Stop COVIDiocy: Seattle Students Walked Out of School, Demand Mask Mandates to Be Reinstated

From The Seattle Times:

More than 100 Seattle Public Schools students walked out of class Monday morning to protest the district’s decision to end the requirement that students and staff wear masks. 

Many of those students rallied at district headquarters, the John Stanford Center, to ask Superintendent Brent Jones to reinstate the mask mandate districtwide. Mask requirements for Seattle and most other districts in the state ended a week ago.

And the teachers are pushing back as well. Teachers did not like the unilateral decision reached by the school district superintendent. In fact, the superintendent ended the mask mandate without bargaining with the teacher's union, as required by a prior memo of understanding. 

The school district, of course, blames the governor for lifting the mask mandate. They are merely "aligning" with the changing policy from the state department of Health and Public Health. 

But it's clear that the students and the teachers are on one side, with the district on the other. 

But which side are the parents on? 

School Meeting COVIDiocy: Viriginia Woman Threatened to "bring every single gun loaded and ready" To School Over Mask Mandate

While knowing she was being recorded, Amelia King, in front of Luray, Virginia school board told everyone that she would "bring every single gun loaded and ready" on Monday with her maskless child. Then she was cut off as her 3 minutes were up. She left with "I will see you all Monday". 

As you can guess, she's upset that the school would DARE mandate that everyone mask up. But threaten to bring guns, really? 

WTF... 

Police did not think this was a joke. Local police charged her with making an oral threat on school property, and Ms. King was released on $5000 bond. According to the police chief, she was remorseful as she realized what she had said after leaving and was very apologetic. 

Police, with help of county Sheriff's Office, will provide extra patrols for the schools coming Monday, as a precaution. 

The situation is NOT helped by Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, who had issued an executive order ("executive order number two") on his first day in office, supposedly giving parents the authority to ignore school mask mandates, and it will go into effect on January 24th. 

But many schools and school districts said they are NOT going to accept any opt-outs by parents. They claim that state law (Virginia Senate Bill 1303) says they have to follow CDC guidelines, and CDC guidelines say indoor masking should be done. And thus, the governor has no power to order them to ignore state law. 

More than a dozen parents are suing the governor over "executive order number two", and the Virginia Attorney General has already asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit as it "affirm(s) that parents matter". 

Anti-Mask COVIDiocy: "Unhinged" Antivaxxer Stormed NYC Burger King Protesting Mask Mandate

As reported on ComicSands, a group of antivaxxers and antimaskers stormed a Brooklyn, New York Burger King to protest New York State's new mask mandate. Most of them split when NYPD showed up, but some had to be ejected by NYPD from the premises of Burger King. However, that's nothing special. What's actually unhinged is one of the women antivaxxers tried to solicit a crowd reaction claiming that because Burger King is open to the public, they cannot be thrown out. 

Then she tried to argue with the police that Burger King is a private business. Her argument? "No it's not [a private business]. If it is, they ould do it [allow people to order food] by appointment only."

WTF?!

This sort of twisted logic was right out of the "Sovereign Citizen" manual. (In case you don't know, Sovereign citizen believe themselves not bound by the law you and I live by, and they have bizarro explanations for why that is so)

But really, picking a Burger King as your figurative "hill to die on"? 

You can see the jokes poured in fast and furious. "They did their own research on the law too, huh?" 

What else is interesting? One of the stormers was identified as Mitchell Bosch, who had instigated multiple incidents around New York at various restaurants including Cheesecake Factory and Applebees, and was definitely present at the January 6 Insurrection. 

So there's a professional agitator in the crowd who wants to overthrow the legitimate government. 

Any bets on FBI already have a file on him? No one? 

Strange COVIDiocy: the "Fauci lied" narrative

Recently ran into an antivaxxers who asserted repeatedly that Dr. Fauci lied and is a criminal and variations thereof, among his various antivax viewpoints. 

So I asked him what exactly did Fauci lied about. 

He gave only one answer: early in the pandemic, Fauci asked people not to mask up. He later changed his stance on that. According to this anti-vaxxer, this constitutes lying, and since he's a public official, this constitutes deceiving the public and should be arrested and charged with... something. 

Let's get a little context on this. 

Back on March 8 2020, Fauci did say "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask". This was only a few months after the discovery of COVID and nobody has any idea how bad the pandemic would spread. At that point, even WHO believed COVID to NOT be airborne. No one knew how bad the asymptomatic spread would be, and there was a genuine fear that health facilities may run out of masks due to panic buying by the public. 

CDC changed its stance on masks on April 3, 2020, recommending people mask up in public settings, esp. when social distancing will be difficult, and they recommended cloth masks, not the genuine 3M medical masks that people sought. Even since, Fauci have repeatedly stated in public that people should mask up, and even wore a mask to a July 2020 Senate hearing. 

Not to mention asymptomatic spread is a serious problem, much more serious than we ever suspected. It's believed that 30-40% of COVID spread is from asymptomatic people, and the way to stop spread is to ask everyone to wear a mask since one does not know if one has any symptoms. 

So I pointed out to the antivaxxers that he's being unreasonable. He expects government officials to NEVER admit their mistake if they made one. Isn't that even MORE dangerous than lying? Basically double-down and make the problem worse? 

"All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes." -- Winston Churchill

He's not backing down though, kept calling Fauci an incompetent fool and a lying SOB, as we as being old and senile. 

Guess he won't be learning from his own mistakes any time soon. 

More COVIDiocy: How had we sunk this far?

Today is 9/11, the day when the largest terrorist attack on US soil took 3000+ lives in moments. 

Today also marks a time that it has been more than 20 months since COVID first appeared in the US, and it has claimed 659K lives since then in the US alone (check on Google for latest CDC data). 

In fact, on September 10th alone, CDC recorded 2418 deaths, in the US. And the trend is still upwards. We may see deaths surpassing 3000 daily in a few days. 

US COVID Daily Deaths for 9/10/21 = 2418... and rising

Yet it seems some people are so desperate to go back to normal, they are ignoring the deaths and prefer to tout "right to choose". 

Texas Governor Abbot infamously tweeted that he will defend the Texans' "right to choose" when the Biden administration announced some sweeping vaccine mandates in a few months. How he can tweet that, having signed the anti-abortion law which limits Texas women's "right to choose" not too long ago, signifies the broken Republican moral system, and clearly, his own broken hypocrisy detector. But let's not get into that at the moment. 

It seems a lot of Federal Worker Unions are not going to be onboard the vaccine mandate train, so to speak. Many have carefully worded their response as "workers should have a choice in their own working conditions" or similar verbiage. 

Translation: "You can't tell me what to do!" (Even though it's the right thing to do, like masking up, or getting vaccinated.)

Who says that? Entitled people, i.e. the "Karens" of the world. 

One Florida parent was arrested when he got physical with a student who started filming him without a mask on inside the school. The guy was already warned several times for not wearing a mask despite school policy. So he was basically provoking a reaction. 

In California, a man got into fisticuffs with a teacher who was trying to protect the principal as the man yelled profanities over the school's mask policy. He was arrested for assault and battery. 

In Austin, Texas, several parents started yelling at the teachers who chose to stay masked during a meet-the-teachers meeting. One parent even yanked the mask off a teacher's face. The two cases had shaken the community. (FWIW, Governor Abbot of Texas, whom we mentioned earlier, also signed an order PROHIBITING mask mandates)

Please keep in mind that Florida, Texas, and California are the most populous states in the US, and therefore, COVID hotbeds, with the most cases... and deaths. 

Given that we can't vaccinate the kids yet, at least those under 12 years of age, the only way to protect them was to mask them, and the teachers, and all the school employees, and EVERYONE around them (including the parents, relatives, and so on).  It'd be better they all get vaccinated too, but it takes weeks for the vaccination to reach full potency (the antibodies get made).  Masking is immediate. 

So people opposing the masks are basically saying "my right to NOT cover my face is more important than protecting the kids". 

COVID is not merciful. Given half of US population is fully vaccinated, the new COVID cases are almost exclusively of the unvaccinated, and sadly, that includes children. Infants. Babies. EVEN THE UNBORN. Yes, COVID also causes fetal deaths. And we've earlier covered a case where a 4-year old went from fever to death in mere HOURS. Children are now over 20% of new COVID cases in several different states. 

In 2020, we thought we had survived COVID because we didn't get the huge wave of casualties like China when the entire medical system was overwhelmed in Wuhan. 

It is now 2021, and ICUs across the country are filling up with COVID patients with a good number of them children. Several states have started or are preparing for "rationing care" because they only have so much resources available to fight COVID. First state to do so was Idaho. Care to guess which party is Idaho's governor? You guess it: Republican. It is just so ironic to see how Sarah Palin (Republican) tried to push the narrative of a "death panel" in the 2009 political debate, and it is now forced into practice... 

The Republican party has governors in two out of three most populous (and thus, most COVID) states. DeSantis in Florida, and Abbott in Texas. BOTH have signed mask anti-mandate orders for their state in the name of "freedom for the parents". 

It is no coincidence that many reports of overwhelmed hospitals have surfaced from both Texas and Florida. Texas had run out of ICU space near Houston, and Florida is believed to have less than 10% space left in ICU as of mid-August.

Is freedom really worth THAT much death, esp. of children? 

Or perhaps..

"The needs of the many, outweighs the needs of the few"?