This is going to be short and sweet.
In today's opening of the special session, the Republican leadership introduced Senate Bill 1 (with a matching bill in the House). The opening provision is to remove any sort of top-down mask mandate, either by the governor or by the Department of Education or anyone else. Instead, the bill proposes that any mask mandate must come from local authorities, like local school boards.
Here's the thing, Republicans: Pass this bill, and you are going to get someone killed.
Here's why.
If a local school board DOESN'T institute some sort of mask mandate, there will be children in that school system that will get infected, get sick, and die. With the amount of virus surging across the state, this is a certainty.
And many local authorities are either believers in what they hear on Fox News, or they are scared of the people in their community that are covidiots, so they will take the easy way out and do nothing.
BUT – if a local school board DOES follow the science and institute a mask mandate, those same covidiots will come after THEM, with death threats included. And someone, somewhere in Kentucky, will actually carry out that death threat and kill a school board member.
More than one local superintendent has said that they want the mandate to come from someone up the chain, so that they don't have to face their community alone. They KNOW what will happen if they put a mask mandate in place.
So, Repubs in the general assembly, mark it down: If you get rid of any sort of mask mandate coming out of Frankfort, you are going to get someone killed because of your actions.
--30--
Comments
