So first of all, the good news – our local school district has announced that masks will be required in our kids’ schools for the rest of the school year!
Granted it’s only another month, but you may recall that this was a big issue earlier this month for me because my county dropped its mask mandate and the schools were contemplating theirs, as it hinged on a statewide order that is set to expire at the end of this week.
Now I don’t know what happened because our governor still hasn’t announced whether it will be extended or not, but apparently the schools decided they had more power than they thought and just decided to pull the trigger anyways. Maybe somebody figured that a lawsuit is going to take longer than the next month to get resolved anyways, so who cares?!
Well, I do, and I’m both happy and relieved by the result.
That said, this afternoon was also interesting on social media because after reading the announcement online, I shared it to our community’s Facebook group as no one else had done so yet and what followed turned into a rather interesting social experiment for me. I mean, I knew that there were going to be some negative reactions because it’s clear that not everybody is onboard with wearing masks.
But I’ve always wondered just how many were of that opinion because A) people who bitch online tend to be the loudest, and B) I’ve observed both good and bad days just going to our local Walmart at various times. If I go after the kids are in bed around 9pm, I’d say the vast majority of shoppers are wearing masks, but if I go around 10am after I drop David off at school, it’s far worse to the point where my trip last week was pretty uncomfortable.
So I’ve been watching both the reactions and the comments on this news post for a few hours now … or at least until an admin closed comments because some folks weren’t being very nice … and here are just a few unofficial observations that I’ve made about wearing masks, particularly children wearing them, in my local community…
Of those 194 reactions:
- Like – 109
- Love – 29
- Caring – 3
- Sad – 9
- Angry – 44
In other words, 73% were positive and 27% were negative … which is both comforting and better than I was expecting.
Some choice comments…
- One person was concerned about bullying – of people who weren’t wearing masks – because they believed people were already being bullied about not wanting to take the vaccine.
- One person repeatedly shared a well-debunked link about masks not being effective.
- A common retort was to “follow the science” as if to imply that science said that the pandemic was already over.
- One lady actually did say that the pandemic was over because we have a vaccine and hospitals aren’t overwhelmed anymore.
- Lots of complaints mentioned “not living their lives in fear.”
- One person cited losing 53 people in their life to COVID, which is just really horrible.
Other random observations…
- Of the 100 comments entered, the same people’s names kept coming up over and over … meaning that while it looked like this huge debate, the reality was at least a lot of the back and forth was a small handful of people responding with the same arguments.
- A lot of stats were overstated on both sides – one person cited 20,000 new cases in Florida every day, whereas we’ve really been averaging about 6,000 cases a day. Another cited “classrooms of 60-80 kids” in close proximity, which is also clearly wrong!
- One guy told me, “If the government told you eating shit sandwiches protected you against “covid”.. you’d be first in line.”
- Another fun person had a banner on their profile picture that said, “I would rather shit in my hands and clap than take the shot.” But in a cute way because it used emojis for the poop and the vaccine!
So the good news is, my kids get to finish out the school year uninterrupted and we can worry about what happens next at the end of the summer when we’ve got a few more months, and hopefully more vaccines and far fewer daily cases and deaths to worry about.
On the other hand, some of these folks who don’t believe in the importance of wearing masks apparently also have a strange fascination with shit … which isn’t great for public health concerns in general if they also believe hand washing to be a waste of their time.