This is important and quite a bit scary. Days after crowing about Arkansas’s southern rural independence or some such stuff, governor Asa Hutchison expressed what sounded like sincere regret over his signing of a mask mandate ban earlier this year.
Mere months after Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a bill that banned local mask mandates across Arkansas, the state’s top Republican has asked lawmakers to reconsider the prohibition so school districts might require children to don face coverings when they return to classrooms this fall.
“In hindsight, I wish that it had not become law,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
In March, when covid-19 cases were declining, Hutchinson allowed a statewide mask mandate to expire. About a month later, he signed a bill that barred local officials from requiring face coverings.
Now, Hutchinson wants to undo that legislation. On Tuesday, he called for a special session to reevaluate the ban.
Hutchison is a very experienced politician, so I was surprised when he gave into the rantings of lunatics in the first place. Of course he gives with one hand, then politically slaps silly people in need with the other as seen here:
“It is more important that we reduce the number of unemployed and put more people to work than it is for the state to accept any federal relief programs related to unemployment,” Governor Hutchinson said. “I will ask legislators to affirm that the director of Workforce Services may exercise discretion in her decisions to participate in or to cease participation in any voluntary, optional, special, or emergency program that the federal government offers.”
While I am glad he is seeing the light on masks, I am also concerned about what data he is seeing that he needs to call a special session to overturn his own law. This is rare behavior, not often seen in governance. Clearly he knows he made a large mistake, but it is unclear if he wants ot undo it. So what is he seeing?
Perhaps this?
Arkansas Children's hospitals report a record number of children are hospitalized with Covid-19 as the illness continues to prey upon the state's unvaccinated population.
The hospitals, located in Little Rock and Springdale, said 24 pediatric patients were hospitalized with Covid-19 on Wednesday, a 50% increase over any previous peak during the pandemic. Of the 24 children, seven are in intensive care and two are on ventilators, the hospital said. More than half of them could have been vaccinated -- anyone 12 and over is eligible for a free shot -- but none of those hospitalized had done so.
"We're seeing a real surge with the Delta variant that we did not see previously," Dr. Rick Barr, chief clinical officer at Arkansas Children's Hospital, told CNN. "This is the worst that we've seen it for kids, absolutely."
Still though, it is all interconnected. The same unemployment he decries is the same program that underpins families struggling to get through this pandemic. We are not the United Federal provinces, we are the United States of America, for better or worse. Had the obstinate states done their jobs, states almost entirely red-led, America would be doing much better.
But they allowed their politics, donors, and extremists to dictate policy. For the worse, because science can’t cure an electoral bloodstream infected with lies. You have to clean lies first.
So Maybe this is a small crack in the wall of intransigence GOP governors have erected with regard to their Covid approach.
Or maybe the neon writing on the wall is clear: Covid is still here and still seeking out the most vulnerable:
Grade schoolers. Who can’t be made to wear masks. Who have no immunity to a virulent disease. Almost like, nah, can’t be..almost like the politicians weren’t thinking at all!
-ROC
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