“Listen to the science!”
That was the mantra of the left for more than a year, but Mayor Bill de Blasio offers a caveat: Listen to the science, unless the United Federation of Teachers disagrees.
The mayor said Monday that the city will ignore the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, which indicated that vaccinated students and staff can go un-masked. (Gotham was already ignoring similar guidance that the state Health Department issued last month.)
All the science shows that kids under 12 simply don’t get COVID in significant numbers, and the rare cases are not that serious. Kids have been going to school full-time, maskless, throughout Europe and other parts of the United States. The number of infections is minuscule.
Meanwhile, teachers in the city have had every chance to get jabbed — yet their union remains the loudest voice in the country for not reopening schools without every conceivable safety measure, while pitching it as “strongly supporting” reopening.
Then again, Randi Weingarten, who heads the UFT’s parent union, was instrumental in adding new restrictions to the CDC school-reopening guidelines back in February.
Given the union resistance, de Blasio deserves some credit for his hard line in favor of total reopening (and the end of all virtual classes) come the fall. And the mayor said Monday that the city will continue looking into the mask question in the weeks ahead.
“As always,” he says, the decision “will be driven by the data we see and the science.” The data and science are clear. Stop kowtowing to the UFT’s paranoia.
