JoCo anti-mask activist’s COVID ‘super spreader’ invitation plays with people’s lives

An anti-mask activist invited her Facebook followers Wednesday to join “our next super spreader” at the Johnson County Commission meeting Thursday.

This is just off-the-rails reckless, especially at the height of a hundred-year pandemic that’s still spreading like a wind-whipped wildfire. Kansas City recorded more than 1,200 new COVID-19 infections and a new record for the weekly average of cases Wednesday.

It’s not the first time outspoken anti-mask activist Emily Coleman has trumpeted hosting a “super spreader” event. On Nov. 10, she posted, “Who wants an invite to my next super spreader?” for an upcoming screening of an anti-vaccine movie.

But promoting maskless visits to public meetings, as she did for Thursday’s commission meeting, is her most ill-advised and dangerous step yet. It’s playing with people’s lives.

When The Star Editorial Board contacted her via Facebook Messenger about her actions, Coleman wrote back: “Either you stand for the Constitution or you don’t.”

Asked if she’ll go to the meeting maskless Thursday, if she’s encouraging others to, and whether her use of the term “super spreader” was in jest, Coleman simply replied with previous posts on her timeline in which she was highly critical of two county commissioners. “Do you want to publish something? Publish this,” she wrote.

In one of the posts, she referred to Commissioner Janeé Hanzlick as “Comrade Hazmat.” In the other, she says of Commission Chairman Ed Eilert, “Comrade Eilert wants you to wear a mask in your car, outside, and of course, at the commissioners’ meetings when you show up to protest mask mandates.”

Eilert said he’s familiar with Coleman as someone who has spoken at recent meetings, but said he’d not seen her post inviting followers to the Thursday meeting as a “super spreader.”

“I do not understand that kind of approach and that kind of attitude,” Eilert said. “I don’t understand the approach that ‘I don’t have do anything and we should all become infected.’”

“Name-calling and threats to harm others is abusive behavior,” said Hanzlick, retired head of the county’s nonprofit domestic violence agency Safehome. “It is completely irresponsible to promote infecting other people with a virus.”

Eilert said recent commission meetings have seen a number of residents showing up without masks — milling about in the atrium and prompting other county residents to say they’d like to come and comment, but are afraid to because of all the maskless attendees.

Eilert told his colleagues: “I will be expecting all participants who do not have a medical exemption to wear masks at our board meetings moving forward, including visitors, speakers, staff and commissioners. For those who are not wearing masks, staff will offer a mask and ask them to please comply with the governor’s order.”

However, the chairman said no one will be denied entry or the privilege of speaking Thursday for not wearing a mask.

Why the heck not? We appreciate the gentlemanly nature of Eilert’s “as strongly as we can” request, but that’s obviously not strong enough. Why not require mask usage at meetings — as is required in every restaurant, retail store and business in the county? Why should commission meetings be exempt from the mandate?

The rest of the citizenry deserves it. And should demand it.