.Anti Wokeness and anti masking: issues come to a blue state county

 Update April `6, 2022:  The fired school superintendent is proceeding to sue the school board . Former DougCo superintendent says he was fired illegally over support for masking, equity policies | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org) 

Update: April 17, 2023

https://www.denverpost.com/.../douglas-county-school.../...

ign=denverpost.com-2901340#

Absolutely deserving. This is what happens when the newly elected ideologically tilted school board against Covid mask wearing and bogus claims the superintendent taught CRT got rid of one superintendent to replace him with another they had preferred..

Anti-wokeness and anti-masking come to a blue state county. Douglas County, a fast-growing southern suburb, one of the richest counties in the US. , is also one of blue state Colorado's largest school districts, It has been the site of tumult as conservative movements, anti-maskers and the opponents of "wokeness" in anti-Critical Race Theory have gained their control on the local school board in a recent election.  The race which gave the school board a 4-3 majority involved local wealthy supporters and dark money from national political action committees opposing teaching of certain issues of race and gender equity in schools and others also opposing masking mandates. The money supporting these extreme right candidates totaled three times the money raised by their more mainstream opponents. The conservative effort to take over school boards reaches fever pitch in one Colorado district (nbcnews.com).    An opponents of the winning candidates admitted " they were asleep at the wheel ".  If this newly elected majority attempts to impose their views of curriculum that whitewashes racial history to reverse gender equity in school district, years more of turmoil can be expected. The new board has already acted to reverse equity policies and to oust the superintendent. As we learn to live with COVID and the virus abates, the masking issue will also become diminished as a hot button issue. 

 The last time in Douglas County the conservative majority got national attention is when they attempted to impose controversial programs regarding taxpay funded vouchers for religious affiliated schools.  In 2011, that issue of school vouchers sparked a 7-year battle as religious conservatives controlled the board and tried to institute a voucher system that would have provided student taxpayer funded scholarships for their students to attend religious affiliated schools. Subsequent elections changed the makeup of that board. That attempt to institute vouchers ended in 2018 after the US Supreme Court had ruled against a similar case in another state. The US Supreme Court referred the matter back to the Colorado Supreme Court that had ruled earlier that the plan violated the state constitution. In 2018, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the case ending the voucher case attempt and the Douglas County School Borad ended the plan, which had never been put in place due to lawsuits and court challenges.

 Dougco school board removes superintendent - feliciamuftic@gmail.com - Gmail (google.com)  

Teachers, students protest new Douglas County school board's alleged plot to oust superintendent - Colorado Newsline

Colorado school board votes to end voucher program | AP News  2017

Douglas County school board members decry move to oust superintendent (coloradosun.com)

Douglas County School Board votes to remove Superintendent Corey Wise | Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org)

   Douglas County school voucher program now officially dead after case dismissed by Colorado Supreme Court, officials say – The Denver Post

Anti maskers and anti vaccination advocates are cut from the same dangerous cloth

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/05/29/mapping-covid-19s-spread-from-blue-to-red-america/ Highest pro Trump 2016 counties have the highest rate of COID19 infections.  COVID goes where there irresponsible adults who drank the and swallowed the Trump propaganda.  Anti maskers and anti-vaccination advocates are cut from the same dangerous cloth. The argument is the same whether it is about anti-vaxxers (anti-vaccinations) and anti maskers. At issue:; personal rights vs the impact on others. Both are anti-science and both are about being responsible for ourselves and our health and society. If the goal to kill the COVID-19 virus is for 60% of the population to become immune, either having and surviving the virus and/or getting vaccinated, then we should. get vaccinated. once there is an effective and safe vaccine. I will not make my decision based upon some ideological devotion to a theoretical concept. but I do appreciate the ability to have a choice based upon science...not some misplaced reliance solely on libertarianism rights and unsubstantiated beliefs. Trump's push to hurry up to get a vaccination is harmful if it shortcuts the scientific research and trial studies. We owe it to ourselves and others to get vaccinated. We are so far away from that percentage, we will not get there alone with those infected by surviving the virus they caught without vaccinations. .For those who refuse to get vaccinations or wear masks, they are unwittingly or uncaring enough to keep from spreading it to others. It is a matter of responsibility to society versus personal beliefs..and science.. I come down on the side being responsible to society and also to myself. Those values are not in conflict. My view comes from being aware of my self-interest, too.: I consider anti maskers a public health threat to my well-being especially since I am a senior over 80 years old. Scientific evidence is overwhelming that masks do cut down on the amount of spreading of the disease. I consider anti-vaxxers a threat to my great-grandchildren since all of my children and grandchildren have been vaccinated. against DPT and polio, and measles, and have never died from those diseases. Whooping cough is on the rise because of such anti-vaxxers..There is a correlation between the rates of mortality of children and the advent of vaccinations of over a century, as well., that cannot be ignored. .There are plenty of studies showing that learning disabilities are not caused by vaccinations but by many other factors, including heredity. My daughter is a teacher and she must have boosters and shots against DPT and measles as a requirement to teach and to protect herself from the anti-vaxxers in her classroom.. I will follow the science on both accounts...science provided by evidence of scientific studies and experts who know because of their education. Whether I get vaccinated against the virus will depend on how the scientific trials now going on provide evidence they are effective and safe. I will not make my decision based upon some ideological devotion to a theoretical concept. but I do appreciate the ability to have a choice based upon science...not some misplaced reliance solely on libertarianism rights or everything not supplied by mother nature or God is bad or some far fetched conspiracy theory .lacking evidence.

Why COVID 19's buck is stopping at Trump's desk in a paragraph

I was asked by a Trump supporter of why Trump should be blamed for COVID-19's spread. She saw it as all politics in an election year. Here is my answer: The buck is stopping with him as more people realized: 1. he denied the virus and said it was a hoax for months...and his true-believing followers acted accordingly, and became anti maskers. 2. He finally agreed there was a problem in July when "his people", meaning White, people and his supporters, especially those in the red state South, began getting sick and dying 3. He made it a priority to open business ignoring the guidelines set forth by his own administration members of when and how 4. He relied on the private sector to fill the needs of PPE and testing when defense act and money needed to come from the government as well as a national effort.5. He set a horrible personal example not wearing a mask and promoting rallies and indoor gatherings in which no guidelines were followed..including mask-wearing and social distancing. 6. He turned mask-wearing and other precautions into a political issue. 7. He touted bogus cures when even a 4th graders knew were stupid..injecting household cleaners, etc into the body.  8. He supported and still supports cures that subsequent testing and studies proved were ineffective and even dangerous..even after the studies and evidence were presented to him. And yes, it is an election year, but this issue affects everyone's lives, red and blue, old, young, and of any race.  It is potent enough  for that reason to cost him re-election.

August 12, 2020

Kamala Harris' acceptance remarks to being chosen as Biden's running mate laid out her "open and closed case" of why Donald Trump is guilty of failed leadership and deserves blame: "When other countries are following the science, Trump pushed miracle cures he saw on Fox News. While other countries were flattening the curve, he said the virus would just poof, go away, quote, like a miracle. So when other countries opened back up for business, what did we do? We had to shut down again. This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation. It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start, his refusal to get testing up and running, his flip flopping on social distancing and wearing masks, his delusional belief that he knows better than the experts.

All of that is reason. And the reason that an American dies of COVID-19 every 80 seconds. It’s why countless businesses have had to shut their doors for good. It’s why there is complete chaos over when and how to reopen our schools. Mothers and fathers are confused and uncertain and angry about childcare and the safety of their kids at school. Whether they will be in danger if they go, or fall behind if they don’t. Trump is also the reason millions of Americans are now unemployed. He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground. Because of Trump’s failures of leadership, our economy has taken one of the biggest hits out of all the major industrialized nations with an unemployment rate that has tripled as of today. This is what happens when we elect a guy who just isn’t up for the job. Our country ends up in tatters, and so does our reputation around the world."

Update August 9, 2020

Here is where the US stacks up in mortality rates. We have the 4th highest rate per 100,000 in the world, per Johs Hopkins as of August 8," this represents a country’s general population, with both confirmed cases and healthy people". You can slice and dice figures but this is the one Trump stumbled over and it is not dependent on the number of tests, confirmed cases, or the total population of the country.. This is per a Johns Hopkins University on going data study. 

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-trouble-thirds-americans-disapprove-handling-covid-19/story?id=72088513

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=59f46ed8ae7e8a2d8f8a4a21&s=5f247564fe1ff65e1171ab18&l