a nasty bout of COVID (and did so last week in fact!) in exchange for letting my children experience a proper childhood, complete with friends, education and experiences.

[op00to]

- The kindergartners who haven't seen a teacher's face in 24 months

What is that even supposed to mean?

- The grade schoolers forced to eat outside in the cold.

This is not harmful, but is also not universal. I have not seen that personally. Hell, in Nordic countries people leave their infants outside in freezing temperatures to nap.

- The high schoolers who unofficially "dropped out" when their schools closed and will never return to receive their diploma.

No one cared about high school drop outs before. Why the sudden concern now?

[sanedigital]

1. Viewing faces is extremely important for cognitive development. With teachers masked 24/7 young children are not getting important information from their educators and caretakers throughout a critical period of their development. I don't have time to pull all the studies on this, but here's one focused on babies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598570/

2. Speak for yourself. If my young child was forced to eat lunch outside of the cafeteria in freezing temperatures I'd be furious. And infants left outside are bundled up—they're not manipulating food and placing it into their mouths.

3. I tend to care about all people and seek the best outcomes for everyone whenever possible. My bad, I guess.

[ctyc]

For a child (and arguably everyone honestly) a face on a screen !== seeing someone in real life. It’s not even comparable.

Lots of people cared (and continue to care) about the high school drop out rate. I would be such a person.

College dropouts on the other hand…