As mentioned in the post previous to this one, I just wanted to make sure this important news got highlighted. The South Carolina Supreme Court voted 5-0 that the Columbia mask mandate violates state law. This ruling apparently also put to bed any efforts by schools to issue their own mask mandates…at least for this year.
Columbia’s City Council had voted 5-1 last month to issue another mask mandate. Here’s the article from The State Newspaper explaining the mask mandate ordinance.
Well, here we go…the crazies in Columbia, SC are hell bent on continuing with the fear propaganda. Remember we have a Republican Governor here in South Carolina by the name of Henry McMaster. If you’re looking at moving to SC because you are escaping a blue state, I’d give McMaster a C+ to B- grade. He is not DeSantis. His State Superintendant of Education is Molly Spearman. She just issued a mask mandate requiring all students and staff on any and all state-owned school buses. I don’t know how many state-owned buses Greenville County School uses but I will find out soon I’m sure and will update this post.
NOTE: “buses will be equipped with a supply of face coverings that meet CDC Order requirements. If a student boards without a face covering, drivers will offer the student a face covering. However, no student should be denied transportation for failing to adhere to the CDC Order.
I don’t know if there will be many students with the courage to get on those buses without a mask but according to Molly Spearman, they must be allowed to get on the bus even if their faces are not covered with a MASK!
This morning there was large rally / protest at Prisma’s Greenville Memorial Hospital. There are concerns that Prisma is going to mandate Covid vaccines for its employees. Prisma is the largest healthcare provider in the state of South Carolina serving as many as 25% of the state. If Prisma mandates the vaccine then it will be easier for many other health networks to do the same. It also will likely encourage many corporations to also require a vaccine mandate for employment.
It was a peaceful event. I was there from about 7:30 – 9am. The event continued on until 9:30am or so. I’m not a professional at sizing up crowd sizes. I did try to take my own guesstimates but it was definitely more than 500 people but probably less than 1,000 from my vantage point. The organizers of the event were SC4Freedom and Laurens County Republican Party SC. Here’s the Medical Freedom Rally Prisma Health Greenville Facebook Event Page.
There were all kinds of concerned citizens who showed up with homemade signs. This was not a crowd of professional protesters nor did it appear that the group had big sponsors in the background who could crank out tons of signs. Young and old…moms and dads, kids, grandkids…all showed up to make a statement that we will not stand for vaccine mandates and that we need to have medical freedom of choice.
The only people I saw masked were the media personnel who were there filming and broadcasting stories about the rally 🙂
Well I know this is 3+ hours away from Greenville, but I can’t help but publish some information about the goings on in South Carolina in general especially when it comes to the corona virus situation.
South Carolina has supposedly become one of the real hot spots in the country with Covid-19 / Delta Variant cases popping up all over. If you follow social media, you’ll see the screams from people pleading for folks to wear masks. And while I have seen a noticeable uptick in mask wearing the past few days, it seems most are content to take the risk and go barefaced.
So I thought it was interesting when I checked my e-mail today with news that Hilton Head Island has declared another emergency due to the Covid outbreak. Now mind you, no one can really point to a giant increase in deaths…just positive cases – whatever that is worth…not much. The aspect I found most interesting is that they are NOT hitting people with a mask mandate. They are only recommending people wear them. They aren’t even going as far as saying that masks need to be worn in city buildings or indoors anywhere. Not the town council could decide to do a mask mandate like they did for much of 2020. Let’s hope not.
I know that many of my readers are people from out of town trying to figure out where to move to as they escape the oppressive governments running nearly all the blue states in the U.S. So, if that’s you, and if you haven’t been to Hilton Head Island, it’s a fabulous place to vacation. The beaches are phenomenal and there are plenty of golf course to take in. Be sure to do the short 25 minute drive out to Bluffton, SC. Make sure you visit the old downtown as well as drive along many of the gorgeous roads with overhanging oak trees covered in Spanish moss.
Lastly, a unique thing about the beach on Hilton Head Island is that you can experience both the sunrise as well as the sunset given the position of the island.
Well it appears the City of Greenville has once again decided to embrace the mask 🙂 Yesterday it was announced that effective today, there is a mask mandate for all City of Greenville offices and buildings. This is not a citywide mask mandate and appears to be much more limited than the new mask mandate for Columbia, SC. Here is the official statement from the City of Greenville regarding their new mask mandate for August 2021.
If I’m not mistaken, I believe the City of Greenville is limited now in what it can require in terms of mask mandates across the city so they have gone with the limited edition – city buildings only. I do expect we’ll see a pick up in some mask wearing particularly downtown. We might even see some businesses decide to once again require masks to enter their stores, buildings, and offices. However, there has been a lot of push back against the masks. It’s hard to imagine that this latest round of government overreach makes it very far with the populace. Lots of people are getting tired of government telling them what they have to do. The Greenville area is generally considered a conservative bastion and they aren’t too fond of the masks or the vaccines.
If you want to follow along with how well South Carolina is doing with Covid, you’ll have no shortage of Facebook posts to read through at the SC DHEC Facebook Page. According to SC DHEC, Covid-19 – or the Delta Variant – is raging out of control across the state. That said, it appears that the number of Covid-19 Delta positives has dropped by about 50% in the past few days. I believe we were around 3,200-3,500 per day last week. Today’s report shows 2,220.