Now They Want a Pandemic 'Amnesty'
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Believe it or not, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten on Monday tacitly acknowledged that keeping schools closed during the pandemic was a mistake. Miracles happen, apparently. But she also now wants parents—especially if they're voters next week—to forgive her and her political allies without seeking an apology or holding them accountable. Sorry, that lets them off way too easy.
"I agree," Ms. Weingarten tweeted a link to a piece in The Atlantic by Emily Oster, "Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty." The article argues that Americans should forgive experts and government leaders for their mistakes during the pandemic.
Ms. Oster cites school closures as one example: “There is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high.”
However, she adds, “in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.”
That’s awfully generous to Team Shutdown, which included all of the progressive great and good and nearly all of the media. Yet it was clear by summer 2020 that children were at extremely low risk for severe illness. They were also struggling with remote learning, as were their parents. All efforts should have been made to reopen schools, as Florida did in August 2020, and to keep them open.
But the teachers’ unions lobbied hard to keep them closed and succeeded in far too many places where they dominate local and state politics. Many big city school districts didn’t reopen until spring 2021. Chicago didn’t offer full in-person learning until last fall. The results in lost learning have been catastrophic.
This plea for forgiveness would be more plausible if the shutdown lobby had shown more willingness during the pandemic to listen to other arguments that proved to be right. Instead they dismissed and tried to discredit the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who argued for focused protection of the most vulnerable while opening schools. Tech platforms censored them.
Ms. Oster says “most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.” But the teachers unions intentionally misled the public by hyping the virus risks for children. They did this to extort more money from Congress to “safely reopen” and compensate for learning losses from the shutdowns. Democrats gave them $122 billion last March, only about 15% of which was spent during the 2021-22 school year.
“Getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing,” Ms. Oster writes. But in Ms. Weingarten’s case, it was.
One certainty: The left will never forgive the shutdown dissenters, notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for being right
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We could never forgive them. We have those e-mails between the Teacher's Union and the CDC. We remember how the teachers were given special status when the vaccine became available. Many of them never took it, yet that was ok and even concealed from the rest of us. We most of all recall how they would be able to go to the front of the line, before the most vulnerable.
They put our kids last.
Wouldn't you know, it would again be the Atlantic Magazine to again drive the discussion.
oh well, live and learn. it should be a lot easier to weaponize the next pandemic against science deniers.
The greatest science deniers were named Fauci and Walensky.
May there be no "next time" for the evil left.
They need to can Weingarten and her politicized cronies for the damage she has initiated in our schools. She is a menace to the education of our children in this country. Amnesty? Not a chance!
Getting rid of her will be a tall order.
That's the problem with some unions. Look at Jimmy Hoffa.
Nixon did make a deal to get rid of Hoffa, which is kind of ironic since Hoffa supported Nixon in the 1960 election. As soon as Robert Kennedy became AG he went after Hoffa. Walter Reuther (UAW) was guilty of many of the same sins as Hoffa, but he supported JFK in 1960, thus we never heard a discouraging word about him.
BTW, the infamous Teamster's Pension Fund never lost a dime on the loans it made.
Very true.
That’s the problem with a lot of unions. They reward mediocrity.
Weingarten is a great example of that.
I think the only good thing that come out of the shut down was parents became more involved in what their kids were learning and found so much of it to be inappropriate or flat out racist.
As for "amnesty"? Fuck that. They caused irreparable damage.
Some of the only learning from 2020 was that of the parents.
As for "amnesty"? Fuck that. They caused irreparable damage.
Let's hand it to Emily Oster for creating a new phrase: "Pandemic Amnesty."
And they were labeled "terrorists" by the left.
To be harrassed & interogated by the FBI (Our modern day STASI)
Now try to get them to admit to it and they'll tap dance all around the question trying to justify it with bullshit.
Agree 100%.
Like Ann Miller!
Yep, spot on.
Unintended consequences of their draconian school shutdown policies.
Dumbasses!
Heaven forbid that those charged with the safety of children err on the side of caution. How disgusting of them! /s
The last time the world saw a pandemic on this scale 50 million people died worldwide from the "Spanish flu". I dont hold it against the "experts" that they wanted to prevent a similar calamity.
Grow the fuck up complainers.
The Teacher's Union has never cared about school children. They were woke before the name was created.
Are you a parent? Does not sound like it.
So you continue to deny the science?
Please reroute your rant to the children that are now years behind where they should be in education; and those parents whose teens committed suicide while being shut in and cut off from social development.
We paid millions extra into education to get smaller class sizes (and abide by Covid restrictions at the time) and moved teachers to the head of the line to get the Covid "vaccines"; only to receive the big FU. Teachers stayed home and forced remote learning on everyone.
Why don't you talk to the parents how their children were affected.
You will not like the responses you get.
Democrats and the teachers union want a free pass? The midterms need to be a big FU to the Democrat Party. The teachers union might get the point then.
I watched my two young grandchildren suffer through the COVD shutdown.
Horrible, absolutely horrible.
Seems those that it did not substantially negatively affect are quick to mouth off about forgiveness.
Given that we didn't know how this virus would affect children, and the teachers that taught them, it was at first prudent to close schools.
During other pandemics, i.e polio, schools were closed and students were taught over the radio in the 1930's, so this is not a new thing.
Everyone can play Monday morning quarterback.
Of course it was but many states, schools and unions were slow to react when we did. Unnecessarily exasperating the problem.
Weigarten gets an F in this regard.
Teachers were given special status to recieve the very first vaccine, in the front of the line, in front of seniors!
Many never even got vaccinated.
I don't really believe our medical professionals, public health officials and those in positions of power who made decisions during the pandemic want amnesty. They want us to forgive them for being stupid. We expected our medical professionals to offer solutions to the crisis, and they decided to hold the rope for idiots in positions of power. We knew the public Health officials were morons, and we knew our politicians were morons but our Doctors? This came as a shock and it eroded public trust in those we expect to have our best interests in mind.