Enjoy, New York: Outdoor Mask Mandates for Kids at Summer Camps Isn't Going Anywhere

So I guess they're sticking with this complete insanity, huh?

Even after the CDC has significantly loosened outdoor mask-wearing guidance for unvaccinated adults, and despite the well-established science that kids are far less likely to be negatively affected by COVID. Quite a few people have already written about the madness of forcing children to wear masks while playing outdoors in the summer heat, but evidently, some of the adults in charge are pressing forward anyway. Enjoy, New York:

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced some new guidance for child care, day camp, and overnight camp programs in New York. Even while outside most campers will still need to wear their masks, according to the state's guidelines...Children and campers over the age of two and staff who are not fully vaccinated must wear face coverings except when eating, drinking, showering, swimming, or sleeping/resting. Since face coverings have been proven to be effective when distancing is not feasible, facilities and programs must provide and require the use of face coverings for individuals who are not fully vaccinated...Some parents are frustrated about the guidelines. "It's not fair to take the step back, they deserve to run around and play, and breathe in the fresh air," said mom Deborah Berro. "Everything in the state and the country seems to be easing up, so I really don't understand any thought of doing anything more restrictive this year as opposed to last year," said Crestwood County Day Camp co-owner Mark Transport.

Yes, some of the restrictions are going to be more stringent on these kids than they were last summer, when the virus was more prevalent and no vaccines were available to the public. Parents and camp officials may object, based on common sense and the data, but government knows best. Science? Never heard of her:

Here's a chart of Covid vs. Flu deaths for ages 0-17 since the 2012-13 season. Covid has proven less deadly for children than 5 of 8 flu seasons. There is no reason to punish children with masking when unvaccinated adults, in practice, can go maskless https://t.co/V7yA4BOYc7 pic.twitter.com/HSPeWlhVhT
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) May 20, 2021

With adult vax, US kids cases have decreased by 45% last 4 weeks. Infect rate among kids now .07%. Chance an asympt kid will infect another kid and a severe outcome will occur is approx 0.0007 (prev) x 0.007 (asymp transm) x 0.00008 (covid hosp rate in kids)= 0.00000004%. pic.twitter.com/6zhkhLRvGT
— Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD (@TracyBethHoeg) May 19, 2021

And then there's this:

The reported number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, one of the primary metrics for tracking the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, was grossly inflated for children in California hospitals, two research papers published Wednesday concluded. The papers, both published in the journal Hospital Pediatrics, found that pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 were overcounted by at least 40 percent, carrying potential implications for nationwide figures. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, and Amy Beck, an associate professor of pediatrics, also at UCSF, wrote a commentary for Hospital Pediatrics that accompanied the two studies. They wrote, “Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of clearly distinguishing between children hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 found on universal testing versus those hospitalized for COVID-19 disease.” The studies demonstrate, they said, that reported hospitalization rates “greatly overestimate the true burden of COVID-19 disease in children.”

There is no justification for these stringent, oppressive measures to "protect" kids, who are likelier to be harmed by breathing into damp cloths covering their noses and mouths while exerting themselves outside in the heat. But the Party of Science isn't really into actual science, it turns out. Our politics is just stupid, performative tribalism, all the way down. On that score, I'll leave you with this: