Members of the Board of Education:
Watching the “Boob Tube” Wednesday night, I was struck dramatically by the nightmare in which you find yourselves entrapped. I shivered at the prospect of being caught in your dilemma. Examples?
On the one hand I saw the hospital administrators, doctors, nurses—seasoned professionals!—collapsing in tearful despair at the number of dying children and their parents they must try somehow to face, and whose personal tragedies they must later cope with emotionally, within their own hearts.
What caused the unnecessary deaths of these children? In part, alas, it was decisions made by Boards of Education like you. And if children die because of masking/vaxxing decisions you make? Well, obviously, you’ll face the same horrors. Fortunately for you, you don’t have to wait resignedly to cope with decisions made by others. You yourselves can set the standards.
To accept vaxxing according to CDC standards? The current science-based CDC, not its politics-based predecessor? A half-brainer at best! But let’s put that aside and focus only on masking. Masking hurts virtually no one, and the minuscule number of potential exceptions could easily be accommodated. Masking helps literally everyone—ironically, even those who object to it.
[Aside: On August 2, I was admitted to a Volusia hospital for what was supposed to be an outpatient procedure. Because of a complication, I was confined to the hospital until late the next afternoon. During my entire stay I encountered absolutely no one who wasn’t wearing a mask—including myself, of course. No one!
Why? Hospital rules, of course. But why does the hospital impose such rules? Obviously they must protect themselves from the ambulance-chasing attorneys whose ads clutter our TVs each day. But, far more important, they have committed themselves to the Hippocratic Oath sworn by every physician: First, do no harm.
Perhaps those holding public office should swear their own version of a Hippocratic Oath.]
Wearing a mask has absolutely nothing to do with one’s own personal freedom. It has everything to do with one’s having the character and courage to stand up in defense of others’ freedom—freedom to live in health; indeed, freedom to continue living period.
It isn’t that easy, of course. Unfortunately for you, to save children’s lives—and save their parents, doctors, nurses, and others from heart-rending anguish—you must put your own lives on the line. Literally. You must confront those like the violently threatening thugs assaulting the expert medical witnesses after they testified at the School Board meeting in Tennessee.
Quite obviously, those thugs were stupid, ignorant…but dangerous! And, as we know from the indictments and convictions following the January 6 seditious attack on our nation’s capitol, Flagler and Volusia are crawling with such dangerous thugs. For you to deny that would be fatuous; to cede to it, cowardly; to ignore it, foolish.
But—as the shills on 3:00 a.m. TV infomercials say—Wait! There’s more! You must also cope with Florida’s Governor DeSantis and his rubber stamp legislature. In other words, you must face not only the moral burden of responsibility for children’s lives, and the physical threat to your own lives, but also the complex threat from a man willing to sacrifice everything, even the lives of Florida’s children, to advance his own presidential ambitions.
I’m sure it’s obvious by now that I hope you’ll have the moral and physical courage to require as much masking/vaxxing as you can. But also that I’ll understand your being unable or unwilling—for whatever reason—to step up. I don’t pretend to know what it would be like to occupy your morally, politically, and even physically fraught position. But I do trust you to do your moral and honorable best. That’s the most any of us can ask of another.
Sincerely,
Wayne Dickson
601 N. Amelia Avenue
DeLand FL 32724
wayne@looking4light.com
386-734-7235