In August, a group of parents in Buncombe County, North Carolina, flocked to a local school board meeting to demand that it stop trying to protect children. Dozens of people turned out to ask the board to repeal its approval of a school mask mandate.
Yet for Cawthorn and some other Republicans, the pandemic is just another opportunity to raise their profile and score culture-war points, even if it means taking stances that are actively pro-COVID-19.
Among those who spoke was North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn, who called school mask mandates “psychological child abuse.”
“The greatest threat to our children today does not come from COVID-19,” Cawthorn, a rising star in the Republican Party, lectured the board. “It comes from woke, liberal government officials like you who think they are all-knowing and all-wise.”
After the meeting, some parents refused to leave, saying they had “overthrown” the board and planned to elect new members on the spot. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
Creative Commons
Madison Cawthorn wearing a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 has killed more than 650,000 people in the United States, of all ages, including hundreds of children. The new Delta variant is spreading more rapidly to kids; the largest demographic of the unvaccinated in the United States are children under twelve. We know that wearing masks reduces transmission of the virus. The less mask-wearing there is, the more children will get sick and die.
Yet for Cawthorn and some other Republicans, the pandemic is just another opportunity to raise their profile and score culture-war points, even if it means taking stances that are actively pro-COVID-19.
“It is very important that we say, unequivocally, no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions, and no to mandates,” declared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, as hospitalizations and deaths soared in his state.
“There will not be any government-imposed shutdowns or mask mandates,” echoed Texas Governor Greg Abbott, even as new cases of COVID-19 overwhelmed his state’s health care facilities.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem pledged to “take every action available under the law to protect South Dakotans from the federal government.” This was after she praised and took part in this year’s super-spreader event known as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
What rot and nonsense has been allowed to fester! There is nothing nefarious or even new in asking people to receive vaccinations. All fifty states require children to be vaccinated against such ills as measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, and polio.
Yet, thanks in large part to Republican demagoguery, much of the populace is refusing to treat COVID-19 with the seriousness it deserves. Some people have come to believe that having to wear a facial covering is an intolerable infringement on their civil liberties. They are more willing to ingest a horse-deworming medicine to ward off COVID-19 than take a vaccine that has been proven to be safe and effective.
Roughly one in four U.S. citizens say they will not get vaccinated, enough to prevent the nation from achieving herd immunity and ensure that many thousands of people will needlessly die or be left with ongoing health impacts. That’s unconscionable.
Like the denial of climate change or the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, the lie that vaccines and safety precautions are more dangerous than COVID-19 is being promoted by politicians and commentators who frankly know better. They deserve our scorn.
But the people who they are lying to and putting in danger do not. It’s not their fault that they have been misled, and they don’t deserve to be in danger. The appropriate progressive response is compassion, not condemnation.
For COVID-19 to be beaten, and the nation to be healed, we must find a way to connect with people on the other side of this issue, to help them cut through the lies and protect themselves. Their lives, and ours, depend on it.
So yes to masking, and yes to mandates. Yes to making vaccination a condition of employment. Yes to more restrictions, if that is what’s needed. Yes to listening to people who know what they are talking about, not blowhards and propagandists. Yes to treating our fellow humans with decency.
And yes to coming out of this better than we were before.