COVID PERMISSION SLIP: WHEN THEY MATTER, WHEN THEY DON’T

A permission slip comes in many forms. A ticket to a show, ID in a liquor store, including a professional license framed and hanging on a doctor’s wall.

I think of these things as a comfort.

If I’ve paid for a ticket and present it at the door, I’m in. Woo hoo. Do I also have six airplane bottles of booze tucked away, booze I needed to show my driver’s license to buy?

Maybe.

When I make a doctor’s appointment I check the credentials they use for wall decoration. What I don’t want to see is a small engine repair certificate from ITT.

But maybe that’s just me?

Permission slips have changed over time from hall passes in high school, to the current symbol of caring about others: The Covid Mask!

Oh, my.

Clackamas County Chairwoman Tootie Smith gave her views recently, views on masks and vaccines.

Smith went on to state that control over these issues should be left up to counties and their elected leaders and to the “people living in the trenches of life” in order to maintain order and peace.

“Vaccine and mask mandates are wrong and fail to improve public health,” she said.

When did Florida move to Oregon?

Science Education On Parade For Covid Permission Slip

Science education develops scientists. Science education is also a requirement for a Bachelor’s of Science degree.

I took Rocks For Jocks for geology hours and Organic Gardening for biology hours.

With that less than extensive science background I am qualified to express an impassioned opinion on masks and covid vaccines. Suuurrre I am. Call me an expert.

But that’s not it works. Not for me and not for Tootie Smith when she uses her position of authority to give bad science.

Feeding an anti-mask and anti-vax audience bad science is asking for bad outcomes.

I’m here with a history degree from Portland State along with twenty years in professional history work. That I’m also a former Army medic doesn’t put me in any position to give covid advice.

But what if I had graduated with a BS in Management and Business Communications from Concordia College? Move over losers and listen to my covid takes because nothing says infectious disease expert like a business degree from a defunct school.

From Tootie Smith’s wiki page:

Tootie thinks that following her state COVID restriction is like being a “second-rate slave”

Who Gives A Covid Permission Slip? These Two?

Local media explained it last year, and what’s changed?

More from KOIN:

Oregon is currently experiencing an ongoing surge in COVID-19 cases as the delta variant spreads through communities. On Thursday, state health officials reported a record 2,387 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 across Oregon while 670 people were being treated at hospitals due to the virus — also a record high.

This Thursday was yesterday, not last year. What’s changed?

People still listen to unqualified speakers giving medical opinions. What are the people saying?

“We are not here to tell people that they can’t wear masks, or they can’t access a vaccine that they want. It’s their body, it’s their choices, but we want to make sure that our bodies are our bodies, and our choices are our choices,” said Tiff Mumma.

Tiff and Tootie sound Pro Choice. Their body, their choice. Who isn’t all in on pro-choice? Good for them.

“We need to see each other’s faces and each other’s smiles,” said Karen Cook. 

Let’s be real. If things go as wrong for this Karen as it has for the over 600,000 covid dead, that smiling face will be the ICU doctor sliding a ventilator down her neck. It probably won’t be the sort of smile she needs though.

And she won’t see that smile because why? They’ll be wearing masks.

“We’d really like to see it be a choice rather than a mandate,” said Thomas Cook. “The way I look at it — if someone wants to wear a mask, knock yourself out, go for it. I just don’t want to be told I have to wear one.”

What else does Tom not want to be told about? Has he heard about Santa? The Easter Bunny? Sixty is the new forty? Knock yourself out.

The way I look at it, if information deficient people stand up and give faulty opinions to other information deficient people in a close public gathering with no masks, you might get knocked out.

Severe Illness Is Not A Talking Point, It’s A Dying Point

If you’ve never experienced severe illness, or been around severely ill patients, you’re missing a human connection.

Congratulations if you’ve never felt like you’ve been dropped at death’s door and escaped. Shame on you if you’ve never made the effort to comfort others.

I can tell you this much: no one quoted here is going to show up bedside for a dying covid patient who followed their no-mask, no-vax advice.

Go ahead and talk the talk, walk the walk, but know that you’ll be alone at the end. Just you and lots of clicking and gurgling sounds with a hoses and tubes and blinking lights.

What’s that hose coming out from under the covers? If you don’t know, don’t ask. Where’s that smell coming from? It’ll be coming from you, my friend, and it will smell like death. Your death.

But please, don’t worry about masks and vaccines because they don’t fit your lifestyle.

You know what else doesn’t fit anyone’s lifestyle? Dying of covid, that’s what.

Take Tootie and Tiff and Karen’s words at face value, then cover your’s with a mask.

Even if Ms Smith didn’t change her tune, she’d be more believable if she earned a nursing degree from Concordia instead of a liberal arts degree. They used to have those.

You now have a permission slip to leave a comment on this post. Don’t lose it.