"We are actively dealing with problems remote learning caused. A whole generation of kids is further behind than they were tracking to be behaviorally, mathematically, and in reading scores."
Gee I wonder what would do that, is it three+ years of unmitigated exposure to a virus that causes brain damage? No, the problem is they stayed home, which makes you developmentally challenged, as we all know. Oh, you don't want to get COVID? Then stay home.
Me in 2019: Please don't make microplastics the lead paint of our times.
monkey paw curls
2020: A global pandemic is caused by a very infectious disease that causes brain damage.
I'm convinced we ended up with both.
Exactly. The monkey's paw didn't even hold up its end of the bargain with a tainted promise. Covid killed millions, is still killing at a rate that isn't even permitted to be tracked while causing repeated incidence of brain damage with increasing severity, and yet we're still poisoned by microplastics (along with vast swathes of the rest of the biosphere) which is likewise a serious and worsening issue that isn't getting covered much for similar reasons that Covid is ignored and denied.
On top of that, I'd bet my life that PFAS ("forever chemicals") are doing more harm in more places than almost anyone realizes yet. So far as "leaded paint of our time" goes, the difference now is that instead of pretending to give a shit and make at least some inadequate efforts to correct or regulate the issue, the response ranges from "yeah, there's all kinds of nasty shit out there like lead but that's just how things are," to "lead isn't actually all that bad" to "there isn't lead in the paint, that's a hoax so there's nothing we need to do." Hell, they won't do anything about lead in the water now so long as it's only poisoning the poors. Shit is bleak.
to be honest I’ve kind of given up. I’ve spent nearly every day of the last 5 years constantly agitating in every social group I’ve been a part of in hopes of getting them to care any little bit at all about COVID — to speak nothing of all the rest of the very valid crises you mention — and none of them listen. None. They laugh at me. They spit (intentionally coughing) on me. They don’t say it, but their actions tell me to disappear, mortally or otherwise. I have two friends remaining of a previously not-insignificant social circle because all the rest abandoned me to catching COVID from them on repeat. There has to be a point when you realize you’ve lost and I think I’ve hit it. The reaction has won. I can’t do it anymore. I’m devoted to surviving and that’s it. I gave almost 20 years of my life mired in poverty, disability, and immense hardship to activism, learning, being involved where I’m able in trying to help these people and not a damn bit of it mattered, because in the end they all think they’re God and they won’t take no for an answer. All I have left to say is you won’t catch me crying when the chickens come home to roost.