Well, so much for having a little more sanity by our colleges when it comes to getting back to normal for the coming school year. Clemson University has come out with it’s policy regarding vaccinations for the Covid. Everyone is required to get fully vaccinated. If you do not, there are protocols to follow of which the key one is that you must self identify and wear your mask while at Clemson. I don’t know yet if university officials will allow the unvaccinated to take their masks off while walking to class or not. It probably depends upon if they are walking with others. Here is an FAQ that Clemson has posted. I don’t know if this is the most recent FAQ.
It also hasn’t been made clear exactly how this will be enforced and how they will identify if one of their unvaccinated students breaks the rules and doesn’t wear a mask. Will the university expect its college students to rat out their friends who are not vaxxed if they are not wearing a mask? I guess that begs another question…are students so brainwashed on the vaccinations that will they even consider being friends with others who aren’t vaccinated? Are they okay with being around people in masks if they know that’s an identifier notifying the world that this person did not get vaccinated and thus might be a danger to themselves and others? 😉
Clemson did not have to step in to this. They could have just said we are opening up for in-person classes. If you want to get the vaxx, get the vaxx. If you feel safter wearing a mask, wear a mask as worthless as that is. Don’t test for Covid this year. That was a complete waste of money and caused undue stress, fear and anxiety.
The elite universities have been all in on Covid and the vaccines. It does surprise me to see a big public and much beloved university like Clemson jump in to the fray with what I think is a very overbearing Covid policy. It’s time to move on.
My sense is there is a full court press on to get as many vaccinated as possible in the next couple of months. Those who wanted to get vaxxed, got vaxxed. It seems the numbers getting vaccinated now have fallen off precipitiously…thus the need for the hard lines, fear tactics and outright bribing we’re seeing take place in the culture to convince people to get vaccinated.
On Tuesday this week, South Carolina Governor, Henry McMaster issued a new executive order. He cut the legs out from the tyrannical city mayors and councils and school districts across the state with their silly mask mandates. It literally was CHECKMATE on the tyrannical actions of local schools and cities. It was brilliant.
There was immediate pushback from some places as seen on various posts on Facebook. Greenville County Schools which has been a huge proponent of the mask, was not going to give up their masks quietly. They issued a statement to the effect that they weren’t sure if McMaster’s EO was legal and their lawyers were taking a look. I believe it was then the next day that South Carolina’s School Superintendent issued her own statement saying they would drop the mask mandate due to to the Governor’s EO. I believe it was after that that Greenville County Schools succumbed to the dropping of the mask. However, I believe students need written permission on the specific state form in order to show up maskless. Then one by one, the mask mandates were dropped…cities and schools started to fall in line. The biggest one was the City of Greenville had to finally cave as they had no standing any longer.
All of this just shows me that this was all theater and there was no benefit to the mask. It just finally took political courage and leadership from our Governor to finally stand up to this nonsense. The maskers are ticked off of course. I’m sure the school districts are besides themselves and panicked as to what to do now. I like to say that Greenville became the Mask Capitol of the South. Good riddance to the mask but something tells me this isn’t over yet.
Apparently it’s still a Federal rule that school children must wear masks on buses. Good luck enforcing that. Businesses can still require masks so I’m sure there are plenty of restaurants in downtown Greenville who will leave their mask signs up and require their employees to be masked. But really, how silly is it at this point to require masks? Costco won’t give them up, that’s for sure. Put Best Buy in to that crowd as well. If they ever do give them up, you will know that the “pandemic” is truly over.
Earlier this week, a crowd of parents and students gathered outside of where the Greenville County Schools Trustees were having their meeting. They were calling for an end to the mask. Many of the maskers on Facebook were ridiculing these parents and kids for their efforts. However, the next day, the Governor dropped his Executive Order.
Now it’s on to continually reminding the voting public that these people put in the mask mandate. Every mayor, council member or school board member who voted for the mask must be voted out. Oh, and particularly for those in leadership at Greenville County Schools who are making it difficult just to drop the masks, I do hope you will continue to wear your mask until the last mask on a child is still showing up to school.
The South Carolina Department of Education has come out with busing protocols for the 2020-2021 school year. They have an entire web site called Dedication to Education to provide guidance as to how schools should operate this year during Covid-19. This comes from the work led by State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman who convened school administration leaders and teachers from all over the state to participate in the AccelerateED task force.
From Dedication to Education:
“The first thing you should know is that all our focus, and every single one of our priorities, are directed toward protecting the health, safety and wellness of students and staff while giving students the best possible learning experience that is as close to normal as health and safety allow.”
There still appears to be a lot up in the air yet for this coming school year. We are waiting to hear from Greenville County Schools supposedly by July 21st as to what their plan will be for opening.
Governor McMaster yesterday suggested that schools should delay the opening until September 8th due to the spike in Covid cases right now in South Carolina.
At some point maybe people will start looking at the data that is staring us all right in the face. South Carolina has seen an increase in Covid-19 positive cases by 400-700% over the past 6 weeks. We had been tracking about 250-300 cases per day to now 1500-2200 per day. And yet today, we heard from SC DHEC that they had NO CONFIRMED DEATHS due to Covid-19. WOW!
We’ve seen no uptick in deaths in the past 6 weeks. We have seen an increase of hospital usage in the past 6 weeks but nothing at this point to worry about.
Today there have been discussions about opening or not opening schools in person. We’ve also seen the SCHSL decide to delay the start of the fall sports season for now with the potential to cancel it altogether.
My guess is if we just stopped wearing masks and moved on to other topics, people would soon enough forget about the virus.
We still don’t know if our schools will be playing high school sports this fall. The South Carolina State High School League will hold a public meeting via Zoom tomorrow, July 15th at 8am eastern. It will be broadcast live from the SCHSL Facebook Page.
South Carolina State Parks just issued a mask mandate requiring visitors over the age of two to wear masks while visiting the parks.
According to the South Carolina State Parks Facebook Page:
“Effective immediately, visitors over the age of two years old are required to wear a mask in any state park facility staffed by employees or where the general public may congregate. This includes park offices, visitor centers, stores, nature centers, restrooms or while touring any indoor facility being considered for rent. In the event that visitors do not have a mask, they will be asked to remain outside of the facility and park employees will assist them and accommodate their needs, if possible.
Any park rental facility to include cabins, campsites, picnic shelters, group facilities, etc, are considered as having restricted use and will be the responsibility of the party renting that facility. It is recommended that they follow all CDC and SCDHEC guidelines regarding social distancing and mask wearing, but park staff will not be responsible for reinforcing those guidelines.
We thank you for your cooperation and understanding as we work to stop the spread and protect our visitors and employees.”
This sounds serious folks. The Greenville County Schools Board of Trustees are holding a meeting tomorrow morning at 9am to discuss the upcoming school year.
Given the incredible rise in positive coronavirus cases in the past 6-7 weeks here in South Carolina, I’ve been of the opinion that they will not be going back to school this year and that everything will be virtual. Just today, South Carolina DHEC announced that we had 1,532 new Covid-19 cases and 13 new deaths…205 are on ventilators. We’ll see what the Trustees have to say after tomorrow’s meeting.
Note, I’d like to see the students go back to face to face education. We’ve seen the sharp spike in Covid cases but not a corresponding rise in deaths fortunately. Perhaps we’ve nearly achieved herd immunity? Maybe the virus is weaking? I don’t know but just following the data, I personally don’t have big concerns at this time.