New York City’s new health commissioner sparked outrage after announcing that children aged five and under should wear face masks indefinitely, bucking the national trend of ditching masks and going in the face of vast evidence that kids are at little risk from Covid-19.
‘I think it’s indefinite at this point,’ Dr. Ashwin Vasan said Friday during a COVID-19 briefing in Queens. ‘People who have tried to predict what’s going to happen in the future in this pandemic have repeatedly found egg on their face, as they say, and I’m not going to do that here today.’
The woke commissioner, who lives in Brooklyn with his partner and three children, including a four-year-old son, argued he wanted to mask children because under fives are not vaccinated.
‘As a father of a two-and-a-half-year old-and two other older kids, I want to keep them as safe as possible. I would love nothing more than to send my son to daycare without a mask,’ Vasan said, according to CBS New York.
‘But as a scientist, and as a doctor, and an epidemiologist, I want to keep him safe because he’s not eligible for a vaccine.’
NYC’s new health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, thinks that children ages five and under should continue wearing face masks indefinitely despite by the nationwide trend to lift pandemic-era mandates
The commissioner, who has a four-year-old son, argued that unmasking is not safe for those who are unvaccinated
His comments sparked fear and fury among frustrated New York parents who face having to force their young children to keep wearing a mask in the face of mounting evidence that they are at little risk.
It also comes as every state, including California which ended its mandate last week, has lifted or announced plans to lift masking requirements in schools.
The lone holdout is Hawaii, which is dropping its indoor mask mandate on March 26 but expected to extend the requirement for schools.
New York state and city also lifted school mask mandates earlier this month.
Vasan is the latest woke addition to new Mayor Eric Adams’ collection of progressive leaders, among whom include soft-on-crime District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
He has publicly thrown his support behind controversial critical race theory, the Black Lives Matter Movement and even vaccinating children against COVID – and detailed his beliefs on social media.
‘First they came for Critical Race Theory, now they’re coming for mental health and suicide prevention programs when we are literally in the midst of a national children’s mental health emergency? Absurd doesn’t begin to define this logic,’ he tweeted in November 2021.
In May 2021, he commemorated the anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by showing his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
He tweeted: ‘While some progress has been made in the last year, including the conviction of George Floyd’s murderer, it’s not enough. We still have a long way to go to ensure that Black Lives Matter is not just a slogan, but a governing philosophy reinforced by substantive policy reforms at all levels of government.’
He has also issued his support for progressive left talking points like defunding police and stopping the jailing offenders with mental illnesses. Instead, he suggested criminals get ‘the resources they need to thrive in their communities.’
Adams has appointed Vasan to address the pandemic, but the pair have seemingly opposing viewpoints on COVID related issues after the mayor told a group of angry parents who confronted him Thursday, that he planned to lift the mask mandates for children.
Vasan is the city’s 44th health commissioner, replacing Dr. Dave Chokshi, who recently stepped down from the role.
Friday’s remarks were made during his first-ever COVID press conference and have been met with anger online by many who accused him of ‘torturing children’.
‘It should be us as parents choice if we want our children to wear a mask. Worry about the crime rate in NYC & not our children,’ Kimberly Raimondo stated.
‘Why are we masking the little ones ? That’s child abuse,’ questioned Dawn Doccola.
‘Really pathetic these corrupt pols (sic) just can’t let it go. Already proven to not work and actually makes things worse,’ wrote Dimitrios Skaliotis.
The push to rescind mandates comes amid debate over the BA.2 variant of COVID, a sub-variant of the Omicron.
‘Currently there’s no evidence that BA.2 causes more severe illness, increases risks of hospitalization or that our current vaccines offer less protection against it, but we continue to monitor this,’ Vasan said, according to The New York Daily News.
He added: ‘We are tracking these variants very closely.’
Vasan also said he doesn’t plan to drop the city’s workplace vaccine mandate anytime soon.
However, despite his push for continuing mandates, the woke epidemiologist did note that restrictions are taking a toll on residents and reminded them to prioritize their mental health – a topic the doctor is apparently passionate about.
‘We’ve all been through so much over these past few years and continuing coverage adds to strain of wellbeing,’ Vasan said, encouraging New Yorkers to seek help from mental health professionals if needed.
Last weekend, New York saw a spike in positive cases, which experts are attributing to the BA.2 sub-variant.
COVID cases more than doubled across the state this week with the positivity rate jumping from 1.45 percent on March 14 to 3.75 percent a day later.
As of Friday, the state’s seven-day average positivity rate now stands at 1.76 percent. There were 2,089 new COVID cases statewide reported on Friday and 16 deaths.
Overall, New York has reported 4,935,921 positive COVID cases and 67,191 deaths over the course of the pandemic.
Governor Kathy Hochul also announced Friday that COVID hospitalizations across New York – which total at 978 – are at the lowest its been since early August. Only 157 patients were in intensive care.
Vasan, a primary care physician with twenty years in the medical field, epidemiologist and public health expert, has been tasked to address pandemic management and recovery.
He also works on chronic disease prevention, ‘health equity’ and mental health.
The public health expert spent nearly a decade expanding HIV treatment access in developing nations.
Most recently he served as President and CEO of Fountain House, one the largest mental health charities in the world.
He also served on staff at the Columbia University Mailman College of Public Health since 2014, focusing on the implementation of science and global health.
Additionally, he worked at the College of Physicians and Surgeons providing care for low-income, Medicaid/Medicare or uninsured patients from Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx.
The newly minted health commissioner’s comments comes just one day after Mayor Adams was confronted by a group angry parents.
He ended up promising to life the mask mandate for children.
‘I got this. They’ll be unmasked,’ Adams said Thursday, however he did not indicate when the unmasking would occur.
Adams’ visit to the pub was marred by multiple parents demanding to know when their young children would be allowed to remove the face coverings they must still wear at school.
They must continue to wear the face coverings because COVID vaccines haven’t been approved for under-five’s, even though youngsters have been shown to be at extremely low risk from serious COVID infections.
Maria Kubak, 36, a financial professional, and another mom waited inside the Pig & Whistle bar where Adams enjoyed an early morning pint of Guinness before the St. Patrick’s Day parade to put the mayor on the spot about lifting the restriction for tykes and toddlers.
‘You want to be the mayor or you want me to be the mayor,’ he asked the concerned mothers.
‘I would love to hear from you,’ one says back to him.
‘I’m a dad too,’ he said.
Kubak, who has a three-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son, said she wanted to remind him that his 26-year-old son doesn’t have to wear a mask.
But he walked away before she had a chance.
‘I find that’s very condescending because, as a mother of toddlers, I’m asking a very valid question,’ she said.
Meanwhile, daily Covid cases have been falling for weeks in the U.S.
But health officials warn that this could soon change based on wastewater data and the situation overseas, and as the Omicron ‘stealth’ variant now makes up 23 percent of all cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Tuesday that one third of wastewater sample sites showed a jump in cases during the first 10 days in March.
It is most prevalent in New Jersey and New York, and Northeastern regions of the U.S.
These account for around 40 percent of cases in both designated areas.
Stealth is not yet the dominant Covid strain anywhere in America, while it has taken over in many parts of Europe.
Eric Adams is filmed telling a NYC dad to stop yelling in front of his daughter after being confronted about when under-5s would be unmasked in the city
According to Quinn, the variant accounts for about 30 percent of NYC’s recent COVID cases
