Science deniers abound over two years after the pandemic. You can find them in New York City’s Democratic government.
Children are continuing to be forced out of after-school programs, including after-school sports, if they have not been vaccinated for COVID-19. Children do not need the vaccine to attend classes, but according to the New York City Department of Education, COVID-19 magically becomes more dangerous to children once the school day ends.
“Vaccinations are still required to participate in high-risk extracurricular activities, including high-risk PSAL sports,” the department said.
Even if those “high-risk” activities included coughing directly into each other’s mouths, this would be anti-science nonsense. Children are not, and have never been, at serious risk from COVID-19. All available data show that children face a higher risk of health complications from the flu. Only about 0.001% of children who contracted COVID-19 died, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What do we know puts people at serious risk of being hospitalized or killed by COVID-19? Obesity. A CDC study last year found that 78% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 were overweight or obese. If anything, New York City is putting children at more risk by preventing them from playing after-school sports such as football, volleyball, and basketball.
You would have to be an anti-science, COVID-paranoid zealot to think that mandating coronavirus vaccines for children would keep anyone safe, especially children themselves. Yet that is exactly what Mayor Eric Adams and his government are. They are not protecting anyone from COVID-19; they are punishing unvaccinated children so that they can pretend they care about public health. Why? Because children can’t fight back.
There is no justification for this, and it should be completely disqualifying. Adams and everyone working in the city’s Education Department belong nowhere near any sort of political power. New York City politicians and bureaucrats are destroying the lives of children because they don’t understand COVID-19 data or simply don’t care. This is the kind of damage that real science deniers cause, and it is coming from the self-proclaimed “party of science.”
