It’s not good policy

Trusting that actions of the Arkansas Legislature always equate to good public policy sometimes requires the suspension of disbelief. That’s always been true to a degree. However, the frequency seems to have increased. The lawmakers’ refusal last week to make changes to the state’s ban on school mask mandates is just the latest example.

In making its choice, the Legislature decided to overlook numerous facts learned about covid-19 over the past 18 months, data about the accelerating spread of the virus among children age 18 and under and arguments that masking is an effective intervention not only as a control to prevent spread of covid-19 from infected persons, but also as protection to reduce wearers’ exposure to infection. And it works best when everyone in a group is masked.

Instead, members chose to give more credit to the false notion that wearing masks affects the oxygen going to children’s brains and “just causes a lot of trouble as far as being able to think,” and to absurd doubts regarding the actual existence of the coronavirus. They then decided to punt on doing something to protect children, taking a courageous stand to do absolutely nothing and hope for the best.

Even the best of us might find it easy to gamble with other people’s money for which we have no responsibility. But it takes a special someone that falls well outside the parameters of the best of us — someone characterized by a relaxed indifference to and a reckless disregard of others — who can easily gamble not just with the lives of others, but with the lives of other people’s children.

Good public policy does not willfully put children at risk of serious illness, a potential hospital stay or possible death, however low those odds might be. It doesn’t deny school districts the option to impose mask requirements in order to limit the spread of the covid-19 virus among students and their communities. Nor should it ever leave even the slightest impression that those kids who might fall victim to the covid virus because of the policy are acceptable losses.

PAUL CUNNINGHAM

Little Rock