Everyone says that Bucks Central high schools (East, West and South) are the best in the county. Its students come from Bucks feeder schools — from the highly rated John Barclay Elementary School with 642 K-6 students in Warrington, PA., to the highly rated Unami middle-school with 875 students in Chalfont. (A hat tip to the Algonquian language that begat the name, a ready-made discussion at your college interview.)
Bucks Central does a good job online informing parents about Covid-19 cases, as this recent spreadsheet shows:
But what no one in Bucks County emphasizes is the bad job we are doing compared to the surrounding Philly suburbs. The overall rate of COVID-19 positivity in Bucks County is 6.9 percent, higher than that in Chester, Delaware or Montgomery County and much higher than in Philadelphia. The New York Times on October 9 said that cases in Bucks County had risen 25 percent over the previous two weeks. Again, higher than surrounding suburban counties.
Since the pandemic began, there have been eight deaths of children between birth and 18 years of age in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania as a whole, there were ten times as many children who had Covid in the first week of August as there were in the first week of August a year ago.
And then there are the complications. The Pennsylvania Department of Health now counts 142 cases of – hold your cravats! – Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MDS-C) in which multiple internal organs, following Covid infections, become inflamed, including the gut, heart, lungs, kidneys, eyes, the brain and skin.
It is not Bucks County alone that is failing in this area. But can’t Bucks County do better? Reject the nincompoops who argue that wearing masks is a matter of personal choice. It is not. Or squeal like a stuck pig if their child is quarantined after being exposed to covid, because it is “unfair.”
It is fair.
It is a matter of protecting each other. Because even vaccinated people can catch Covid-19 and pass it on.
But what ho! New data says that 17,975 Bucks County people have gotten their third shot, and soon even young children will be eligible for the vaccine.
The problem is that a recent YouGov poll showed that Republicans are less approving of childhood vaccinations, not just for Covid, but for measles and mumps, the whole horror show. Their attitude took a sharp downward turn in 2020, once the Great Confabulator began making up facts about Covid, bleach and horse pills, not to mention other balderdash, like corrupted voting machines. With Bucks being a purple county, which can go either way, it’s hard not to see how this is taking root here.
You will have a choice in the Senate election in 2022 to fill Republican Pat Toomey’s seat.
There is Sean Parnell, declared GOP candidate, “decorated combat veteran and frequent guest on Fox News,” who says, “My position on the Covid vaccine is pretty simple. … let no government mandate it. No vaccine passports or mandates. Ever.”
Or someone from the Democratic side like Mark Pinsley, a veteran and small business owner, who said “… still, some Republican leadership, looking to exploit people’s fears, fed by misinformation and lies, fail to take Covid seriously.”
There’s also the perennial Republican candidate and frequent guest on Fox News Kathy Barnett, who says, “These radical Democrats want to preach ‘my body, my choice,’ except for when it comes to vaccine mandates!” Somehow, I suspect Kathy Barnett had the polio vaccine as a child.
Or Ashley Ehasz, a former Apache pilot and U.S. Army veteran, a graduate of West Point and Oxford and former Covid-19 policy writer for Marion County, Florida, who has just announced that she will run as a Democratic candidate for Congressman Fitzpatrick’s seat.
We’re just saying.
