Last week, the new governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, threw parents a curveball: A year and a half into the pandemic, she announced a mask mandate for children aged two and up in childcare facilities.
A video of a daycare worker trying to put a mask on a two-year-old went viral days later, racking up four million views just from one tweet alone:
It’s a similar story across the state, with one upstate New York daycare owner expressing concern to local media over the long-term outlook for her business because of the mandate.
It’s a Catch-22 situation: The daycare employees look like the bad guys, trying either to enforce an impossible policy or risk losing their daycare license and face fines.
It’s a similar situation for airlines. Since the TSA implemented a mask mandate in January of 2021, it seems like every few weeks there’s another viral video of a toddler or a child with disabilities removed from a flight for a “failure to comply.” Since it was announced, more than 4,000 incidents involving “face mask violations” have been reported, and many of those have involved children.
Last week’s viral video seems a bit more complicated than most: A family of a two-year-old was removed from an American Airlines flight.
Wow. American Airlines kicked a 2 year old boy with asthma off a plane and had police waiting for him + his mom because a power tripping flight attendant Carl lost his humanity. The last thing you’d do to a child suffering from an asthma attack is force a mask on them. pic.twitter.com/pWuVXJrFps
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 15, 2021
The family claims it was over a mask violation while the child was experiencing an asthma attack. A spokesman from American Airlines told MarketWatch that the flight was returned to the gate, and the family had to deplane for “refusing to comply with crew member instructions to remain seated while on an active taxiway and to wear face coverings securely over their nose and…