Editors at the Washington Examiner argue now is the time to block the return of harmful mask mandates.
We regret to inform you that the Democrats are at it again.
An elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, sent a note in early September telling parents that all children in one class would be required to wear a mask indefinitely because three tested positive for COVID-19.
Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a one-off. If schools start requiring masks for tiny outbreaks (of a virus against which children were safe even before the entire population acquired immunity and had access to vaccines) then we can expect rolling mask mandates, not only for COVID-19, but for cold and flu season.
Like a virus, mask mandates will spread if not contained. The mandarins of Montgomery County, a wealthy suburb of D.C., consider themselves the advanced guard of “progressive” governance. The school district was among the most locked-down, distanced, and masked in America, with the strictest quarantine rules outside Australia.
If MoCo restores mandates, others will follow. Already, there are mandate outbreaks elsewhere.
Dillard University in New Orleans and Morris Brown College in Atlanta have both mandated masks early in the academic year. For good measure, President Joe Biden is masking up again, although inconsistently, as you’d expect from a chief executive who has lost the plot.
This absurd and unfounded trend must be stopped.
Mask mandates do not curb the spread of COVID-19 to any meaningful degree. Yes, well-fitted, high-quality masks worn consistently and properly can limit the spread of respiratory viruses, but that doesn’t mean mandating them does any good or that they don’t cause concomitant harm. The preponderance of research on mandates has failed to show any good effect, especially among school children.
We know that politicians didn’t really believe masks mattered, because those who supported or imposed them also flouted them.
