On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a statement demanding that everyone in school over the age of 2, including students and staff, be forced to wear a mask even if they have already been vaccinated, Breitbart reports.
The statement, given by Sonja O’Leary, chair of the AAP’s Council on School Health, said that “the pandemic has taken a heartbreaking toll on children,” and that the only way to alleviate the suffering is by “combining layers of protection that include vaccinations, masking, and clean hands hygiene,” which “will make in-person learning safe and possible for everyone.”
The AAP’s justification for the mandatory masking is that, allegedly, a large portion of the student population is still not yet eligible for the vaccines, while also falsely claiming that masks are “proven to reduce transmission of the virus and to protect those who are not vaccinated.”
AAP further reiterated this debunked claim when Sara Bode, the incoming chair of AAP’s Council on School Health Executive Committee, claimed that mask mandates are “the most effective strategy to create consistent messages and expectations among students without the added burden of needing to monitor everyone’s vaccination status.”
The AAP’s demand directly contradicts with the recent edict issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which said that students and staff who have been fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks in school.
There has been growing speculation in recent weeks that mask mandates and other strict lockdown measures may return over unfounded fears of the new India Variant of the coronavirus, which some refer to as the “Delta Variant.” These fears led to Los Angeles County in California reimposing its indoor mask mandate on everyone, including the vaccinated, and also caused the Dow Jones to crash by over 700 points on Monday.