As the fall 2020 school term began in local schools, both Rutherford County and Murfreesboro City school systems have instituted a mask mandate.

Nearly half of the approximately 57,000 students enrolled in the local public school systems began the year learning at a distance from home rather than attending a school building each day, according to Rutherford County and Murfreesboro City school officials.

Students and employees who do attend in-person classes this term must wear a face covering while at school.

“This policy is in place to increase protection from spreading COVID-19 while attending school,” according to the Rutherford County Board of Education. “Medical exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis if parents can provide detailed medical documentation from a doctor that clearly explains why someone cannot wear a mask.”

The new, strict face-covering policy caused at least one local family to step away from the public school system altogether. Throughout 2020, individuals, governments and organizations across the globe have debated how to respond to COVID-19, analyzing the seriousness of the threat to medical systems and economies, gauging how to react, how to balance the response with preserving some sense of normalcy and liberty, and where to draw the line.

In Murfreesboro, Adam R. Williams is drawing the line with masks, or as he refers to them “face diapers for followers of the cult of the branch COVIDians.” He does not wear one, and says the schools shouldn’t require kids to either.

“Nobody, healthy or sick, should wear a mask all day. It’s an unhealthy practice for numerous proven reasons and you shouldn’t need a doctor to tell you that at this point,” Williams says.

His son, age 6, attended a YMCA summer care program at a Rutherford County elementary school, without a mask, after Williams stated he objected to the policy on religious grounds.

However, when he showed up with his son for first-grade enrollment, the principal stated that a religious exemption previously respected at the same school during summer essential care “won’t float here” and insisted that all in the school would wear a mask.

Williams pointed out that the school system’s policy is at odds with Rutherford County Mayor Bill Ketron’s August executive order, which specifically exempts children 12 and under from wearing a mask.

“To be clear, I respected this COVID situation for as long as the science behind it wasn’t ridiculous and political,” Williams said. He said he just does not want to see government action taken based on “rising numbers” which include multiple instances of rescinded positive case counts, positive test results from individuals who never took a test in Murfreesboro and elsewhere and counting those who died in car wrecks and other completely unrelated passings as COVID deaths.

“They lost me with the fruit and goat testing positive,” Williams continued, referring to the controversial case of a goat and a pawpaw fruit testing positive for COVID-19 in Tanzania earlier this year, leading many to speculate on the accuracy of global positive case numbers.

He referenced numerous studies, among the vast amount of information he has reviewed over the past eight months, refuting the effectiveness of masks and questioning whether governments should require schoolchildren to wear them.

One study pointed out that typically the first rule of any medical action should be to “do no harm.”

Some of those opposed to forced masking contend that the headaches, breathing challenges, communication barriers, rashes and psychological effects of the masks may far outweigh any potential benefit of forcing students to wear them, suggesting that masks actually cause physical, mental and educational harm.

Few will disagree when looking at the statistics that COVID-19 presents a very, very low risk of death in the young and healthy, and the Centers for Disease Control, earlier in 2020, issued specific statements that the CDC “does not recommend the use of face masks to help prevent novel coronavirus.”

“This is a submission and pacification exercise at this point, trauma-induced mind control,” Williams said. “The truth is many of us have been done participating in it for some time now.”

Williams’ research on the topic led him to look at Denmark, a country with very few deaths from the virus, and minimal government-ordered masking requirements.

“Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Denmark, said in August. “There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”

Plenty of physicians across the world have voiced their opposition to mandatory masking requirements, both from scientific and personal liberty standpoints.

One physician, who questioned how risky not wearing a mask really was in the first place, pointed out that even if it were a sound medical choice, plenty of studies demonstrate that “certain lifestyle choices, such as attending farmer’s markets or owning a pet” may have positive health outcomes as well, though governors and school boards do not order everyone to attend a farmer’s market or own a pet.

Another article Williams shared stated that cloth face masks, often cobbled together as a makeshift alternative when stocks of surgical masks run low, and sometimes worn as a fashion statement, offer no practical protection against the novel coronavirus, a study conducted by an environmental epidemiology professor in Japan concluded.

The New England Journal of Medicine said that “in health care settings, a mask is a core component of the personal protective equipment clinicians need when caring for symptomatic patients with respiratory viral infections, in conjunction with gown, gloves, and eye protection.

“However, wearing a mask outside healthcare facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. . . . The chance of catching COVID-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”

Williams had initially hoped that local educators, tasked with passing on a passion for learning and critical thinking to the next generation, would investigate a variety of sources with exploratory and open minds to arrive at their own conclusions before falling in line with the herd thinking. But he soon abandoned that hope after being referred to the attorney for the school system to continue any further dialogue.

He said he considered getting an attorney of his own involved, considered getting doctors involved, but rather than placing a 6-year-old in the middle of a political disagreement with a government brainwashing institution, Williams opted to go the route of homeschooling his son.

In neighboring Coffee County, a parent of a public school student did indeed file a lawsuit against the county school system there over its mask requirement.

Williams said he is “at peace with the decision” to opt for homeschooling.

“It has certainly been a major adjustment for my family. I changed my major from education 20 years ago, but sometimes we are called to stand in the gap, and that’s not always easy or comfortable. But I will always stand in the gap for my family. You adapt and overcome. I just feel extremely blessed to even have the opportunity to keep my son out of that environment thanks to my work schedule. I know plenty of other parents who aren’t as lucky, and they are extremely anxious about their situations,” he said. His son “gets more time with me and he gets to learn more than the subjects taught in public school.”

Later seeing the agreement that Rutherford County schools sent out to parents of distance-learning students asking them to not tune into the video sessions, a move that caused some controversy of its own, “furthered my resolve” to homeschool, Williams said.

“I felt so much more at peace once we started seeing more and more examples of what the other options look like,” he said.

Williams says he agrees with the words of Ohio lawmaker Nino Vitale.

“We are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face. I will not wear a mask,” Vitale told his constituents.

Though the public manipulation, an “Operation Mockingbird” experiment of sorts, continues to escalate. If the cable news outlets relentlessly tell the public to wear masks, over and over and over, they will fall in line, regardless of any real danger present or proof of a mask’s effectiveness in combating it. If social media sites don’t want information contrary to their end goals out there, they will censor it, ban it, label it or discredit it.

“The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective. They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker,” said Jon Miltimore, managing editor of the Foundation for Economic Education’s website. “It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.”