Republicans in general seem to struggle with many, MANY subjects such as math, history or finance but the one that seems to completely flummox them has to be biology.
First, there was Todd Akin, would-be US Senate candidate, who was the first to identify a unique power of the female reproductive system to detect a "legitimate rape" and "shut that whole thing down," thus justifying his opposition to allowing abortion in the case of rape. Akin went on to lose his race and disappear, seemingly to the same place as the doctors he cited when making the comment. No one has located any of those doctors in nearly 8 years.
Now, there's Governor Mike Parson, who publicly commented on July 20, 2020 thusly:
These kids have got to get back to school. They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.
I've put that in bold font so you can just sit back from the screen and fully absorb all of the stupidity.
You don't have to a poet-warrior, rocket surgeon savant to grasp the bare minimum facts required to formulate an appropriate public policy for schools and covid-19. You can learn everything required to make appropriate public health policy by scanning news headlines on your local newspaper's website or a national news website, probably even Fox news. If you did, you'd see headlines such as these:
- Without $600 unemployment, economy will likely tank
- Rising cases prove summer is no barrier to COVID-19
- More than 50 Florida hospitals have run out of ICU beds as coronavirus cases soar
- Coronavirus: 13-year-old dies while self-isolating with Covid symptoms after virus test came back negative
If you exercise just a little more initiative and actually "use the google" and search for the words "covid children" you see stories like these:
- Studies find nearly 300 kids with inflammatory condition tied to coronavirus
- A Florida mother lost 2 children to Covid-19 within 11 days
- Coronavirus orphans: Michigan kids lose both parents to covid-19
- Older children spread the Coronavirus Just As Much as Adults, New Study Finds
- Almost one third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus
You don't even have to READ these stories to come away with an appropriate set of conclusions. You just need a few brain cells.
Even if younger children don't come down with aggressive SYMPTOMS, they can CARRY the disease and infect older children and young adults / parents. We already know the population bracket exhibiting the biggest explosion in case load is 21-35. We know studies of many "long-haul" covid-19 patients reflects systemic damage to multiple organs consistent with clotting and vascular problems. We still don't have a vaccine. We have already forced about 16% of the economy to shutter for three months - triggering a huge financial setback for those workers - under the guise of nipping this thing in the bud. Cities and states re-opened too early and infection rates now are WORSE over a larger swath of communities than they were in April, threatening another lockdown in many states, further tanking the economy for those hardest hit. Even if some promising vaccines pass trials, we still don't have enough manufacturing capacity IN THE WORLD to produce the vials required to distribute the vaccine from the lab to doctors' offices.
And Governor Mike Parson wants to just get it over with, drag all the kids back to school in August and have 'em tough it out and see how students and parents many make it long enough to show up for the Thanksgiving play.
This kind of stupidity isn't funny. It's deadly.
WTH
