Opinion: This time, governor deserves criticism - let the kids play

It's easy to be mad at New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

She forced private businesses to close or limit interaction with customers. She said churches were dangerous places to gather. She ordered us all to wear masks and stay socially distanced, like she's our mother or something.

Most thinking people admit her public health orders have reflected reasonable approaches to combating a deadly worldwide pandemic, but, well, we don't like being told what to do.

And so some of us have chosen to be mad at her instead of the coronavirus. And maybe some of us have been feeling a little guilty about that as positive test results have skyrocketed of late.

Thank goodness last week she made a bonehead decision that finally justifies our frustration with her.

Lujan Grisham said our children can't play organized school sports for the rest of the year.

That kinda made sense early on, when we didn’t really know what we were dealing with. But as we’ve (mostly) resigned ourselves to living with this “new normal” and changed our routines out of respect for this disease, we’ve also learned that healthy young people are not at great risk from it.

So why can't we take a page from Major League Baseball and let the kids play?

All of the major professional sports, and many college athletic leagues across the country have returned to the fields and arenas with little evidence of serious illness resulting.

But in New Mexico, volleyball and basketball players, even cross country runners, have been sidelined out of an abundance of caution.

Make that over abundance. As in we're supposed to be afraid of our own shadows.

We only need to look across the state line to see there is no correlation between COVID-19 and kids playing ball.

In Parmer County, for example, where Bovina, Farwell, Friona and Lazbuddie schools have been playing sports for more than a month now, they've recorded 19 positive tests over the past two weeks. Not 19 positives in the schools — 19 positives in the entire county.

Next door, Bailey County has averaged 1.3 positive covid tests per day since mid-September.

It's true that Parmer County has had six covid-related deaths in the past two weeks, but anecdotal evidence suggests all of them can be tied to nursing homes and/or the elderly with underlying health conditions.

If high school harriers are dropping dead running around the golf courses, they've done a great job keeping it secret.

It's true the New Mexico governor has been the unfair recipient of our anger throughout the pandemic, when the virus is really to blame.

But at some point, we have to get back in the game, accepting reasonable risks to our safety like we do every time we get behind the wheel of a car.

Allowing healthy young people to compete in adult-monitored sports seems a good place to start the process.

— David Stevens

Publisher