Well it took a while Bricker, but good job on back-peddaling. Sincerely. Here’s the post:
Etymology: “Cruel and inhuman punishment”. The two words are in the same ballpark to this native speaker. “Cruel” is fairly strong. “Lacking compassion” is milder.
In contrast, characterizing the shelters where 1500 children are crammed in as concentration camps would be hyperbolic to my ear, even if true in a literal sense.
Some of the treatment of under-5s could be causing toxic stress to the brain, since employees can neither touch the children to comfort them nor call in their parents. The intentional infliction of such developmental issues and the dismissal of well founded concerns from health care professionals strikes me as pretty brutal/unnecessarily cruel/inhumane, as consequences may be life-long while necessity is weak. It’s not like driving spikes into fingernails. But c’mon: kids.