When @JuliaRaifman sent @drlucybmcbride this Tweet, McBride's response was: "Fear & shame aren't motivating."
Imagine the parents reading that their baby should be kept out of sight so that others might not be afraid.
This is the darkness of #UrgencyofNormal. 🧵
This is McBride's response in full. Notice McBride, after having shown no compassion for the passing of this little girl, no compassion for the grief of her parents, suggests, "Empathy & Compassion for all."
Who does she mean?
Notice McBride retweeted; to what end?
In the replies, McBride responds to the suggestion Rainfman's Tweet is "not offered in good faith." If you follow @JuliaRaifman you will know this is untrue. Yet McBride is quick to embrace the sentiment saying, "Exactly" adding that Raifman is "resorting" to bad tactics.
Ironically, McBride adds, she would not "motivate ppl to care abt mental health by sharing details abt suicide deaths."
McBride might not go into details but if you follow her, you'll know about suicides. If you aren't careful, you'll assume the suicides are due to restrictions.
After Raifman suggests restrictions stay in place longer to prevent another baby's death, McBride wants to know how many lives would be saved and how we'd explain the delay to depressed kids.
How quickly McBride has forgotten about the baby.
That picture is where I'd start.
All of this comes up in the context of McBride Tweeting about her son's disappointment that he can't have lunch in his college cafeteria. So when McBride asks about "college kids", it makes me wonder if what she's worried about are those kids who can't eat in the cafeteria.
Lucy McBride wants to talk cost-benefits. Fine. But I worry about having that discussion with someone who puts so little value on life, who won't discuss the children who die.
Why not? Their deaths are part of the cost.
As much part of the cost as closed cafeterias.
We should all have the composure of @JuliaRaifman. Noticing McBride is retweeting her unkindly, Raifman wishes her well.
I wish us all well and I wish us all better than what #UrgencyofNormal has to offer.
End.
@JuliaRaifman Naturally, I find too late a mistake and it's always in the first Tweet. I am referring, or course, to @drlucymcbride not @drlucybmcbride.
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Some people look at unprotected adults and think, "Why are they risking the adverse outcomes of Covid merely to go maskless? @ProfEmilyOster looks at the same adults and thinks, "Why not take chances with kids too?" 🧵 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
After noting that pandemic restrictions are being relaxed, Oster says, “Politicians are generally pushing for .. normalcy.”
This might seem nit-picky since this is now an accepted use of “normal,” but it would be remiss not to point out: There is nothing normal about pretending there is no pandemic!
"Educators do not have rights to mask"
"This is out of concern students see faces."
Just like that, Denmark transforms the denial of a right to wear a mask into a requirement to unmask.
Denmark has made masks moral wrongs. @TracyBethHoeg is fine with that.
This is a dark path.🧵
Hoeg’s #UrgencyofNormal partner, @drlucymcbride agrees: “human beings need to see each other’s faces.” Maybe this is news to McBride but needing to see faces imposes on others obligations to reveal them. McBride doesn't restrict the obligation, which makes it a broad social one.
I don’t know how else to say this, but Hoeg and McBride seem to believe wearing a mask by one person is the wrongful deprivation of another person’s human needs. A little ironic coming from the individual responsibility camp, no?
The American--Speech-Language-Hearing Association and The American Association of Pediatrics both say there is no reason to believe children's language or speech skills be negatively impacted by masks. 🧵
h/t @stricken103 healthychildren.org/English/health…
"....there is no known evidence that use of face masks interferes with speech and language development or social communication. Plus, children can still get plenty of face time at home with mask-free family members. "
".... there are no known studies that use of a face mask negatively impacts a child's speech and language development."
"After 2 years, growing calls to take masks off come from me, some other moms I found and a pediatrician. But most scientists I asked think masks are no big deal"
So why did this pointless article get published? 🧵npr.org/2022/01/28/107…
It should tell you something that Kerry Dingle, who the opening 5 paragraphs of this article are devoted to, feels the need to say that, though she thinks masks should be optional, she is not “anti-vax” or “psychotic.”
Having gotten that out of the way, Dingle quickly moves on to bemoan the “burdening” of little kids with "protecting other people”; namely, "high-risk people."
One 'mo time: Covid is not like seasonal influenza.
* Covid is more transmissible than flu. (NPIs "obliterated" flu but not Covid.
* Covid is more deadly than flu.
* We can care about both.