A Wisconsin representative responded to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s approach to masking school aged children.
Rep. Gallagher slams Dr. Fauci's comments earlier this week where he doubled down on masking kids in schools.
"By masking kids, you're impairing their education, their development, and their childhood…even the WHO and European CDC determined the tradeoff was not worth it." pic.twitter.com/5ArAKqilo6
— Rep. Gallagher Press Office (@RepGallagher) January 25, 2022
Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) said in a Twitter video Tuesday, “By masking kids, you’re impairing their education, their development, and their childhood.”
Gallagher said he disagreed with Fauci’s doubling down on universal masking for kids in school, as young as two years old.
“This is based on inconclusive science, at best,” he said. “Dr. Fauci has consistently maintained indefensible positions.”
He said masking young kids in schools is an abhorrent policy that has unclear benefits and causes very real harm to students.
Gallagher said he believes the masking of children in schools could have potentially been justified in the early months of the pandemic when very little was known about the virus. However, the representative said “we are well past that point.”
“There is still no clear evidence that universal masking in schools has had any significant impact on the transmission of coronavirus,” he said.
“By masking kids, you are impairing their education severely,” Gallagher said.
He said that the European version of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) both decided that the tradeoff for universal masking in schools was not worth it.
“Here in the U.S., for some reason, likely just fear or incompetence, the CDC still can’t give any real prediction on when their universal masking requirements will come to an end,” he said.
Gallagher also discussed school closures due to COVID, “Parents should be able to send their kids to school in person, and parents can choose whether or not they want their kids to wear a mask, they shouldn’t be forced to do it.”
“Adults should start acting like adults,” Gallagher said.
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Hayley Feland is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun and The Wisconsin Daily Star | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
