New York has done it again. The city has managed to find the most useless yet harmful policies possible to impose on the safest segment of the population.
On Friday, Mayor Eric Adams and his health commissioner Ashwin Vasan announced that children aged 2 to 4 must remain masked in kindergartens and preschools. No other age group is forced to dress up similarly.
On November 7, 2021, I tweeted“It would be something if the last masked people were toddlers. It would be the icing on the whole poorly managed pandemic cake.”
People pass it around like I’m prescient. But the reality is that I had seen poor public health first hand in New York, where what made the least sense in the fight against COVID was what we were doing.
Masks for the 3-foot walk from the maître d’ stand to the table? This is us!
The teachers union closing (public only) schools says that when the city scored a paltry 3% positive tests, meaning 97 healthy people for every 100 tested negative instead of 98 the previous day? We again.
A vaccination order for a virus that spreads despite vaccination, with a special carve-out for guest athletes and artists, but not for those who live here? Building indoor shacks on the sidewalk so restaurants can call it al fresco dining? Canceling outdoor events like New Year’s Eve in Times Square? Masking of children in public schools outside in the winter of 2022? That’s New York.
Vasan announced the continuation of the masking of young children, which no other western country did at any point in the pandemic, saying: “We want to keep an eye on this recent surge to make sure our youngest New Yorkers stay safe as we see an increase see cases due to the more infectious BA.2 subvariant. As we know in the past, cases and hospitalizations in this vulnerable age group have increased, typically a few weeks behind, in line with wider community prevalence.”
That’s just a lie. New York City’s “alert level” is green, “low.” COVID hospitalizations for children under 18 is 0.5 per 100,000 and has been for months.
Meanwhile, the over-70 population is 4.7 per 100,000, and they can traipse around town maskless, licking lampposts and kissing strangers. If it sounds like it doesn’t make any sense, that’s because it doesn’t make any sense and never has.
The commissioner absolutely knows it’s a lie. Two days earlier, he tweeted a chart showing children under 5 with the lowest case numbers in the city.
Worst of all, city attorneys responded to a lawsuit challenging the infant mask mandate by arguing that as of the 4, “immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage.” Liars.
The judge struck down the mandate on Friday — and Adams immediately said he wanted to appeal.
Michael Chessa, the parents’ attorney, told me, “These mandates are anti-scientific, anti-child, anti-parent and illegal according to the court ruling last week. Every day that passes that Mayor Adams upholds those mandates is a stain on his legacy.”
There are compromises in life. If the argument was, “kids will mask, and we risk them having language and cognitive delays because they are uniquely vulnerable to COVID and that’s how we protect them,” that might be understandable.
Instead, toddlers mask themselves, they risk language and cognitive delays, and it is offered absolutely no protection from COVID.
Even if masks worked for the older set, which was never proven by a study with a control group, the under-5-year-olds could never wear them properly. This population group is also not prioritized for vaccination because they simply do not need it.
COVID has largely spared children. Vasan’s own data shows this. We’ve known this since the beginning, and yet children continue to be targeted with idiotic policies that have done them great harm and not protected them at all.
Vasan added“This afternoon we ask for a little more patience and a little mercy.”
New Yorkers should just say no. No more patience and certainly no more grace. The commissioner didn’t deserve it. His politics make no scientific sense, and in a healthier time New Yorkers would be calling for his dismissal.
Instead of listening to bad advice and only masking the part of the population that never needed him, the mayor must man himself up and take control of his city. He’s only been in office a few months, but these idiotic policies suggest he’s drifting.
That’s right, Mayor Adams, or we’ll remember you along with Mayor William O’Dwyer. Who is this? Exactly.
Twitter: @Karol
https://nypost.com/2022/04/03/new-yorkers-must-demand-an-end-to-mayor-adams-toddler-mask-mandate/ New Yorkers must demand an end to Mayor Adams’ toddler mask mandate
