Judge Whitley and Aledo’s coach are right about COVID-19. We have a knucklehead problem.
Our county leaders are trying to slow COVID-19.
But instead of thanking them, we only give them grief.
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley of Hurst, by law the official in charge of emergency management in Texas’ third largest county, suggested that youth teams and sports leagues stop play, not as much over a risk to kids as over the risk of parents and fans shouting in the stands unmasked.
Basically, he was talking about the same people Aledo High School football Coach Tim Buchanan blamed for the Bearcats missing games:
“These knuckleheaded parents.”
Yet Buchanan was praised. Whitley was mocked.
They’re both right.
We have a knucklehead problem in Texas.
If grownups won’t wear masks and stay 6 feet apart, and make sure their kids do the same, then we won’t have any games.
We won’t have school. We won’t have a fun Thanksgiving or Christmas.
“It’s not just sports,” Whitley said Friday.
“It’s everything where people are getting together — games, events, clubs.
“We need to tap the brakes on that right now.”
Whitley, a 23-year veteran of county government, responded after he went to watch a grandchild’s softball game at a busy Keller complex.
“There were 200, 300 people out there — we were the only two with masks on,” Whitley said.
School and youth sports parents and fans come from towns all over.
They bring COVID-19. Or they take it back home.
(Maybe the games should continue without fans. Or assign exact seats and require masks and distancing, like the Cowboys and TCU.)
“These are the same people who want so badly for everything to be open, and for the kids to be able to play,” Whitley said.
“But they refuse to comply with wearing masks.”
It’s up to the grownups to be grownups.
Wear masks. Stay 6 feet apart. Lead by example.
When public officials say it might be safer to stop going to youth games, or civic club meetings, or weddings, or office birthday lunches, a good parent would not start dunking on them.
The county health director, Vinny Taneja, recommended Tuesday that families avoid indoor or outdoor gatherings at Thanksgiving with more than a handful of people, avoid inside dining at restaurants completely and avoid bars and gyms.
You’d have thought he said Texans should give up cornbread dressing.
Even Gov. Greg Abbott, a judge for 18 years, has been bashed by gripers and bellyachers in his own Republican Party for his orders limiting business capacity.
“Every type of business is open in Texas,” Abbott told KSKY/660 AM host Mark Davis on Thursday, going on to explain that restrictions are tighter in the Amarillo, Lubbock and El Paso areas because COVID-19 cases are filling the hospitals there.)
“The way to handle this,” he said, “is the same way we handled the spike in July, and that is for everybody to follow the best practices.”
He called this “the ninth inning of our challenge with COVID.”
At this point, we have two choices.
We can listen to warnings and try to help stave off a COVID-19 spike that threatens to steal our holiday joy.
Or we can be knuckleheads.
