Back to Fort Fairfield Journal WFFJ-TV Contact Us
.
Gov. Mills Rescinds Face Mask Mandate for All But Those Who are Least Affected by COVID
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal,
June 2, 2021
AUGUSTA, Maine - While many people in Maine are celebrating Big Sister Mills’ ending of the face mask mandate for most people in Maine on May 24, most fail to realize she has kept the mandate in effect for an age group that is the least likely to get sick from COVID-19 and are not dying from it anyway.
Big Sister is still requiring children 5 years and older in school and child care facilities to remain masked even though face masks don’t stop respiratory viruses and the U.S. CDC has shown kids in this age group are the least likely to catch, or get sick from, COVID-19.
In their September, 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios the U.S. CDC noted their best estimate of Infection Fatality Ratio for the age group of -0-19 years was 0.00003.1
Around the same time, researchers at Stanford University found the average probability of fatality in people from a much wider age group of 0-49 years of age was still only 0.000003% - or ten times lower than the error-filled computer models had predicted.2
One of the authors of that study, Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, MD stated that the public’s perception of the deadliness of the rather benign virus has been skewed significantly, “Scientific uncertainties, media attention, dramatic government action and a subjective perceived lack of control over exposure all may be influencing risk perception,” he wrote.
“The Governor should follow the science and remove the mask mandate for persons age 5 and older in schools and childcare settings,” said Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn). “It makes no sense to keep that requirement for Maine’s safest population when the mask requirement has been removed for everyone else, including our most vulnerable citizens. If this is truly about using science to manage the risk, the Governor will remove this mandate on our children.”
The Maine CDC has not recorded a single fatality from COVID-19 under age twenty. Of the 816 Maine deaths from COVID-19, one was under age thirty, and four under forty have lost their lives.
notes:
1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html (this is updated regularly, I have the hard copy printout of the September, 2020 version referenced.
2. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124446v2