It’s too bad that Tallahassee—as in the governor, the legislature and the State Board of Education—doesn’t prioritize common sense, common-good and self-determination when it comes to reining in COVID and its malignant delta variant. Some things really should be immune to self-serving politics, blatantly partisan priorities and legal crucibles. In sounding like another Ron DeSantis lackey, Board Chairman Tom Grady said that Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran should “take all steps to enforce” a state rule that says school districts must give parents the ability to SOLELY decide whether their children should wear masks.
This, of course, is in the context of younger people now being infected at higher rates than before. In-school learning sans masks is collectively and unconscionably risky. The back-and-forth between Tallahassee and local districts is, alas, mirroring the increasingly confrontational relationship between DeSantis and the Biden Administration.
Here’s a bottom line we should adhere to: None of us should feel free to disingenuously and ignorantly redefine and misappropriate personal “freedom,” so that it imposes unnecessary public health dangers to others. That’s not “freedom” or “liberty”; it’s calculated, in-your-face, bumper-sticker idiocy.