Washington, D.C.’s COVID policy is promoting “systemic racism,” and Mayor Muriel Bowser is lying about it.
The city is banning children 12 and older from attending school if they have not been vaccinated for COVID. According to the city’s own website, only 60% of school-aged black children over 12 are vaccinated. This means that 40% of them won’t be allowed to attend school.
We know that all children must be in school. We also know that requiring the COVID vaccine for children is pointless because children are not and never have been at serious risk from COVID and that school closures have hurt poor and minority children the most. Yet D.C. is going forward with a useless policy that will harm 40% of black children from 12-17. Bowser doesn’t care. In fact, she seems to think the numbers from her own administration are made up.
“I don’t think that that number is correct,” Bowser said when confronted by a reporter. “We have a substantially fewer number of kids that we have to engage with vaccination, and I explained why it’s important. It’s important for the public health of our students and that we can maintain safe environments.”
I asked D.C. @MayorBowser how she could justify forcing 40% of unvaccinated black students to stay home from school. She said my numbers were wrong. They’re her numbers. pic.twitter.com/Gmoidu1YuU
— Douglas Blair (@DouglasKBlair) August 15, 2022
If Bowser is right and that number is incorrect, then D.C.’s COVID database is comically wrong, meaning the city has no credibility to be issuing COVID edicts. If Bowser is wrong (or, more likely, just lying), then she has no credibility to be issuing COVID edicts. One of these two has to be true.
Even if Bowser is right and the website is wrong, Bowser has still exposed her ignorance of COVID or public health. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, children are at more risk from the flu than they are from COVID. This has been apparent since the early days of the pandemic. Requiring children to wear green shoes would protect them as much from COVID as requiring them to get the vaccine today. The “safe environment” of schools doesn’t need Bowser’s maintenance. Children are already safe.
Bowser is among the few remaining politicians trying to destroy children’s education with word salads about health and safety. D.C.’s vaccination requirement for children is anti-science, and it will only harm children, not help them. It is unacceptable, and it is made worse by the fact that the mayor and the city are contradicting each other on the data that are being used to make the decision.
