What Do Children’s Shoes Have to Do with Vaccination Requirements?

Some two years after the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 made it to our shores, there remains no national consensus about how we should address it moving forward. Nothing illustrates that lack of consensus more vividly than hundreds of pairs of children’s shoes lined up outside a school. But what do shoes have to do with it? Everything, if you are a parent standing against mask and vaccine mandates.

The shoe protest is typically organized by parents looking to make their thoughts known to local school boards. Organizers began contacting parents within their own districts, asking for donations of children’s shoes. The shoes are then displayed near the entrance of the school or local school board office as a demonstration of the number of children who would be forced out of school in the event a vaccine mandate is put in place.

We normally take shoes for granted. In fact, how many of us spend a lot of time thinking about daily footwear? On the other hand, hundreds of pairs of shoes lined up outside the main entrance to a school is pretty stunning, especially if you try to imagine all the children who would otherwise be wearing them.

Parents Protecting Their Children

When it comes to mask wearing and vaccines, parents have differing opinions. The one thing they all have in common is a desire to protect their children. Some parents believe that every precaution should be taken to keep their children safe, even if that means wearing a mask at school and being vaccinated against COVID. Other parents believe masks and COVID vaccines are more harmful than the virus itself.

Still other parents are pro-mask and vaccine, but they are against mandates. They believe all parents should have the right to choose what is best for their children. That is where the whole children’s shoe protest idea comes from: parental choice and medical freedom.

Parents from coast to coast are showing their displeasure with school district and state mandates in any number of creative ways. The shoe protest is but one of them. Behind each and every protest is the central theme that parents, not politicians, bureaucrats, and school board members, should decide what is best for their children.

Protection Is Not Black and White

The thing to remember here is that protection against COVID is not black and white. Coronavirus is an airborne virus that is impeded very little by cloth masks. As for vaccinations, reams of data have proven that none of the current vaccinations being offered based on emergency approval prevent catching the virus or transmitting it. So it boils down to whether protection measures are worse than the disease itself.

If masks and vaccines were as black and white as putting on a pair of GC Tech waterproof shoe covers, there would be little room for debate. After all, the fact that shoe covers protect shoes against the weather is easily verifiable. It is scientifically verifiable as well, if you were of a mind to test the pair of shoe covers in a lab.

As for coronavirus and COVID, it represents a constantly evolving situation because we know so little about it. There is no scientific proof that all the measures we have taken to stop the pandemic have actually done so. We simply assume that those measures have, and then act on our assumptions.

Plenty of parents will have none of it. If that means their children must be pulled out of school, so be it. Every pair of shoes lined up outside the school house is a reminder of that sad reality.

Author: Stephen J. Lane

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