Party unpoopers

COVID-19 positivity rates in New York City are rising. Hospitalizations and deaths are not, despite indoor mask and vaccine mandates having ended in early March. Which is one reason Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks were right Monday to lift the requirement for youngsters in the city’s public schools to be vaccinated in order to attend prom.

For months now, adults — and high school kids, when they’re out in the city on their own — have been free to party to their hearts’ content inside, with or without masks, whether or not they’ve had their shots. Also for months now, kids in K-12 schools have been sitting next to one another in class unmasked, whether or not they’ve had their shots. So it was nonsensical to draw the line at an end-of-year rite of passage, especially at a moment when teenagers in New York and around the country are struggling psychologically, due in no small part to two years of interrupted routines and isolation caused by the pandemic.

As Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan put it, vaccinations are important, as is masking, “But another critical resource for health is togetherness and celebration — for which these events are so critical in the lives of young people.”

If only the same healthy perspective informed the city’s rigid rules, still in place despite parental protests, requiring unvaccinated 2-, 3- and 4-yearold kids in pre-K and daycare programs to mask up all day long on the ground that they’re too young to be vaccinated. Kids in this age range are the least vulnerable to coming down with a serious case of COVID, and the downside of mask-wearing is by all accounts most severe for them, as they’re often learning to speak properly and gleaning a lot from facial cues.

The fact that 17- and 18-year-olds, even in schools where vaccination rates may be very low, are now being given the green light to cut a rug should shine a harsh new spotlight on the pre-K mask mandate. End it already.