Gov. Phil Scott (R-VT) announced in a tweet on Tuesday that students will be asked how they spent their Thanksgivings and, depending on their answers, may be required to quarantine before they can return to school.
In the middle of a lengthy tweet thread about a mother of six who recently died in Vermont due to complications from COVID-19, Scott began explaining why residents need to continue to adjust their lives.
“There are some who want to do the right thing but don’t see the risk in getting together. But with the amount of virus in our communities right now, even your trusted friends and households are at much higher risk and may not know they have the virus,” Scott tweeted. “Maybe you just aren’t worried about getting the virus. You’re young/healthy, you can work remotely or you just don’t think it’s a big deal. But you never know if you’re going to be the domino that leads to a nursing home outbreak or pushes an entire school to remote learning.”
He then asked residents to avoid large gatherings with members outside their own household and announced how students would be treated upon return to school next week.
“Unfortunately, we know some will still get together and schools have asked for help. [The Vermont Agency of Education] will direct schools to ask students or parents if they were part of multi-family gatherings and if the answer is yes, they’ll need to go remote for 14 days or 7 days and a test,” Scott wrote.
Further, he said the state had to, “based on current data,” delay the start of school sports until some unknown date in the future. “I hope adults realize the need to sacrifice to give our kids these experiences and keep them in school as much as possible,” he said.
He added that business should also consider asking employees about their Thanksgiving activities
Vermont has had a total of 3,827 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and has seen 64 deaths. For comparison, nearby New Hampshire has seen 18,776 cases and 514 deaths.
Governors across the country have imposed restrictions on residents for the holidays. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown (D) suggested residents “uninvite” family members and also encouraged people to snitch on their neighbors for violating Thanksgiving gathering restrictions, The Daily Wire reported.
“This is hard, but making difficult sacrifices now will save lives,” Brown tweeted. “This Thanksgiving, keep it small. Uninvite them.”
She also likened snitching on neighbors for having dinner with their families to reporting noise complaints.
“This is no different than what happens if there’s a party down the street and it’s keeping everyone awake,” Brown said last week. “What do neighbors do [in that case]? They call law enforcement because it’s too noisy. This is just like that. It’s like a violation of a noise ordinance.”
Noisy neighbors directly affect others in the neighborhood, while quiet family dinners do not.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo 9D-NY) also told residents to avoid Thanksgiving with family, even as he invited his own elderly mother and two of his daughters over. He later announced he was cancelling those plans after being called a hypocrite.