Leaving New York; Saving the Children

Now he tells us. Now President Biden, who was ranting that we had to blame Donald Trump for the first year of Covid, has declared that there is no federal solution to the pandemic. But, he still wants to impose a federal vaccine mandate on everyone.

Consistent thinking, anyone?

And then there is New York. One cannot imagine a more inept and incompetent group of politicians than we have in New York City. Comrade de Blasio is the worst, though now we have a new governor, one Kathy Hochul, who believes that leadership involves shutting everything down, imposing mask mandates and the like. I suspect that the new governor considers herself to be a governess dealing with obstreperous children. 

In large part, New Yorkers have complied. The offices are empty; the schools are often closed; children are forced to wear masks all day long.

New York Post columnist Karol Markowitz has had enough. She is moving her family to Miami. She and her husband and their three children are going to move to a place where children are not subjected to irrational policies. The city, under the aegis of the teachers’ unions, have already damaged children by shutting down schools for over a year. One suspects that most of them will not soon recover from the lost learning, the emotional damage and their enforced desocialization.

City and state authorities have decided that we must shut down as much as we can. They have never considered the impact of these policies. They are all-in to control the virus, even though their policies have done little to control the virus. They refuse to accept the least risk. 

Risk aversion-- interesting point. Men are more inclined and more willing to take risks than are women. It's one of those truths about human nature than we often ignore.

When you have a state or a city run by women, apparently, they are less inclined to take risks. A city or a state that is run by men would presumably be more inclined to accept a certain level of risk.

Of course, this is not always gender specific. Some men, like Mayor de Blasio, function like women. No risk Bill has sat back weakly and watched crime increase under his watch. The criminals have his number. Fortunately, he will be replaced as mayor next week.

It is a colossal irony, the kind that draws our attention, that America’s leading risk taker, namely Elon Musk, was recently named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. In a country where many political leaders refuse to accept any level of risk in dealing with the pandemic, preferring more rather than fewer shutdowns, regardless of the impact on children’s development or the nation’s economy, one of the most admired people in the country is the champion of risk taking.

Put that one in your pipe and puff on it.

Anyway, Markowitz describes life in New York in the plague year. It did not bring out New Yorkers’ best. It brought out their self-righteous and maniacal side. You would have thought we were dealing with the bubonic plague, which was as deadly as Covid is not.

This time was very different. The pandemic had us at each other’s throats. Neighbors reported each other for gatherings. People screamed at each other in the street for not wearing masks. It became religious and any questioning of the doctrine was forbidden. It was impossible to discuss whether containment measures were useful (Did we need to wipe down our groceries with Clorox? What were the three-sided Plexiglas booths helping, exactly?) because any discussion of easing up on any of it meant you wanted PEOPLE TO DIE. If you wanted schools to open, you wanted TEACHERS TO DIE. People became afraid to speak up. I saw it all the time.

Markowitz recounts that when she decided to leave New York, slews of her friends wrote that they wished they could join her. Of course, they needed to remain anonymous, lest they be considered traitors and be canceled or prosecuted:

When I announced our family was leaving New York and moving to Florida, a state with a governor who has led the way on sanely managing COVID-19, I received dozens of messages from New Yorkers considering the same move. When I asked several if I could quote them, they asked to use a fake name. They live in fear of being “canceled” for not being sufficiently terrified of COVID. Three vaccines and many new treatments do not seem to matter. We must live suspended in our fear indefinitely.

Being a mother, Markowitz is acutely sensitive to the cost her children are paying for New York City’s crazy policies-- imposed by deranged teachers’ unions and Democratic politicians:

No one has it worse in New York than children. There is damage being done to the kids of this city, with masking and continued restrictions, and few in leadership seem to care at all. Masking is seen as a “low cost” safety option, but the idea that masking kids has no consequences is, of course, absurd. We’re already seeing studies about a decrease in cognitive abilities, in particular for “males and children in lower socioeconomic families.” 

Mask mandates for children. Has anyone considered the impact of all-day masking on children? Certainly, women have stood up at school administration meetings and have denounced the practice. They have now been labelled domestic terrorists.

I see it in my own children. My 6-year-old son, who has been masked for the entirety of his schooling, is shy and apt not to repeat himself when he is misunderstood. He also will not ask the teacher to repeat herself. It’s having predictable results in his education.

Of course, school shutdowns and mask mandates are special-- they seem entirely limited to American blue cities. Foreign countries would never subject children to such draconian abuse. And, be clear, it is clearly child abuse:

We visited Iceland this summer and kids under 16 don’t have to mask there and never have. I have friends in Britain, Sweden, Holland. None of their under-12 children had worn masks at all through the entire pandemic. They don’t love their kids any less than parents in super-blue parts of the United States where masking is most intense. They do not worry less about their children becoming sickened with COVID. But they understood that in the short span of childhood, there are trade-offs. 

It was a trade-off. It was a risk-reward calculation:

The medical professionals in their countries had weighed the data that masking has a minimal benefit for children, but would be detrimental to their education and well-being, and chose not to do it.

Now, New York State’s new governess has mandated universal masking-- even for two year olds:

Instead, in September, at a time when our COVID case rate was at its lowest, Gov. Kathy Hochul forced the return to masking even for 2-year-olds in daycare settings. No other Western country is masking children this young. As the rest of the world moved toward sanity, blue cities like New York have jutted away.

Hyper-masking of the lowest-risk population is the canary in the coal mine for so many other issues, but it’s not just the masking driving us away. 

Has all of the risk aversion cut down the rates of covid transmission. Not at all. New York is now leading the nation in viruses:

Now the Omicron strain is hitting New York hard. Cases are through the roof. There’s no argument to be made that any of our mitigation tactics worked. The masking of toddlers was pointless. People are still contracting COVID-19 and classrooms are still closing. 

Markowitz continues:

School openings in New York City were delayed twice in the fall of 2020. When they finally opened, they were on a ridiculous hybrid schedule, which appears to have exacerbated cases. No sooner did this hobbled part-time model — which was celebrated by leadership across the city as some sort of win for kids while children in much of America and the world just attended schools on a regular schedule — start than they shut down again when NYC hit a 3 percent positive testing rate in November. Everything else remained open. Only children bore the burden of a shutdown.

It is almost as though New York’s leaders have it in for children. In their zeal to protect children, they are damaging children. It is beyond appalling:

Now the great majority of NYC kids are shut out of indoor dining, museums, theater and much else because the vaccine mandate has been extended to young kids, the demographic least likely to have a poor COVID outcome. Kids from other countries, few of which even have an approved vaccine for those under 11 years old, are not welcome in our anti-children city.

Until the recent cold weather, my kids had been eating on the ground outdoors in their respective schoolyards. When they finally moved the kids inside, my sixth-grader reported that the kids were forbidden from speaking to each other or sitting with their friends. Who else is living like this? Who else eats in silence? The best part was when the school vice principal visited the cafeteria and saw the kids chatting, she yelled at them — but not before pulling down her mask so she could be better understood, of course.

Are children at greater risk for covid? In truth they are at less risk, certainly at less risk than octogenarians:

A report by Public Health England in September found that unvaccinated kids are at lower risk of death than vaccinated adults of any age. But 80-year-olds are free to gallivant around the city living their best lives despite being at the highest risk for COVID deaths.

So, Markowitz and her husband, as conscientious parents, are moving their children to Miami:

It feels like we’re in the grip of mania and there’s no way out. I have fought for the children of this city the entire length of the pandemic. I fought for every child who did not have parents at home working from their laptops, every child with a disability who was not getting the help they needed over Zoom. I fought for all the children who would never regain what they had lost while their city stepped over them, trying to ignore their existence. 

But now I have to think of my own children and get them to sanity. We can no longer wait for our city to return to it.