Of course plenty of people complained about it and refused to give up their freedoms. Many states with Republican governors either refused to impose any mandates, or imposed very few that were never enforced. Democratic states, which generate a huge chunk of the money (and tax revenues), imposed draconian measures that essentially killed off thousands of small businesses and left millions unemployed. It's no coincidence that public schools in many of these states (CA notably; NY has succeeded in running public schools in-person for many students) completely abdicated their responsibility towards their students, shutting down in-person learning for the entire school year. Note that the 'follow the science' crowd is curiously silent on this: the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics emphatically argued against this injustice perpetrated on children to no avail.
The children who suffered from this, and stand to continue suffering because of this even after the pandemic ends for most adults, will bear the cost for generations to come. Not only will they inherit a heavily indebted country, they will also be woefully unequipped for it because of the major hole this abdication of responsibility has blown in a critical period of their lives. Two years is a huge amount of time in a young child's life, and the callous indifference to their future shown by Democratic politicians (who draw the majority of their support from teachers unions, among other public employee unions) is just sickening.
I sincerely hope that parents will wake up to the insidious damage public employee unions are doing, and move en masse to private schools or direct student funding for schools that they can choose, as a result of all this. Teachers unions have shown themselves to be completely unaccountable to the public and deserve their comeuppance.
The children who suffered from this, and stand to continue suffering because of this even after the pandemic ends for most adults, will bear the cost for generations to come. Not only will they inherit a heavily indebted country, they will also be woefully unequipped for it because of the major hole this abdication of responsibility has blown in a critical period of their lives. Two years is a huge amount of time in a young child's life, and the callous indifference to their future shown by Democratic politicians (who draw the majority of their support from teachers unions, among other public employee unions) is just sickening.
I sincerely hope that parents will wake up to the insidious damage public employee unions are doing, and move en masse to private schools or direct student funding for schools that they can choose, as a result of all this. Teachers unions have shown themselves to be completely unaccountable to the public and deserve their comeuppance.