Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently warned that an Illinois judge's ruling that struck down his school mask mandate for some districts was "out of step" with vast majority of legal analysis in Illinois and the nation.
But it is Pritzker who is out of step. Illinois is one of just soon-to-be eight states that continues to force schoolchildren to wear masks.
The governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Delaware and now Massachusetts have all announced they’ll drop their school mask mandates in a few weeks. New York says it is reviewing its mask mandates.
Gov. Pritzker, meanwhile, has set no deadline for ending Illinois’ school mask requirements. In fact, he refuses to even discuss the specific metrics it would take for him to drop his mandate.
What's more astonishing is that Gov. Pritzker just announced a gradual end to Illinois' statewide indoor mask mandate except for schools, where the mandate will stay in place.
That decision is completely inverted from what it should be. Children in schools should be the first to go unmasked. Both the science and the politics of school mask mandates tell us that.
The data since Omicron’s arrival shows no obvious benefit of masks for children when comparing Illinois to those of its neighboring states. You’d expect to see lower pediatric hospitalizations in Illinois compared to its neighbors if masks were effective as Gov. Pritzker claims. But the graphic below, highlighting publicly available CDC pediatric hospitalization data, shows that’s not the case.
Illinois has run in the middle of the pack in terms of hospitalizations across the entire Omicron period, doing better than some neighbors and worse than others.
That comparison to neighboring states is not conclusive scientific proof in itself, but that proof is there in at least 150 studies on masks and the harm they cause.
"The science has changed" on masks, says Dr. Leona Wen, CNN’s COVID science advisor. Most importantly, she also says “the first restriction removed should actually be the restriction on children.”
All the evidence shows Gov. Pritzker is far behind the curve on masking schoolchildren. He can expect growing pressure from parents and pundits alike as his restrictions become ever more untenable.