This whole thing is surreal. My wife and I are helping chaperone the Sadie Hawkins dance tomorrow night. Our son’s play is the following weekend. Sports has been going full-throttle (after a statewide revolt against the AIA, which wanted to cancel the winter sports season). I even have two foreign exchange students from Italy (I was stunned that there were any at all, but we have another Italian, a Spaniard, and a German as well).
In Arizona, the guidelines are written such that schools that want to be open, can be open. It’s completely up to them.
I feel really bad for the extreme lockdown states/cities/counties. The goalposts keep moving — they are going to want masking and shutdowns next school year, too, even with the vaccine. I think bureaucratic inertia refuses to stop — like how it took 21 years to abolish the national 55 mph speed limit, even though the OPEC embargo was lifted a few months after it was installed. Or England continuing to ration food into 1954, well after the need. Society, politicians, and even the Church have been conditioned, and many accept this “new normal.” Heck, General Conference was only cancelled once during the Spanish flu epidemic, and that was much, much worse than this has been at its worst.