NIH Director Condemns ‘Politics And Polarization’ Of School Mask Mandate Bans | Talking Points Memo

NIH director Dr. Francis Collins on Sunday took aim at mask mandate bans in schools as the Delta variant prompts upticks in COVID-19 cases throughout the country.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1384600

Good. More straight talk like this please. The Overton window in pandemic measures needs to be moved quite a bit toward reality, sanity, and humanity.

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Good that it was on Fox.

Bad that Fox viewers only want Freedumb and to pwn the libs…

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What DeSantis and these other stable geniuses do not seem to understand is that the alternative to mask mandates is likely to be another semester or two of “distance learning” for every K-12 school district in FL, because when half the school census is on COVID-19 quarantine, it will be impossible to keep face-to-face schools open. What does he think will be the reaction of working Floridians when mom or dad have to stay home from work to watch the kids stare at a computer screen.

We might be headed there anyway with these appalling new case numbers, at least until we can vaccinate kids, but these genius GOP Governors aren’t helping head the worst outcomes off. They have a “Duty of Care” for their constituent’s health and welfare which they are willfully not acknowledging and the only words I can find to describe it are “Dereliction of Leadership Responsibility”

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Whether Dems or GOP, the powers that be haven’t done enough to earn our trust. That is why distrust is rampant, even when it comes to common-sense measures like masks. I wore a mask even when the authorities told us not to, because it was an obvious precaution.

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Two other relevant words: evil monsters.

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DeSantis THINKS???!!? Who’d even imagine that?

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Sadly, I think he does think, but only about his sick ideology and political gain.

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I’d say to achieve that depth of evil requires considerable cunning and thinking. Just not good cunning and thinking.

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I really can’t figure out if people only hear what they want to hear, or what validates their ideas. I’m still seeing people post info on COVID from back in early 2020, do these people not think that the more we learn about a “novel” virus then predictions and safety measures will change.
I’ve said this before but I think Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, head of the CDC, didn’t message correctly when the vaccines became available. Everybody/majority of the people weren’t eligible to get the vaccine when she made the statement that vaccinated people didn’t have to wear a mask anymore.
After I got my second dose in May I only went maskless for a week in June. I checked the vaccination rates for MO, and my county and thought the number of people vaccinated was too low. And then there was the beginning of the surge in India with suspicions that there may be a new variant involved. This is not me touting my own horn here, it’s just maybe I pay attention when the world is in a Fucking Global Pandemic. I thought everyone was paying attention, but then I was proven wrong.

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Kudos to Canada, and hopefully, we can follow.

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I can’t tell you how sick I am of reading that, because they’re not doing that. They’re the ones who are in the death ray right now. I’m standing over there shaking my head at people in America killing themselves.

Doesn’t make sense.

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Is Abbot going to arrest every school head in Dallas and Bexar county when they refuse to comply?

This is ridiculous. Seeing what they’ll get away with, I see.

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Well the viewers that will be considered as among the surviving.

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I have no idea how this pans out I hope the school districts takes to another court, if they can.

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I’m sure they’re getting advice. Hope the parents get active.

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Please, just because Dr. Collins is the Director of the NIH (has been for many years) does not make him some kind of god, compassionate, or even credible. He is more political than he is clinical or caring of individuals with medical needs. He might “condemn politics and polarization,” but that is his bread and butter. He’s a chimeric jerk. And I use that term because I hope that at some point in his egotistical life, he might get it…

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"… it’s not just the epidemic of COVID-19. It’s the epidemic of misinformation, disinformation, distrust that is tearing us apart.

Amen, Brother Francis. That’s it in the olde nutshell. Stir those ingredients together in a broth of stupidity, ignorance, and anti-intellectualism, and we’ve got today’s shitshow.

@Hatmama Ouch! Care to elaborate? I always figured him for one of the good guys, albeit given to hanging out more of his spiritual laundry than I’d personally care to do.

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Nope. The only cause he believes in is his own legacy.

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