Dozens of Arkansas school boards have approved mask mandates despite protests from parents saying their children's faces are nobody else's business.
That's heartening to one who had expected the right thing only from Fayetteville and Little Rock, the progressive islands, and Marion, which started school two weeks early and is awash already in the reality of 1,194 kids quarantined.
State Sen. Clarke Tucker of Little Rock put it well, posting on social media: "If you were dejected, disheartened, demoralized by the [Arkansas Legislature] session, please take heart. Courageous school boards all over Arkansas are showing us that there's much more political leadership in this state, present and future, than only what's happening at the state Capitol."
And there is a much greater sense of responsibility among the people than in the Legislature, it would seem.
The Northwest Arkansas Council commissioned a survey that engaged in concerted screening to make sure it had a representative sample of unvaccinated people. The poll showed that 66 percent of respondents in that historically conservative area said they favored allowing local school districts to decide on masking.
State Rep. Robin Lundstrom of Springdale, the Trent Garner of the House, said that's not at all what she was hearing from her constituents.
Polls tend to capture passive and general views. Anti-maskers seem to be more ... specific and emotional and loud, let us say ... than the reticent and rational.
On one hand you have often-disengaged people answering the telephone and replying to questions in a vague and conceptual way. On the other hand you have people shouting and carrying signs saying "my kids, my choice" when school boards meet to consider mask mandates for students as recommended by health experts and now permitted by a court injunction against the legislative ban on mandates.
Notably, Bentonville School Board members walked past protesters Wednesday night to vote 5-to-2 for a mandate. They listened to bountiful testimony, including the following from a woman whose sincerity and partial thoughtfulness I do not doubt.
She said: "I am not anti-mask, but I am pro-parental choice. This meeting is not about arguing about whether a piece of cloth works. This, to me, is about the right parents have to choose our own children's health. Parenting is very personal, and I have made the decision about what is best for my children physically, emotionally and academically for 18 years. We are teaching our children how to build up their immune system and use wisdom concerning the virus, but also not to be ruled by fear and miss out on really living because of fear of getting sick."
Her obvious thoughtfulness is only partial because it stops with her personal situation and short of the public interest.
A highly contagious virus variant that strains hospitals and causes deaths represents the very essence of our human interconnection. It simply cannot be treated as a household-to-household matter when it comes to essential mass public gatherings such as for educating children.
This mother is fully entitled to make health decisions for her children except in regard to masks during a public health crisis in which one child's covid case is not just that, but likely an infector of other children, and from there into the community.
New cases lead inevitably to more people in the hospital, and more on ventilators, and more waiting for ICU care that may not exist.
There is a severe nursing shortage for the caseload caused by those whose idea of virtue is personal independence instead of responsibility to others. Nurses-for-hire chasing the pandemic's pay bonuses might choose, say, Maine, with 80-degree temperatures and 149 new cases the other day, over Arkansas with 90-degree temperatures and 2,900 cases the other day.
And, by the way, ask any parent of an immunocompromised child about the intimation that it might be better simply to let kids go unmasked and catch the virus. I know of one such parent who just about lost it when he heard that breathtakingly insensitive nonsense at a legislative committee meeting two weeks ago.
The very concept of protective masking during a pandemic is that individual responsibility means responsibility to the group.
A mask is more efficient at blocking the spreading of the masked person's emissions than blocking that masked person's receipt of a non-masked person's emissions.
The point, then, is for everyone to wear masks. Together we build a wall. The masks are bricks in that wall.
It's true that bricks and mortar can crack or chip. They also can lock down pretty solidly when packed fully and properly.
To cite the supposed virtue of personal responsibility in saying you'll keep your brick at home because home knows best ... that leaves a hole in the wall guarding everyone, the protection of whom ought to be a greater virtue, at least during a health crisis.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.