The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Last week when I featured the psychologist who had predicted we humans would veer off-kilter in a pandemic, he said the one thing he hadn’t foreseen is how much the public health effort would get bizarrely undermined from the top down.
This stubborn failure of political leadership continues today. There was another glaring example of it this past week in the Tri-Cities region. The congressman there, Rep. Dan Newhouse, has picked the peak of a local surge to plunge into the pandemic culture wars by co-sponsoring a new bill called the “Masks Off Act.”
The bill is like a totem for our time. Introduced as schools have been struggling to get back to full-time in-person learning, it seeks not to bolster the overall public health effort, but to reward parents, in taxpayer dollars, who are fleeing from it.
Riding the anti-mask protests, it proposes to give parents grants, up to the per-pupil amount that the government pays for public education, so they can pull their student from any school that has a mask requirement and send them to one that doesn’t.
In this state that’s going to be tricky because private schools are supposed to be masking up, too. But the money could be used as well for hiring private, and presumably maskless, tutors or instructors. In Washington, the average per-student cost is about $13,000 annually.
“Equipping families to make their own choices is the only way forward,” Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, said in a news release Wednesday. The very next day though, health officials in the Tri-Cities, which Newhouse represents, announced that 29 percent of all COVID cases in the area are among children.
“We are seeing a significant increase in cases in our school-aged children,” said Dr. Amy Person of the Benton-Franklin Health District.
So Person begged, for the umpteenth time in 19 months, for people to please wear masks, get vaccinated and limit indoor gatherings. Recently the mayors of the three cities, along with doctors and the heads of the local hospitals, co-signed an effort called “Any Two Will Do” that pleaded with recalcitrant local residents to do just two of those three pandemic strategies. “Our counties are in crisis with COVID raging through our community,” the letter says. “It is time for everyone to do whatever they can to stop the spread. Everyone.”
Everyone? The congressman who represents the region is out with the exact opposite message.
The “Masks Off Act” not only undermines this plea right in its name, it proposes to shift taxpayer resources out of one of the core institutions — schools — on the front lines of the battle. And it would give that money to people who not only aren’t doing whatever they can to stop the spread, but are throwing a fit over the relatively mild request to wear masks as a way to try to keep the schools open.
This bill won’t pass (I think?), as its main purpose is to pander to the crowds who have been out screaming at school boards. But when the histories of the pandemic of 2020-2021 are written, the longest chapter ought to be devoted, as the psychologist recommends, to our strange and enduring leadership dysfunction.
Any two will do, the doctors beg. Nope, the politician responds: Masks off! We’ll even pay you not to do your part.
Morning Briefing Newsletter
Get a rundown of the latest local and regional news every Mon-Fri morning.
