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During the Monday airing of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, defended the decision to require masks for children in kindergarten to grade three. year in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci told host Hugh Hewitt that although this is a “difficult situation,” there is a slight increase, due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus, in younger children being hospitalized for ” more serious illness “. He said hiding this age group could be a “temporary thing”.
“[W]We have a disagreement that I want to voice with you, ”Hewitt told Fauci. “My friend Chuck Todd doesn’t agree with me too. These are children from Kindergarten to Grade 3. And as the grandfather of three of them, and I talk to a lot of parents, they don’t believe masks are a good thing. They believe their development is difficult to manage. They can hide developmental disorders. They impair speech and hearing, and they are not very effective. And boy, they feel it strongly, and that’s what the UK has felt. My grandchildren were at school in England last year. Why don’t you agree with British scholars and with the Wall Street Journal this morning, article by Dr Makary and Dr Meissner?
“You know, Hugh, it’s a tough situation because you really have to balance the risk of transmission against the real risk, and I’m not demeaning what you’re saying. It is obviously not comfortable for children to wear masks, especially younger ones, ”replied Fauci. “But you know, what we’re starting to see, Hugh, and I think it’s going to unfold even more over the weeks, is that this virus is not only so extraordinarily transmissible, but we’re starting to see pediatric hospitals. becoming more and more young people and children not only numerically, but what seems to be a more serious disease.
“Now we are following this, the CDC is following this very carefully, so it will be a balance that we would feel terrible if we all of a sudden said OK, kids, don’t wear masks, then you find in retrospect that this virus in a very, very strange and unusual way is really hitting children very hard, ”he added.“ That’s the thing. No one feels comfortable seeing children find themselves in a situation where it could ultimately, as some people study, have an impact on them. But I hope it will be a temporary thing, temporary enough that it doesn’t have any lasting negative impact on them.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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