COVID-19 and the New Right Thing

COVID-19 and the New Right Thing

I have a very short, simple email address, so I get errant correspondence all the time. I usually just alert the sender of their mistake so they can redirect it to the intended recipient, but then there are times when I take a different tack. Here’s one!

(Names aside from my own have been changed because my aim is to educate and perhaps entertain, not shame — though any weird spacing and grammatical/syntactical inconsistencies remain because I charge for proofreading/editing and nobody paid me to clean up their mess.)

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 4:30 PM Norm Hunkerblee <norm@bossanovababy.com> wrote:

BILBO School Board,

Ffion and I, Norm Hunkerblee have two daughters (Norma and Naomi) that attend BILBO and a younger daughter (Olga) who attends Shire School. Naomi is in her second year at BILBO and Norma is a first year student.

There is no doubt, we chose BILBO for the right reason. We are here because of our conservative beliefs and desire for a Christian-based education for our children. We often share a positive message of the noticeable difference in our girls’ Increased confidence and sense of calmness that we attribute to your program. This combined with our focus on reassuring our children that we will work to ensure their safety has allowed them to navigate this difficult time.

However, the task of navigating the situation is incredibly difficult given the mixed messages and mostly ridiculous masking policIes pushed by authorities across the country. Now it seems, these same policies have made their way into our school.

Make no mistake, we want the masks off our kids. I realize going without masks is harder for BILBO administration than following the prevailing sentiment. But we believe it is the right thing to do and the right thing usually is more difficult. Teach our kids to live their best life, support others regardless of their beliefs, and wait for an opportunity to share what they have learned at BILBO with others.

If you simply want silence from parents, the current system of mask shaming/Administrator threats/Peer tattling will achieve silence eventually. But, forcing masks on our kids will diminish support for the program and undermine the work that has been done. If you think the benefit outweighs the risk, own it. A ‘our hands are tied’ excuse from school leadership is not good enough.

Sincerely,

Norm and Ffion Hunkerblee

Sent from my iPhone

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 5:27 PM Robert Glen Fogarty <fogarty@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Norm and Ffion! Great to hear from you, and I’ve carefully considered your proposition.

Please wear masks. Please encourage your children to wear masks. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the very least we can all do to help each other during an already difficult time. Wishing for the pandemic to just go away because it’s an inconvenience — and pretending it’s not still running rampant by eschewing proven, medically directed protocols — is largely why we’re currently experiencing such a massive uptick in cases around the world. Acting as if it doesn’t exist is a woefully ineffective measure against COVID-19, because science doesn’t care about what you believe is the right thing to do. It sets a poor example for our children, and frankly, as the grown-ups in the room, we should strive to do better by them and each other.

Here are some recent findings to help you correct course and find a new right thing in which to believe.

Face Masks: What the Data Say | Nature, October 2020

Best,

R.G. Fogarty

Sent from my Speak & Spell

[Photo by Daniel Adesina on Unsplash]

About Robert Glen Fogarty

Sometimes I'll take the wrong bus just to get out of the cold for a little while.

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