When the pandemic disrupted schools in spring 2020, educators predicted remote learning would set up many children for failure, especially students of color and those from poor families. Test scores from the first months of remote learning showed students falling months behind in reading and math. This fall, as many students returned to classrooms for the first time after 18 months of disruptions, some teachers have found the learning loss is worse than projected.
Tyler Cowen is rightly critical of what he calls “mask apartheid.” A slice:
I am increasingly disturbed by what I call “mask apartheid.” If you have attended a conference or public event recently, you may have noticed it: The wealthier attendees are not usually wearing masks, but the poorer servers and staff almost always are.
Even if the attendees are wearing masks at the beginning, the masks come off once they start wining and dining — and they usually don’t go back on. Isn’t this a sign that mask-wearing is no longer so essential? At the very least, it sends a mixed message: If you want to be comfortable eating and drinking with your peers, it’s OK to take off your mask — but it’s not OK if you want to be comfortable serving food, carrying heavy trays and describing the dessert menu.
But at least what will kill these people won’t be Covid-19!
Meghan Murphy makes a feminist case against vaccine mandates. Two slices:
Vaccination should therefore be an individual choice. In a democracy, as Steinem points out, people should have the right to make informed choices about their own bodies and health. But far too many feminists and progressives who loudly pronounce their pro-choice politics, vilifying anyone opposed as repressive, misogynist, and authoritarian, blindly support vaccine mandates and the censorship and punishment of anyone critical.
Famed feminist lawyer Gloria Allred recently debated Dave Rubin on the issue of vaccine mandates, arguing on one hand that it is one’s “right to choose” what one does with their body, but that in the case of the Covid vaccine, this doesn’t apply because choosing not to get vaccinated endangers others. Putting aside the fact Allred lacks a basic understanding of how this vaccine works, it is appalling to suggest, as she did, that individuals should lose rights, freedoms, and their employment should they decline the vaccine.
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Either we live in a free and humane society wherein people get to make choices about their own lives and health or we live in an authoritarian society where the government dictates what individuals do with their bodies.
Jan Jekielek interviews Jay Bhattacharya. (Jay is correct to observe that the overreaction to Covid-19 has put the liberal order on “life support.”)
