'We followed the rules, wore masks and STILL got Covid': Families who have toed the line are now pushing back against mandates while cases plummet, while NY will extend its mask rule in schools even though neighboring states have dropped theirs
Frustrated parents and students are rallying against school mask mandates after nearly two years of abiding by pandemic restrictions that they allege haven't protected them from the virus.
'I am tired of seeing my kids wearing masks. We abide by the rules, we wear the masks all day at school and work and we still got COVID - including my infant,' Ari Moore, an Oregon mother of three school-aged children, told DailyMail.com.
Moore - who has followed mandates since the pandemic first broke out - said she takes COVID 'very seriously' and feels 'horrible for families who have lost loved ones' to the virus, but is also concerned about the impact masking has on her kids.
'My son says he can’t breathe well with them on and gets told to pull them up when he pulls it down to breathe,' she said. 'And that is not okay!'
The push to end mask restrictions comes as COVID cases continue to fall in the US, with the country recording a 43 percent drop in daily infections over the past week down from 469,770 daily cases a week ago to 267,765 as of Tuesday morning.
The daily case total is now nearing the highs of around 250,000 per day set in last year's surge and is expected to fall even further.
In response, 'angry COVID moms' are fighting restrictions and the lawmakers who 'abandoned their responsibility' to protect America's children by running for Congress.
'When you shut down my kids' schools and impose devastating mental health effects on them - I don’t forgive anyone who did that,' Maud Maron, who plans to run for office in New York, told Bari Weiss in her Common Sense Substack. 'This is the year that parents say, "You’re either with us or against us."'
Emily Burns, who is running for office in Massachusetts, believes the school boards, teachers' unions, politicians, medical experts and officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and World Health Organization (WHO) have failed the nation's children by implementing lockdowns and advisories.
'I’m determined to talk about what we’ve done these past two years, and the criminally bad public policy,' she said. 'I don’t want this to get swept under the rug.'
Similarly, students have taken to protest in an effort to put an end to mask mandates. A group of Chicago-area students walked out of school Monday after being told they were required to wear masks to attend class, despite an Illinois judge having issued a temporary restraining order against the governor's statewide school mask mandate.
Frustrated Vernon Hills High School students walked out of their Chicago-area school Monday after being told they were required to wear masks to attend class
The maskless Vernon Hills High School students were denied entry into classrooms and escorted into the gymnasium, where they were instructed to either mask up, leave school and have a parent report the absence, or work on classwork isolated in the gym
The maskless Vernon Hills High School students were denied entry into classrooms and escorted into the gymnasium, where they were instructed to either mask up, leave school and have a parent report the absence, or work on classwork isolated in the gym.
Video of the protest shows a throng of students exiting the gym before walking out the school's front doors where they are met with applause and positive remarks including: 'Good job, way to stand up for yourselves.'
The students, who were given a mental health day, are angered by the treatment, with one telling The Kerr Report: 'I've been denied access to education.'
The walkout comes as some states, including New Jersey and Delaware, have made the shift to end statewide school mask mandates as COVID-19 positivity rates continue to decline.
Despite the moves of neighboring states, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is planning to expand the statewide mandate ahead of its scheduled expiration later this month.
New York Department of Health spokeswoman Jill Montag confirmed to the Albany Times Union on Monday that the mask mandate, set to expire on February 21, is 'expected to be renewed.'
The initial regulation was issued under a 90-day window. The health department official did not indicate whether the renewal would also be continued for 90 days.
News of renewal comes as the State Council of Superintendents issued a letter to New York Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett alleging mandatory universal masking was a 'major outstanding concern.'
Council President Phyllis S. Harrington and Charles S. Dedrick, council executive officer, also commended Hochul's administration for their 'straightforward communication' about mask mandates.
Video of the protest shows a throng of students exiting the gym before walking out the school's front doors where they are met with applause and positive remarks including: 'Good job, way to stand up for yourselves'
'The critical issue with mandatory masking in schools at this moment is the urgent need for school leaders and parents to know the plan moving forward with concrete assurances from the state,' Harrington and Dedrick penned in the letter, which was made public Monday.
'School leaders, students, teachers, and caregivers have been put through a whirlwind of uncertainty when it comes to masking.'
The council argued that parents are concerned mask mandates will 'continue in perpetuity' because state leadership has failed to 'provide reasonable, understandable and achievable metrics based on recommendations from medical professionals for when masking rules will eventually be changed.'
Meanwhile, the statewide order forcing businesses without vaccination mandates to require mask-wearing for workers, customers and visitors is set to expire on Thursday and will not be extended, according to the newspaper.
Hochul will make a formal announcement about the state's mask mandates on Wednesday.
Maud Maron, who is running for against Democrat Carolyn Maloney in New York's 12th congressional district, launched her congressional bid because she believes Hochul's actions are hypocritical and not in the best interest of her children.
'When Kathy Hochul gets on the screen, talking about how she wants to protect us and keep the masks in schools, she doesn’t have a f*****g mask on her face, and I’m so sick of politicians who take the mask off their face to tell me to put the mask on my children—like how dare you?' she told Weiss.
'You have to fight for the things that people are taking away from you.'
Emily Burns, a Massachusetts mother running as a Republican, is bidding for Congress because she doesn't want the impacts of 'bad public policies' that have been in effect during the pandemic to get 'swept under the rug'.
'Every Republican who misses that message of the betrayal of our kids - and there are a lot who are not fully engaged on this - is leaving votes on the table,' she said.
California, like New York, will continue its school mask mandate, although the state did announce Monday it will end its indoor masking requirement for vaccinated people February 15.
Governor Gavin Newsom's order still requires unvaccinated people to be masked indoors.
The modification also specifies that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, will have to wear masks in higher-risk areas like public transit and nursing homes and other congregate living facilities.
Local governments are allowed to continue their own indoor masking requirements, if they choose.
Meantime, in Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker has asked the State Attorney General's office to appeal the temporary restraining order issued by Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow last Friday that restricts his mask mandate.
Pritzker, in a press release, called the decision 'misguided' and threatened that schools may be forced to go remote if they don't have the proper tools to keep students and staff safe.
However, President Joe Biden's COVID tsar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, argued just last week that 'Illinois is actually doing well.'
'The upper Northeast and the Midwest, represented by Chicago and Illinois, are doing better in general than the rest of the country,' Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told NBC Chicago on Friday.
He claimed the state, and nation as a whole, has been through the worst of the pandemic.
'To the Illinoisans who feel that way, you are correct - but also, Illinois has been through multiple surges, as we all have,' Fauci said.
He also applauded the state's school mask mandate because it, combined with vaccinations, are all part of a 'layered approach' to keep schools open.
'You provide a safe environment for children by surrounding them with people who themselves are protected, number one. Number two, vaccinate as many of the children as you can,' Fauci said.
Despite a decline in COVID positivity rates, the White House and CDC are still recommending that children remain masked while at school
COVID cases are continuing to fall in the US as the country starts to move past the Omicron surge, recording a 43 percent drop in daily infections over the past week
'Next you provide an environment in schools hopefully with things like good ventilation but also masking. When you put all of those things together, the school system has been really quite safe for children, with few exceptions.'
He added: 'So before we start talking about pulling back on them, let's get the dynamic of the virus in the community low enough so that we can feel safe in pulling back on the requirement for children to wear masks.'
Echoing Fauci's applause for school mask mandates, press secretary Jen Psaki signaled Monday that the White House does not approve of the liberal New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut governors' decision to end mask mandates for school children in their own states.
'We recommend masking in schools. That is the recommendation from the CDC,' the press secretary said in her daily briefing, asked about the decision from Govs. Phil Murphy and John Carney. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced he would be lifting his state's school mask mandate later in the day. Still, Psaki insisted that it is 'up to schools' whether or not they implement a mask requirement.
COVID cases have fallen week-over-week for the past three weeks. Seventeen US states are recording a case decline of 70 percent or more over the past two weeks, only a month after nearly every state was seeing cases double over a 14-day span. The only state still recording increasing cases in Maine, the state with one of the lowest infection rates in America.
Daily death totals often lag behind cases by a few weeks. The mortality rate from the virus is starting to stabilize and has likely peaked as well. The country is averaging 2,529 cases per day, around even to the 2,452 average last week. Falling cases means that a sharp drop in deaths could occur in the near future as well.
Deaths from COVID among children is also rare. CDC data show that around 8.3 million children have contracted Covid and 841 have died since the pandemic began in March 2020.
This means that children make up around 12 percent of cases and less than 0.1 percent of deaths in the US. The Census estimates that 22 percent of Americans are under the age of 18.
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