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Students and parents in Washington State welcome medical tyranny, don’t want to quit wearing masks.
I admit, I was just flabbergasted when I read the comments of various Washington State students and parents, regarding the possible end to state-mandated wearing of face coverings in schools. Since the fall of 2020, when some schools went back to in-person instruction, the State has mandated that all students, staff, and teachers wear face coverings while in school buildings. The Teachers Unions have been particularly adamant about mask mandates, in spite of the SCIENCE indicating that they are not at any higher risk, and the fact that teachers were among the first groups eligible to be vaccinated in early 2021. They still quake in their boots and swear that their own students are putting everyone at risk if they do not wear masks in school.
But some of these comments just indicate that the State mandates and statistics have had their desired effect. The press and Health Nazis have instilled abject fear in a significant slice of the population, of a virus with a 99.9% recovery rate. Here’s what some have to say about the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s call for the end of mandated mask-wearing in public schools.
Students like Kamiak High School Junior Esaw Adhana are making it clear they don’t want masks to be taken out of schools any time soon, as Reykdal recommended to the governor’s office Wednesday.
“My goal is not for masks to be the new norm,” Adhana said. “No one likes to wear masks 24/7. Eventually, but just not yet.”
……..But, parents are voicing concerns.
“If we do, you know, remove the mask mandate, are the numbers going to go straight back up again?” said Julie Dennis, a Shoreline School District parent.
And, of course, the Teachers Unions are sounding the alarm!
The Washington Education Association said in an email statement the state must anticipate that lifting the mask mandate will exacerbate staffing shortages and interrupt learning.
Washington State teachers have decided that they will not be able to teach their students if they are not required to wear a dehumanizing face covering.
I despair for the average person in the state in which I live. They have succumbed to the 100% government control of their lives, and now welcome medical tyranny.
I will continue to defy that tyranny.
[originally posted at RushBabe49.com]
Published in Domestic Policy
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You know about “mass formation psychosis”?
I just heard that my granddaughter’s cheer team just won first place in a national competition where they had no deducted points in their routines for the two performances over the two days of competition.
I can only imagine the self-administered pressure on an individual performer about making a mistake.
Recently my daughter and her husband visited us and expressed concern over anxiety displayed by this 15-year-old daughter as well as their 22-year-old son. They are searching for ways to cope and asked if we could think of anything. I’ve already suggested to get them off TikTok if they are on it but I don’t think we have experience in trying to deal with the way societal pressures are brought to bear today.
It looks like those in Washington are getting plenty of this to deal with.
I don’t understand the parents and the students, but since teaching is a very “safe” profession (job almost guaranteed as long as a teacher wants one, steady path for career progress, minimal to zero probability of being laid off or fired, predictable salary, predictable requirements for career advancements, little risk of physical harm (with exceptions, mostly in known urban districts), etc.), I would expect that teachers and school administrators tend to be risk-averse people. The long-term substitute teacher my daughter had in first grade who was also a wildlands fire fighter is probably the exception. Risk averse people would naturally be trying to reduce even small risks to yet smaller levels. Most of us examine that effort and determine the cost is not worth even the theoretical benefit. But even to the risk averse, they should see that the measures they are demanding have their own risks. I am baffled why such risk averse people don’t see the risks presented by masks and other isolating measures.
Shortly after we went into lockdown and the mask mandates showed up I had a significant number of my coworkers indicate they did not realize how many germs were flying around all the time and that it might be a good idea to wear masks from now on. My company do not require masks for the vaccinated, but about half, maybe more are still wearing masks and do not seem to be interested in letting them go. The have the same claptrap that if it saves one person life it would be worth it. These are typically people that are younger than I and much healthier but they seem all into this. Sadly they have the whole Left side politically backing them and if you even suggest that it might not be the greatest thing ever then to HR you go. I have noticed a lot of people my age (close to retirement age) that were not the mask type retiring early. Sort of indicates to me a push out. Basically if pushed it is best to retire and leave then be pushed out and lose your retirement benefits.
@rushbabe49, if you read this in the Seattle Times, they are guaranteed to spotlight the most fearful and risk-averse amongst the population. It’s part of their “journalistic” SOP.
Rekdahl (sp?), the SPI, is a horrible lefty who pushed the age-inappropriate sex education curriculum in WA schools, so if he’s going against the teachers’ union, that’s a big deal. Perhaps even he can see the other problems this is causing coming down the pike. He should suggest some pilot problems in smaller or more rural schools, which are more likely to favor mask removal, to demonstrate that the fears are overblown.
< devil’s advocate mode = on >
The Johns Hopkins meta-analysis study that the Left despises because it concluded that lockdowns did virtually nothing to curtail COVID mortality also suggested that mask mandates had the most effect, reducing mortality by about a third, although they caution that the meta-analysis only included two studies that looked at mask mandates, and one of them was limited to employee mask mandates.
https://www.wcpo.com/news/national/coronavirus/johns-hopkins-university-study-finds-lockdowns-only-reduced-covid-deaths-by-0-2
< devil’s advocate mode = off >
I guess we should be thankful it’s only masks? /sarc
All the WA SPI did was say he was thinking the issue of masking should devolve to the local school boards. So I think I know how that’ll go . . . . masks forever!!!
This sounds like selective reporting, fake consensus, not the actual majority position. I see no indication of properly constructed public opinion polling on this issue. It seems like the regime media campaign is having its desired effect on you. Just say no to such “reporting.”
I’m sorry. When I think of schools, I’m still thinking of that 35-punch beating one girl gave another, leaving her apparently unconscious at her school desk. The teacher never tried to stop her other than saying very quietly stop that or something, and saying the word (not calling) “help” once.
But they were all masked, so that’s good.
Priorities, man. Priorities.
I teach at a charter school in Vegas. Sisolak ended the mask mandate during the day Thursday, so starting Friday masks were optional. I expected there’d be some students masking, but I was surprised by just how many- I think half or more. I think most of the staff and admin (myself included) were maskless.
Put a mask on it and it would be perfect.
Wasn’t this a Beyonce hit?
The Washington State Health Nazis refuse to yield.
Doctors, Hospital Leaders: WA not ready to end indoor mask mandate. What did I tell you? You will be masked forever.
This should be on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
This essay, from Kevin Williamson, talks about the symbolic/talismanic role that masks have assumed. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/why-progressives-cant-quit-their-masks/#slide-1
I’d agree that not wearing a mask has also become, during COVID-time, an “identity marker.” It’s just that the not-wearers aren’t the ones who will have to change their behavior and relinquish the marker as “the science” (actually, the politics) permits unmasking. What I liked the illustration of how a solution to a practical problem—preventing the transmission of lice, reducing the risk of inhaling virus——becomes symbolic. THat is how we (human beings) roll! It made me think of the way that early Christians distinguished themselves from (other) Jews by binding their scriptures into a book form (“codex”) rather than in the more common 1st century form of scrolls. Scrolls were the preferred form of publication in those days for anything longer than a notebook. There were practical reasons for the Christians’ choice, even if there were also technical problems to overcome. When publication had to be done by hand, a scroll was a more flexible and economic way to “print” a piece of literature. As any kid who has tried to make a book by folding sheets of paper in half and stapling the edge, it’s hard to create an elegant “codex” . Christians wished to demonstrate, through proof-texting, that Jesus was the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. A book works better for this purpose than a scroll, as you can flip back and forth between pages and prophecies. This practical requirement become symbolic, and it stuck. The scroll , by the way, then became fixed as an identity-marker for Jews. “We aren’t those (Christian) Codex people, we’re the scroll people!” To this day, the Torah whose presence represents or embodies the presence of God in the synagogue is a scroll, not a book. By the way, I flung The Da Vinci Code across the room in nerdy disgust when, within the first few pages, the author described a scroll as a “codex.” Still pisses me off to think about it. (C’mon, man! Google, for Christ’s sake!)
Scrolls are sequential access. Books are random access. Random access is worth going through a little difficulty to achieve.
Maybe they are scared because they have seen all of those news stories about the hundreds of school teachers dropping dead of COVID in mask-free Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Texas, South Dakota, Virginia, Wyoming…
Or maybe not.
They drank Flavor-Aid at Jonestown! End the Kool-Aid Blood Libel!
I teach high school. We are currently required to wear masks.
There is a particular type of student who likes the mask as a guard against participation in class. It is not fear of disease. It is fear of having to expose one’s ideas and thoughts to their peers in clear language which can be heard. With masks, these students just mumble through the mask and then retreat back to their isolation.
Masks are the new baby blanket for teens.
This is similar to my son’s daycare in the Seattle area. We all have to wear masks. If any worker, child or parent tests positive they close down the daycare for 10 days. They’re insane. These people. My wife and I and or 2 year old son all had covid last week. We just kept him home and didn’t say why so we didn’t screw over all those parents and workers at the daycare. They write us 1,000 word memos about safety, but offer very little in reasoning other than ‘in congruence with local health experts and the CDC.” I can’t wait to leave this place.
The first Christian “virtue signal”?
The other advantage of a book over a scroll is that you can copy a book faster because you can split it up and have more than one or two copists working on it simultaneously.
Where do you get the 99.9% survival figure? It is appears incorrect, given the number of Covid deaths reported, which is around 0.3% of the population.
Forcing children (or anyone) to be gagged with a face diaper will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Our grandchildren’s daycare in New Mexico has a similar policy (I think the oppressive New Mexico government insists). Our son-in-law declined to get a Covid test when he was notified he had been “exposed” at work to someone with Covid-19. Our son-in-law never felt sick. If he had gotten tested and the result was “positive,” the positive result would have been reported to the daycare, which would then shut down, disrupting life for a dozen other families.
I don’t think that there’s one explanation for this. It’s probably multilevel in nature.
There’s a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, a bit of religious substitution, a bit of pure human irrationality, and more than a bit of media/government induced PTSD.
Wouldn’t all those go into mass formation psychosis?