A private New York City School announced on Thursday it will become the first in the Big Apple to make masks optional – even though Gov. Kathy Hochul has said the mask mandate for school children will remain in effect for the time being.

Officials at the Poly Prep Country Day School – which has two locations in Brooklyn serving about 1,000 students, and charges $57,000 a year for tuition – sent an email to parents on Thursday to inform them of the policy change, which will go into effect next week.

‘In the past few weeks we have seen sharp declines in COVID cases at Poly and in NYC,’ the email, which was posted online, reads. ‘In addition, we have had minimal in-school transmission of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

‘In light of these sharp declines in case counts, and our most up-to-date evidence, wearing masks will be optional beginning on February 14  for all students and employees,’ the school’s health director, Sarah Zuercher wrote. 

The announcement comes just one day after Hochul announced she was ending the statewide indoor mask mandate, citing New York’s 93 percent drop in COVID-19 cases and declining hospitalization rates.

She said she will review the school order – which has prompted outrage among students, parents and politicians – next month after students return to the classroom following their upcoming midwinter break.

Governors in other states, meanwhile, have already announced they would lift their school mask mandates for a return to ‘normalcy,’ as COVID cases continue to decline and studies are released showing they are ineffective in stopping the spread. 

In its decision to lift the school’s mask mandate, officials at Poly Prep said there have been no COVID-related hospitalizations or serious cases at the school, and that all documented cases have been ‘mild to asymptomatic,’ according to the New York Post.  

As Zuercher explained to the school’s newspaper, the Polygon: ‘We’ve seen a very sharp decline in COVID cases here at school and in the community. 

‘As we look at the layers of our COVID safety strategy, we don’t need to keep all the layers as we always have as COVID cases go down.

‘While [masking] can be very effective, with Omicron being highly contagious, we think it’s one of the less effective mitigation strategies when you look at everything we’re doing – testing, vaccination, boosters [and] air filtration.’

She added that studies have shown that for children, masks ‘might inhibit language acquisition, social and emotional development [and] their ability to read facial cues.’

Officials also noted that the decision to lift the mandate was made in connection with the school’s Health and Safety Team, which comprises physicians, researchers and clinicians.

Students, however, may continue to wear masks if they so desire under the school’s new policy.

‘We will support each individual’s choice,’ Zuercher said, ‘and will follow up immediately if our mask-optional policy must change.’

On Wednesday, Hochul announced the end of the state’s indoor mask mandate, although it remains in effect at state-regulated facilities including schools, health care facilities, adult care facilities and nursing homes, correctional facilities, childcare centers, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and on public transit.

She said in her announcement that New York was ‘trending in a very, very good direction’ – citing case and hospitalization rates – and is ‘now approaching a new phase in this pandemic.’ 

‘We are not where we were in early December. New Yorkers did the right thing to get through the winter surge, and we can now lift the statewide mask-or-vaccine requirement for indoor businesses starting tomorrow,’ Hochul said, adding: ‘Counties, cities and businesses can still choose to require masks.’ 

The state’s mask mandate for students, however, will remain in effect state-wide.

‘Masks have been a successful part of our toolkit to fight COVID, and New Yorkers must keep wearing them in certain places throughout the state,’ Hochul said during Wednesday’s press conference.

She said she will revisit the school mask mandate come March, but said in the meantime officials are taking steps to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 ahead of midwinter break. 

In the meantime, all K-12 students and their families will be provided a state issued ‘winter tool kit’ that involves sending children home with COVID testing kits ahead of the school recess. They will then be tested again upon return from break. 

Hochul said officials will use this data to make further decisions about masking in classrooms.  

On Thursday, New York reported just over 7,422 new positive coronavirus cases, a nearly 92 percent decline from the 90,000 that tested positive about a month ago.

The statewide positivity rate is now 3.62 percent, a decline from the 23.2 percent peak recorded at the start of 2022.   

Additionally, hospitalizations have decreased to 4,398, a 63.5 percent drop from the 12,000 reported in mid-January.  

Nationwide, cases are also declining, with the United States recording 223,417 infections daily on Thursday – a 43 percent drop from 394,741 cases per day this time last week.

And every single state in the U.S. has recorded a drop in cases over the past two weeks, with 43 states having had cases slash in half over the past two weeks – and 21 recording a 70 percent fall. 

The U.S. is recording 223,417 infections daily, a 43 percent drop from 394,741 cases per day this time last week. 

Officials in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon have now announced plans to lift their mandates as they seek a return to ‘normalcy.’

But when one man attended a school board meeting in upstate New York on Tuesday he was forcibly dragged out of the room by a security guard. 

Dave Calus told Kimberly’s Revolution he proceeded to the board room where the Webster School Board meeting was taking place, but was met by staff who told him that if he didn’t wear a mask, he would be placed in isolation during the meeting. 

‘They were segregating masked and unmasked parents,’ he explained. ‘The unmasked parents were going to have to sit in a classroom with a video monitoring watching and listening to the board meeting.’

He said he was placed in the classroom and decided ‘this isn’t going to work for me.’ Calus then walked down to the main board room and was once again instructed to wear a mask.

‘I took a mask from the person who handed it to me, looped it around my ear, walked into the room, and sat down and put the mask in my pocket,’ he recalled.

He said he remained seated for 15 to 20 minutes before being approached by a security guard who demanded he put the mask on. 

Webster Police Department, issuing a statement on Facebook, said their officers were not involved in the incident but they are conducting an investigation. After the investigation is complete, the department will determine whether ‘charges are appropriate’. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also said it continues to stand by its mask-wearing guidelines for schools, saying COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are still ‘too high’ to consider dropping restrictions despite daily infections having declined by 47 percent over the past seven days. 

‘Right now our CDC guidance has not changed. We continue to endorse universal masking in schools,’ CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a radio interview with WYPR on Tuesday. ‘We owe it to our children to make sure that they can safely stay in school. Right now, that includes masking. We’ve seen outbreaks that have occurred in communities where students were not masked in schools and had to close.’ 

The Biden administration doubled down on wearing face masks – even though eight Democratic governors have rolled back COVID restrictions, cases and hospitalizations have plummeted and one of America’s closest allies England has completely scrapped all rules. 

‘Our guidance is consistently has consistently been this: when you are in a high transmission area, which is everywhere in the country, you should wear a mask and indoor settings, including schools,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at her press briefing on Wednesday. 

When asked if people should follow the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which are to wear a face covering, instead of listening to their governor, Psaki responded: ‘Yes.’

She conceded some people are tired of wearing masks but added there are many who still want to have one on.

‘People are tired of masks,’ Psaki said, adding, however, ‘there were also a huge chunk of people who still want masks.’

Landmark study says children DO find it more difficult than adults to recognize people wearing masks – and it could affect their ability to make friends: Demands mount to set our kids free as COVID levels plummet

By Natasha Anderson and Shivali Best for DailyMail.com

Parents and medical experts are demanding that US schools stop forcing children to wear ‘ineffective’ face masks as COVID-19 positivity rates continue to plummet and studies have shown mask mandates are detrimental to psychosocial health and academic success.  

York University in the UK published a new study showing masks make it difficult for children to recognize faces and, in turn, could affect their ability to socialize and make friends, a fear that is echoed by parents worldwide. 

The study comes as both New Jersey and Delaware announced the scrapping of state-wide mask mandates in schools. However, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday  – when data showed COVID case numbers had again dropped 33% nationwide week-on-week – reiterated the CDC is still recommending universal masking in school and that ‘still remains our recommendation’.

‘It’s always been up to school districts. That’s always been our point of view and always been our policy from here,’ she said.

Parents, including those who have previously toed the line on masking their children at school, are increasingly voicing their concerns about the detrimental impact masks have on their children and experts are joining the chorus. 

The US has been accused of clinging to restrictions put in place at the height of the pandemic while other countries scale back mandates on masks and vaccine passports to reflect the dropping infection rate. 

Now, many parents are rallying their districts and demanding school leaders to follow the science, pointing to data that show there is ‘a minimal reduction in COVID transmission with masks in schools’ and very few deaths.

They also fear the longer term consequences of the prolonged mask mandates on their children, who they say are taking longer to learn and are struggling to develop empathy because they can’t see their peers’ facial expressions. 

Tom Hadziyianis, the father of a teenage boy in Long Island, New York, told DailyMail.com on Monday that he feels that the mandates are less about the safety of the schoolchildren but instead seem to be administrators ‘exercising power just to exercise it.’

York University researchers studied the psychological impact on students, revealing that face masks make it 20 percent more difficult for children to recognize faces, compared to just 15 percent in adults.

‘[This] could impair children’s ability to navigate through social interactions with their peers and teachers, and this could lead to issues forming important relationships,’ said Dr. Erez Freud, who led the study. ‘Given the importance of faces to social interactions, this is something we need to pay attention to.’

While previous research has found that mask-wearing can hinder facial recognition in adults, this is the first time it has been studied in children.

Freud said: ‘Faces are among the most important visual stimuli.’

‘We use facial information to determine different attributes about a person, including their gender, age, mood and intentions. We use this information to navigate through social interactions.’ 

The team recruited 72 children aged six to 14, who were presented with images of faces with or without masks, both upright and inverted.

The results showed that children had about a 20 percent impairment rate for recognizing masked faces.

For comparison, previous research has shown that adults have about a 15 percent impairment rate. 

Meanwhile, the results also showed that children process faces differently when looking at a masked, and unmasked face.

Usually, humans process faces as a whole, rather than by their individual features – known as holistic processing.

However, the researchers found that when children looked at masked faces, they became more analytical, focusing on individual features.

‘Not only do masks hinder the ability of children to recognize faces, but they also disrupt the typical, holistic way that faces are processed,’ Freud said.

The researchers hope their findings will encourage future research into the effects face masks have on children’s ability to recognize faces and make friends. 

Freud concluded: ‘With children back to school with mask mandates once again, future research should explore the social and psychological ramifications of wearing masks on children’s educational performance.’  

A group of American doctors pushing to de-mask school children released a report in January titled Children, COVID and the Urgency of Normal that outlined why schools returning to normal operations is critical for children’s psychosocial health. 

‘The pandemic and the loss of normalcy are taking a tremendous toll on students, with the data on mental health being particularly,’ the report’s authors claim in a USA Today op-ed, alleging the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared a mental health emergency in children.

‘As the surgeon general recently highlighted, combined analyses of 80,000 children found that symptoms of depression and anxiety have doubled among young people during the pandemic, with 1 in 4 showing depressive symptoms and 1 in 5 showing anxiety.’ 

Stephanie Avanessian, a concerned Los Angeles mother, told NPR: ‘They can never see their friends smile. They can never see their friends frown! They’re not developing empathy. It’s taken six months for my fifth-grader to make friends because it’s so hard to tell what people are doing.’

Hadziyianis, a lawyer whose son attends high school in Nassau County, told DailyMail.com his child complains that masks negatively impact the learning environment. 

He said: ‘My son explained how, you’re in the classroom and the desire to participate in discussion is stifled. It’s uncomfortable to speak with a mask on. You have to constantly repeat what you’re saying. Other students can’t hear you and you can’t hear them.’

But Mr. Hadziyianis raised a worrying concern – he said his son claims the desire to socialize throughout the school day has diminished and that his classmates are self-segregating based on their opinions about the mask mandates.

‘There’s a masker, non-masker mentality at school,’ the father shared. ‘There’s almost a scarlet letter you wear over masking — whose family thinks similar to me and whose doesn’t.  

He added: ‘My son will tell you virtually every single one of his friends does not wear masks unless required – friends groups are separated over who does and doesn’t.’

‘And even when the mandates get lifted, memories will remain. They’ll remember who masked and who didn’t.’

Hadziyianis notes that he is ‘not opposed to any parent wishing to have their child masked in school,’ as that is ‘their choice,’ but doesn’t think his son should be obliged to wear a mask, especially when ‘cloth masks do virtually nothing’. 

Several studies have also found ‘no significant evidence that the kind of masking that is common in schools is worth it’. 

‘More and more experts have concluded that the evidence for masks in schools doesn’t hold up to scrutiny,’ Dr. Jennifer Knips, Internal Medicine Specialist and mother of four, echoed in a Time Magazine op-ed last week. ‘Many students wear cloth masks that provide little to no protection.’

‘There are several studies that show a minimal reduction in COVID-19 transmission with masks in schools, but the results were not statistically significant.’  

Researcher Kristen Walsh, a North Jersey pediatrician who co-wrote the Urgency of Normal report, also argues that mask mandates continue to force children to ‘bear the burden’ of virus-related restrictions, such as masking and social distancing, despite being the least at-risk for severe illness from COVID. 

The report claimed Omicron, which health authorities allege was responsible for an unprecedented nationwide surge in infections, is flu-like for unvaccinated children and that vaccinated, healthy children have ‘almost no risk’ for severe illness from it.

‘It’s a paradox that our most highly vaccinated states currently have the most stringent rules in place for [school] children,’ said Walsh.  

‘Everywhere where Omicron is receding, we don’t think it makes sense to be putting additional restrictions on kids when the variants are getting milder.’

She added: ‘Really, also, masking is what people are focusing on. But that’s only one facet of it. We just think that at this point, school should go back to normal for everybody. Like 2019 normal. Stop the quarantine, stop the silent lunches, stop making kids eat out in the cold. It’s not necessary and it’s doing a lot of harm.’

She and her colleagues believe districts should make wearing masks optional. However, mask mandates are currently in effect in more than a dozen states and Washington DC, despite experts arguing the precautionary measure is ineffective without medical grade masks.

‘Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations,’ public health expert Dr. Leana Wen argued last December. ‘My point isn’t that we don’t need masks, but rather that we should require masks that are most effective to prevent disease transmission. 

‘Everyone, including children, should be wearing at least a three-ply surgical mask when indoors and around others of unknown vaccination status.’ 

However, most school children are not wearing medical-grade face coverings as they likely don’t have access to them.  

‘As the days go by there is less and less science supporting masks,’ Hadziyianis told DailyMail.com, arguing the ordinances are not about the safety of school children, but instead seem to be administrators ‘exercising power just to exercise it.’

‘If it was truly about the health of the children the requirement would be medical grade masks, but because they know they cannot enforce that – it’s impossible at this late junction – they keep going with this known ineffective policy.’ 

Similarly, the US masking policy is the outlier in regard to COVID restrictions, Knips alleges. She said many European schools remained open without masks and that the US schools that have remained maskless have ‘not seen major outbreaks over the past two years’. 

She also noted the World Health Organization advises against masks for children under age five and claims they are only selective for kids younger than 11. 

Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in an MSNBC interview Friday the US should be ‘as aggressive’ in lifting COVID restrictions as ‘we were about putting them in place.’ 

‘[We should be] willing to relax some of these provisions that have created a lot of acrimony,’ Gottlieb said. ‘We want our kids to try to get back to some kind of semblance of normalcy.’ 

Health experts are also arguing the current coronavirus trajectory suggests Americans should be able to return to normality this spring, as infection rates continue to go down. In response, some states have even moved to remove restrictions, such as masking in the classroom.  

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf rescinding his state’s mask mandate last month and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat who imposed arguably some of the strictest pandemic mandates in the US, announced Monday he will be lifting his statewide school mask requirement on March 7 in response to the declining case and hospitalization rates.

Similarly, Delaware Governor John Carney on Monday signed a revision to the state’s emergency order, lifting Delaware’s universal indoor mask mandate on Friday. 

The modification also temporarily extended the mask requirement in schools and child care facilities. It will expire on March 31. Governors in New York and Connecticut are also considering changes to their school mask policies. 

Murphy’s announcement comes as New Jersey’s seven-day average for positive tests now stands at 2,634, a 51 percent decline from last week. That is the state’s lowest seven-day average since December 3. 

Hospitalizations from confirmed or suspected COVID cases also continued a steady decline, down about 66 percent from January 11. 

Deaths from COVID among children is even more rare. CDC data show that around 8.3 million children have contracted Covid and 841 have died since the pandemic began in March 2020.

This means that children make up around 12 percent of cases and less than 0.1 percent of deaths in the U.S. The Census estimates that 22 percent of Americans are under the age of 18.  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first issued its recommendation for ‘universal masking’ in schools in February 2021. The health authority also pushed for students to maintain a social distance of six feet.

Since it’s initial recommendation, the health authority has conducted several studies to determine the efficacy of masking in schools.

A study conducted last May, comparing Georgia schools with and without mask mandates, reportedly found that masking of teachers was associated with a statistically significant reduction of COVID transmission, however masking of students was not.

An ecological study, conducted in September, found that ‘counties without school mask requirements experienced larger increases in pediatric COVID-19 case rates after the start of school compared with counties that had school mask requirements.’ 

However, the study did not take into account vaccination rates or other COVID safeguards, which researchers argue are important variables. As a result, the researchers noted ‘causation cannot be inferred’.  

An Arizona-based study, published the same day, also found COVID outbreaks were more common with schools that did not mandate masks. Similarly, the study did not  control for vaccination rates or other safeguards and has been highly criticized by public health experts.