Mike Pence argued today that opening schools amidst the coronavirus pandemic is acceptable because “COVID-19 will still kill less children than school shootings this year, and we don’t do anything to prevent those.”
“If you’re scared about your child getting sick, let me reassure you,” Pence smiled, “there will be many, many more kids gunned down this school year than will be killed by any virus.”
Pushing back, the CDC pointed out that many children will in fact die from COVID-19, that kids will undoubtedly spread the disease to high risk people who will also die, that school-wide outbreaks are inevitable, and that cancelling the school year would result in zero school shootings.
“It is sad that we can’t open schools on time, but if we had followed social distancing and face mask rules over the past several months, maybe we could have,” a message from the CDC read. “It’s hard to believe that the unintelligent are literally killing the rest of us, but it serves as a grave reminder that we need to fix our widespread educational problems. Sadly, at this point, we look forward to a time when bodies are only piling up because of bullets.”
Photo credit Gage Skidmore