FAMILY RULES vs COVID MASK MANDATE WITH A VACCINE SIDE

Family rules are unquestioned behind the front door, behind the tent flap, tree house, or wherever they live.

In the housing world, a man is the king of his castle, or so we’ve been told.

We can all play along with this fantasy until it swerves off the tracks.

It works until the king discovers he’s not as important as he thinks.

He can lay down family rules, but the problems start outside the front door.

Here in Oregon we’re apparently awash in kings and would be kings having trouble with the idea of public health during this drawn out covid pandemic.

Is this a real problem? Based on requests for refrigerated morgue trucks, it’s a real problem.

Tillamook County’s commissioners noted in a statement to the Tillamook County Pioneer on their request for a truck, which arrived Friday, that 86% of the 361 new coronavirus cases were “unvaccinated individuals.”

And:

Unlike Tillamook County, Josephine County’s commissioners have not been promoting the vaccine despite its hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, AP notes.

Where’s the social disconnect between the sick and the healthy, the well and the ill?

Every community at the core are individual families joined by common need.

Family Rules Say No One Needs To Die From Covid?

If not, they should.

After all this time, things ought to be clearing up. If there’s still doubt among my readers, here’s the only review that matters, based on available science:

Wearing a mask lowers covid transmission risk.

Coupled with:

A covid vaccine helps limit the severity of the virus if contracted.

Why are there still so many questions about the science?

Is it because the kings in their castles weren’t consulted first about masks and vaccines for their input on infectious diseases? Or because the kings all got together and decided they know better?

If just one of them breaks with the group and wears a mask and gets a vaccine, they just lost their crown. And the rest of the royalty doubles down, encouraged by too many authority figures.

Authority Figures Usurp Kings

Governors in Florida, Texas, Mississippi all have opinions outside the medical advice given.

They play to their constituents, as they should if they want to keep working in their current capacity.

But isn’t Oregon better than that?

After all, the break with the south came much earlier than 2021. One of the statehood questions was whether to admit Oregon to the Union as a slave state or free state before the outbreak of the Civil War.

While geographically distant from the national infection caused by slavery, Oregon was not immune. The growing divisions over slavery were imported to Oregon in the 1840s as waves of white settlers traveled west on the Oregon Trail with potently racist attitudes.

When put to a vote by the people, Oregon came in as a free state, but with lingering attitudes.

A Faulty Attitude Can Be Deadly

Let’s agree that no one wants to die. Can we also agree that covid sounds like a bad death?

So why do county sheriffs balk at mask and vaccine mandates when nothing else is working?

Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen’s letter, addressed to Brown, accused her of dictating the state through fear and said the sheriff’s office would not impose the mandates. 

Bowen’s letter stated, in part: “We will raise our children how we see fit. We will choose to wear a mask or choose not to wear a mask. We will choose to get vaccinated or choose not to get vaccinated. Your mindless dictates will no longer be tolerated.”

I understand the reasoning when someone is called “mindless.” It’d disagreement taken to a whole other level. From name calling, to protests, to “Please send a morgue truck,” covid doesn’t care.

Keep talking the talk about doing things as you see fit and you’ll have fewer people to communicate with. Send a deputy out to remind the kings in their castles that they can do it their way, and be sure to reserve a bunk in the morgue truck.

Is it too much to ask people to show some consideration for others? Wearing a mask isn’t taking a knee. Getting a covid vaccine won’t turn you into a sheep. Asking sheriffs to follow sound medical advice won’t turn them into storm troopers.

Apply those three notions the next time you see anti-mask and anti-vaxx people raging about their rights and freedoms on television.

Remember them when the same people are reported dead from covid.

Be a real KING, and align the family rules with scientific data, not the feelings of a minor league blowhard.