Pirate's Cove

This is the NY Times lead story of the day. Not Americans being stuck in the hellscape from Surrender Joe’s ill-planned Afghanistan adventure, or what’s going on with people post-Ida. Or kids having to wear masks that have almost no decrease in the chance of getting COVID (FYI, the single page headline is different from the front page, reading The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student)

‘An Emotional Hellscape’: Frayed Nerves for the Teachers of Unmasked Students

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked.

So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked.

It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Dr. Boedy said.

North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost a year and a half of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience.

What’s he worried about? The main purpose of being masked is so that you don’t get COVID, right? That’s why so many wear them when in their own cars alone and outside. Sure, The Experts! say that they help stop the spread, but, they say to wear them so you don’t get it. Even though lots of people get it when everyone is wearing a mask. Oh, wait, we aren’t supposed to say that.

Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching.

“Morale is at an all-time low,” warns a petition at the University of Iowa.

What about the morale of the students, who pay lots of money to attend class in person, rather than what has shown to be not very good learning on-line. Some colleges do a great job with this, because they set it up this way. You see their ads on TV all the time. Traditional colleges don’t. And still want to charge full boat for the classes. Including ones that require hands on learning, like scientific laboratories. Can’t do that at home.

Dr. Atzmon helped organize a petition asking the university to be more open to online teaching. It was signed by more than 700 faculty members and instructors.

In a response to the petition, Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, said on Thursday that, given the “stellar” rate of vaccination at the Ann Arbor campus (92 percent for students, 90 percent for faculty), the classroom was “perhaps the safest place to be” on campus.

So, wait, even though 92% of students are vaxxed, these weenie teachers want to go back to on-line, because some aren’t wearing masks? What was the point of getting vaxxed, then? Goal post shifting.

A few have sacrificed their jobs. Cody Luedtke, a biology instructor and lab coordinator at Perimeter College, part of Georgia State University, said she cried at the thought of teaching in a classroom where masks were not required.

When she refused to teach, she was fired, she said. “I just couldn’t perform a job duty that went against my morals and my desire to protect my students and the broader community,” she said.

There are multiple stories of teacher’s losing their sh*t and quitting/being fired in the piece. Oh, well, suck it up. A lot of people had to actually go to work during the height of the China created pandemic.

Meanwhile

• Liberal city could lose hundreds of cops over vaccine mandate (that would be Seattle)
• American Airlines ends coronavirus pandemic leave for unvaccinated employees (vaxxed employees will get paid sick leave, unvaxxed will have to use their sick/vacation days)
• Las Vegas substitute teacher accused of taping mask to student’s face, report says
• PHE reveals it has spotted 53 cases of ‘Mu’ variant in UK which is feared to be resistant to vaccines and is already spreading in 49 US states
• Pa. parents, lawmakers sue to stop Wolf mask mandate
• LANL Workers To Protest Vaccine Mandate Tuesday (that’s in Las Vegas)
• Reports of possible sickout by some Seattle City Light workers frustrated over COVID vaccine mandate
• First responders nationwide resist COVID vaccine mandates

There’s so many it’s hard to know where to stop.

Read: Teachers Are Living In An “Emotional Hellscape” From Unmasked Students Or Something »

So, I’m guessing it is time to force “people of color” to get the COVID vaccine? Somehow, low vaccination rates among black and brown people is the fault of you white folks

Federal vaccination data show mixed record on equity

Nearly three out of every four shots administered at the federal government’s Covid vaccination center in Cleveland went into white arms, according to site-by-site data provided exclusively to NBC News by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

That compares to a city-wide population that is 33.8 percent non-Hispanic white. At the same time, Black people were given just 10.8 percent of the shots, despite accounting for nearly half of Cleveland’s residents. And, in figures that comport with broader national vaccination trends, Asian Americans got shots at a higher rate — and Hispanic people at a lower rate — than their share of the local population.

The full data set, covering 39 federal Community Vaccination Centers in 27 states, suggests President Joe Biden met his promise to “fight this virus with equity” in some parts of the country but not others. Where the administration fell short, it was not for lack of effort: Both political appointees and career officials at federal agencies say that equity was the watchword of the program.

Asians were much more likely to have a very high percentage of their population being vaccinated. Blacks and Hispanics are very low. So, what to do? These Wokesters can yammer about equity all they want, but, in the real world, their high minded social justice warrior beliefs run into the road block of reality.

The FEMA official said community engagement was an outgrowth of trying to figure out how to reach the most vulnerable populations — and those least likely to have easy access to shots.

“Our whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach both achieved results and served as a generator of best practices at every level,” Criswell said. “At FEMA, we’re leveraging this experience to ensure we continue to equitably deliver our programs and assistance.”

Have you ever noticed that the Wokesters have very low opinions of blacks and Hispanics, always think that those populations cannot do anything themselves, always needing the Hand Of Government?

Why some US Blacks and Latinos remain COVID-19 ‘vaccine deliberate’

Notice that they do not even want to use the phrase “vaccine hesitant”, in order to not Offend blacks and Latinos? Rest below the fold

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Read: Bummer: Data Shows A Mixed Record On Vaccination “Equity” »