Johnson County pediatrician may be out of job even after her change on masks in school

Supporters of Johnson County pediatrician and school board candidate Dr. Christine White say she was bullied into supporting mask mandates in schools — after vigorously opposing them, in contrast to the rest of her medical group’s pro-mask stance. One supporter says she’s also being forced out of her medical practice — and may be reassessing her run for Blue Valley Board of Education.

Let’s hope that’s not the case, for two reasons. First, no one should ever feel bullied into a decision. Sadly, there’s been far too much browbeating and threat-making on this issue already.

Second, let’s hope White changed her mind because it was the right thing medically, not politically. If so, she should say that loud and clear, in order to further convince the skeptical out there that masks and vaccines do help slow the COVID-19 delta variant, and therefore save lives.

But you have to wonder if White’s sudden conversion — “My views on masks have changed,” she wrote in a Facebook post — is the result of an epiphany or a cacophony of outrage at her long-held stance that masks should be optional. She and two other Blue Valley school board candidates, after all, have billed themselves collectively as “My Child, My Choice. This is how we take back our schools in Blue Valley.”

Moreover, while I happen to agree with her stated goal of having students in class this year, it’s only common sense that masks and other reasonable pandemic precautions will help us achieve that goal of keeping students healthy and in school.

One would hope that, as a pediatrician of all things, she would be among the loudest and most sincere in calling for mask requirements. As Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Health System put it, “We’re on the precipice of becoming Springfield” — the Missouri city ravaged by the virus.

It’s certainly beginning to ravage Kansas City area children, too. Early this week, Children’s Mercy reported 20 children in the hospital for COVID-19, seven in the ICU.

Meanwhile, as other area schools begin to open for the new year, after just a week of being open Kansas City, Kansas public schools recorded 82 students with COVID and another 220 and staff in quarantine. Reports out of Georgia alone are enough to warrant extreme precautions in Kansas and Missouri. The Talbot County School District there closed just a week after opening because of a COVID outbreak. Georgia’s Ware County School District closed quickly too, with 143 students and employees positive for COVID and nearly 680 students quarantined. Metropolitan Atlanta schools logged more than 4,000 cases after opening.

It isn’t government tyranny that’s afflicting all those children and, increasingly, younger adults. It’s a virus for which we have vaccines, and for which we can slow the spread with the simple wearing of masks and other precautions.

Yet, astonishingly, mask requirements, particularly in schools, are still dumbfoundingly controversial. After a five-hour boorish, heckle-filled hearing on a proposed mask mandate Monday, Kansas City metro’s Park Hill Board of Education felt it necessary to clear the room — inviting spectators to leave the chamber and watch on livestream — before approving a mask requirement 6-1.

We shouldn’t, and shouldn’t have to, bully anyone into agreeing to protect our children. And our elected officials shouldn’t be bullied into not doing it. Our health care professionals should be the loudest urging it.

Masks aren’t a hill to die on. You’ll take others with you.