If there was any doubt that politics, not science, is driving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s coronavirus guidance, newly released emails between the CDC and a powerful teachers union should settle the question once and for all.
The emails, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, show that President Joe Biden’s CDC tightened its masking guidance after the National Education Association threatened to criticize the administration publicly. The correspondence followed the CDC’s May 13 announcement that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors or outdoors. The NEA responded in an email to the White House and demanded that the CDC clarify that masks should still be worn by both adults and children in schools at all times. If this clarification was not made, the NEA threatened to publish this critical statement:
“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the statement said. “This will also make it hard for school boards and leaders of institutions of higher education to do the right thing by maintaining mitigation measures. We need CDC clarification right away.”
The emails also show that the White House put the NEA in direct contact with the CDC so the two organizations could coordinate. On May 14, White House Director of Labor Engagement Erika Dinkel-Smith asked CDC chief of staff Sherri Berger to connect NEA President Becky Pringle with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Berger responded and said she had spoken with both Pringle and Randi Weingarten, president of another teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers.
The next day, the CDC released a clarification saying all children over 2 years old should still wear masks, indoors and outdoors, and all adults in schools should still wear masks regardless of vaccination status. The teachers unions’ orders were clear, and the CDC willingly obeyed.
This is the second time the CDC has been caught colluding with the teachers unions. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the CDC adopted the American Federation of Teachers’s school reopening guidance nearly verbatim.
There was no justification for this then, and there is no justification for it now. The teachers unions’ demands are not backed by scientific data or common sense, so why is the CDC allowing them to write the rules? Study after study proves children are not at risk of falling seriously ill or dying from COVID-19. It is absurd and cruel to force them to act as if they will.
Furthermore, the harmful effects mask-wearing has on a child’s emotional and mental development have been enough to lead most other countries to discourage mask mandates in schools explicitly. Yet, here in the United States, we’re forcing 3-year-olds to wear masks not because the adults in charge are worried they’ll get sick but because they’re worried about the political pushback they might face from teachers unions.
This is shameful, and it just further proves that teachers unions and the government officials giving them cover don’t care one bit about our schools or students.
