BELGRADE, Serbia — To the few Serbs who spent the last hours of Sunday smoking cigarettes while waiting for the Super Bowl to begin more than 6,000 miles away, Los Angeles looks as impressive as ever.
The newly constructed SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the most expensive sports venue ever built, has carefully crowded out the homelessness crisis devastating California’s cities. The NFL packed the stands to capacity, counting a bevy of celebrities among the more than 70,000 attendees.
Most glaring was the conspicuous lack of masks in the crowd.
Residents of Serbia’s capital were surprised to hear that LA’s homeless epidemic (5 homeless people per 1,000 residents) is substantially greater than that of Belgrade’s (1.6 per thousand). But these Serbs, already acquainted enough with the states to watch American football, were most surprised when I explained that Los Angeles, like so many other American cities, still makes children abide by the most rigorous coronavirus restrictions.
L.A. county’s school district not only mandates that all students wear masks, but also that they specifically wear more restrictive medical-grade masks. Furthermore, all children over age two who are unable to socially distance are forced to wear masks, even when outside.
The continued regulation of the population least at risk from the coronavirus is cruel and unusual by world standards. This is even more true when vulnerable populations — older people, that is — have abundant access to three separate vaccines and multiple therapeutics.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, France had just 12 weeks of school closures resulting from the pandemic. The United Kingdom had 27 and Spain 15. Serbia had 42.
The U.S., however, had 71.
England never forced its elementary school students to mask up. Nor did Sweden or Norway. Those Western countries that do or did insist on masking children have, for the most part, exempted those under 12. In contrast, toddlers not yet potty trained or capable of speaking English continue to be legally required to wear masks in California and some other U.S. states.
We’ve known for some time that the continued masking of children is cruel and completely unjustified. According to a German study of parents of nearly 26,000 children, of those required to wear masks, a majority reported irritability, headaches, and an inability to concentrate. Nearly two in five reported impaired learning or drowsiness. And now, even the most ardent agents of the forever pandemic have conceded that mask madness has done little to prevent community transmission.
Before Super Bowl Sunday, on Belgrade’s central pedestrian road, Knez Mihailova, I spotted a squad of unsupervised children in tracksuits, smoking cigarettes. Unusual, to be sure, but a good deal less cruel than what I’ve seen in America for the past two years and counting.
