Over 100 parents and their children rallied at New York City Hall Sunday to demand Mayor Eric Adams ‘unmask our toddlers’ just days after New York City‘s new health commissioner sparked outrage after announcing that children aged five and under should wear face masks indefinitely.
Parents had previously protested outside City Hall two Sundays ago demanding that those under five be given the same freedom as older children to unmask in schools.
Signs included slogans like ‘My kid my choice’ and ‘Follow the science’ while chanted ‘Unmask our toddlers!’
Adams has said his policy is necessary for younger kids because they aren’t yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Dyan Hes, a pediatrician and medical director at Gramercy Pediatrics, said that she’s seeing more children with speech delays due to masking.
‘I do not believe that the masking of 2-4 year olds is doing anything to help this pandemic. What has stopped the spread of Covid is having the adults around them be vaccinated.’
‘These children cannot learn well with masks. Kids who are on the cusp of speaking or might have hearing loss, these kids are all suffering. The brain develops fastest from ages 0-3.’
A speaker leads a protest of about 100 parents and children in front of New York City Hall against the city’s mask mandate for children under five years old
Protesters argue that these children are at the lowest risk for Covid and therefor should not be masked
Dr. Dyan Hes, a pediatrician and medical director at Gramercy Pediatrics, said that she’s seeing more children with speech delays due to masking
New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a news conference at City Hall, Friday, March 18
Dr. Ashwin Vasan, incoming commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
A sign shows how they believe masking harms children’s social and emotional development
One Washington Heights parent, Daniela Jampel, told the New York Post that she wanted New York City to ‘follow the science’ the way the rest of New York seems to be doing.
‘New York state recognizes the science. Everywhere else in New York state, 10 miles away in Nassau County, 10 miles away in Westchester County, toddlers are allowed to take off their masks along with their older brothers and sisters in school,’ Jampel, 38, said.
Protesters argued that the mandate is unnecessary because of the low risk of infection for those under five, and that the rule is ‘damaging’ to the emotional and social development of young children.
Along with a vaccine mandate for municipal employees, the under-fives rule is among the only Covid restrictions NYC Mayor Eric Adams didn’t lift.
One group of parents even said they were filing a lawsuit early in March in Manhattan Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn the mandate, calling the rule ‘harmful’ to children.
According to Quinn, the variant accounts for about 30 percent of NYC’s recent COVID cases
The parents plan to argue in court that the city must pass a law justifying the need to continue the mandate for children under five.
The decision to force children under five to continue wearing masks comes even though just 307 children aged between zero and four have died of COVID in the whole of the U.S. since the pandemic began in spring 2020, according to the latest CDC data.
Speaking on Spectrum News NY1 in early March, Adams said that parents of children under five ‘need to trust me.’
‘We are going to get there. We will lose the masks. We’re gonna see if there’s any spike in K-12, then we’ll come back for the babies.’
Adams did not elaborate how long the mandate would last for children under five or what specific infection rate among children five and older he is looking for in order to justify removing masks for all.
Nationwide, pandemic restrictions that have been in place for nearly two years are lifting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Friday that only 10 percent of the country — those living in ‘high’ Covid risk areas — need to wear masks indoors in public settings.
Chicago and San Francisco authorities are also dropping pandemic restrictions.
‘Two years ago we became the epicenter for the virus and two months ago we became the epicenter again for the Omicron,’ NYC Mayor Adams said last Friday.
‘Two years of pain, two years of heartbreak, of uncertainty, of business loss, of schools closing, of just conflict inside our households, but I said from since the time I was elected I said that this virus was not going to define us, we’re going to define ourselves,’ he added.
Adams cautioned that while the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, he said that he was confident that it is now safe to send children over five years old back to school unmasked.
‘We want to see the faces of our children. We want to see their smiles,’ the mayor said, adding that parents with kids over the age of five could still send their children to school with face coverings if they wished.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who is replacing Dr. Dave Chokshi as New York City’s health commissioner, angered many by saying that children under five could be masked for a long time to come.
‘I think it’s indefinite at this point,’ Dr. Ashwin Vasan said Friday during a COVID-19 briefing in Queens. ‘People who have tried to predict what’s going to happen in the future in this pandemic have repeatedly found egg on their face, as they say, and I’m not going to do that here today.’
The woke commissioner, who lives in Brooklyn with his partner and three children, including a four-year-old son, argued he wanted to mask children because under fives are not vaccinated.
‘As a father of a two-and-a-half-year old-and two other older kids, I want to keep them as safe as possible. I would love nothing more than to send my son to daycare without a mask,’ Vasan said, according to CBS New York.
‘But as a scientist, and as a doctor, and an epidemiologist, I want to keep him safe because he’s not eligible for a vaccine.’
Vasan is the city’s 44th health commissioner, replacing Dr. Dave Chokshi, who recently stepped down from the role.
Friday’s remarks were made during his first-ever COVID press conference and have been met with anger online by many who accused him of ‘torturing children’.
‘It should be us as parents choice if we want our children to wear a mask. Worry about the crime rate in NYC & not our children,’ Kimberly Raimondo stated.
‘Why are we masking the little ones ? That’s child abuse,’ questioned Dawn Doccola.
‘Really pathetic these corrupt pols (sic) just can’t let it go. Already proven to not work and actually makes things worse,’ wrote Dimitrios Skaliotis.
The push to rescind mandates comes amid debate over the BA.2 variant of COVID, a sub-variant of the Omicron.
‘Currently there’s no evidence that BA.2 causes more severe illness, increases risks of hospitalization or that our current vaccines offer less protection against it, but we continue to monitor this,’ Vasan said, according to The New York Daily News.
He added: ‘We are tracking these variants very closely.’
Vasan also said he doesn’t plan to drop the city’s workplace vaccine mandate anytime soon.
However, despite his push for continuing mandates, the woke epidemiologist did note that restrictions are taking a toll on residents and reminded them to prioritize their mental health – a topic the doctor is apparently passionate about.
‘We’ve all been through so much over these past few years and continuing coverage adds to strain of wellbeing,’ Vasan said, encouraging New Yorkers to seek help from mental health professionals if needed.
NYC’s new health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, thinks that children ages five and under should continue wearing face masks indefinitely despite by the nationwide trend to lift pandemic-era mandates
The commissioner, who has a four-year-old son, argued that unmasking is not safe for those who are unvaccinated
Last weekend, New York saw a spike in positive cases, which experts are attributing to the BA.2 sub-variant.
COVID cases more than doubled across the state this week with the positivity rate jumping from 1.45 percent on March 14 to 3.75 percent a day later.
As of Friday, the state’s seven-day average positivity rate now stands at 1.76 percent. There were 2,089 new COVID cases statewide reported on Friday and 16 deaths.
Overall, New York has reported 4,935,921 positive COVID cases and 67,191 deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Governor Kathy Hochul also announced Friday that COVID hospitalizations across New York – which total at 978 – are at the lowest its been since early August. Only 157 patients were in intensive care.
Vasan, a primary care physician with twenty years in the medical field, epidemiologist and public health expert, has been tasked to address pandemic management and recovery.
He also works on chronic disease prevention, ‘health equity’ and mental health.
The public health expert spent nearly a decade expanding HIV treatment access in developing nations.
Most recently he served as President and CEO of Fountain House, one the largest mental health charities in the world.
He also served on staff at the Columbia University Mailman College of Public Health since 2014, focusing on the implementation of science and global health.
Additionally, he worked at the College of Physicians and Surgeons providing care for low-income, Medicaid/Medicare or uninsured patients from Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx.
Children find it more difficult than adults to recognize people wearing face masks which could affect their ability to make friends, study finds
York University in the UK published a new landmark study showing masks make it difficult for children to recognize faces and, in turn, could affect their ability to socialize and make friends.
Researchers from found that face masks make it 20 percent more difficult for children to recognize faces, compared to just 15 percent in adults.
‘[This] could impair children’s ability to navigate through social interactions with their peers and teachers, and this could lead to issues forming important relationships,’ said Dr. Erez Freud, who led the study.
‘Given the importance of faces to social interactions, this is something we need to pay attention to.’
The team recruited 72 children aged six to 14, who were presented with images of faces with or without masks, both upright and inverted
While previous research has found that mask-wearing can hinder facial recognition in adults, this is the first time it has been studied in children.
Freud explained: ‘Faces are among the most important visual stimuli.
‘We use facial information to determine different attributes about a person, including their gender, age, mood and intentions.
‘We use this information to navigate through social interactions.’
The team recruited 72 children aged six to 14, who were presented with images of faces with or without masks, both upright and inverted.
The results showed that children had about a 20 percent impairment rate for recognizing masked faces.
For comparison, previous research has shown that adults have about a 15 percent impairment rate.
The results showed that children had about a 20 percent impairment rate for recognizing masked faces. For comparison, previous research has shown that adults have about a 15 percent impairment rate
Meanwhile, the results also showed that children process faces differently when looking at a masked, and unmasked face.
Usually, humans process faces as a whole, rather than by their individual features – known as holistic processing.
However, the researchers found that when children looked at masked faces, they became more analytical, focusing on individual features.
‘Not only do masks hinder the ability of children to recognize faces, but they also disrupt the typical, holistic way that faces are processed,’ Freud said.
The researchers hope their findings will encourage future research into the effects face masks have on children’s ability to recognize faces and make friends.
Freud concluded: ‘With children back to school with mask mandates once again, future research should explore the social and psychological ramifications of wearing masks on children’s educational performance.’
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