Medical Expert: 'There Is No Data' to Support Fauci's Claim That Young Kids Need to Wear Masks
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marty Makary said Thursday that “there is no data” to support Dr. Anthony Fauci’s claim that children over the age of 2 need to wear a mask for protection from the coronavirus.
“Look, kids who are healthy are extremely low risk and constitute such a small minority of overall cases — 0.05 percent, that’s five-hundredths of 1 percent,” Makary said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
“We’ve lost all sense of risk,” he said. “It’s distorted. More kids die from the common cold.”
Makary added, “They need to be careful, especially if they have comorbid conditions. But there’s no data to support what Dr. Fauci is saying.”
Makary, a surgeon at the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was responding to comments Fauci made Tuesday on MSNBC.
Fauci says 3-year-olds should be forced to wear masks: “No doubt about that” pic.twitter.com/rCWFCWPkjs
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 13, 2021
The White House medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told host Andrea Mitchell that there was “no doubt” that unvaccinated children need to be wearing masks to prevent them from getting infected and spreading COVID-19 to other people.
He pointed to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that say unvaccinated people, including children over age 2, need to wear masks indoors.
“I’d love to see the data. And remember, Dr. Fauci is one who claims that he needs to see the data,” Makary told Fox News.
“But yet at the same time, sometimes the argument is used that things are just common sense so we need to do it. You can’t flip back and forth to saying in a scientific way that certain things are common sense therefore we need everyone to do it versus we need data for everyone to do it.”
Makary was not the only one who criticized Fauci’s remarks.
“We’re going to make low-risk children suffer to protect unvaccinated adults?” political strategist Rory Cooper tweeted.
“C’mon. We have to begin caring about the kids.”
According to the CDC, 0-4 year olds account for 120 COVID deaths. 5-18 account for 271. Out of 600,000. We’re going to make low-risk children suffer to protect unvaccinated adults? C’mon. We have to begin caring about the kids. https://t.co/noH5sAYbaP
— Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) July 13, 2021
Fauci said the government and pharmaceutical companies are studying the safety of administering the vaccine to children under 12, according to Fox News.
The Biden administration also has launched a campaign to get more Americans, including young people, to accept the jab. On Wednesday, 18-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo spoke at the daily White House news briefing to urge her peers to get vaccinated.
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