Thursday, August 12, 2021

If Only We Could Vaccinate Masks


No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

                                                                                                     -H.L. Mencken, 9/18/26

 

Even eight years of Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) and of George W Bush and four years of Donald J. Trump did not convince me that Mencken was right. However, now

Parents of school-aged children are supportive of some, but not all coronavirus restrictions as kids gear up to return to the classroom this fall, a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation released Wednesday shows.

A majority of parents — 58 percent — don't want their child's school to require COVID-19 vaccinations. The results were split along party lines, with 66 percent of Democratic voters supporting vaccine requirements compared to just 13 percent of Republican voters, but even among Democrats the rate was lower than the 82 percent who have age-eligible children who have already received the vaccine.

The question was premised on the FDA fully approving the use of a Covid-19 vaccine in children. Yet

.... most parents do support mask requirements for students and staff who remain unvaccinated, though it's not clear what percentage backs masking for those who have received their shots.

If respondents are being honest, parents would rather their children wear masks throughout the school day (other than, presumably, while eating) than to have them vaccinated. 

This is barely comprehensible and suggests H.L. Mencken's perspective would apply today. Mencken referred to "intelligence." But whether "intelligence" or "common sense" or some other word most accurately describes the American people (at least the ones in this survey),  something is seriously awry.

However, thinking is far more awry, and dangerous, among residents of Franklin County, Tennessee, who have taken displeasure at wearing masks to a frenzied extreme:

 


No comments:

Score One for the Former, and Still, Thespian

Not the main question but: if we're fools, what does that make the two moderates of The View? Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski real...