The Georgia sophomore was initially suspended (her suspension has since been lifted), and despite the fact that nine people at her school are reported to have tested positive for coronavirus, she says she and her family and friends are still being sent screen grabs of group chats with threats from people who she has "known for years," condemning her actions.
Watters told CNN that one message said "I know where this girl lives," and other said things like "We're going to jump every girl named Hannah in the tenth grade" and "Hannah is going to have a rough day at school on Monday."
She went on to say: "I feel like a lot of teachers have my back because they know how dangerous it is going to school...I know I'm doing the right thing and it's not going to stop me from continuing doing it. But it is concerning, especially since it's a lot of the people I go to school with, people I've known for years now, that are threatening me."
The backlash against Watters should come as little surprise, considering the degree to which anti-mask sentiment and general coronavirus skepticism has so often been co-signed by leaders across the US - including by the president himself.
But what sets her apart from shop managers, employees and officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci -- who have urged social distancing and report being met with resistance, threats or violence -- is the fact that she had no actual or implied responsibility to keep people safe.
"I was concerned for the safety of everyone in that building and everyone in the county because precautions that the CDC and guidelines that the CDC has been telling us for months now, weren't being followed," Watters told CNN, after her photo drew national attention.
In highlighting the risk posed to herself, her classmates and her teachers, Watters volunteered concern for the safety of some of the very people who have since penalized her. Her actions were swiftly validated by the necessary shift to online teaching after cases were discovered (the school has now reopened, and plans to "address issues" associated with a large student body).
In the same school district, a school nurse has quit over what she deemed inadequate Covid-19 precautions.
But the hostile reaction Watters has received initially from the school authorities and some of her peers is emblematic of the destructive polarization and lack of empathy which appears to have been sewn into the Trump administration's attitudes towards the pandemic from the beginning.
Across the US, as the coronavirus took hold in March, health care workers felt the obligation to tend to their patients even when proper protection was not provided to them, despite a president who called social distancing protesters "great people" ringing in their ears.
The validation of Covid-skeptic sentiment from President Donald Trump and other US leaders -- and the staggering lack of empathy it seems to have engendered in many among the American public who support them -- has looked stark even next to hard-hit countries like the UK, even though our population,
