School Board Surrenders in Battle Against Covid

By: Travis Naughton

For the second time this school year, the Southern Boone County School District’s Board of Education voted to discard a previously agreed upon temporary mask mandate just as it was set to go into effect. This time around the board took it a step further, though. Not content to simply toss aside one safety measure recommended by the doctors and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the board took the extraordinary step of also ignoring the CDC’s recommendation that unvaccinated close contacts be temporarily isolated or quarantined from the rest of the school population. Under the board’s revised policy, if an unmasked, unvaccinated child sneezes directly in the face of an unmasked, unvaccinated classmate and then goes home and tests positive for Covid that afternoon, the second child (who has unquestionably been directly exposed to the virus) would NOT have to stay home from school until he or she starts exhibiting symptoms or tests positive. Bear in mind that it can take several days after an exposure to develop symptoms and many children who are Covid-positive never experience symptoms at all. Such a child who has been directly exposed to the virus (and not sent home to isolate) could pass the virus on to his or her classmates and teachers who could, in turn, spread it to other students, teachers, family members, etc.

See more in this weeks Boone County Journal