Gov. Henry McMaster holds Monday morning news conference on COVID-19

South Carolina Gov.

Henry McMaster held a news conference Monday morning to address the latest COVID-19 issues affecting the state.

Well, good morning everybody, welcometo another week at the statehouse,appreciate you coming.

Oh, the weatheris beautiful, vacation's over theChildren and young people are goingback to school.

There's a lot ofactivity out there now.

People aregetting ready ready to settle back downand what I wanted to remind people isthat if you're going to get avaccination now is a great time to doit while we're getting ready for thefall, a lot of activity going on.Football games are starting again.Classes are starting again.

Now is agreat time.

If if you're ready to getthat vaccination, go ahead and get it.Now is the time as you know, pig and Iand our Children who are fullyvaccinated and we urge everyone to Makethat decision that plenty of placesstill open, maybe over 900 close to1000, it's free is convenient.

Thelines are not like they used to be wayback, you get right in and get out.

Sogo ahead and make your decision.

Um Itis our duty two during the pandemic toprotect the lives of those mostvulnerable.

And I think that we havedone a good job in doing that andthat's our elderly or young and at riskpopulations.

The new variant that deltavariant does pose a real threat.

Weknow that it spreads more easily.

Butthere are some differences between thatand the original virus.

But shuttingour state down, closing schools andmasking Children who have no choice forthe government to mask Children to haveno who have no choice to protect adultswho do have a choice is the wrong thingto do.

And we're not going to do it.We're not going to shut our state downas other states did.

Mandating mask isnot the answer.

Personal responsibilityis the answer.

Common sense is theanswer And we have an abundance of bothin south Carolina.

I've been vaccinated.I believe that it works.

Studies showthat all of the vaccines, all three arehighly effective against covid and thenew variant when you've taken bothshots in the case of father and Madonnaand the one in case of J and J.

So Iencourage right now, I encourage everysouth Carolinian to strongly considergetting vaccinated.

As I've said before,the information is out there.

You can'tget away from it.

Talk to your doctor,doctor, talked to loved ones.

Talk tothose who have had the virus.

Talk tothose who have had the vaccination andyou may talk to some who have been inthe hospital because all of them havesaid it.

It seems the stories we hear.They all say the same thing indifferent ways and that is I wish I hadgotten a vaccination.

So don't let thathappen to you.

South Carolina's economymust remain open.

That's one differencebetween the way we did things here andthe way they did them in a lot of otherplaces and our schools must remain open.Working parents cannot stay home withtheir Children every day.

You have towork to pay the bills to feed thefamilies, provide shelter.

Same for thefuture and the uh, economic security ofthe Children.

If a parent wants thechild to wear a mask in school, thenthat's up to that parent.

They can dothat.

That's their choice.

We need touse common sense.

State law todayprohibits school administrators fromrequiring students to wear a mask.

TheGeneral Assembly agreed with myposition and that is.

That decision isnow up to the parents looking just atstatistics briefly, although we knowthat cases are on the rise.

They're notwhere they were a year ago, hospitals.Then we had about 13,000.

So hospitalrooms back then they were sometimesfilled 81% 79%.

And that is yourmembers.

When we had the National Guardprepared to augment the supply of thosefacilities.

Uh, today it's about 77/77percent, something like that.

So it's,it's less than it was then.

That's thepoint back then.

And I see you we hadalmost twice as many people with Covid.And I see, I see unit units as we dotoday.

Maybe maybe not quite that many.And on ventilators we have these daysabout half as many as we did then.

Sowe have not returned to where we werethen and we don't want to return towhere we were then.

And the way toavoid that is for everybody to becareful.

We now today we know havinggone through this for over a year now,we know about the virus.

We know it'sgoing to change a little as time goesby might change a number of times, butwe know how to protect ourselves and weknow how to use common sense.

I sayagain with school starting football,starting with people are returning fromvacations.

The weather is beautiful,Our economy is doing better here thanin a whole lot of other states werereally other states are digging outbecause they closed down unnecessarily.We did not.

And because of that we'regrowing now is a perfect time.

If youwant to get that vaccination, go aheadand get it all the any questionsGovernor, there are limited virtuallearning options for some students andsome of our public schools, given thatwe have a teacher shortage right nowacross the state and not has shown inPakistan that there could be outbreaksand transmission do not worry about thelimited learning option.

But that nowwe have, we have so much money cominginto the state two for education.

Now,it's uh, we, we have plenty of funds toaddress any shortcomings like that.

Butwe do know this course if a parentwants to go virtual and that's that,that's up to that parent.

But uh, weknow that the virtual learning has notworked very well in south Carolinaanywhere else.

We know that because ofthe Children being out of school for solong, we know we do not want to repeatwhat we went through before.

There areestimates by educators and othersaround the country and even around theworld who say that there's someChildren that never will recover in theeducational process because of whatthey went through that has taken a yearoff is just uh, highly inadvisable ineducating a child and their socialemotional problems. All that stem fromit.

We want to get the Children backinto school and we do not want to havea repeat of what we did last year.Conference parents think those, those,those up to the, those questions up tothe, to the parents is the parents thatknows their child.

They knew the impactthis has had on the child, theirChildren and there's ample informationabout what it's, what, what the risksare and what the risks are not.

Andwe, by state law, we are not going tohave mask mandates in the publicschools.

You mentioned you Jamie,the, there are some hospital,especially metro hospitals that are nowstarting to feel the strain again.

Youknow, are you prepared to do anythingsimilar to what you did in the past?Well, the the the the numbers, thegeneral numbers are down from what theywere before.

The numbers last year didnot reach what we the worst casescenario which we were prepared for it.But it never arrived and that's becausewe we handled it well and we'll do itagain this time.

Are you planning to dowell?

We do what is necessary toprotect the people of south Carolina.But right at this point it's clear it'snot like it was last year.

We know howto handle the virus.

Now it's acompletely different situation.

Yes sir.Not very.Yeah.

Why aren't youthat you have?Why?

What are you doing this pressconference along with?

Well, theinformation I'm giving you is just comeoff the press this morning from thedehecq officialsOn that schematic has said that inorder to protect Children younger than12, as you say, well, if mask maskingwould help, but so would keeping themhome.So what keeping them in their bedroomand not sending school at all?

Thatwould say, But that is not that's notnecessary.

And there are negativeconsequences that come from all of that.There's there's a way to make our waythrough this without activating all thenegative consequences that we saw lastyear.

What Carlos?

Yeah,terrible.

It's going to stop.Well, you may, you may have read aboutthe teachers, uh, the and educators andprofessionals in that area say thatit's difficult to communicate with ayoung child who's wearing the mask.They can't see the teacher's face.Children, the teacher can't see theChildren's faces.

The Children's can'tsee each other's faces.

But the wholethe question is, is that necessary todo that to take that step?

And webelieve that it is not necessary totake that step.

And that's why thelegislature passed that law.

Yes.

Mayorhere in the city track.Okay.Mhm.

Right, paul.

And if it is momentspolice support.

Yeah.

You know, I don'tknow that mandate, I believe iscontrary to state law.

I don't know ifit will be tested in court, but thestate law is crystal clear that statefunds are not to be used to enforce amask mandate.

And the very people thatwere listed as those who would beresponsible to enforce the mandate orof course paid in whole or part uh,with state funds.

State funds infusedeverything that happens in our publicschool system.

There's no way to getaway from it.

And whether the massiveprovided free or by some other sourcesis irrelevant to the question becauseif the enforcement mechanism is presentin the school, then that is using statefunds to enforce it.

That's my view.

Ithink that's the view of the GeneralAssembly and I would think that wouldbe a view of a code if it werepresented to a court.

Yes, sir.

Covered.Local officials originally wanted yourmatch exports like churches, therockets provided foods and back againschools, Would you take a net for themto not mandate this?

I think it oughtto be up to the parents.

If the parentswant to have their Children have massand they can send them to school with,that's, uh, but again, simply providingthe source of the, of the mask is not.The question is, is the question is, isit being enforced through directlyindirectly with the use of state funds?So the closer you get to, the answer tothat being yes than the more of aviolation it is.

Yes.

Right.

In lastyear's party, same day.

What?

Okay.Yeah,right.

There's no magic number.

Thething to remember is that we weredealing with a virus that we know thisyear.

We did not know it last year.

We,we we took measures based on our bestinformation at the time.

Theinformation right now is that thesemasks are not necessary in the schools.They we do not do not need to have theschool mandating that I'll be up to theparents.

Yes, sir.

Would you considerthinkvarious prevention?

Yes.That we are getting information andanalyzing and being very careful as wewere last year.

And there's no need torequired for the government to requiremasks in schools at this time.

There'sjust no need for now if you listen tosome of the national press and some ofeven some of the national experts who Ibelieve are exaggerating, engaging inhyperbole and and unnecessarilyalarming people.

You may thinkotherwise.

But the facts show some ofwhich I just recited show that we're ina different situation from that we winthis time last year.

Yes, ma'am.Right.

I couldn't hear you.Please see that's the problem.

I canbarely hear You'd imagine if everybodyin the schools wearing a mask.

That'sthe problem.

That's one of the problemsand you're hollering.

Yeah.Pieces and pull it back.

There'snothing, pardon metake.

Yeah.

No, that's that's that'ssomething we know that there arebreakthrough cases.

I think lindseyGraham was one he felt like he had acold, we we know that we know that thevaccinations, the statistics, thenumbers any way you cut them ordemonstrate that if you vaccinatedfully vaccinated, you are in a muchbetter place than if you are not in thenumbers, the vast majority of peoplewho are fully vaccinated havecompletely different histories andoccurrences from those who are not thatyou came from the hands.

Do you agreethat?I think it helps with the pain the fire.Do I agree that we're in the master?Yeah, I think the, the uh, thestatistics show.

Yes, it, it, it doeshas not much effect or a much smallereffect on something coming into yoursystem.

But it does retired that goingout of your system to someone else.

Ifsomeone close by,when it comes to the maximum mentionedthe CDC, but it is recommended gapmasks to make back to school safe.

Well,I could uh, right well, uh, safer isurging people to, if they want to getvaccinated to remind them that now is agood time to do it.

But there are a lotof things that could make things safe.If everybody parked the car, we'dprobably have a whole few a fewaccidents on the road and we then we dobecause people are driving, but we haveto drive.

Commerce has to go on.

Wehave to go to school, Children have tolearn.

And if it is not necessary iffor the government to require too man,this is the government mandate tomandate that they wear a mask over theopposition of the parents.

And we'resimply not going to do that.

That isnot the government's role.

Thank you.Yeah.