D.C. Drops Mask & Vaccine Mandate for Bars and Strip Clubs, But Not for Students

On Monday, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced an end to many of the city’s stringent COVID-19 protocols in the coming weeks.

Starting yesterday, our nation’s capital ended its vaccine requirement for businesses.

And beginning March 1, the city will end its indoor mask mandate for businesses including bars, strip clubs and restaurants.

According to a graphic posted by the mayor on Twitter, masks will not be required at:

• Restaurants and bars
• Sports and entertainment venues
• Gyms, recreation centers, and indoor athletic facilities
• Houses of worship
• Businesses
• Grocery stores and pharmacies
• Retail establishments
• DC Government offices/areas with no public interaction

However, seemingly disregarding “the science,” one place where the mayor will not roll back the indoor mask mandate is for children in schools.

“On March 1, masks will continue to be required at a number of locations, including schools,” the mayor wrote on Twitter.

On March 1, masks will continue to be required at a number of locations, including schools. pic.twitter.com/c8Fwfy15sk

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) February 14, 2022

In addition, on December 12, 2021 the Washington D.C. City Council passed a bill requiring “all eligible students … to be vaccinated against the Coronavirus … students eligible to be immunized under a fully approved vaccine must do so before March 1, 2022.”

The vaccine requirement for school children will also remain in place.

One of the most frustrating parts of the onerous COVID-19 mandates we’ve seen put in place over the past two years has been the hypocrisy on the part of those responsible for them, unwilling to follow their own regulations.

We saw this again on full display during Super Bowl LVI.

Los Angeles County has imposed an outdoor masking requirement “at outdoor mega events (events with over 5,000 attendees like concerts, sports games, and parades”

And yet, during the Super Bowl, politicians and celebrities alike were caught breaking the county’s rules by not wearing the masks, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Other celebrities seen not wearing masks included LeBron James, Ellen DeGeneres, Justin Bieber, Matt Damon and Kevin Hart.

Do be sure, we don’t believe these celebrities shouldn’t be forced to wear masks either. But neither should school children.

The science regarding the risks that children face from COVID-19 doesn’t match with masking requirements.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that for the entire duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been 795 deaths “involving COVID-19” among children and adolescents age 0-17.

And according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as of February 10, 2022, 12,341,801 children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

This equates to a death rate of 00.006%.

The AAP confirms this, noting that “0.00% – 0.01% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.”

It’s also important to note that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), recently claimed that even for the children who are hospitalized with COVID-19, many of them were hospitalized for a different reason, and then just happened to test positive for the virus while in the hospital.

“If you look at the children are hospitalized many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” Dr. Fauci said.

“If a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID hospitalized individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that.

“So, it’s over counting the number of children who are ‘hospitalized’ with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” he noted.

Focus on the Family President Jim Daly recently called for elected officials to end schoolwide mask mandates.

“Enough is enough,” Daly wrote. “It’s past time to allow children to take their masks off and live like normal human beings again.”

Daly noted that children “are at the lowest risk of COVID … Statistically speaking, they pretty much have a zero percent change of dying from it.”

Additionally, Daly noted that recent studies have found that constantly wearing facemasks “makes it more difficult to identity a child’s fear, sadness or anger – or having them read those same emotions in others … masks impair a child’s social and emotional reasoning.”

Last week, a viral video emerged from Las Vegas after Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak rescinded his state’s mask mandate, including in public schools.

After a teacher informed her students of the news, they erupted with joy:

Tragically, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve constantly seen “the science” become political.

It appears that in Washington D.C., students will be required to wear masks for the foreseeable future.

And yet, students won’t have to just a few miles away across the Potomac River in nearby Virginia. The Daily Citizen recently reported on a soon-to-be-enacted bill “giving parents the right to opt out their children from any mask requirements on school property.”

As Daly concluded, “Taking off the mask represents both a symbolic and scientific step in the right direction. It’s time to reclaim what has been wrestled from us.”

Photo from Shutterstock.