The Republican party claims to be the pro-life and pro-family party and the only force standing between liberals and total anarchy, but they also regularly display their total lack of fucks to give about actual children and their families.
Today's especially heinous example comes to us from Missouri Governor Mike Parson who dialed into local radio in St. Louis for an interview in which he explicitly said that reopening schools will create new outbreaks of the coronavirus.
He also made it clear that he doesn't care.
“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.
They are "going to go home," as Parson says, and who is at home? Mom and Dad. Grandma and Grandpa. Brothers and sisters.
It's as if Parson believes kids exist in a vacuum with no parents, grandparents, teachers, or other guardians near them who won't just "get over it."
While Parson has been the most explicit, this appears to be a view widely shared by Republican lawmakers who've said we must reopen schools no matter the cost. And the cost is a much wider outbreak and thousands of dead parents and families, but that's just the cost of doing business, isn't it? All will be sacrificed to Mammon Trump's reelection campaign.
There is no collateral damage that Republicans consider to be too great and it should be said that while kids do not die at the same rate as adults, they aren't actually immune and at least some of them will die. The number will be greater than zero.