The only winner at Jackson County meeting about masks for kids was COVID-19
Cheers that erupted in the Jackson County Legislature chambers on Tuesday clearly indicated that the anti-mask- mandate folks who packed the room, waving “No to Masks” signs, believed they had won a big victory.
Legislators withdrew a proposed ordinance that would have required all children to wear a mask while attending public schools in the county.
Technically yes, they did win several more days with no county requirements of any kind.
But the real winner is the virus, since the vocal minority pressuring county legislators to say no to mandating masks, and those refusing to get vaccinated, are on the wrong side of efforts to stop COVID-19 from spreading.
Jalen Anderson, 1st District at-large member of the county legislature and a co-sponsor of the ordinance, said it was withdrawn because he and the two other sponsors, Crystal Williams and Scott Burnett, worried that with only eight of the nine legislators present, they did not have the support needed for it to pass.
He expected that only four legislators present would vote yes. Legislator Ron Finley, who has been a supporter of masks, was absent. If four voted no, the measure would fail.
Sponsors plan to bring the school mask mandate ordinance back in a week, or when the full body is present.
It’s good that legislators wanting to get masks required in all schools are not giving up, because neither is the virus, which is shutting down schools and overwhelming hospitals. And it is not skipping over school children, as some misinformed mask opposers have been led to believe.
“Recently we’ve seen the most cases that we’ve ever seen in children under the age of 5,” said Ray Dlugolecki, Jackson County assistant health director.
The county has the highest percent positivity — 35.5% — so far in the pandemic. For school children, particularly those who are high school age, the positivity rate is at 40%. And, Dlugolecki said, hospitalizations overall jumped more than 9% over the past week.
Only Christi Johnson was allowed to speak against the proposed mandate. She said they cause anxiety and are unsanitary. She also said they delay development in the youngest children when they can’t see teachers’ lips move.
“I am for freedom and letting parents decide what they want to put on their children’s faces,” Johnson said. “The cloth masks are not working. … If they worked they would have worked by now.”
That is not the whole truth. Yes, national and local health officials agree cloth masks alone are the least effective against the omicron variant. They recommend double masking or KN-95 masks.
But masks do work in combination with hand washing, social distancing and most important, getting vaccinated, to “disrupt transmission of the virus,” said Dlugolecki.
Most schools in the county are requiring everyone to mask up. A few in the eastern part of the county, including Blue Springs, still do not.
And unfortunately, the virus isn’t the only danger county officials have to deal with. Anderson said he and other legislators who want a mask mandate for schools have received death threats. Doing the right thing for children should not require any bravery, but apparently, it does. “Death threats will not deter me,” Anderson said.
