Perhaps when the Legislature — and by that we mean Republicans — passed Senate Bill 590, they didn’t think it would blow up in their faces.
That is the bill, sponsored by Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, that is now under scrutiny because it bars school superintendents from mandating that masks be worn. Superintendents can suggest masks be worn, but they can’t require it.
So these captains of education, people who are hired by school boards, have enough on the ball to guide the educational process for hundreds if not thousands of students but not enough smarts to determine if those students need to put on masks to avoid catching or spreading the coronavirus. That’s the long and short of it.
It was in the early spring when the bill was signed into law. Fast forward to today, when the delta variant is crushing the state to a greater degree in many respects than the original version of the virus. Now, with school just a few weeks away, Democrats in the Legislature have asked Gov. Asa Hutchinson to call a special session of the Legislature to allow districts to implement a mask policy. The governor, who has defended the law, said he would talk to legislative leaders about the matter.
So that’s a good thing. The change needs to happen. Hospitals are full or filling with covid patients — including Jefferson Regional Medical Center — and those patients are different. When the original virus was surging, it was older people going to the hospital, people in their mid-60s and up. Now it’s people a decade or more younger, according to JRMC officials. And sometimes it’s youngsters who are now suffering from covid.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
We might not be having this problem if more people had gotten their vaccinations. Maybe the reason older people are not as affected now is because they got vaccinated. And that would be because they come from a generation that: A. Wasn’t dependent on wild information coming across social media, and B. Grew up getting a laundry list of vaccinations. People that age, for one, saw the horrible effects of polio and eagerly stepped up to get the vaccine that stopped it.
For those who are hesitant about getting a covid vaccination, we draw your attention to all the people who aren’t walking around today with polio, or measles or smallpox, etc.
Still, the state’s vaccination rate is abysmal, with only 36% fully vaccinated, which is very nearly the bottom of the heap.
So we all wait and see if the governor and Legislature can work something out. Republicans also limited the powers the governor had when there’s an emergency. So, now this is 100% in their laps. The facts are that the delta variant is running rampant, and school starts soon, and, consequently, the CDC is recommending that masks be worn universally by teachers, students — anyone who walks in the school door, a move that has been endorsed by teachers’ unions.
Democrats have been wanting this for several days now, and certainly, it’s time for everyone to get serious about masks again. But the Republicans hold the majority, so it’s up to them.