New Yorkers, you’re worldly. You have friends in other cities, other countries. Ask them: Are you still masking 2- to 4-year- olds?
After they get over the shock that anyone would have ever masked 2- to 4-year-olds, ask them what they think about New York mandating it today. Tell them that until a few weeks ago, these same kids were forced to mask outdoors. It’s June 2022, and New York City has decided that all remaining COVID-19 mitigation burdens should rest only on the shoulders of one group: toddlers.
Your friends will ask: But why?
There is no answer. There has never been any science to suggest masking any children, much less small children, was a good idea. But for the kids learning language, learning how to read facial expressions, learning how to emote in the world, to still be masking when no one else has to, shows a deep disregard for children as a whole.
Tell your friends that your city has a good reason to continue to harm children with this masking and hear them laugh in your face. No other city, no other state, is force-masking toddlers. Most countries have never masked this age group whatsoever. New York is on an island of abject foolishness all on its own.
The idea that these kids must be masked because there is no vaccine for them is just plainly untrue. Children are uniquely not susceptible to COVID. We’ve known this for over two years. Instead of being grateful for this blessing, we’ve treated 2-year-olds as if they’re 80. If 2- to 4-year olds were dying of COVID at the same rate as older people, they would have been at the front of the vaccine line, not at the very back.
In poker, there’s a concept of a player being unable to get off a hand. It’s the player who thinks they’re winning while they have unquestionably lost, and they just can’t fold. Either Mayor Adams is this player, in which case you might want him at your poker table as the mark but certainly not in Gracie Mansion, or he is being forced into this terrible hand by someone else. New Yorkers deserve to know why their mayor has become pot-committed to a hand that never made any sense and was never going to win.
How dare the mayor continue to show his face around the city when this idiotic policy continues to exist? How much longer will children continue to have their development paused while the mayor hobnobs, maskless, of course, with celebrities?
But the real question is: When will New Yorkers finally have had enough of the anti-science way their city fought the virus? When will they snap out of the conformist silence they’ve all sunk into, stand up and say “this is wrong.” Ask your friends, New Yorkers, ask them.
Tots & kin face big problems
Free their faces! Parents with young children are fed up with city health mandates that require children ages 2 to 5 — and their teachers — to wear masks inside schools. They note that young kids are at low risk of a serious COVID infection, but they’re seeing detrimental delays in motor skills and language, along with safety and social issues, as a result of the masking. Here, four moms share their experiences with The Post.
— Jeanette Settembre
Laura D’Andre, 36, Harlem
Her 2-year-old daughter Josephine has been having potentially embarrassing accidents at her day care because she has trouble communicating her toilet needs while wearing a mask. At home, the potty-trained tot doesn’t have any issues.
“Either the teacher doesn’t hear her, or she just isn’t comfortable speaking up through the mask, she’s not as verbal when she has the mask on,” D’Andre, an actress, told The Post. “If something worse were to happen — like an allergic reaction — it would definitely get missed.”
The Harlem mom said it’s clear that the face covering is making school an unpleasant experience for her child.
“She’s not happy to go. When I drop her off she clings to me and cries,” she said. “It’s jarring, having an adult put something over your mouth every day, over your ears and face that’s tight so it’s hard for you to talk and hard for someone to hear you.”
Shantel Espaillat, 25, Upper West Side
Her young son Elias has some motor skill developmental delays that she attributes to his being masked for eight hours a day at his Bronx day care.
“He’s about to be three, and he still walks on his tiptoes,” the mom-of-two noted, adding that he’s noticeably behind where his older sister was at the same age.
She also believes her son’s communication with his teachers has been severely impacted, with all of their mouths covered.
“He’s not following along,” Espaillat, a gym manager, told The Post. “You’re not as connected if you’re not looking at the other person’s lips and their expression.”
When the little guy comes home, he’s cranky and doesn’t seem to be learning to love school.
“Instead of focusing on the academics and what it is that’s being taught, the kids are more focused on keeping the mask on and removing it and it just interrupts learning,” she said.
Michelle Kaicher, 44, Upper East Side
Thankfully, Kaicher’s 5-year-old daughter Annette doesn’t have to cover up at the private Catholic school she attends, but it’s a different story in her ballet and gymnastic classes. The extracurriculars don’t officially require that kids don masks, but Annette reluctantly wears one to fit in with her classmates.
“My husband and I felt we wanted them off as soon as possible. But now in ballet class everybody still has it on, so she felt like she had to put it back on. It’s peer pressure,” Kaicher said. Plus, “the instructors still have it on and it’s hard for her to hear the instructors.”
She worries that all of the masking is effecting her girl’s social skills.
“I want her voice to be heard — she’s shy anyway — and I don’t want her to hide behind her mask,” she said.
Lauren Brandel, 46, Upper East Side
Being in a day care with masked teachers, coupled with years of isolation, have contributed to her 2-year-old daughter Hailee being behind with language and requiring speech therapy.
“She also hasn’t had enough exposure to other children because of the pandemic,” Brandel, who works in finance, told The Post.
She believes the benefits of not masking outweigh the low risk the virus poses to young children. “[Our] own pediatricians, they don’t think kids are that affected,” she said. “They come down with the virus [and] are OK, the majority.”
