Franklin, Tennessee: School board meeting shows how polarized public health is

An explosive school board meeting Tuesday night in Franklin, Tennessee illustrated how mask warrants, even in schools where students are too young to be vaccinated, have become a new front in the widely waged Covid-19 cultural war by anti-vax and right-handed vaccine skeptics.

At the Tennessee meeting, where the Williamson County Schools Board of Education voted to require masks for elementary students, staff and visitors inside buildings and buses, Tennessee reporter Brinley Hineman shot a video of the procedure disrupted by an extremely vocal and agitated anti-mask. demonstrators chanting “No more masks!”

Even more disconcerting, Tennessee reporter Matt Masters shot a video after the meeting showing anti-mask protesters harassing medics and nurses who had spoken out in favor of the mask warrant as they attempted to exit the parking lot. (The clip was later reposted on Twitter by Tennessean reporter Natalie Allison.)

“We know who you are. You can leave freely, but we will find you, ”said one man, as police separated the crowd so that public health experts could leave safely.

The Tennessee scenes are far from an isolated event. On August 5 in North Carolina, anti-masks erupted in similar hysterics after the Buncombe County Board of Education voted to maintain a district-wide mask mandate.

As schools resume, the delta variant is leading to a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases across the country – and especially in places like Tennessee, where vaccination rates remain low. Yet even as the number of hospitalizations for children rises, anti-masks are lashing out at officials trying to keep students, teachers and faculty safe while allowing schools to open for in-person instruction.

It should be noted that children under 12 – roughly sixth graders and younger – are not currently eligible to be vaccinated. And the spread of the delta variant poses risks even to vaccinated teachers and staff, as it has demonstrated a rare but still significant ability to infect those vaccinated. (However, cases among those vaccinated are generally much milder than those among the unvaccinated, and as my colleague German Lopez recently detailed, unvaccinated people continue to account for the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. death.)

Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that face masks are effective in reducing the transmission of airborne viruses, including the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Yet, going back at least to April 2020 – when then-President Donald Trump announced he had no intention of following his own government’s guidelines to hide himself – and continuing through the bashing Repeatedly from Joe Biden’s Trump for diligently wearing them during the election campaign, mask-wearing has become an increasingly politicized indicator of the severity of a pandemic that has now killed more than 618,000 Americans.

But while anti-masks can be extremely loud, they seem to be in the minority. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday found that 63% of parents of school-aged children believe unvaccinated students and teachers should be required to wear masks at school. On a related note, despite all the fuss at Tuesday’s meeting, Williamson County School Board President Nancy Garrett said she had received 781 emails from people supporting the warrant. of the mask and only 348 of those who oppose it. Like Josh Kraushaar at the National Journal Noted, this data point – from a suburban county where Trump won 62% of the vote in the 2020 election – suggests mask terms are generally popular, even in some red areas.

Nonetheless, speaking out against mask warrants even as Covid cases peak has proven to be a good way for Republican politicians to strengthen their base. Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida – two of the hardest hit states in the recent spate of cases – recently decided to ban mask warrants altogether, much to the chagrin of local officials who are challenging them in front of the courts. courts.

Tennessee, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of not only Republicans’ efforts to turn masks into a wedge issue, but also GOP’s efforts to translate vaccine skepticism into policy. . As I detailed in July, the Tennessee Department of Public Health, under pressure from increasingly vaccine-skeptical Republican lawmakers, fired its senior vaccine official, then banned officials from the State to engage in any form of vaccination for minors. The measures came amid a continuing wave of Covid cases in the state, with hospitalizations increasing by more than 100% in the past two weeks. (Just under 40% of Tennessee residents were fully immunized as of August 10.)

Unsurprisingly, after Tuesday’s meeting, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) posted a tweet endorsing the cause of parents resisting mask mandates, writing, “No masks for children!”

While a number of experts and public health workers spoke out at Tuesday’s meeting on behalf of the masks – “We would love if there was another way out of this pandemic, but what we have right now is a way to vaccinate our students and our audience and we can wear masks until all of this happens, ”said one parent, pediatrician Dr Jim Keffer.

Outside of Tuesday’s meeting, a reporter for Liberal Tennessee Holler spoke with an anti-mask nurse who proclaimed, “There is no pandemic.” This nurse, wearing her scrubs, was later escort out of the meeting by a policeman.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Stands – one of the groups behind anti-mask protests in the state – on Wednesday urged its nearly 13,000 Facebook followers to refuse to comply with mandates for school masks like the one who just approved in Williamson County.