Bless his metaphysical heart, Tate Reeves prefers taking the Godly, "big picture" approach to life and death, rather than fussing with proven, earthly measures to promote the former among his constituents. (Sort of, for he also tries to cover his sanctimonious ass with vague blather about secular safeguards.) Said the Mississippi governor at a Republican fundraiser in Tennessee on Thursday:
"I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about covid … and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say. When you believe in eternal life — when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen — then you don’t have to be so scared of things.
"Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions. And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that and we should all do that. I encourage everyone to do so. But the reality is that working together, we can get beyond this. We can move forward. We can move on."
Unless you're dead. And if you're one of the Mississippi children who has died from covid, you never had the chance to experience even much of a temporal "blip."
Moving forward, as the governor said, other Mississippi children may soon join their friends now enjoying eternal life, for Reeves refuses to mandate school masks.
Among those who "[didn’t] have to be so scared of things," as Reeves put it, are "two teenagers [who] have died of COVID-19 since July 25, 2021," reports the state's Free Press, "including 14-year-old Mkayla Robinson, who had begun 8th grade at a mask-optional school just eight days before dying within hours of being diagnosed."
The Free Press adds that Gov. Reeves has "struggled to remember … the state’s child death toll." But its ultimate accuracy shall stand as a neoConfederate monument to the sick admixture of religion and politics.
And some parents will never "get beyond" it, they'll never "move forward" nor "move on."