“I think this is the only path forward. It is the right thing to do. ... Ultimately, it allows parents to make that final choice” – State Senator Rob Samson on the question “Who should decide?”
Let’s begin with the obvious.
COVID and its variants, each succeeding variant more contagious
but far less fatal than its predecessor, is not an emergent medical problem. It
has been with us on the front pages of our newspapers for two years,
approximately 730 days. We are old enemies. Here in Connecticut, “science,”
such as it is, has prompted the state to redraw its battle lines.
Many stores no longer requiring masks have pulled themselves
back from the economic brink. The emergency powers of Governor Lamont, more
than 20 as Connecticut entered its first year of the pandemic that originated in
China, a hostile communist, authoritarian regime, have been trimmed
considerably. All the indicators, both in the United States and Europe, suggest
that COVID has now become manageable – to be treated in the future as have
other flu-like viruses.
In what sense is a non-emergent medical problem an
emergency?
Governor Ned Lamont’s numerous executive orders have now been
reduced to two, a positive sign on the part of the Lamont administration that
the emergency is no longer emergent.
The reduction of emergency powers leads us to several
questions, some of which have not been addressed openly in the court of public
opinion, since news generating public hearings on issues of grave importance to
Connecticut have been one of the many casualties of the shutdown of the General
Assembly.
Why now? Why are most executive orders headed for the ashcan
of history now?
Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant, a longtime reporter
who has managed to avoid being submerged into the Coronavirus political sewer pipe or
the attendant political whirlpool,
writes in a February 11 story, “House extends emergencies to guarantee
federal money, “After a sometimes passionate debate, state legislators
voted Thursday afternoon to extend two emergencies so that the state can continue
to receive more than $50 million in critical federal funds.”
The debate lasted two hours and the two money making measures
passed on a party line vote. The vote was necessary because Lamont’s emergency
powers were due to expire on February 15.
As in all debates in the General Assembly, both sides of the
issue up for discussion -- should mask mandates in schools lapse along with the
bulk of the governor’s extraordinary powers? – were represented by different
legislators, a welcomed return to normalcy.
Arguing in favor of continuing the state’s masking policy in
schools was Middletown Democrat State Senator Matt Lesser, who pointed out that
a measure before the Senate rejected by Republicans that would continue a
masking policy in schools “does not grant the governor any powers. We are
reclaiming the legislature’s authority ... We all want the pandemic to end. We
are all exhausted.’’
Lesser’s party also rejected “an amendment Monday that would
have allowed parents — rather than school boards or the governor — to make the
final decision on whether individual students wear masks in school.”
Both the Governor and Democrats in the General Assembly had
already let fall from Lamont’s iron plenary grip decision making powers that
now reverted to municipalities. Decisions that previously had rested entirely
with Lamont would now be made by the municipal governing authority, with one
notable exception. The decision on the question – to mask, or not to mask --
would remain with a General Assembly dominated by Democrats that adamantly
refused to allow parents to decide whether their children should be forced to
wear masks at a time when many important scientists had agreed that the
prophylactic utility of masks had been, so to speak, greatly exaggerated.
Concerning the utility of masks, the “yes, no” meandering
pronouncements issued over the years by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s chief COVID
policy enforcer, suggests, at the very least, that so called “science” – the
last refuge, some think, of authoritarian scoundrels – had not affirmed Fauci’s
politically shifting dicta.
And somewhere along the line, woke parents noticed that
“science” was being used by master politicians to sanction dubious policies, a
realization that has flowered, among
other places, in Boards of Education meetings, even in quiet, austere,
go-along-to-get-along Connecticut.
Tempers are not so much flaring as changing in Connecticut.
There is a cleavage in the question – should young children be forced to wear
masks in schools? – that has not sufficiently been appreciated by politicians.
Two questions, not one, have been presented to Connecticut parents.
Question one: Should children in, say, K-8 be forced to wear masks, given the
changes that have occurred in the “science” of COVID from 2020 to 2022? And question
two: Who is best able to decide the issue, a parent familiar with the quirks,
medical and otherwise, of their child, as always in consultation with the child’s
doctor, or a remote bureaucrat, state or national, irrationally and
unscientifically committed to a one-size-fits-all solution to whatever ails us,
medically or politically?
The answer to the second question is now being played out in
Boards of Education meetings across Connecticut.
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