Go to any school in Europe, and you’ll see happy children running, reading, and learning — all without any masks on their little faces. But here in the United States, 10 states and countless counties have mandated the wearing of masks for even the youngest kindergartners.
Why the difference?
Well, in Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control does not recommend that children under 12 wear masks in school. The ECDC guidance on the matter notes that children younger than 12 “may have a lower tolerance to wearing masks for extended periods of time, and may fail to use the masks properly.”
But here in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidance that “masks should be worn at all times, by all people in school facilities,” including “all classroom and non-classroom settings, including hallways, school offices, restrooms, gyms, auditoriums, etc.”
When CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued the guidance in February of this year, she said, “I can assure that this is free from political meddling.” But if the CDC’s mask guidance is just based on science and is free from “political meddling,” then why did the ECDC reach a different conclusion?
Is science different in Europe than it is here? Not likely.
What is likely is that powerful political interests have corrupted the CDC, pushing it to issue the mask guidance for children even though the science to support it isn’t there.
Thanks to a lawsuit from Americans for Public Trust, we continue to discover that top officials at the nation’s two largest teachers unions have been in constant contact with CDC leaders, shaping the agency’s supposedly politics-free decisions.
The American Federation of Teachers’s senior director of health issues emailed Walensky directly, suggesting changes to the CDC’s school opening guidelines. Walensky then forwarded the email to the CDC’s director of preparedness and emerging infections, who replied to Walensky, “Yes, will work with them.”
This is not the first time emails have been released showing the CDC taking direction not from scientists or qualified people but from teachers unions. When the CDC issued its May 13 guidance, that those who were fully vaccinated could stop wearing masks, National Education Association President Becky Pringle demanded to talk with Walensky so she could press her to issue follow-up guidance clarifying that the school mask mandate still stood. After Walensky spoke to Pringle, the CDC did exactly as the teachers union demanded.
From National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci lying about his agency’s funding of gain of function research to Walensky’s own flip-flopping on mask mandates, our nation’s public health officials have completely undermined their own credibility.
One way they could start to rebuild it is to promise never to communicate with the nation’s teachers unions ever again.
