https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-zombie-war-against-covid/
The last remaining restrictions on normal life are a national embarrassment.
This week, New York City finally made masks optional for children ages two to four in preschools or daycare facilities. They did so despite the fact that the ongoing requirement was clearly meant to be yet another inducement to get more people vaccinated for Covid, a disease that barely affects young children, and one they don’t spread as much as adults do. The vaccine-makers have had trouble showing worthwhile results in the youngest children, and in the meantime, many young children have acquired some immunity by getting sick with, and recovering from, Covid. New York City has finally given up on masks everywhere but on public transit.
The World Health Organization had never recommended masks for children below five years of age. The European Centers for Disease Control noted in its recommendations that young children have trouble wearing masks effectively, often drool into them, can easily become alienated from masked caregivers, and can suffer adverse social and developmental consequences from wearing them. Europeans trusted the science, and their children did roughly as well as Americans did. Better, in fact, because their school closures and disruptions were significantly less severe.
But in America, progressives trusted the science!, which is a very different thing. Mostly it’s about fear and neuroticism as a lifestyle choice, though occasionally it’s about using your child’s face as an anti–Ron DeSantis yard sign.
Not a single elected official in New York City or Los Angeles has ever even attempted to demonstrate with data that the policy of masking two-year-olds was achieving a public-health goal for the city that other people in their states, or in Europe, were foolishly forgoing. They don’t have to do this, because when you are trusting the science!, you don’t have to think or reflect on what you’re telling others to do.
