Showdown This Fall: Face Masks and Social Distancing in Public Schools
When schools open in late August and early September, the world's economy will be headed into a depression. So will every state.
Between now and this fall, the American economy is going to deteriorate on a scale unimaginable by governors today. It is staggering how fast the economy is disintegrating. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank offers an unofficial weekly assessment. It is published every Monday morning. You can read it here:
Governors will have to decide how far to back off from the enforcement of the social distancing laws. These laws have created havoc for retail businesses. In the midst of a massive recession that threatens to become a depression, the worst thing that any politician can do to the economy is to maintain restrictions on retail business traffic. If a politician does not allow businesses to sell as fast as they can per hour to as many people as they can, they are destroying the business model of 80% of retail businesses. It may be 90%.
The social distancing rules, if enforced, are likely to bankrupt half America's independent restaurants.
Craig Ganz, a bankruptcy specialist and litigation partner out of Ballard Spahr’s Phoenix office, says that prior to the virus ordeal, the restaurant industry was overly saturated. He expected that factor, combined with over-leverage and thin operating margins, to lead to a slew of bankruptcy cases similar to what’s been seen in the retail industry.But now, with the virus raging on and restaurants forced to limit operations or close completely, Ganz says, it’s not even quantifiable how much his opinion has been affected in terms of the number of bankruptcy cases he expects.
“The impact of the virus on the restaurant industry is literally the worst thing that has ever occurred to the restaurant industry,” Ganz says. “I can’t come up with something that would be similar or what No. 2 would be. When you have that factor, you’re automatically going to be moving into the question of how many bankruptcies are we looking at some point here, and it’s going to be enormous.”
Governors will be looking for ways to pull back without losing face. In other words, they will want a face mask for their own policies. They want social distancing from their own policies.
The #1 test is going to be the reopening of the public schools. The fact that governors closed them is one of the most astounding political facts in American history. The central institution of the government for shaping public opinion is the public school system. Yet governors shut them down in all 43 locked down states. This was historically unprecedented. This was the silver lining of an otherwise oppressive policy.
The governors now must plan to reopen them. Politicians dare not close the school buildings, forcing districts to go to 100% online education. That would open the door for the Khan Academy and homeschooling in general to replace the public schools.
Here is the problem they face. Social distancing in the classrooms will reduce the number of students in the classrooms by half. This fall, school districts are going to find that it costs a lot more money to educate students. This is great news for the teachers' union, but it's bad news for everybody else, including the students.
Then there are face masks. Are students going to be required to wear face masks? Are the teachers going to be required to wear them? If not, then the whole lockdown scenario is a gigantic sham. It's fake. If we cannot protect the children against the pandemic, then the lockdowns are a fraud. On the other hand, if the lockdowns are required, and families must be protected from their children coming home from school carrying the coronavirus, then all students will have to wear the masks.
There is no way that teachers are going to get all of the students to wear masks all day. There is no way that they are going to keep students from playing close together on playgrounds at lunch time and during the break times. To attempt to enforce such rules will disrupt classroom-based education.
So, the rubber is going to meet the road this fall. We are going to find out if the lockdowns are legitimate from a public health standpoint. If the schools are not completely restructured in terms of the same requirements that are placed on businesses, then this is a gigantic fraud.
The way for the voters to deal with a gigantic fraud is to go to the polls in November and vote out of office every governor who has not lifted the lockdowns to a level comparable to whatever is being imposed in the public schools. The public schools are the litmus test of the seriousness of a governor with respect to the threat to the public by the pandemic. If he goes soft on the public schools, then the lockdown is a fraud. It is an attempt by a governor to gain social control over American businesses in a time of major recession.
Most governors are going to figure this out by late August. They are going to back off. The litmus test of how far they have backed off will be social distancing and face masks in public schools.