Stop Masking Children

European countries don't because there's no scientific reason why we should and plenty of common sense reasons why we shouldn't.

Writing in the National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that it’s time to follow Europe’s lead and stop masking children. He and his family flew to Ireland on the Irish airline Aer Lingus because it didn’t require masks for children, as opposed to American airlines which require children over 2 to mask up.

“The flight attendants treated our children with sympathy and understanding rather than hostility,” writes Dougherty. “Everywhere in Ireland the kids were spared from masks. And guess what? All their close contacts in Ireland are still living and breathing. More distant and incidental contacts were fine, too — Ireland’s contact tracing was more extensive than anything in the U.S., and we received no calls.”

There is evidence everywhere — if only the authorities would consult it — that children are not efficient transmitters of COVID-19. A study of 150 schools in the U.K. showed that we do not have to quarantine students who come into contact with other COVID-positive students. We can just test them, and so long as they stay negative, they don’t spread the coronavirus to their classmates. I expect that even the testing regimen will begin to go away in Europe.

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Young unvaccinated children are in far less danger from COVID than vaccinated adults are. The adult world is starting to allow itself more and more events without anti-COVID interventions, so of course we should allow the same for children. Then again, at the Met Gala and in many restaurants around the world, masks are becoming a de facto class signifier. Servers are expected to wear them because masks signal their commitment to keep the clientele safe. But the patrons don’t have to wear them, presumably because they are paying. If the images of masked servants make us step back in disgust, so should images of masked children standing aside unmasked adults.

You may have already seen images from the Met Gala, but here’s a rather galling video of AOC attended upon by “masked servants” as Glenn Greenwald puts it, while she shines her pearly whites:

Erik Kain @erikkain

Not a good look.

youtu.beA Mask-Free AOC and Her Boyfriend Attended to by a Team of Masked ServantsIn newly released video footage from Vogue, the socialist Congresswoman and her boyfriend are attended to as if they are the the Prince and Princess of Wales...

These are both legitimate concerns. First, that kids who do not stand to benefit from such draconian social-distancing and mask-requiring practices will be negatively impacted socially and psychologically by the fear, stress and isolation, and second that we create an even more classist society where the working class, service industry workers and others down the economic totem poll remain masked while elites go mask-free—regardless of vaccination status.

We should do everything we can to protect the vulnerable and high-risk populations—the elderly and immuno-compromised in particular—but that doesn’t require the lengths we continue to take even among the vaccinated and among children even with the Big Bad Scary Delta Variant throwing its weight around (and the media’s constant fearmongering over said variant). There are mental health and economic consequences that are just as important a consideration at this point and cannot be ignored. If 2020 was a year we spent living in fear of a brand new and frankly terrifying virus, 2021 is the year we all really begin to feel the fallout from the measures taken to combat it.

By all means, let’s get everyone we can vaccinated. But as I wrote yesterday, we have to drop the hysteria—largely used for clicks and power grabs at this point—and have a sober, realistic conversation about what the next steps are. I do not think those include masking low-risk populations like children or the vaccinated and I do not believe that giving Big Pharma and the federal government more invasive powers over our lives is the right answer, either.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading and subscribing!