Thanks to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, public schools and county health departments all over the state are now abandoning all covid mitigation efforts. No mask mandates, no testing or tracing programs, no public release of information on infections and deaths. Schmitt has, in effect, declared the pandemic over. It’s just a mirage.
The timing for this couldn’t be better; we’re going into the holiday season, and covid rates are going up all over the country. According to the Mayo Clinic, the positivity rate in Missouri is now 12 percent, up from 6.3 percent in early November.
How did this happen? Late in November a county circuit court judge ruled that county departments of health had absolutely no legal authority to impose covid control measures on schools, businesses, or other entities. The decision called such measures a violation of the state constitution. Only elected representatives can vote to put such measures in place, the judge said. And in most of Missouri, elected representatives are not about to do that, either for fear of retaliation by MAGA-heads or because they are MAGA-heads themselves. I don’t know if anyone is appealing the decision.
The judge, Daniel Ray Green, was elected, not appointed, so I can’t blame a politician for him. His most controversial decision before this was to refuse a new trial for one of Missouri’s many wrongfully convicted inmates, Ryan Ferguson. Ferguson’s conviction eventually was vacated by another court.
Anyway — last week Schmitt issued a letter to all school districts and county health authorities declaring that all covid measures must immediately cease. And since then, one county after another has announced the end of all covid mitigation programs. From today’s Kansas City Star:
A growing number of local health departments across Missouri are ending their COVID-19 response after Attorney General Eric Schmitt demanded the agencies comply with a court ruling that appears to severely limit the authority of local health officials.
Since Thursday, more than half a dozen departments have announced they are suspending coronavirus-related work after Schmitt, a Republican campaigning for U.S. Senate, sent letters earlier in the week.
The announcements come from health departments in mostly rural counties — none have been issued from the Kansas City or St. Louis metropolitan areas. Rural Missouri counties have struggled throughout the pandemic to contain cases amid low vaccination rates, pushback from the public and limited funds.
These counties will no longer investigate COVID cases, contact-trace, direct exposed individuals to quarantine, or make county data public. Rural counties were never able to implement mask mandates, so there weren’t any to cancel in them. (There’s been a big fight over mask mandates in St. Louis County that’s so convoluted I gave up trying to understand it.)
The best part of this, though, is that Schmitt is asking parents to snitch on schools that are still requiring masks. I don’t know what parents are supposed to do if they have an immuno-compromised child.
Related to this, Schmitt is proposing a parent’s “bill of rights” that, among other things, would encourage parents to veto any part of the school curriculum they don’t like. Not long ago he sued the Springfield public school district for not adequately responding to his demand for documentation about how critical race theory is being taught. You get the picture.
Have I mentioned AG Schmitt is running for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat? I believe I have.
Update: This just in — a school bus driver in Arnold, Missouri (just south of St. Louis) said a police officer got on her bus and threatened her because she asked the children to wear masks on the bus.
Missouri Attorney General and Senate candidate Eric Schmitt.
Oh gee he's a white guy I never could have guessed.
Glad I don't live in misery.
I have to wonder if a class-action suit by the families of Covid victims in MO after this date is possible. They'd name the A/G personally and the state. I have no idea if there's a legal basis, but if Covid spirals up, with fatalities, the A/G has personally built the fire.
I was thinking the same thing. Also, if covid rates in schools go up, schools might announce they are going back to virtual lessons and blaming Schmitt for it.
Of course they'll go up. The seven-day new case rate for Missouri is up 33%.
I'm really starting to think that, come 2024, there might not be enough Republicans alive to elect a dogcatcher. Which might be our only hope, because the Republican Party is dedicated to destroying democracy and installing a Fuhrer.
I see no way for this country to survive as a single, democratic state. The Right is primed for an orgy of murder.
Missouri oh Missouri. I have paid union dues there and city taxes to the city of Kansas City Missouri. When everyone else was working on the Missouri side and living on the Kansas side I was doing the opposite. I recall the days when the Kansas City Star was stayed and Republican, but that was when we still had Republicans would read. I am a half a day's journey from Missouri and have been so from some years. I still have some contacts in the state, but I can hardly say I have a read on the pulse of the state. All I know for sure is that it has gone downhill since I left. In my mind I like to think I helped prop it up, but the truth is all the king's horses, and all the king's men would not be up to that task.
Missouri politics is the shadow of Truman, much in the way Kansas politics is the shadow of Eisenhower. Bod Dole rode the wake of Eisenhower, but now even he is gone. The days when the landlocked middle of the country had a path for political prominence is long gone. We need to get with Missouri and establish the bi-state Sam Brownback American Politician's Hall of Shame. It is our destiny and our Karma. We sure have few if any to elevate, we might as well do what we do best. Pick the all-time biggest losers.
I just don't get it.
In a pandemic, would you put yourself, your family, your friends, your coworkers, and your constituents, in potentially lethal danger, by telling them they don't need masks because… well, just because? And that you forbid them from ever wearing a mask!
I don't think any rational actor woul…
Oh.
Yeah.
"Rational."
Sorry.
And also, just awful.
I feel really terrible for the people who become the "collateral damage" in the war tRUMPists are having with… Well, frankly, everyone who's not them.
Their pure and limitless hatred for Black & Brown people, women, the LGBTQ folks, libtards, and a (ass)whole host of "Others," leads them to act not just against the their own interests, but against every and any body else around them.
Why put others in danger?
Maybe because psychologically, deep down, these people know they're worthless as human beings. I think they know they"re out of step. That they're basically useless. So, if you can't be a productive person, at least you can be a disruptive person. Basically, they know to some degree, that they're physically, intellectually, and or emotionally… Don't hate me, because this "R"-word is verboten.
But here goes: Basically, they aware to some level that they're not like the others. That they're physically, intellectually, and/or emotionally "Retarded."
Sorry again.
That's the word that best fits, imo.
And they find others like them.
tRUMP is like magnet for suckers, saps, bobo's, marks, lugs, mugs, pugs, slugs, thugs,* loons, dim/nit/half/fuck-wits, and all of the other humans that we "normal" human types don't want to be associated with.
They're abnormal.
Yes, they've got "Abbie Normal's" brain!**
*H/t to the great Mel Brooks
**Ditto.
Note: I’m doing a hell of a lot of generalizing when I’m describing people.
The real question is why have Republicans decided that public health is not a function of the government and want to go back to 1900 when infectious diseases were the biggest killers of Americans.
Go, Governor Newsom!
“I see your nonsense, and I raise you”
Be to see We’re Stuck with the Senate. What then?, James Fallows’ follow-up to Fools, drunks, and the United States of America
This quote from the follow up article got to me:
Fair and balanced is nothing but a f**king bifurcated mess. You have no shades of grey and even the psycho's think they deserve a seat at the table. Whose dumb idea was this? Putin's?
Think about all the ways living in a batshit red state endangers your health — lack of COVID control measures, more unvaxed dumbasses, less pollution controls, less workplace safety and hygeine enforcement, less gun control, opiod epidemics, starved public health institutions, neglected hospitals and shittier roads.