Yesterday, we registered our pre-Kindergartener for the Summer 2022 season of outdoor day camp. There are dozens and dozens of such programs here in Brooklyn. We considered proximity, program content, and which programs her preschool classmates might be doing. But when we narrowed it down, the #1 question on our minds was: Which program seems most likely to drop the mask requirement and let children do outdoor day camp unmasked, if coronavirus numbers go low and stay low?
We had her in a similar day camp here in Prospect Park last summer. A sweet-looking half-day program for ages 3 and 4. Masks were required at all times except when they ate, and when they ate there was social distancing. Our daughter, usually full of enthusiasm for things, seemed increasingly flat and glum about going to camp each day. She is a friendly kid but she made zero new friends in camp all summer, and I heard similar from other parents; at age 3 it is very hard to understand one another, conversationally, through cloth masks, and you’re still just learning how to read and interpret the nuances of facial expressions. And hot July and August days in the park were made that much more uncomfortable with masks on their faces all morning.
As Omicron recedes, and it is receding, I find myself impatient, looking at other US states and at other nations (hello Denmark) that are lifting their societal restrictions or never had them as strict as we have here in the liberal cities and towns of the Northeast.
To be sure, I get it: there are things we all must do and we have done them, during an active pandemic. Late December through mid January, in particular, were frightening here in NYC. But things are changing for the better and it is happening fast. As covid case numbers drop further and further, and they will, at what point can we say that there is not a pandemic? Is there an off-ramp for these mask-related policies? Particularly around children, and the ways they are made to constantly wear masks in school and especially in organized *outdoor* group activity?
I understand the counterarguments. Think of the immunocompromised people out there. Think of the frontline nurses and doctors who have been through hell and are still working in horrible conditions treating covid patients. And I do.
But this masking — particularly making young children and teenagers wear masks — was not supposed to become a permanent way of life, something we should do from here on out “just in case.” For increasingly hypothetical reasons.
I think Texas went entirely too far in the other direction, flouting the pandemic’s grim reality and paying the price for doing so. But it was interesting for me to read this recent Atlantic essay from a Texan mom — “First, You Decide That Kids Belong In School”— and to connect so deeply, as a parent, with some of what she is saying.
From the essay:
In my community, we understand that keeping kids in class is partly a matter of will. You can call us selfish and anti-science for the way we’ve handled our schools, but that is not true. Consider the devastating social, emotional, and educational consequences experienced by students across our country. Is it selfish to prioritize human connection? Is it anti-science for Americans to not mask children when much of Europe never has?
Kids are resilient, the chorus goes, even as they’re reaching their breaking point. When we adults reach our breaking point, we berate ourselves for not being tougher. Have you lost your steely resolve to fight COVID forever? Shameful.
And this passage really stayed with me:
By letting children go about their lives, we are accepting some possibility of spreading the virus to adults who are far more vulnerable to it. But burdening children mostly for adults’ sake is a moral judgment too—one that no community should make lightly, especially if adults can take other precautions.
To be clear, I think that communities like hers have gone too far in disregarding the pandemic during times when it was and is a pandemic. But, no lie, I do envy how they are schooling their kids. And I have no doubt that, unlike here in Brooklyn, they are happier kids and they are not experiencing a societal surge of pediatric mental illness. And just try to find an available child psychologist in this city, anytime these past 18 months. It is difficult.
So I want to ask: Where is the Off Ramp?
At its worst, around January 1, Omicron Covid was infecting NYC at a recorded rate of 1 in every 27 New Yorkers per week. The actual rate might have been be double that or more, as you couldn’t even get tested without waiting hours on queue out in the cold.
But now it’s more like 1 in every 500 New Yorkers. And soon it will be half that, and then half that.
Where is the Off Ramp? And maybe, just maybe, if there’s almost no covid anywhere, will my 4 year old be able do summer day camp in Prospect Park in 88 degree weather this coming July without being made to have a mask on her face all day?
I am also writing this out because, as this is a political site, I think some of us on the left may be underestimating the groundswell of public feeling around these things. Parents in particular have had enough. Omicron is receding, and receding fast. Vaccination is available to nearly all, and soon to even the youngest.
Soon the crocuses and the daffodils shoots will be poking up through the soil, and if coronavirus has receded to a very low point similar to June 2021… will our children still be made to wear masks all day in school?