August 19, 2021
School buses are back on the roads of neighborhoods all over America. Aboard are many of America’s roughly 35 million elementary schoolchildren under 12, who are not vaccinated against covid-19. They crowd together in school corridors, classrooms, and cafeterias. In eleven states and the District of Columbia they’re wearing masks because those states either require masks in schools or allow local school boards to require them, complying with guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Legislatures in seven states have prohibited mandates. Florida and South Carolina have threatened to withhold state funding from school boards that try to require masks. Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson signed a law banning schools from requiring masks. As covid ran rampant through the state he said he regretted signing it and asked the legislators to rescind the no-mandate law. They refused.
On August 3, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, discussing the dangers of the covid delta variant, said, “It’s clear that this variant is capable of causing serious illness in children. Anyone that says you don’t have to worry about it if you are a young, healthy person, there are many counter examples.
“You do need to think about it and that’s the reason why the recommendations are, for kids under 12, that they avoid being in places where they might get infected, which means recommendations of mask-wearing in schools and at home.” He later clarified his comments, saying that it’s not necessary to wear masks at home.
Collins, M.D., Ph.D., has served as NIH director since 2009, the only Presidentially appointed director to serve in more than one administration. From 1993 to 2008 he was director of NIH’s National Genome Research Institute.
In South Carolina, Dr. Hunter Moore of the Children’s Medical Center of Greenville obtained signatures of more than 1,000 physicians on a petition urging Governor Henry McMaster to rescind the state ban on mask mandates in schools. Moore said that “the most recent data for South Carolina shows the rate of daily cases is over 2,000 over the past week. These are the highest numbers we have seen since February 2021, and it is not reaching a plateau but is increasing at an alarming rate.
“With school starting in South Carolina this week and next and the rate of spread of the delta variant among the unvaccinated population, we have every reason to expect the case rate to explode in the coming weeks.”
On August 17 the Florida State Board of Education announced that the Broward and Alachua school districts could face financial penalties for violating a state law that bans schools from mandating masks. The Board said it would investigate and the districts would be “possibly punished,” according to The Washington Post, for failing to comply with the law.
At an emergency board hearing, Nikki Fried, state Agriculture Commissioner and Democratic candidate for governor said, “shame on all of you. How embarrassing that you may be more afraid of the governor than you are [concerned about] the lives of our children and teachers who already are getting sick and dying in record numbers.”
Meanwhile, the Post reported that Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes Tampa, said that 8,400 students and 307 staff members are in isolation because of a positive test or in quarantine.
I stopped at the YMCA in Taylors, S.C., and watched a crowd of young kids file out of their daycare. None wore masks. I asked the college girl in charge about masks. “No, they don’t wear them,” she said. “We follow Greenville County policy. But they’re an option.”
South Carolina’s McMaster, rejecting the physicians’ petition, offered that “parents should be the ones who decide whether their children should wear masks. Parents know their children. They know what’s good for them. Common sense is the best way to fight the virus, not shutdowns or mandates. National covid experts, he said, are “exaggerating and engaging in hyperbole and unnecessarily alarming people.”
He reiterated his position that “mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is the answer, common sense is the answer, and we have an abundance of both in South Carolina.”
McMasters’ idea is that “personal responsibility” is a higher priority than schoolchildren’s safety. The state’s covid statistics cited by Dr. Moore show the dark consequences of the no-mask posturing.
A few days ago Collins said, “I do believe that [vaccine] mandates make a difference. … How did we get here? We’re incredibly polarized about politics, we really don’t need to be polarized about a virus that’s killing people. We ought to be doing everything we can to save lives. And that means get the vaccine. And that means wear a mask when you’re indoors in a crowded space. And if you’re unvaccinated, wear it all the time. … This is not a political statement or an invasion of your liberties. … We know that kids under 12 are likely to get infected, and if we don’t have masks in schools, this virus will spread more widely.”
On the Road 