Masquerade at the School Board

[XLFD]

The Ludington Area School District (LASD) had their regular meeting at 6:00 PM last night in the high school's library and it was reportedly well attended by 70 citizens voicing their concerns with the school's mask policy.  I had to get to Scottville to attend their clowncil meeting held at 6:30, so I had to miss this meeting.  Fortunately, the school board also had a special meeting held at their business office at 5 PM, and I was able to attend that and introduce my latest course on "Why are you muzzling our children, acting against science and their health in doing so?"

A person strongly asserting this question is a person that the four members of the school board who voted to mandate masks on your children would like to muzzle.  So it was not surprising that after getting to the meeting spot, that there was a note on the door mandating masks on all who enter.  I had did my research before this day, research is great, it's why I can proudly say "Masks don't work in community settings".  This research, however was done on actual board policies and rules, none of which declared that attendees at a public meeting had to wear a mask.  

I went in full-faced around five minutes before the meeting, only to learn from the receptionist that a closed door meeting was already taking place.  Since multiple board members were in the board room already this may have been an illegal meeting, it definitely wasn't noticed as either a committee or board meeting.  Two more members arrived shortly after me, I struck up a conversation with a masked Mike Nagle (pictured below sans mask), who, after some small talk about a mutual acquaintance, was wondering why I was not similarly attired. 

I explained that the school board has the power to establish and record rules pertaining to their meetings, in looking through the rules I could find nothing established or recorded for attendees of their meetings to be masked.  When he said there was, I asked for him to produce those rules, and when they were voted on by the board.  He explained that their vote on the special meeting on August 30 had that effect, I invited him to show me-- at which point an office worker was directed to seek and print out the relevant part.

When she found it for me, it revealed what I already knew, that the mandate was for students and staff, not visitors or attendees at public meetings.  She printed out my pass, and I went into the meeting where five masked up LASD board members were seated (Foster and Carlson were absent) along with the recording secretary. 

The meeting started with attendance taken when it moved to public comment.  Perhaps one reason why the school board thinks that they can force your kids to wear masks is that they do not acknowledge the greatness of our republic and the individual freedoms it affords us.  They do not pledge allegiance to the flag at the beginning of their meetings, at least this special one.  Something to work on.  Today, however, I spent my three minutes and change telling them that real science trumps the pseudo-science they base their un-American mask policy on:  

"As of this afternoon, the agenda for this special meeting and tonight's regular meeting at the LHS library was not posted on-line, nor have the minutes for the last three meetings of the school board been posted on-line.  Have you mandated putting masks on transparency as you have for our kids? [UPDATE: as of this morning, the day after, all three minutes and both agendas are posted on-line, thanks for listening]

I appeal once again to the school board, and in particular the scholarship and tolerance of Dr. Autrey and the three other board members who chose to impose a mask mandate on the children and teachers in Ludington Schools to reconsider their choice.  

In 1921, renowned epidemiologist Warren Vaughan proclaimed in his lengthy work "Influenza: An Epidemiological Study": “Certainly the face mask as extensively used during the 1918 epidemic was of little benefit and in many cases was, without doubt, a decided detriment.”  I'm surely not going to ask you to blindly follow the advice of a one hundred year old retrospective analysis of the Spanish flu, but neither am I going to tell you to focus strictly on observational studies cherry-picked by a politically-charged CDC completed after Covid-19 appeared.  Yet that's what you're exactly doing to justify this mask mandate rather than allow informed parents to choose their child's health care choice.  

At the last meeting, I showcased Swedish statistics regarding schools opened during the hot days of the pandemic which showed that over a million maskless kids going to school did not increase mortality rates among the kids, while maskless teachers actually had half the mortality rate of other occupations.  Why isn't this in your guidance from the health department?  Perhaps, they are too busy highlighting multivariable observations focused on two Covid-positive hairstylists at a beauty salon in Missouri and their 100 clients.  How do you even take a health department seriously that peddles such garbage science?  

The gold standard in medical research is randomized control trials, RCTs, and there have been at least 14 such studies that have looked at the effectiveness of masks against viral spread.  Thirteen of those were done before Covid-19 hit and their results were pretty stark in showing that masks didn't work in any significant way.  This baker's dozen of RCTs was the reason why our surgeon general in February of last year publicly Tweeted:  "“Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS!, They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus."

The most directed and relevant was a 2010 study in France by Canini, et al., which randomly placed sick people, and their household contacts together into either a mask group or a no-mask control group.  Within a week, 15.8 percent of household contacts in the no-mask control group and 16.2 percent in the mask group had spread of the virus to them. So, the two groups were essentially dead even, with the sliver of a statistically insignificant advantage observed in the control group.

The Canini study won't be found in your literature, as it does what science is supposed to do, replace myth and superstition with fact and reason.  Do no harm, revisit the vote to mandate and vote using fact and reason."  [END comment]

I would have loved to see the looks on their faces when I delivered this, but they were all masked,  The reason for the meeting was also masked, when the agenda finally came out this morning, it reflects what he said at the meeting.  It said that a closed session was going to be held to consider a Title IX appeal.  Title IX deals with sex/gender discrimination in schools in reference to activities or education.  One must assume that either a student had claimed a TIX violation which was denied by school administration or that a school official/agent was disciplined for violating a TIX violation by administrators and they were appealing that decision.  

This does not appear at face value to justify a purpose for going into closed session legitimately.  I have submitted a comprehensive FOIA request to get to the bottom of that mystery, which I will report on at a later date when that information becomes available.  That afternoon, however, I had an appointment in Scottville to make, in order to tell another public body why they were acting unhealthily.