Quote Originally Posted by Johnson85 View Post
It's not wearing a mask or acknowledging risk that is living in fear. It's refusing to accept that not every bad thing can be avoided and trying to make other people's lives worse rather than accepting that something bad has happened.

A lot of people have died and will die from the Wuhan virus, and keeping kids out of school, or keeping them from playing sports or other social activities, isn't going to change that. It's just going to heap avoidable harm on top of all the unavoidable harm, without much gain unless we get incredibly lucky with a vaccine.

We have already asked young people to bear a pretty significant burden. Some of that was perfectly justified. There were a lot of unknowns and being cautious was the right approach. But we shouldn't ignore that it was a real harm we inflicted on a lot of kids. From being subject to abuse and hunger to the much milder but still real harm of depriving some of them of social activities and sports the spring of their senior year. And we shouldn't sign up to inflict more of that harm without an attainable purpose, and I'm still not hearing what the justification would be. We need to accept that something bad has already happened, and we're can't make it unhappen by putting our fingers in our ears and pitching a fit. At least we are dealing with a pandemic that is relatively mild for the young. Still horrible, but it could be much, much worse.
I agree with you. As the same time, there are people on this board that are dismissive of the data being shared.

I highly doubt anyone on this thread is being a hermit and not socializing with their friends or neighbors. At the same time, I would hope that they think twice before they head out to participate in a large gathering. It boils down to common sense and I'm afraid that is lacking in our overall population.

I don't think anyone here is not empathetic to the situation and what impact it has had on kids, businesses, family lives, etc. To answer your question on justification, I don't think we'll be shutting things down again like they were earlier this year. I don't think that is a feasible option, nor is it warranted. At the same time, you can't ignore the spikes in cases and think that the virus won't at some point infiltrate your community. My greatest fear is that if it gets a hold of rural communities and spreads (like it did in Albany, GA) - there is going to be some severe heart break because there isn't enough healthcare to manage the volume.