Phil Berger sez: "Don't Listen to the CDC." Apparently, the Watauga School Bd Agrees

 

Republican NC Senate boss Phil Berger sent out a fundraising email this past Wednesday that flattered his donors for their country wisdom and their scoffing at science. But what politician ever went broke flattering the ignorance of their supporters? Here's the full Berger product (from the copy in newsobserver.com):

I ate a lot of cookie dough myself as a youngin, usually surreptitiously behind my mother's back. "Get outta that! It'll give you worms!" That warning was no deterrence whatsoever, so I get the brilliance of Berger's analogy (the virus equals cookie dough, which some eggheads think is dangerous). "Owning the libs" is great sport, refusing to wear a mask or cooperate with social distancing or even concede that a pandemic currently exists. Flattery goeth before the pitch: Give me your money to save the state from "Left Wing bureaucrats."

It's all Trump's fault, of course, the diverging lines of pure pestilential rumor about the virus (and its progeny), invented for partisan purposes, or just plain lies, or the fiction-writing habits of a man who wouldn't recognize the truth if he encountered it. I can agree that the CDC deserves some condemnation for inconsistency of message -- did we trust it during the Trump Regime? We pick our authorities, someone we listen to, sometimes because they don't flatter us. I'll take Anthony Fauci over Berger most days (and you'll notice the truly low blow Berger dishes to "Dr. Fauci" -- the continued scapegoating of the good doctor as a handy target).

Trump caused the confusion. Watauga County is doing its part to add to it. Governor Cooper wants masks in schools ("strongly recommend"). Watauga County school board votes to make masks optional -- whatever the parents want. “Look at this again,” Cooper said yesterday, urging school boards to reconsider that "optional." “Look at the number in your county, and the danger your students could face.”

Watauga School Board member Gary Childers was the swing vote in the 3-2 partisan decision to let parents dress their kids for success, mask or no mask. The board has two Republicans, two Democrats, with Childers the Unaffiliated swing vote. "The motion ... passed despite almost every board member agreeing that they thought — while hoping it wouldn’t — COVID-19 cases and transmission would rise in the county in the future." Duh.

Will the school board reconsider as Cooper requested yesterday? Perhaps. The motion to make masks optional was made explicitly reversible. Gary Childers may be rethinking his vote at this very moment.