If the Babylon Bee posted a story about White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying she’s okay with parents sending their kids to school with seven masks and two hats to keep them warm in the winter while they’re forced to eat outside, everyone would assume it’s satire. It’s not. It happened.
Psaki was asked by a reporter: “Sometimes students are required to eat outside or eat distanced from each other or not talk to each other while they’re eating. Does the White House want to see those rules lifted, as well, to get back to a little more normal school experience?”
If she had just said, “No,” and moved onto the next question, it would have been the most honest thing she ever said from the podium. Instead, she did her standard spin with a personal anecdote and generalizations about healthcare being important to this regime. Her response about a “version of normalcy” is striking:
Well schools are taking steps, especially since we’ve only recently approved through the CDC and FDA vaccines for five to 11-year-olds — they’re not approved for kids younger than that — to keep their kids safe and keep students safe. I will tell you I have a three-year-old who goes to school, sits outside for snacks and lunch, wears a mask inside and it’s no big deal to him. I’m not saying that’s the case for everybody but these are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe and I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that.
Obviously we want to get to a point where we’re turning to a version of normalcy for everybody, right, where you’re not sending your kids backpacked with seven extra masks, right, where you’re not adding two hats so that they’re warm outside for a snack. There’s no question that’s the case but we also think the most important thing should be safety, the safety of kids, keeping kids in school, which the president is very focused on and some of these steps creative steps that schools have taken have enabled that to be possible.
What Psaki seems to believe (or at least wants us to believe) the “vast majority of parents appreciate” kids being forced to eat outside in the bitter cold because unhinged, anti-science teachers and school administrators want to normalize anti-social behavior in the next generation. As The Post Millennial’s Katie Daviscourt posted on Twitter, there are reasons for parents to be concerned.
CHILD ABUSE: Kindergartners are forced to eat lunch outside in 40 degree weather at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.
They sit on buckets to social distance from their classmates. pic.twitter.com/KqFcliTFYf
— Governor Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) December 8, 2021
Brodigan at Louder with Crowder had some thoughts:
The worst part is how the White House will lie with a straight face that this is all because of “the science.” Acting like we don’t know that the CDC was busted rewriting guidelines with the teachers’ unions — who are not the science — not only once, but they were busted twice. Yes, the same teachers’ unions who give Democrat politicians lots and lots of money.
It’s clear that the only way this country will ever get back to normal is to vote out the people who are working overtime to make sure we don’t get back to normal. Even then, there’s no guarantee and those people may have to be voted out as well. But the people in charge now don’t care about you and, even worse, don’t care about your children. If your answer to seeing five-year-old’s forced to eat outside in the cold and rain is anything other than “this is wrong,” you should not be in public life.
He’s right.
Kids have effectively zero chance of dying from Covid-19, yet the draconian (and futile) efforts to stop the spread among them in schools would make one think death by Covid is guaranteed without government and schools acting stupid.