In the public school unmasking effort, all (widely shared) good things come in threes
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Below please find a note that I wrote, in email format, to Estero High School parents on May 13th on the heels of two email communications from Estero High School that disclosed all the recipients’ email addresses — roughly 400 people, most of them graduating seniors’ parents — two times. The Estero High email I responded to was titled: IMPORTANT! YOU need to LAUGH!!! Beneath my note, you will find the initial Estero High email that I decided I had to respond to, given what has transpired since last August. Without further ado, my appeal to Estero High School parents:
Dear fellow parents:
We have indeed endured many hardships since COVID-19 really exploded on to the scene over a year ago. The question is whether the hardships were due significantly more to the very intrusive and disruptive virus policy response or to the COVID-19 virus itself – said differently, was the cure worse than the disease? With so many businesses lost, jobs lost, financial hardships, family lives turned upside down, sharply rising suicide rates, increased depression/mental health problems, freedom of assembly put on hold, property rights put on hold, and kids and adults masked-up either related to or comprising various aspects of the aggregate virus policy response, this is not an academic question. Separately, is poking fun at “all that” akin to poking fun at other tragedies? Would we poke fun at “9/11” or “the Holocaust?”
In a related manner, has the Corona virus (COVID-19 or the virus) really been a pandemic? It was predicted in the spring of 2020 that 0.23% of people that get the Corona virus would die of it (99.8% would survive). The 0.23% prediction was repeated and confirmed as more data came in. Moreover, it was ascertained relatively quickly that virtually no kids get the virus, that the Corona virus infection fatality rate of those kids that do is 0.002%* (meaning that out of 1,000,000 kids, an estimated 20 could die from it*), that kids don’t spread the virus well, and that face masks have little or no effectiveness in terms of preventing the spread of the airborne viruses (the mask lattice is way too big to constrain the virus particles), yet kids have been forced to mask-up for a whole school year.
The (sad) joke has been on us and on school-aged kids, our kids’ health, their freedom, their normal development, their psychological well-being, and their right to breathe free instead of dealing with school day-long oxygen starvation, CO2 inhalation, and a mask that traps warm, humid exhaled air as a perfect breeding ground for germs and bacteria, adding insult to copious and varied masking-up injury.
Now, my daughter Sarah, a senior, is graduating from this masking-up nightmare this year, so I don’t have much skin in the game anymore, although I have tried very hard to get my daughter unmasked at Estero High since last August, when this shameful masking-up started. Moreover, my heart goes out to kids that may have to suffer under this cruel and useless diktat in the coming school year if the education department bureaucrats continue to prevail — think back two years, please, and ask yourself if a school administrator had forced your K-12 child to mask up all school day long, if he/she wouldn’t have been charged with “child abuse?”
If you share my stance, and you are worried about sustained masking-up that your non-graduating public school kid(s) may have to face (no pun intended), then I strongly suggest that you consider clicking on all the links I provide in this email. The “this” links below, coupled with a family doctor masking-up medical exemption secured last October given the sustained headache, skin, and drowsiness issues my masked-up daughter was having (and still has) — an exemption which the Estero High School administrative staff refused to abide by — were the culmination of my multi-pronged, but unsuccessful, efforts to again allow Sarah to breathe free for 7 – 8 hours a day, five days a week, starting with the bus ride to school and ending once she steps off the school bus to walk home.
Yes, we all want to smile and laugh, and wouldn’t it be great if our children’s smile at school wasn’t hidden behind a useless, harmful mask and a laugh wasn’t muffled by same?
If you’d like to revisit breathing free sanity for the sake of your kids and also have a more detailed look at my backed-by-science claims in the third paragraph, you may want to give this and this (family doctor masking-up medical exemption visible here) a once-over.
Furthermore, and more importantly, if you, as concerned parents, would also like to chime in on the unmasking front, perhaps my efforts will help give you some ideas and doors to knock on, starting with your child’s school principal’s as well as reaching out to the Lee County School Board. More and more parents are demanding unmasking of their school age kids across the country, and if enough of you make your voices heard here in SW FL, the inhumane Lee County Schools masking-up status quo can change! Even the good governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has belatedly reached the same conclusion: “These Kids Do Not Need to Be Wearing Masks… We Need to Let Them Be Kids and Let Them Act Normally.” Moreover, Gov. DeSantis will pardon anyone in the Sunshine State charged for not wearing masks or not “socially distancing.”
In the sense of making your voices heard, let me close with two apt quotes. The first is from a great philosopher: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The second is from a pivotal Founder and Framer: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Greetings,
Dan Kurz
Post publication date addendum: I received no parental responses to my unmasking appeal proposal.
* https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html (See scenario 5, 0 – 17 years old, 20 estimated deaths per 1,000,000 infections)
P.S. – I’d like to most sincerely and gratefully thank Doug S. and Debi D. for their invaluable suggestions, content input, and solidarity in this “heads up, fellow parents” endeavor.
The initial May 5th, 2021 email from Estero High School that triggered my “round three unmasking plea” effort:
Subject: IMPORTANT! YOU need to LAUGH!!!
Due to a GLOBAL PANDEMIC, we have been forced to endure many hardships. Now is the time to relax and laugh some stress off. Our very own EHS seniors are directing a one-of-a-kind show “The COVID-19 Show” that pokes fun of this crazy past year. With so many shenanigans and EHS faculty guest stars, this will surely put a smile on your face.
The link below is where you can buy tickets either in person or zoom in!
IN PERSON TICKETS: https://www.showtix4u.com/event-details/48775
ZOOM (Hang out at home and watch in your PJ’s) TICKETS: https://www.showtix4u.com/event-details/51628
We hope to see you there next week!
Estero High School
WILDCAT PRIDE!
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