Lockdown revisionist hysteria taken to its ultimate conclusion.

My Letter to the Editor about a ridiculously bad op-ed which was recently published in my local newspaper.

My Letter to the Editor was published in the Scranton Times-Tribune. It was in response to a ridiculous yet sinister op-ed that’s been published in at least a dozen other newspapers since being published in the local paper. I have further thoughts, and a list of references below.

From the op-ed:

Reconsider automatically closing schools for prank threats – The Editorial Board Oct 22, 2023 The emergency text alert of a bomb threat goes out, forcing caregivers to scramble, cutting the school day short and spreading fear among students, parents and educators alike. Multiple schools across Northeast Pennsylvania have been evacuated and/or closed due to threats on five different weekdays since classes resumed in September. On one occasion, those local threats were part of a nationwide scam that targeted 150 U.S. schools. The incidents interfere with students’ progress, inconvenience parents and sow anxiety across the community. And they put school administrators in the unenviable and difficult position of weighing student safety against maintaining normalcy, knowing that these threats are almost certainly bogus, but also knowing that making the wrong call could lead to tragedy.


My LTE:

Text of letter as it appeared in print newspaper with the Times-Tribune chosen headline: “School officials must take threats seriously.”  Editor: I had difficulty believing my eyes when I saw the Editorial Board op-ed from Oct 22, 2023, “Reconsider automatically closing schools for prank threats” because this is taking anti-lockdown hysteria way too far. The persistent pandemic era and its “Lockdown” Revisionism and associated but widely debunked “learning loss” myths, should not inform public safety response to threats. We live in times of political turmoil and climate emergencies, and what we need to normalize is dealing with the inevitable disruption, and rise to the moment. Clinging to “maintaining normalcy” as a priority, as if it’s more important than human lives – especially the lives of children, is a morally bankrupt proposition. Normalizing harms is something panicking elites blindly choose over actually having to do the work to mitigate disasters or find solutions to problems. Maybe the people opposing school consolidation back in the 1970s were onto something. All that consolidation means larger more concentrated vulnerabilities for infectious disease, weather events, infrastructure failures, and our endemic gun violence. One thing is certain: the answer to school disruption is NOT accepting the most horrendous potential outcomes as normal. That road ends with children being told to keep filling in circles on their standardized tests while an active shooter roams the halls because “no more lockdowns amirite!” Who will take responsibility when the worst happens because it wasn’t “just a prank” next time? “The Editorial Board” perhaps?

For a beautiful moment in time Tom Toro cartoon but it’s been edited. The people are sitting around a campfire with the hazy cityscape in the background and the caption now says Yes a lot of kids were killed. But for a beautiful moment in time we kept parents at work lulled into a false sense of normalcy.

I’ve mentioned a few times over the past few years that the “no more lockdowns” crowd would never say kids shouldn’t have a lockdown at school when there’s an active shooter,1 but now I’m not so sure!

I’ve been hearing all my life how kids are resilient — but apparently they can’t possibly grow up with any “disruptions” at all — ever. Not even to keep them alive and healthy. This makes no sense. Anxiety is not what’s going to kill a kid shot by an active shooter, it’s the bullets. And people are not panicking over preventative measures.2 Plenty of kids the world over, throughout history, have grown up through far worse “disruptions” than missing some in-person schooling because of a virus outbreak or a false alarm. The lesson from this spate of threats is that school officials and parents ought to have contingency plans for evacuations, and should be coming up with plans and pushing for policies to prevent these threats in the first place. We’re living in a time of various upheavals, so yes, sorry, we need to be prepared. The answer isn’t pretending it’s not happening for the sake of “maintaining normalcy” at all costs. 

This is really a most obvious example of ELITE PANIC, where, as described in a commentary by James B. Meigs about disaster research, in an emergency often authorities “begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself.”3As was said in the documentary from 2002 called “Toxic Sludge is Good for You” about the PR biz, their “first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem.”4 And as Robert Evans said on the It Could Happen Here Podcast: “People like us worry will my community & I survive & people like them worry will I lose power?”5

The people behind this likely PR placement op-ed probably were not even thinking about the education of children, and obviously not about their safety – they simply don’t want businesses disrupted by workers getting calls from family members in danger, or in need. So they want to normalize the harms.6 And so they overemphasize the disruptions that occur with “lockdown revisionism”7 and “the outrage factor”8 so as to shift focus from community safety to business interests. They don’t care if a worker’s family member is in danger, they just don’t want their workers to be interrupted even by having last words with a dying family member.9 They already have people out sick all the damned time because of covid and long covid, and they don’t want to come up with ways to prevent that either. 

It’s a push for complete denial that things are not like they were

The very next day after that op-ed suggesting schools not react to threats, there was another opinion piece calling for cell phones to be banned in schools.10 Instead of finding ways to engage students, and discourage distraction in class, they want the kids forced to sit there while there’s a bomb waiting to go off or an active shooter and be unable to call or text their family for last words. Next these people will claim to us that locking down with an active shooter is what’s causing this mythical11 “learning loss”12 and demand we do away with all lockdowns and if the teacher is gunned down they’ll just have the cafeteria lady or school bus driver come in with a bullet proof vest and continue to hold class so the parents can stay at work, as they’ve done to cope with rampant virus spread instead of using HEPA filters or masks or going remote.13 These op-eds are hoping for stuff straight out of a demented horror movie where the authorities behave like clueless jerks and the protagonists are forced to walk straight into the arms of the villains. Everyone’s seen those movies and we don’t want the people in charge to shit things up like that. Figure something out people.

What PR firm is churning these talking points out? And why are these elite movers and shakers so terrified of change and the march of progress that they’re hell bent on maintaining normalcy over all else, even if it means holding their world together with the cheeks of their ass? 

They’re probably the same people who think preventative measures are bad because they remind people of danger14 and they believe that the general public accurately perceiving pitfalls causes more detriment to their bottom lines than a disaster itself. They’re likely the people who lose money if people curb traveling15 and curtail miserable work commutes16 to dismal office buildings.17

Shane @sbliss89 8:26 AM · Aug 14, 2023 – I’m returning to the office for one day only, for the first time since April 2020. It’s for active shooter training. Granted, I wasn’t in any danger of that during work until they called me in for today.

References:

1

Forcing Normal in the Roaring 2020s – Elite panic kayfabe is timeless but not permanent. CHLOE HUMBERT DEC 13, 2022 There have always been things that have come about for people that made things seem “abnormal” or upsetting. Pandemics plague human history after all. As do disasters and preparedness for them – such as the old Duck & Cover Drills49 of the Cold War Era. People lament the need for active shooter drills in American schools, but who would protest “lockdown” during an active shooter situation? Nobody. As Beth of LongCovidLife on TikTok points out, we wouldn’t just stop going to the gym or promote junk food with the mantra of oh, “just live life!”

2

Dear Public Officials: Stop falling for the myth of an irrational panicked public. Ridiculously wrong elite panic: The only people panicking are the people in charge. CHLOE HUMBERT AUG 25, 2023 Lee Clarke points out in the article “panic: myth or reality?” that blaming panic is a way of blaming the victim when things go wrong because of structural or management failures, and that people recognize this and learn to mistrust those who deflect this way. The article ends with the statement: “Our leaders would do well to see us as partners in recovery rather than as a “constituency” to be handled.”4 The West Nile Virus has been found yet again in mosquitos in Scranton, Pennsylvania – within the city limits.5 But nobody should be more concerned about panic. Officials should be broadcasting the various things people can do to avoid being bitten, and to quell the mosquito population, like using mosquito nets, Deet, and larvae dunk traps.6

3

Commentary: Elite Panic vs. the Resilient Populace by James B. Meigs, MAY 2020 For the police, fear of public chaos outweighed, at least temporarily, concern for possible victims. Before dispatching those casually deputized citizens to keep order in the streets, the Anchorage police chief suspended the search for survivors in damaged buildings. “Arguably, the city was protecting its ruins from looters more conscientiously than it was looking for people trapped in them,” Mooallem writes. Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies don’t just waste resources, one study notes; they also “undermine the public’s capacity for resilient behaviors.” In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors. As in war, the first casualty in disasters is often the truth. One symptom of elite panic is the belief that too much information, or the wrong kind of information, will send citizens reeling.

4

Toxic Sludge is Good for You 2002In today’s corporate culture major PR firms promote crisis management as a necessary business expense. Whenever something bad happens to a corporation, often its first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem.

5

It Could Happen Here Podcast: Into The Wild Orange Yonder, Robert Evans (audio podcast) Most of these [elites] are just as blindsided by the disasters racking our world as anyone else. Because they’re the kind of people who are capable of taking power they look out for themselves first. And in chaotic and dangerous times they default to what they know best – leaning on culture war bullshit and hiding from scrutiny. The sheer amount of information coming in can be blinding and the best course of action is generally unclear. Elites are actually more likely to be blinded in these situations than the rest of us. A mayor or a president has much more info incoming & his concern is always more complex than what needs to be done to protect people – What is politically safe? What do my donors want? And how will what I do be spun by the media? – are also on his mind. People like us worry will my community & I survive & people like them worry will I lose power? This tug of war between disaster & political experiences between preparing… and protecting your ass leads to a phenomenon called turbo paralysis.

6

Rand Waltzman on Linkedin: Strategies for Manufacturing Doubt (6) Appeal to Mass Media, – Appeal to journalistic balance – Develop relationships with media personnel – Prepare information for media personnel – Invoke the Fairness Doctrine, Take Advantage of Target’s Lack of Money / Influence – Silence or abuse individuals by – out-spending – exploiting a power imbalance, Normalize Negative Outcomes – Normalize the presence of negative effects – Reduce importance – Make them seem inevitable

7

COVID-19 lockdown revisionism Blake Murdoch, Timothy Caulfield CMAJ Apr 2023, 195 (15) E552-E554; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.221543 The term “lockdown” has become a powerful and perverted word in the infodemic about democracies’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown, as used in public discourse, has expanded to include any public health measure, even if it places little to no restriction on social mobility or interaction. For example, a working literature review and meta-analysis on the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality misleadingly defined lockdowns as “the imposition of at least 1 compulsory non-pharmaceutical intervention.”1 This working paper therefore conflated mandatory isolation for people with confirmed infections and masking policies with heavy-handed limitations on freedom of movement, and since it gained viral fame, it has helped fuel calls for “no more lockdowns.” This working paper has been highly critiqued and is less convincing than comparative assessments of health measures, like the Oxford Stringency Index.2,3 Here, we discuss the spread of misinformation on lockdowns and other public health measures, which we refer to as “lock-down revisionism,” and how this phenomenon has damaged trust in public health initiatives designed to keep people safer.

8

Outrage factor From Wikipedia “Outrage factors” are the emotional factors that influence perception of risk. The risks that are considered involuntary, industrial and unfair are often given more weight than factors that are thought of as voluntary, natural and fair. Sandman gives the formula: Risk = Hazard + Outrage

9

KDRV 12 – A dying Uvalde teacher was on the phone with her husband — a school police officer whose boss decided not to enter her classroom, report says By Holly Yan and Chris Boyette, CNN Jun 2, 2022 In the 77 minutes of bloodshed at a Texas elementary school, teacher Eva Mireles spent some of her final breaths on the phone with her husband, telling him she was dying, a Uvalde County official told The New York Times. But her husband — school district police officer Ruben Ruiz — wasn’t able to save his wife and 20 other victims massacred last week at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The officer’s boss, school district Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, decided not to breach the adjoining classrooms where a gunman slaughtered 19 children and two teachers, including Mireles.

10

Learning Loss: Why Schools Should Ban Cell Phones – Bloomberg The sooner kids are separated from their devices, the better off they’ll be.  October 23, 2023 at 12:00 PM UTC By The Editorial Board

11

Brookings – Three myths about the impact of COVID-19 on public education – Douglas N. Harris – August 29, 2023 Students may have worried about the pandemic generally and the health of their parents and grandparents, or they may have had to chip in more to support their families during the economic downturn initially triggered by the pandemic. To chalk this all up to instructional mode is to ignore that children lived through an unprecedented social, economic, and health calamity. It’s no wonder public schools stayed remote longer. They serve students who were at higher risk during the pandemic. Public schools also involve more complex staffing arrangements which were more brittle during the pandemic. Of course, we all could have done better in retrospect. Hindsight is 20:20, and with a once-in-a-century pandemic, foresight approaches blindness. But, no, we can’t blame the public school system and union leaders for student learning loss.

12

Forbes: Learning Loss: Urgent Crisis Or Harmful Myth? Natalie Wexler Aug 12, 2021,12:08pm EDT At the same time, some vocal educators have challenged the very concept of learning loss, warning that it could label an entire generation of students as “broken.” The most radical form of this critique maintains that students haven’t missed out on any learning at all; they’ve just learned different, and possibly more valuable, things. Rachel Gabriel, an associate professor of literacy education, has suggested assuming that students “learned immeasurable and previously unknowable things,” like “how to reset the rhythms and patterns of their days.” Perhaps, she says, they’ve learned more than previous cohorts of students, “because of what they have lived through and lived without.” Those sentiments have been echoed by others, most recently in a New York Times article. A Seattle teacher and writer named Jesse Hagopian was quoted as saying that students have learned “how racism is used to divide” and “about the failure of the government to respond to the pandemic.”

13

Business Insider – Michigan is allowing school-bus drivers and cafeteria staffers to fill in as substitute teachers, becoming the latest state to expand teaching eligibility amid a nationwide labor shortage. By Sarah Jackson, Dec 29, 2021 “The pandemic has been challenging for our children, teachers, and parents, and our educators have gone above and beyond to ensure Michigan’s children have a bright future,” Whitmer said in a press release. “Allowing schools to employ school staff that students know as substitute teachers will help keep school doors open and students learning in the classroom the rest of the school year.” Michigan is the latest in a string of states making similar changes, in some cases permanent, to make it easier to fill substitute-teacher positions during the labor crunch. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed legislation opening up substitute-teaching positions to retired teachers and eligible college students. In October, Idaho’s superintendent Sherri Ybarra told parents she was returning to the classroom herself to fill in as a substitute teacher and asked parents to join her. “Many of our districts and classrooms are open, but these shortages are creating some stressful and fragile situations,” Ybarra wrote in a letter to parents. “I am asking parents/guardians and community members around the state to help to fill the substitute teacher and staff shortages necessary to keep our schools open.”

14

And Voila, An Anti-Mask Twitter Rando. Is it prediction or part of manufacturing consent? By Chloe Humbert on Medium, Apr 7 2023 Tweet from @reubenR80027912 dated 1019 am May 7, 2021 says Main Street is Very simple. Do 3 things PSA campaigns that you won’t die if vaxxed. Remind people kids aren’t a risk. Remove masks everywhere so people don’t constantly live in fear. Voila. Roaring economy. Spending is about freedom from fear.

15

CMD – How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On Covid By Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch | December 22nd, 2021  Lockdown measures drove down cases in the U.S. and likely saved millions of lives globally. But the decline of in-person shopping and work, combined with factory shutdowns in places like China, disrupted the economy. A 2020 report from the corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found the hardest-hit industries would take years to recover.  One sector in particular that took a big hit was the fossil fuel industry. Oil demand fell sharply in 2020, placing the global economy on uncertain footing. Before long, business-aligned groups — particularly those connected to fossil fuels — began targeting the public health measures threatening their bottom lines. Chief among them were groups tied to billionaire Charles Koch, owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately held fossil fuel company in the world. The war on public health measures began on March 20, 2020, when Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the right-wing nonprofit founded by Charles and David Koch, issued a press release calling on states to remain open.

16

Office workers are saving real money working from home. Workers in Philadelphia who telecommute are saving $2,161 per year in expenses. By CHLOE HUMBERT, FEB 15, 2023 Large US Cities are Seeing Large Reductions in Spending from WFH days, at Between $2000 to $5000 per Employee in the City Reduction in spending ($ per person per year) by MSA of Current Job. New York NY 4,661 Los Angeles, CA 4,200 Washington, DC 4,051 Atlanta, GA 3,938 Miami, FL 3,323 San Francisco, CA 3,040 Dallas, TX 2,869 Phoenix, AZ 2,757 Boston, MA 2,539 Chicago, IL 2,387 Houston, TX 2,167 Philadelphia, PA 2,161

17

Wall Street Journal – Interest-Only Loans Helped Commercial Property Boom. Now They’re Coming Due. Landlords face a $1.5 trillion bill for commercial mortgages over the next three years. By Konrad Putzier, June 6, 2023 Many of the commercial landlords on the hook for the loans are vulnerable to default in part because of the way their loans are structured.  Unlike most home loans, which get paid down each year, many commercial mortgages are known as interest-only loans. Borrowers make only interest payments during the life of the loan, with the entire principal due at the end. Interest-only loans as a share of new commercial mortgage-backed securities issuance increased to 88% in 2021, up from 51% in 2013, according to Trepp. Typically, owners pay off this debt by getting a new loan or selling the building. Now, steeper borrowing costs and lenders’ growing reluctance to refinance these loans are raising the likelihood that many of them won’t be paid back. Many banks, fearful of losses and under pressure from regulators and shareholders to shore up their balance sheets, have mostly stopped issuing new loans for office buildings, brokers say. Office and some mall owners are facing falling demand for their buildings because of remote work and e-commerce.