Scraping ice off the inside of the car

Scraping ice off the inside of the car is one of those peculiar Canadian delights. Today's had to be done as we headed off to pick up our groceries from Loblaw's. The beauty of it is in getting all the little flakes of ice to land on your rapidly heating dashboard so they return to vapour and cause the windscreen to ice up again once you have stopped the engine. 

A nice enough day in spite of this. A Sunday spent in an online battle with Ottawa's appalling Medical Officer of Health and waiting to be told if Ottawacker Jr. will go back to school or not on Tuesday. Not like we have had 2 years to fix stuff in schools or anything. 

Essentially, my issue with the MOH is her conflation of two issues. She is a staunch proponent of kids being in schools (as am I). She argues the mental health aspect of this is the most important, and I can't agree. Kids belong in schools - but only when it is safe. Yes, some kids will suffer by being at home - as will some women and men in abusive relationships; families who are unable to work because they have to look after a homeschooling kid; etc. etc. And I get her point. But disagree with her.

None of the 5-11 year olds in Ottawa are fully vaccinated. Why are they being used as a test case for Omicron? This same MOH signed a regulation limiting OUTSIDE skating rink use to 25 people over the holidays. Why is it now safe to send unvaccinated kids into an enclosed space with more people in the room (OJ's class has 27 kids, 1 teacher, 2 teacher aides)? 

What happens when the kids are forced to stay at home with an infection and all contacts are also forced to stay at home. What happens if the child brings home the vaccine and infects/kills an immunocompromised family member? How will that affect his/her mental health? Will a 5-11 year old feel better about having killed grandpa than not being in school for a couple more weeks?

It is, of course, much more nuanced than that. And I get her point. But laying the bottom line for the city as being that "all kids must be in school doing in-person learning" when there are provisions in place to switch to short-term remote learning is short-sighted and stupid. 

This very evening, she backtracked. Except, of course, being Canada, the interviewer let her off the hook and never made her explain why she had changed her mind. 

For what it is worth, I think the mental health aspect for kids, single-parent families, abused women and men, etc. is incredibly important. But it is not by exposing children to a virus with unknown consequences that we are going to fix any of that.