Idiot of the Week: Says, "No big deal if Kids Get COVID19 at School"

Idiot: Missouri's Governor Mike Parson

Missouri's Governor Mike Parson is this week's idiot because he obviously doesn't care about the
health of CHILDREN in Missouri. He told a St. Louis Talk Show host “These kids have got to get back to school.... And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals.... They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.” (Some maybe will "get over it" in a grave.)  Here's the story from St.Louis' major newspaper 
A series of controversial remarks by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on a St. Louis radio show are getting widespread attention — and some pushback.

FULL STORY FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWSPAPER: https://buff.ly/2WBb8Ye
July 20, 2020

In an interview on Friday with talk-radio host Marc Cox on KFTK (97.1 FM), Parson indicated both certainty and acceptance that the coronavirus will spread among children when they return to school this fall. The virus has killed 1,130 people in the state despite a weekslong stay-at-home order in the spring that helped slow the virus’ spread — and the state set a record on Saturday with 958 new cases.

In the same 10-minute interview, Parson said that if it came to it, he would probably pardon the Central West End couple who pointed guns at protesters marching past their home on a private street on June 28.

Parson’s comment on the coronavirus signaled that the decision to send all children back to school would be justified even in a scenario in which all of them became infected with the coronavirus.

St. Louis-area schools are expected to release their reopening plans on Monday.

“These kids have got to get back to school,” Parson told Cox. “They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

He emphasized that people who are at high risk of becoming seriously ill should be protected but said most people in the state were smart enough to figure out how to stay safe without government interventions such as mask mandates.

“We gotta move on,” he said. “We can’t just let this thing stop us in our tracks.”

In an email on Sunday, Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, called the question about returning to school a “Gordian knot.”

While it is important for children to be in school, he said, and it is true that they do not typically get seriously ill from COVID-19, “we worry about those in school who are not children — teachers, support staff and volunteers. Many of those people will have a much more serious response to the virus and that is what we want to avoid. These children could also come home and spread the virus to others in their household who could also be at a greater risk of a serious outcome.”

In a tweet on Friday, state Auditor Nicole Galloway, the Democratic candidate for governor, said Parson’s comments displayed “stunning ignorance … on how COVID-19 affects children. He admitted that he’s okay with your kids (and your families) getting the deadly disease when he sends them back to school. Does he not realize multiple American kids have died after being infected?”