Friday musings

The world continues to be a crazy place. Here are some musings I have had recently:

 

If you think that the whole ridiculous politicization of masks is bad, just wait until the day we (I hope) have a vaccine for COVID-19. There will be plenty of people who will not want to get it, and they will largely be the same people who refuse to wear a mask. And think of how crazy the battle has been over opening schools in the fall. How will we deal with vaccinating kids for the virus? Will children not be allowed in public schools unless they are vaccinated. (I limit this to public schools because presumably private schools will be able to do as they wish). Considering how terrible our health insurance is in the United States, what happens with coverage of a vaccine? I hope that children will be able obtain a vaccine either free of charge or for a limited cost.

 

I feel particularly bad for my older son, who was hoping to attend college in Germany beginning in the 2020-21 school year, and to be with his girlfriend in Germany. Due to coronavirus, and Americans rightfully viewed as toxic by the rest of the world, this is on hold. But this whole situation just piles on to the guilt I feel for having children during what I had no idea--back in the early aughts--would be such a terrible time to be alive. Nine days after the birth of our older son, 9/11 took place. Four years later, we had our younger son, but I don't know that we were considering the state of the world. By 2004, we had just settled into a life of far off wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the mild daily irritation provided by President George W. Bush. Then, eight years of Obama in office gave us (cough--white people--cough) the misguided and naïve belief that we had entered a warm fuzzy post-racial world.

 

I the immediate future, the U.S. has to deal with how we will teach our children in the fall, and no solution is a perfect solution. If our younger son's school does on-line learning, the hard part will be actually getting him to DO the work. Even though my wife may be working from home at that time, she is too busy to be checking on his progress throughout the day. Thankfully, he is a sophomore in high school and shouldn't (in theory) need constant prodding. However, as we discovered in the final few months of the 2019-2020 school year--in which younger son was at home--he didn't exactly apply himself that much. Who am I kidding, he essentially blew off the end of the school year. So, I have no idea how this will work. I have even less of an idea how this will work for parents of young children--particularly parents who cannot work from home. The whole situation is a mess.

 

The entire world is a mess.