More Mask Madness

Just over a week ago, the Centers for Disease Control advised that vaccinated teachers and students don’t need masks. On Tuesday, it reversed that, recommending that all staff and K-12ers mask up, regardless of vax status. It also switched to saying indoor-mask mandates make sense, at least in areas experiencing spikes in cases.

This is nonsense — and pernicious, too: The vax-hesitant lose a big reason to get jabbed if the shot doesn’t let them breathe freely. Indeed, such reversals also undermine the CDC’s entire claim to be making calls purely on the science.

Especially since the science is clear: Kids under 12 clearly don’t much get or transmit COVID, and ones over 12 can get jabbed — as can all but a few adults who work in schools.

The CDC cites the Delta variant, which seems more able to give (mild) COVID to the jabbed, as reason for its reversal. But that looks more like political/bureaucratic panic than science: Delta-saturated England has now seen seven straight days of declining cases even though it ended its main restrictions more than a week ago.

And while Delta has meant rising cases here in America, it hasn’t pushed hospitalizations up nearly as much, nor deaths at all significantly — 99-plus percent of both the last two categories are the un-vaxxed.

That a few vaxxed people can become at least somewhat Delta-contagious doesn’t justify a 180-degree flip of key recommendations after just seven days. Particularly when cases for vaxxed people tend to be mild.

And especially when CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky admits that masking is barely a Band-Aid compared with the real priority, vaccinations. It makes you think she’s just bowing (again) to political pressure from a White House now panicking in the face of media hysteria over Delta.

But the bureaucrats who need the pressure sit at the Food and Drug Administration, which is taking its time giving full approval to the vaccines. And that delay makes it far harder for employers to require workers to get jabbed and for states and cities to require it of teachers and other frontline employees.

Heck, the FDA has stopped issuing emergency approvals for anti-COVID treatments and technologies. It clearly thinks the crisis is completely over. Is the White House totally asleep at the switch? Or is this the beginning of a slide back into damaging lockdowns?

One more question: When does it end? What’s the baseline level of acceptable COVID transmission before the feds stop issuing these absurd, scientifically baseless advisories?

In particular: What numbers do we have to hit before they let kids be kids again?