We get it: Lexington Herald-Leader columnist really, really, really doesn’t like Republicans. Given the newspaper’s record of political endorsements, and how out-of-touch they have been with Kentucky’s voters, Mrs Blackford’s political opinions are not exactly a surprise. Still, I would have thought that she’d read her own newspaper. After all, it isn’t even that big anymore!

Mrs Blackford’s latest column shows that she’s simply aghast that the state Supreme Court actually sided with following the law, and ordered the dismissal of Judge Phillip Shepherd’s injunctions preventing enforcement of Senate Bills 1 and 2, House Bill 1 and House Joint Resolution 77, and now she’s going to lay all problems with COVID-19 at the feet of the GOP. Mrs Blackford loves #MaskMandates, and wants them reinstated:

That includes clarifying the rules on school districts and the mask mandates. The Beshear administration says the Kentucky Department of Education rule is still valid, although there are plenty who disagree. Will it just be a free for all with some districts wearing masks and others not?

And without masks, cases will climb.

Without masks, cases will climb? We’ve had the mask mandate, for all schools, in place since school started. The Governor urged, but did not mandate, that local school boards institute mask mandates, but some local boards chose against such mandates, so the Governor, who had asked for cooperation, decided that he was just going to make it an order. Subsequent action by the state Board of Education continued the mandate, for 270 days, and that is still in place.

Yet these are some of the stories on the main page of the Herald-Leader’s website:

• Hundreds of Fayette students are quarantined. How does the district handle COVID cases?: August 24m 2021, 3:34 PM
• More than 600 students quarantined since Sunday in Fayette; COVID dashboard back up: August 23, 2021, 2:00 PM
• More Fayette kids left waiting Tuesday. Bus delays, cancellations likely until drivers hired: Updated: August 24, 2021, 6:48 AM

Previous days have shown a list of similar stories, and we have already pointed out that the mask mandates are seriously worsening the shortage of school bus drivers.

Translation: the mask mandates that Mrs Blackford wants are already in existence, and they haven’t done any good. Even if she argued that in-school transmission might be higher without masks, students live every day before and after school as well, unmasked in homes, with family members who have been out-and-about, out in yards and playgrounds and basketball courts. People, adults and children alike, are going to interact with other people, because humans are social animals.

The lockdowns of the spring of 2020 did not prevent COVID cases from climbing, and the mask mandates of the fall and winter of 2020 did not prevent COVID cases, which had dropped somewhat over the summer, from rising again. Cases began to fall in the spring of this year, which many attribute to the introduction of the vaccines, but the fall began well before the vaccines were widely available.

The left decried Governor Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) lifting of COVID-19 restrictions on March 10^th, but cases continued to decline. The vaccines were beginning to come available, but were not widely so.

In the Bluegrass State, COVID cases declined at a lesser rate than they did in Texas, even though Governor Beshear continued his illegal and unconstitutional mask mandates into June.

Texas and Kentucky have very similar vaccination rates, and Texas has slightly higher population density, 109.9 per mi² compared to Kentucky’s 107.4 per mi². Whatever is happening, mask mandates do not seem to make any difference.

Mrs Blackford should realize that; it’s in her own newspaper.