How is it that schools in some liberal cities are still enforcing absurd COVID-19 restrictions for children two years after it has become clear that children are not at serious risk from the virus?
Major school districts in New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Loudoun County, Virginia, all have quarantine rules that prevent unvaccinated children from attending school if they are considered a close contact of someone who gets COVID-19. Washington Examiner investigative reporter Sarah Westwood detailed these policies, including Washington D.C. forcing children to stay home for five days, with no option of testing negative to return early. Instead, children must test negative to return after the five days are up and be forced to wear a mask for five more days.
The politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators imposing these policies are brazenly disregarding the needs of children and the facts about COVID-19 that have been made crystal clear during the pandemic. The same goes for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bureaucrats, whose recommendations that close contacts quarantine for five days and children still be forced to wear masks give cover to the anti-science zealots who refuse to let children return to school as normal.
According to CDC data from April, roughly 0.14% of children who had contracted COVID-19 were hospitalized, either because of COVID-19 or simply with COVID-19. The more telling number was the percentage of children who died after contracting COVID-19, which was approximately 0.001%. Using the CDC’s own data from previous years, children were at higher risk of being hospitalized or dying from the flu. Unvaccinated children are at lower risk from COVID-19 than most vaccinated adults.
The fact that children were not at serious risk from the virus was clear by the time schools were supposed to begin their new academic years in the fall of 2020. The states and cities that forced children to jump through hoops for school or simply sent them home for virtual “learning” were completely unjustified then. The cities doing it now, with no end in sight, are not only punishing children in defiance of all science: They are showing, for all to see, that they do not care about children and their education.
