PHOENIX — Violent clashes caused by people who oppose vaccines or mask orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are on the rise across the United States.
In Hawaii, groups of protesters have gathered outside the lieutenant governor’s house, shouting at him with megaphones and pointing spotlights at him in response to demands that people be vaccinated.
In Northern California, a man broke into his little girl’s school and punched a teacher in the face due to mask regulations.
At a school in Texas, a student’s father forcibly ripped a teacher’s mask off at a routine parent-teacher encounter.
In Missouri, a hospital director was harassed in the parking lot by an Alabama man who accused him of “crimes against humanity.”
Attacks on school board members, community commissioners, doctors and politicians have proliferated. In encounters with locals, they have been accused of being Taliban, Marxists, Nazis, and lords of Japanese detention camps during World War II.
The demonstrations have turned violent and caused alarm among the authorities. Teachers, doctors and other officials are perplexed by the vehemence with which they have been attacked for the mere fact of having offered their opinion. And they are particularly terrified by acts of violence against officials everywhere, even outside their homes or their jobs.
“This week things have definitely gotten worse,” said Shannon Portillo, a county commissioner in Kansas who was insulted at an assembly Wednesday for deciding that unvaccinated children wear the mask.
“This has become much more hostile than anything I have ever seen,” he added.
The clashes occur at a time when COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing and calls are also increasing for the population to be required to be vaccinated and put on the mask, especially in schools where exhausted parents believed that the worst of the pandemic was over.
In the United States today, the daily average of deaths from coronavirus is around 1,000.
In Amador County, a rural area of Northern California, a teacher was attacked. A father was enraged when he saw his daughter leave the school with the mask, while nearby the teachers were not covered. Teachers who are vaccinated can remove their masks if there are no students around, explained school district principal Torie Gibson. This was explained to the father, who left, but returned to speak with the campus principal. A teacher concerned about what happened went to the principal’s office. An argument broke out and the father punched the teacher.
The teacher suffered minor injuries, was taken to the hospital and returned to work the next day. Still, the incident has shocked the entire community.
“Teachers are nervous, because the last thing they want is to get into a fight with a parent,” Gibson said.
“For several days they were attentive and on the defensive, but I think now things have calmed down a bit,” he added.
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