A few days ago this happened on twitter:
PA’s message to Wolf: I know you don’t check the CDC, but I do. 385 Covid deaths under 18 in the US. Out of 74 million. That’s .00052%. But by all means. Let’s restrict free air flow. That’s real leadership right there.
— Wendy Bell (@WendyBellPgh) August 31, 2021
By focusing only on the "385 Covid deaths under 18" Wendy is purposefully omitting this part of the story:
As vaccination rates lag and the new delta variant surges, Covid infection rates among kids have risen and children’s hospitals are seeing a spike in medical care needs among the young patients.
The Covid surge is also stacking upon an unseasonable spike in respiratory illnesses among children typically seen only in winter. That has shrunk the bed space further in children's hospitals and expanded on the unrelenting demand on doctors and nurses.
“It is scary, especially for kids who don’t fully understand what’s going on. They’re air hungry, struggling for breath, and it’s just scary,” said Dr. Kelechi Iheagwara, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at the Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “You have the illness, the fear, they can’t breathe, they’re isolated — that’s hard for anyone to understand, but can you imagine what it’s like for a kid?”
Apparently, this is A-OK for Wendy Bell, the Angel of Death.
But beyond that, she gets the source of the mask mandate wrong. It's not
issued under the authority of the Governor, it's
issued under the authority of the Acting Secretary of Health, Alison Beam.
And it's not just about childrens' death. From the
order:
Now, because of the rise of the Delta variant, increasing disease and hospitalizations, and the inability to obtain vaccines for a large part of that vulnerable group, children are more and more at risk.
There are several reasons for the increasing risk to children from COVID-19. The risk overall to the unvaccinated population is rising. Given the rise in hospitalizations and deaths, and despite COVID- 19 vaccines being available, the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is causing the rate of cases of COVID-19 to increase. The Delta variant is more infectious, and it is leading to increased transmissibility. Additionally, data is suggesting that the Delta variant may cause more severe illness than previous strains of SARS-CoV-2. Vaccination remains the most effective protection against all strains of SARS-CoV-2; however, not all of our population is able to get vaccinated. As of yet, no vaccine has been approved for children under the age of 12. As of August 26, 2021, the total number of cumulative cases reported in children in the Commonwealth was 23,974 in the 0-4 years of age cohort, 56,039 in the 5-12 years of age cohort, and 88,205 in the 12-18 years of age cohort.
See that Wendy? It's not about death but it is about public health and the recently increased risk of infection for children, understand?
You'd know this if you'd actually read the order.
I am guessing you never bothered with the order because if you had and you omitted telling the full truth about it then we'd all know how dishonest you are.
And we all know how much you hate being called a liar.
Then there's this from the order:
COVID-19 is a threat to the public’s health, for which the Secretary of Health may order general control measures. This authority is granted to the Secretary of Health pursuant to Pennsylvania law. See section 5 of the Disease Prevention and Control Law, 35 P.S. § 521.5; section 2102(a) of the Administrative Code of 1929, 71 P.S. § 532(a); and the Department of Health’s regulation at 28 Pa. Code § 27.60 (relating to disease control measures). Particularly, the Department of Health (Department) has the authority to take any disease control measure appropriate to protect the public from the spread of infectious disease. See 35 P.S. § 521.5; 71 P.S. §§ 532(a), and 1403(a); 28 Pa. Code § 27.60. With the opening of the 2021 school year at hand, and case counts and hospitalizations continuing to rise, there is a need for additional action to protect our Commonwealth’s children.
Don't you want to protect the health of the Commonwealth's children, Wendy?
I'll say it again. By focusing only on the "385 Covid deaths under 18" you're
purposefully omitting this, Wendy.
Helpless to improve her infant son’s breathing as he was about to be intubated, Catherine Perrilloux did the only thing that came naturally to her in that moment, the worst of her life: She looked away and prayed. The boy, known as Junior, was two months old and gravely ill with Covid-19.
“I see a bunch of them crowding around the room with the ventilator machine, and then they pull out the tubing, and I’m just losing control,” Ms. Perrilloux, a dean at a nearby private school, recalled last week in her son’s room in the pediatric intensive care unit. “There’s nothing that you could say to make it better. You can’t do anything. It’s just paralyzing.”
At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, scenes like this have played out unrelentingly over the past month. Nurses raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About a half-dozen others were in various stages of distress.
“We all thought, ‘Well, thankfully it’s not happening to the kids; none of us would be able to stomach that,’” said Mark Melancon, a longtime nurse at the hospital, recalling previous stages of the coronavirus pandemic. “Fast forward to now, and it’s happening with the kids.”
So this must be acceptable to you, Wendy.
Shame on you. Shame. On. You.
