A concrete impact of state of emergency: a particular school which had previously invited X00 parents and kids to a ceremony in mid-April single digit days ago called everyone to say “Oh in light of official guidance, Nope Nope Nope.”
You might sensibly think “Wait, *why* did a staff full of educated professionals push forward on that plan on Friday?” and the answer boils down to “Well this is enormously important and if it were actually unsafe clearly the government would say so.”
It’s easy to see some of this stuff as hairsplitting but there are basically mechanical impacts to splitting some hairs given some configurations of organizations and decision makers.
Also, official recognition of a certain fact socially permits other people to recognize that fact in ways that would have been extremely not normative before.
Like, last Friday, a hypothetical concerned parent at that school would not have had much standing to stop that event, and post-emergency declaration that parent assumes that friendly local patrol officer would if informed of plans share a friendly cup of tea with the principal.
And doubtless that cup of tea, if it happened, would include a purely social inquiry into how the staff is holding up during these trying times and a reminder that the government trusts principals to make decisions in the interests of their students’ safety.
Friendly advice: anyone living here is likely to have one friendly “getting to know you” visit, which has never involved tea in my direct experience.
Comport your affairs such that tea does not need to happen, particularly not seemingly spontaneous tea.
Comport your affairs such that tea does not need to happen, particularly not seemingly spontaneous tea.
(The getting to know you visit generally is “Hiya I work at the local police box. Welcome to my neighborhood. In case anything happens I’d personally love to know everyone who lives here; entirely at your discretion but here is a form. I’ll wait, no worries. What do you do?”)
