Mask Mandates Are Not Impeding Childhood — Your Obstinance Is

We can breathe under masks. This is scientific fact. An International Journal of Environmental Respiratory Public Health study examined the effects of both cloth and surgical masks on athletic performance, and showed that young, healthy participants showed zero arterial oxygen desaturation: they could still breathe perfectly fine. These were people doing a “cycle ergometry test to exhaustion.” Second grade does not involve a cycle ergometry test to exhaustion. However, second grade hopefully also does not killing Gramma with the Delta variant. Mask mandates aren’t screwing up childhood. Your refusal to take basic Covid precautions is screwing up childhood.

My kids haven’t left our property line without masks since sometime around March 2020, and their childhood has only been impeded by fuckwits whose refusal to take the pandemic seriously means that a year and several months later, they still can’t play normally with other kids. They just got reined in again, because Delta.

I’m side-eyeing you, people against mask mandates: the Venn diagram of people against mask mandates and people against Covid vaccination is basically a circle. You are the douchenozzles forcing me to play Frogger in Target to avoid hordes of the unmasked. You are the fudge nuggets refusing vaccination despite the Covid death toll surpassing that of World War II. You are the ass dandruff holding “Free the Smiles” rallies and spreading lies about how “continual mask wearing is unhealthy.”

Yes, I just called a sitting Congresswoman “ass dandruff.” However, she’s previously compared mask mandates to the Holocaust, so we can actually call her “anti-Semitic ass dandruff.”

Mask Mandates Protect YOU, Dumbass

My kids go everywhere in masks. They run in circles wearing masks in the middle of our summer, and we would live in a yellow-fever-ridden swamp if not for — oh! A yellow fever vaccine, which wiped out the disease in the United States.

We could vastly improve Covid rates in the United States like with a vaccine like that. We have one. Fuckwits won’t use it though, so we still have Covid. Without a mask mandate, little Madison/Maddison/Maddeson/Madyson and Aiden/Aidan/Aydan/Ayden will pick up the Delta variant from some other moppet and tote it merrily home to Gramma, Grandpa, and anyone in the fam who hasn’t been vaccinated. And if you’re wailing about mask mandates, you probably haven’t been jabbed.

Cue an entire family down with Delta (That sounds like you really, really like an airline. And maybe you do. But this context refers to the far more transmissible variant of the coronavirus, not teensy seats and cocktail peanuts). Do you want to get Covid? Covid isn’t your high school girl/boy/nonbinary/otherfriend asking you to check yes or no. Covid simply sneaks up your noseholes, nests in your lungs, and kills you.

Yes, it kills you. Ask all those people it already killed.

Mask Mandates Protect Children

Yes, Covid can hurt children. Columbia, South Carolina has run out of ICU beds because of children with respiratory illness. “We are seeing the impact of the second (COVID-19) surge here at Children’s Hospital in a much more powerful way than we ever saw with the first surge,” said Dr. Anna Kathryn Rye Burch, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which tends to be right when it comes to health and children because they are experts who have advanced degrees in the health of children, reports that 33% of kids admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 wind up in the ICU. Yes, children can be asymptomatic. But children can also become very ill.

Do you want your kid to wind up in the ICU? When you stomp your feet over mask mandates, you’re saying you don’t care if they do. Things that screw up your childhood include getting intubated, being strapped to bed, and dying. That list does not include “wearing a mask.”

How Hard Is It?

Brass tacks: what does it cost you, and what does it cost your children, to mandate masks and keep other people safe? It’s a piece of cloth that covers your faceholes. No one’s asking your kid to go to school in full hazmat gear. No one’s asking you to play virtual teacher, either — want to return to that shitshow? No? You don’t? Shocking.

It is cloth. It covers your face. If you scoot your glasses down an eensy bit, they do not fog up. Why is this too much to ask? We’ve proven masks are safe (and if you believe they’re unsafe, you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of Dr. Tenpenny’s bullshit, and we may not be able to save your deluded ass). Can’t you ask your kid to wear a mask to possibly save lives?

No. You can’t. You are teaching your kids to be selfish little snotrockets who won’t lift a pinkie to help other people. (Much like you). During World War II, our grandparents skimped on meat, went without butter, and used ration cards to buy coffee.

Stop and reread that.

Our grandparents were only allowed a certain amount of the Elixir of Life. Mommy’s Little Helper. The Only Thing Standing Between Us And Murder.

They went without coffee. You can’t even ask your kids to wear a piece of cloth over their nose and mouth.

Your Kid’s Childhood Is Fine

Virtual school screws up childhood. Not seeing other children screws up childhood. Masks? Not so much.

Covid screws up childhood. Dead relatives screw up childhood. You can buy masks covered in Baby Yoda.

Mask mandates not only save lives, they also assure kids who choose to wear masks don’t get bullied by your mini-me conservative toe-rags who think masks are for losers or some shit. Yeah, that happens.

So shut up with “Save the Smiles” rallies. Stop complaining about mask mandates. You refusal to mask has led us to this point. We could have shut down this pandemic with basic precautions, but you people refused to take them. Live with the consequences.

Because, like children, you’re incapable of making informed decisions about public health, those consequences should include a mask mandate.