Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 2/14/2022

I'd like to take this time to thank the Board, and the Forsyth County Schools for giving our children the freedom to choose whether or not to wear masks, and giving our families the freedom to make their own medical decisions. While other education systems around the country, and even some in other counties in Georgia, have continued to force children to wear masks for years now, Forsyth County Schools have been deliberate, but firm, in their defense of freedom, and have done their level best to avoid needless panic and authoritarian imposition as we have navigated the impact of the China Virus.

It truly confused me for such a long time that we didn't hold China accountable for lying about COVID, and killing nearly a million Americans - until it came out that the Wuhan lab was actually being funded by our very own Dr. Fauci, for gain of function research. Once that became clear, it was obvious that any punishments against China would have to be applied against the United States as well, since our government was complicit in the research that created COVID.

And for much of the United States, for the past two years, our government has punished the people. While Georgia was brave enough to keep it's lockdown in place only from March 16 to April 24, 2020, for a total of just 39 days, my adult son still lives under lockdown conditions in Los Angeles County, California - now 702 days and counting.

Certainly we can all be very forgiving for reacting quickly and harshly at the beginning of the pandemic, but as time has gone on, we have greatly improved our therapeutics, with things like monoclonal antibodies, and the Trump vaccines. At the same time, much less deadly variants have evolved, turning an omicron diagnosis into something less dangerous than the common cold. The sensible response of the Forsyth County Schools, as we have improved the science over time, is something that I am very grateful for.

But not everybody has appreciated just how good we've done. Last month, several children pointed out some very scary statistics, about how COVID was now a "leading cause of death" for children. Left out of their analysis was that children in this country are so safe, and death is so rare for them, that even "leading causes of death" are incredibly uncommon. Out of a population of about 25 million children age 5-11, the leading cause of death from October 2020 to October 2021 was accidents. The total number of deadly accidents - less than one thousand.

For COVID from the same time, it's not 500, it's not 250, it's not even 100 - it's a total of 66 children, all with significant co-morbidities, that died. More children died of asthma and the flu during the same time - but nobody has ever locked down schools to protect children from asthma, or the flu.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic to those who still live in fear - we have been bombarded with scare stories in the media, and it's very difficult to overcome the anxiety that has been imposed upon us for years. Certainly, every one of the 66 children who died with COVID were irreplaceable, loved, and should be deeply mourned. But we cannot be slaves to our fears, and we cannot enslave others due to our fears. We can all be thankful that today, countries around the world are dropping their mandates and restrictions, some quietly, and others in the face of large trucker protests for freedom.

Once again, I thank the board and the Forsyth County Schools for being brave much earlier than many others!

Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.