Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its COVID-19 guidance for schools, recommending that unvaccinated children over the age of two wear masks indoors. The guidance also promoted vaccinations for kids older than twelve.
I took issue with this guidance because, statistically speaking, school-age kids are largely unaffected by COVID-19 and their recovery rates are around 99.997%. Therefore, kids shouldn’t have to wear masks or be vaccinated, as far as I’m concerned. Based on the data, the health risks posed by COVID-19 to kids are minimal, and mask-wearing actually puts them at risk of contracting other illnesses.
But things are likely going to get much worse. I’ve previously noted that the COVID vaccine is too new to justify having kids vaccinated before determining the vaccines’ long-term effects. Unfortunately, Biden hinted that his administration is on the verge of creating a major no-win situation for parents on masking and vaccinations for their kids.
“The CDC is going to say that what we should do is, everyone under the age of 12 should probably be wearing a mask in school,” Biden said during his CNN town hall on Wednesday. “That’s probably what’s going to happen. Secondly, those over the age of 12 who are able to get vaccinated—if you’re vaccinated, you shouldn’t wear a mask. If you aren’t vaccinated, you should be wearing a mask.”
He also said that children under the age of 12 would be able to get vaccinated soon.
Do you know what this means? This means we’re on the verge of having parents being put in the position of choosing between having their kids wear masks in school, despite the health risks, or having their kids get vaccinated, despite the unknown long-term impact of the vaccines.
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Not only has a recent lab test shown that even freshly-laundered masks that “had been worn for 5 to 8 hours, most during in-person schooling by children aged 6 through 11” contained eleven dangerous pathogens, but Dr. Fauci himself said early on in the pandemic that face masks don’t protect wearers from the virus. “Masks are really for infected people to protect them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote in an email on February 5, 2020. “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” This demonstrated itself in the real world when it became clear that mask mandates had no impact on infection rates. A recent study also showed that masks didn’t slow the spread of COVID-19.
I do not want my child to get any COVID vaccines. Please don’t misunderstand me—I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’ve been vaccinated myself. Heck, I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that the Biden administration paused after the pause was lifted. So, I’m all for vaccines, and my kid has received the usual vaccinations recommended by his pediatrician. But I’m just not cool with my kid getting injected with a vaccine that is so new. Quite frankly, most other parents of school-age kids I know agree. So, that likely means our kids will be forced to wear masks that don’t protect them from a virus for which they have a 99.997 percent chance of recovering—one that could make them sick from other dangerous pathogens. Or they can get a vaccine, even though it’s too early to know for sure if it’s safe for them in the long term.
This is a horrible, no-win situation for parents, and we need to speak up.
