Murphy took every COVID case as “DEADLY SERIOUS" and used that excuse to mask your kids. However, the data showed that healthy school-aged kids had 0 risk of dying from COVID. He masked our children longer than most states, feeding fear with his weekly COVID-update lies. His strict school policies were detrimental to the physical and mental health of our children.
I personally had been writing to the Legislature and Murphy about the lack of evidence that children were at risk of death from COVID 2020, lack of mask efficacy and the adverse events caused by masks. I started a Substack in 2021 where I explained that children were at a higher risk of drowning than COVID 19.
The figure below from the NJ SHAD (State Health Assessment Data) database shows how Kids aged 5 to 17 are FIVE TIMES more likely to drown and FIFTEEN TIMES more likely to commit suicide than die from COVID19 in New Jersey from 2020 to current date. In addition, there was a 14% increase in suicide for kids aged 5-17 from 2019 to 2020, according to the NJ SHAD database.
Parents and kids all over the state wrote Murphy, principals and superintendents over the harms that the masks were causing in school. Kids were wearing masks up to 10 hours-a-day with school clubs, and before and after care. Some districts even wrote letters to Governor Murphy pleading to end the mask mandates. The NJ Senate and Assembly never pushed back because they are mostly Democrats who ALSO blindly follow the Democrat narrative. The only Democrat who broke with the narrative was Jamel Holly, so his party primaried him and booted him out.
Murphy extended the masks to 2 years to punish kids because parents were reluctant to use an experimental vaccine on their children, he also used other tactics, such as contact tracing and quarantine to make it inconvenient to be unvaccinated. As a result, over 1.6 million children (according to the NJ State COVID dashboard) between the ages of 5 and 17 received at least one dose of the vaccine, even though their risk of death from COVID is less than drowning.
Ages 5 to 11, eligible since November 2021: 47.2% one shot, 40% complete dose, 12.9% one booster
Ages 12 to 17: 85.5% one shot, 74.3% complete dose, 32.5% one booster
Most parents reluctantly vaccinated their children because of the inconvenience of NJ 14 day quarantine recommendations. When your unvaccinated child was suspected to be within 6 feet of another child who had COVID, they had to spend 14 days doing home instruction even though they had no symptoms of COVID unless they tested. This made it impossible to ride the bus without eventually being quarantined for 5 to 14 days.
Recently in the news, people were outraged to find out that Pfizer COVID vaccine was never tested for stopping transmission before it entered the market. I personally wasn’t shocked because I read all of the clinical trials for all of the COVID products; the vaccine was only tested for reduction in death and I had stated this on Facebook, only to be banned. Our Governor, the CDC, our President, the legacy media and social media gave out misinformation that masks and vaccines stop the spread of COVID 19. After all, that is why we masked our children and forced unvaccinated people to lose their jobs. Now, 2 years later, it is clear that the vaccine was unable to stop spread, just like the ridiculous masks never stopped spread. There is not ONE successful clinical trial, or world population data (using up to date data) that shows masks were efficacious. Early on, the CDC cherry picked mask data in an embarrassing attempt to convince Americans that masks save lives.
And there are people who still believe this lie, and some of them are running for your BOE. Some districts forcibly masked kids after Murphy gave up the mask mandate in March 2021. Schools heavily controlled by the NJEA, like Newark, still forced masks on kids in September of 2022.
Below is a Murphy quote from January of 2021 quote telling the lie that you that you have to DO YOUR PART to GO BACK TO NORMAL.
“With that, we still urge you to get your booster shot. We still have roughly half of those eligible for their boosters who have not yet gotten it. As I said a few moments ago, even though our numbers are dropping, Omicron is still a threat and heaven forbid that a new variant is trying to establish itself that could upend everything as Omicron tried to do. Protect yourself and your family by getting boosted. The more we all do our parts, the sooner we get back to a true and lasting sense of normal.
Lastly, for the numbers, let’s look at the updated figures from our schools. First up, this is the overall rates of infection among students, educators, and staff, which again, are coming off their peaks. This is per 1,000 individuals, and by the way, this is not with regard to where – that it was in-school transmission. This is for all cases regardless of where folks contracted the virus, and now we’ll flip that to the numbers of outbreaks confirmed to have been through in-school transmission. Again, we take every single one of these outbreaks, every single one of these cases deadly seriously, but let’s remember we have a total of 3500 schools across the state serving more than 1.4 million students. These numbers show how our layered approach to safety, including, yes, at least for the time being – it gives me no joy, but reminder that includes requiring all students and staff to remain masked up while they’re in their schools, that that layered approach is helping to minimize the spread while everyone is in their school building. That’s it for the numbers.”
The truth is, it was only up to him to go back to normal, because it isn’t based on data; it was based on his political winds. For example, on 9/1/21 there were 1841 cases of COVID and we started the school year with mask mandates, on 9/2/22, there were 1713 cases of COVID and no mandates. THERE IS NO WAY that slight difference of over 100 people/day made the difference to end mask mandates this September.
The truth is, Murphy’s decision to mask and unmasked were based on popularity of the idea of school mandates and NOT SCIENCE. In September of 2020, schools were shut down because the NJEA wanted it shut down, and our kids were masked because the UNION WANTED THE KIDS MASKED. Parents complained and created an uproar then showed up to the election to kick Murphy out. Last year Murphy had a UNEXPECTED close call with the election, and I believe it was because his campaign didn’t count on angry parents showing up at the polls and narrowing the 2021 Gubernatorial race. Political analysis shows that masks are unpopular, in March of 2022, 46% of parents believe masks at school harmed their kids. When your child is harmed, you are a motivated voter. There is clearly NEVER ANY MEDICAL REASON to mask children, kids are not at risk of death from COVID and masks DO NOT STOP SPREAD.
Clearly, the only reason we are not forced to mask our children because it became POLITICALLY UNPOPULAR, because the data evidence has not changed from the beginning of this pandemic. Your calls and emails to the legislature, followed up with your vote DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
And in this election, REMEMBER the BOE, they have the say right now on mask mandates for children because the democrats realized that mask mandates are like licking the 3rd rail. Its up to you to vote the right people in to your schools. Click the button below for people who fought the mask mandates in your district.
Im a doc in NJ /25 yrs in private practice in westwood. I wrote and called all the county health commissioners the state commiss, murphys office , the hospitals , schools... noone cared ... they all were just following orders. I lost hospital staff Privileges at the Valley Hosp Ridgewood New Jersey. The medical executive committee board of this hospital imposed a vaccine mandate even before the state did. They were completely unwilling unable to listen to any data or reason or argument about the futility of vaccine mandates. Recently just about a month ago I went to Hospital For Special Surgery for a is iconsultation and everybody was still wearing masks. As far as New Jersey goes I think Murphy was a complete failure, bowed to the teachers unions, and allowed political considerations to dictate this health policy. In that respect he was really no different than Trudeau Canada. How did your opinion is the best way to prevent this from ever happening again? We need to strip the governor of New Jersey the office, of the emergency abilities to issue emergency orders
You have always been right. But sadly the kids had to suffer to provide the evidence. I am concerned he will push a vaccine mandate on the kids. Writing to legislature again to express my views.