Florida Will Pay For Victims Of 'COVID-19 Harassment' To Attend Less Hygienic Schools

Oh, the poor darlings.

On Friday, the Florida Department of Health issued emergency orders giving school districts the right to impose mask mandates on students and employees — but only if parents had the ability to opt their children out of wearing one. Governor Ron DeSantis, unsurprisingly, has even vowed to defund any schools that don't give students whose parents don't believe in the virus the ability to opt out of this.

These new protocols also include a ban on "discrimination" against children who don't wear masks and a prohibition on barring them from any school activities or otherwise isolated. But the anti-mask/anti-vaxxers were not sure that went far enough in protecting the rights of those who wish to exercise their freedom to spread a deadly and contagious virus.

And that is why, also on Friday, Florida State Board of Education unanimously voted to give out school vouchers to parents of children experiencing what they are calling "COVID-19 Harassment," so that they can go to to new schools where no one will judge the little darlings for not wearing masks, getting tested or isolating after exposure to COVID-19. It seems pretty unfair that they are limiting this entirely to children who are isolated or tested for COVID-19 and not to, say, children who get head lice. Surely, checking kids out for head lice and then sending them home if they have them is nothing but pointless discrimination and a violation of their freedoms.

Alas, given the rate at which the Delta variant is tearing through Florida — the state broke its own record number of COVID-19 diagnoses three times last week — those schools may soon be fewer and further between. Either because the people who operate and attend them will be less interested in catching the virus from these students or because they are dead.

Via Tampa Bay Times:  

Parents can now claim "COVID-19 harassment" over a district's COVID-19 rules and apply for a Hope scholarship to transfer kids to another school of their choice. Specifically, a parent can apply for a voucher in "instances where a child has been subjected to COVID-19 harassment will provide parents another means to protect the health and education of their child by moving their child to another school."

The state has defined "COVID-19 harassment" broadly: "any threatening, discriminatory, insulting, or dehumanizing verbal, written or physical conduct an individual student suffers in relation to, or as a result of, school districts protocols for COVID-19, including masking requirement, the separation or isolation of students, or COVID-19 testing requirements."

Furthermore, the rule says "unnecessarily isolating, quarantining, or subjecting children to physical COVID-19 constraints in schools poses a threat to developmental upbringing and should not occur absent a heightened showing of an actual illness or serious risk of illness to other students."

As the Delta variant is affecting children more than the original COVID-19 virus, one might consider that catching it could also pose a threat to their developmental upbringing.

The real purpose of this, of course, is to present the unvaccinated and unmasked as victims of discrimination rather than assholes who don't care if other people live or die. This tack is evident in the approximately 80,000 attempts to link their plight to that of Jewish people during the Holocaust — who, it should be noted, were specifically not the ones trying to kill people. They refer to mask mandates and requirements for vaccine passports as segregation. It's all they've ever dreamed of, really — an opportunity to get what they see as the "benefits" of being an oppressed minority without the inconvenience of actually being one.

Another charming example of this happened this weekend, when anti-vaxxers the world over got emotional over a "powerful display of solidarity" in Italy, when vaccinated people burnt their own Green Passes (vaccine passports) in protest of cruel discrimination against the unvaccinated. Or, rather, a requirement that if you want to go somewhere indoors, you have to prove you are vaccinated first. A very, very good requirement that we are going to need to adopt eventually if we ever want to be able to have lives again.

Fully-vaccinated protesters in Italy are burning their vaccine passes in a powerful display of solidarity against t… https: //t.co/Lx4OsSWovr

— Michael P Senger (@Michael P Senger) 1628359440.0 

Except here's the thing — the Green Pass is digital. It's an app. There are physical copies like we have, but this is what they look like. They are not just random green sheets of paper.

A white and blue Italian vaccination card. 

Additionally, the original tweet of the video, which came from a far-right Italian Twitter account, did not even claim that those burning the green pieces of paper were vaccinated.

Now, I happen to speak Italian so I can read that — but so can literally anyone else if they click the "translate this" button on the Tweet. It just says, basically, that people are burning green passes to protest discrimination against the 30 million Italians who are refusing to get the vaccine.

The very emotional reactions to this video from anti-vaxxers on a QAnon message board included such gems as:

"Almost brings a tear to my eye, seeing this. God bless those people who choose unity over division."

"Go France go. They love freedom." (personal fave)

"God bless the free people of the world that can see through the fog and darkness"

"Gob bless those people. They want the vaxxed and unvaxxed at each others throats. This is a public middle finger to that."

"Is this real or a fantasy? People in the US are still so proud of their vaccines and their "special" status that I can never see this happening here. People in the US appear that they will not just accept the segregation of society and the creation of a sub class of citizens but they are eagerly and excitedly ushering it in."

"This video is so great to see. We need this everywhere -- as an unvaccinated person I am genuinely afraid of the vaccinated going up against me. This felt like great hopium to watch."

Reactions to this bullshit were quite similar across the anti-vaxxosphere. They have essentially created a whole ass LARP in which they are an oppressed minority being denied their civil liberties, and that the unfairness of all of this is so evident that eventually even the vaccinated sheeple will see how cruel it all is and stand beside them, on purpose, in an enclosed area. And that is fucking nuts.

The goal, ultimately, as with the ban on "COVID-19 Harassment" in Florida schools, is to remove all context COVID safety protocols and turn this into a social justice issue that is about discrimination and civil liberties rather than keeping people healthy and safe. Why? Because they actually just want everyone to stop doing anything to keep people healthy and safe, period, and let them do what they want.

The fact is, when you put people in danger, on purpose or not, you do have your civil liberties revoked. If you're drunk, you relinquish your "right" to drive. If you are a doctor and you amputate the wrong leg, you lose your right to practice medicine (hopefully). If you don't go to medical school in the first place, you never get a right to practice medicine. If you forget your ID, you lose your rights to buy alcohol and cigarettes, because selling them to you could get the store owner in trouble with the law. If you are not tall enough to ride a ride, you don't get to ride the ride because the park owner has a right to protect themselves from lawsuits. If you kill someone, you get sent to prison. These things are not harassment, they are not discrimination, and neither are mask mandates or vaccine passports.

This is now your open thread! Enjoy!

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