MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Dr Anthony Fauci wants kids to wear masks outside, Tucker Carlson calls it 'child abuse': 'Call the police'

Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson said children wearing face coverings is “child abuse”, adding that if people see kids wearing masks, "call the police immediately, contact child protective services"

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the American physician-scientist and immunologist who serves as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the president, has been accused of being a “child abuser” after warning that children may have to wear face masks outdoors until the end of the year. 

Appearing on NBC on Wednesday morning, Fauci said, “It's gonna be a situation, well, first of all, kids will ultimately end up getting vaccinated, but you want to have some activity in that direction before they do (unmask). High school kids will likely get vaccinated as we get into the fall term, and children of any age will likely get vaccinated by the time we get to the end of the year. But let's not talk about the end of the year.”

READ MORE

Who is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya? Fox News guest says Dr. Anthony Fauci is 'no 1 anti-vaxxer' for mask-wearing advocacy

Move over Dr. Seuss, here's Dr. Fauci: COVID Czar to feature in children's book, as censorship row rock's country

He added, “When children are out in the community -- when you have 30, 40, 50,000 new infections per day. They are unvaccinated now because children can't get vaccinated now and for that reason, they are more at risk of getting infected because they are out in the community where there is a lot of infection. When the community level starts to go way down, the risks to everybody including the children is going to be dramatically diminished.”

Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson said that children wearing face coverings was a form of “child abuse”. On Monday, April 26, Carlson took to his platform and declared “the only people who wear masks outside are zealots and neurotics”. He said that people should go up to people they see wearing masks outdoors and ask them “politely but firmly” to remove the coverings. And if they see kids wearing masks, "call the police immediately, contact child protective services". He said it is “child abuse” and one is “morally obligated to prevent it”. A Twitter user posted the Fox News host's take on the matter with the comment: "Tucker Carlson is now telling his audience to harass people who wear masks outside."

“I think that’s self-evident that that’s bizarre," an exasperated Fauci told CNN on Wednesday, April 28. "I don't want to get into a back and forth with Tucker Carlson, but it's almost self-evident. You’re talking about child abuse, really? Come on.”

On Tuesday, the CDC updated its advice, to say that fully-vaccinated people -- two weeks after their second dose in a two-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or two weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine -- could now be outside safely, in small groups, without a face mask. In large crowds, face masks are still recommended. People under 16 cannot yet be vaccinated, and so must continue to wear face masks in public. 

American actor Nicholas Searcy, best known for portraying Chief Deputy United States Marshal Art Mullen on FX's ‘Justified’, also took to Twitter to label Dr Fauci's latest mask guidelines as 'child abuse'. He tweeted, “Forcing children to wear masks is insane child abuse, and parents and teachers who put masks on these children should be ashamed of themselves.  It is sickening, nonsensical, and shows a lack of critical thinking skills as well as an alarming docility in the face of tyranny.”

In response to a Twitter user calling him out, Searcy wrote, “The survival rate for a child that gets the virus is 99.98%. That means your little darling has a greater chance of dying in a submerged car accident— a car that goes off a bridge and sinks— than dying from Covid. You are an idiot.”