Youngkin Is Right on Masks

G lenn Youngkin promised to be on the side of parents as Virginia governor, and on his first day in office, he delivered.

The Republican issued an executive order allowing parents to decide whether their kids will wear masks in school. He met an instant wall of resistance from Democratic-controlled counties and criticism from the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki. A Washington Post headline said that Youngkin was “terrifying” people.

The flak notwithstanding, his order is a sign of a growing backlash against Covid restrictions that will probably only gain force as the pandemic and lockdowns drag on and former articles of faith, including on masks, get increasingly called into question.

Youngkin has ventured into a legally murky area. Critics believe that he doesn’t have the authority to issue his order because Virginia passed a statute in early 2021 saying that schools should, “to the maximum extent practicable,” adhere to CDC-blessed strategies for controlling spread of the virus. The CDC is still recommending masks. The statute is vague, though, and doesn’t mention masks. Youngkin’s predecessor, Democrat Ralph Northam, felt compelled to issue an executive order specifically mandating masks in K–12 schools.

There’s also the question of whether decisions on masking and other mitigation measures are best left to school districts. Here, it’s worth noting that Youngkin isn’t preventing districts from implementing mandates; he’s only establishing a carveout for objecting parents, should they choose to take advantage of it.

That said, it’s clearly time for mask mandates to end. The conventional wisdom on masks has gone from “don’t wear them, they are useless” at the beginning of the pandemic, to “you are a terrible person if you don’t wear them” for about a year and a half, to now, “cloth masks don’t really protect anyone.”

Even though Jen Psaki said that Arlington County, Va., which is vowing to defy Youngkin, is standing up for kids and their safety, the case for masking kids in schools is weak or nonexistent.

We in the United States are an outlier on this question. The CDC recommends masking all kids ages two and older, whereas other health authorities are considerably more nuanced.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control doesn’t recommend masking for school children younger than age twelve, noting — correctly — that they “may have a lower tolerance to wearing masks for extended periods of time, and may fail to wear them properly.” In areas with community spread, it recommends, students in secondary schools should wear masks, although it stipulates that they should “be seen as a complementary measure, rather than a stand-alone measure to prevent transmission within schools.”

The World Health Organization makes distinctions based on age. Kids ages five and younger, it advises, shouldn’t be required to wear masks based on the “overall interest of the child and the capacity to appropriately use a mask with minimal assistance.” The WHO is open to the masking of kids ages six to eleven, so long as a wide variety of conditions are met. And it says that kids age twelve and over should mask like adults.

Many European countries have avoided sweeping American-style mask mandates for school kids, and for good reason. A large-scale CDC study found no benefits from the masking of kids. Many students wear cloth masks that don’t provide much protection (even if worn and maintained properly), and no sane person should want to subject a child to an N95 all day long.

Parents in Virginia who believe that masking is important can still act accordingly, and vaccines and boosters are available to provide another layer of protection for those who choose them. But masks remain something more than a public-health measure for many proponents — they are a signal of virtue and a pillar of pandemic orthodoxy.

Youngkin’s offense, at bottom, is dissenting from this worldview and providing options for parents who don’t share it, either.

© 2022 by King Features Syndicate