I’m unpopular. I also don’t care

We live in a ridiculous  county.  Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it here.  Until I don’t.   Our county is deeply in denial over Covid.  Here, it is “just a cold.”   Asking someone to wear a mask means you are “living your life in fear and are a sheep.”   Don’t even attempt to discuss vaccinations, they are a “form of governmental control, and the absolutely do not work.”    It’s like beating your head into a brick wall.  Actually, I think the wall would hurt less.   I have largely chosen to bite my tongue, attempt to teach my children that we should seek out our information from actual medical professionals, and you know, scientists.   Meanwhile, our school district threw all their Covid protocol into the trash.  Literally.  Masks aren’t required, except on the bus.  The fancy scanning thermometers?  Gathering dust.  The handwashing, and sanitizing?  Not necessary.   Social distancing?  Kids don’t need that.   Sports?  We refuse to not play, our kids are up for scholarships.  The 800k+ deaths?  Those are all people who had Comorbities.  (Name me one person who doesn’t have an underlying health condition?).  Anyway….this week we have had an explosion.  There are missing teachers, missing administrators, and the students are dropping like crazy too.   Last week, their solution was to shut down the water fountains.  Sure.  That’ll fix the problem.  Tonight, the board of Ed decided to reinstate the mask mandate.  From looking at Facebook, you would think they decided to feed all the children cocaine for breakfast.   I am relieved.  If it helps 10% of the time, at our current rate that would be 8 people who weren’t sick.  If it works better than that, maybe we can get things under control.  I don’t understand why it isn’t worth a shot.  Of course, I’ve never been popular, so if I started now I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.   My kids were not hurt by wearing masks to school all last year.   As a matter of fact, I had 4 kids in 3 buildings and me driving a bus and we never got sick.  Not one cold.  Not one stomach flu.  Not Covid.  I think the masks helped.  If I’m wrong, what is really lost?   If it doesn’t help, so be it.  But if it does help?   What then?   Honesty, I long for all of this to be something we talk about - something in the past. A lesson to be learned in a history assignment.  I never thought we would still be talking about this.   I have a couple friends who are nurses.  They are being forced to work overtime, forced to leave their doctor office jobs to cover shifts in the hospitals, and are saying it’s scary, awful and overwhelming.   Seems like if I can help them in anyway I can, I should do it.