Just end the toddler mask mandate, Mayor Adams
New York City is hard at work competing for the title of having the cruelest, dumbest and most ineffective COVID-19 policy in the world. The city is fighting in the courts to protect their “only toddlers” mask mandate. This policy essentially means that while indoor mask mandates have been dropped for all other ages and groups, children between the ages of 2 to 4 will continue to be required to wear face coverings. Mayor Adams has said he wants to lift it soon, but he is simultaneously using the city’s Law Department to try to prolong the rule.
The fact that a politically savvy mayor has doubled down on this regulation is baffling.
Dealing with 'post-pandemic stress': A doctor's guide
While we may be experiencing a temporary spate of optimism as Covid rates plummet, living in a state of hypervigilance for two years has taken a toll on our individual and collective well-being, says Dr. Lucy McBride.
School mask mandates are ending in many states. Doctor explains how parents can prepare.
Should parents be worried about the end of these school mask mandates? How should they decide whether to keep their children masked or not? How can parents and schools help reduce children’s risk of contracting COVID-19? To answer some of these questions, Yahoo News spoke to medical contributor Dr. Lucy McBride, a physician in Washington, D.C, who specializes in internal medicine.
Let our kids go maskless in school
In recent weeks, several states have rolled back strict requirements for masking in public and indoor spaces. Even Amazon announced the lifting of mandatory masking in its warehouses.
This is great news for adults — but many children remain masked in schools due to mandates that ignore their whole-health needs. We know by now that the negative effects of pandemic restrictions on children’s health are significant, while offering little to no effect on their infection rates or mortality. Yet children remain hampered by the most restrictions even as governors like Kathy Hochul admit to these negative health effects on children while announcing the expiration of indoor mask mandates for adults.
We're pro-vaccine but can't support California lawmaker's school COVID vaccine mandate
Two weeks ago, state Sen. Richard Pan introduced a new bill which would require all children K-12 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend school in person after Jan. 1, 2023. Unvaccinated children would be forced into remote learning.
Pan said, “We need to make sure schools are safe so that all parents are comfortable sending their children to school.”
Every parent wants safe schools. But our children deserve medical care driven by facts, not politics. As physician epidemiologists, we have analyzed the data and found that this mandate is not supported by the scientific evidence — which is why no European countries or other U.S. states have implemented their own.
With vaccines available mask mandates are not necessary in school
As scientists and physicians, we are concerned that COVID-19 mitigation measures for children are doing more harm than good. Too many policymakers have viewed health as the mere absence of COVID-19, putting children into a loop of mitigation measures that are uncoupled from actual risk.
After two years of living with one disruption after another, the evidence is clear: The pandemic and the loss of normalcy are taking a tremendous toll on students, with the data on mental health being particularly alarming.
We're a Physician and Mathematician and a Data Scientist. N95s Won't Work for Kids | Opinion
The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in the SF Bay Area where we live, announced on Tuesday that it was planning on "transitioning all students and staff" to KN95 respirators. If worn properly, such respirators filter 95 percent of particles the size of those that carry the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The BUSD has proposed this measure as a means to slow the spread of COVID-19 and keep schools open. These respirators would be required for the entire school day, including outdoors during gym and recess.
The truth is, the burdens of these masks outweigh their benefits for kids. We need to consider more effective, less harmful interventions as we come together to keep schools open and safe.
Opinion: Medical professionals agree we should protect students’ health this fall. We don’t agree on how.
Life is not risk free, and we need to start considering the harms that we are perpetrating on our children in our public health quest to make our schools a zero-risk environment.
OPINION: As physicians, mothers and daughters, we have concerns with COVID-19 rules
What if everything we are doing to protect the elderly from coronavirus is causing irreparable harm, including more deaths, to our children?
What grandparent would choose to have their grandchild live a life of lower quality or opportunity than they had? What parent would accept that their child’s health be harmed as a matter of policy?
These may seem like ridiculous questions, but the decision to do all these things is being made on a daily basis in our response to COVID-19. If that is true, we need to discuss if this is what we really want to accomplish.
