All over the country last week, Democrat governors and mayors engaged in their own Olympic-level gymnastics to flip and twist their way to ending COVID-inspired mandates – except, oddly, in some states, mask mandates for children in school. Science has shown children to be the very least likely to become seriously infected, or to become hospitalized, or to die. The endless masking of children begs the question: What science are these Democrats following?
Science has shown masks are harmful to children’s mental and emotional well-being. Masks have contributed to learning loss and speech impediments – to say nothing of breathing problems.
With an ever-growing number of scientists and research papers demonstrating the harms caused by masks, what’s behind so many Democrats’ decisions to keep mask mandates in place for school children?
It turns out it isn’t science at all. It’s politics. What’s behind it is the teachers unions, that’s what.
The last ten days or so have seen a rush by Democrats from west coast to east, from California’s Gavin Newsom to New Jersey’s Phil Murphy and many in between, to dump mask mandates as fast as they can. Was it because of science? Yes, but not medical or health science. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor of the Senate Monday, it was because of “political science” – that is, Democrats have concluded there is political peril ahead for those officeholders who were cheerleaders for the lockdowns and endless masking. Democrats are now scrambling as fast as they can not only to abandon these reckless and nonsensical policies, but to rewrite history and pretend they were never on that side of the argument in the first place.
Yet many Democrats are stubbornly clinging to the masking of children.
Democrat governors in New York, California, and Illinois – states with the three largest school districts in the country (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) – all announced plans in recent days to terminate mask mandates for businesses and other indoor spaces, but said they would leave in place mask mandates for schools and licensed child-care centers.
Explaining her decision to maintain mask requirements in schools, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “Kids are in a very concentrated setting. And also, adults can make their own decisions. Children still need adults to look out for their health.”
Implicit in her statement is that the adults who will make those decisions to look out for children’s health are not the children’s parents, but school administrators, teachers, officeholders – in other words, the self-designated “experts,” the very same people who got just about everything wrong during the lockdowns.
Hochul seems to pay as much attention to the science as she does to political trends. Parents don’t want to be treated as an adjunct to a so-called “expert” in the rearing of their children. (See: Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s stunning upset loss after saying, in essence, parents should take a back seat to the teachers unions.)
Worse, Hochul’s explanation sounds like an excuse, a diversion, because what she is really doing is deflecting attention from what she does not want to acknowledge as the real reason she and the other Democrat governors are dropping mask mandates everywhere other than schools – the demands of the teachers unions, the most powerful element in the modern Democratic Party base.
Appearing last week’s on one of the most important propaganda centers of the modern left – MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” – American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten was asked about unmasking children. She responded, “I am in favor of an off ramp on masks. The real issue becomes, is the spread low enough so that there’s no dissemination and transmission in schools?”
Zero transmission in schools? That’s Weingarten’s position? We can end the mask mandates for children when we achieve zero transmission in schools?
That’s simply absurd.
On the other hand, it’s helpful, in a way. It creates a very bright line distinction between belief systems – on the one hand, you can side with the teachers’ union chief who insists that children remain masked until we achieve the impossible, while on the other hand, you can side with everyone else who’s ready to recognize that the coronavirus is here to stay, and we’ll learn to live with it without harming our children by forcing them to wear masks in perpetuity.
Elections are about choices, and campaigns are about contrasts. Weingarten’s position creates a very clear contrast, that’s for sure. Will Democrats who want to win in the fall stand with Weingarten – or with the parents?