Michigan government and Department of Health and Human Services are masking our children for unnecessary purposes. With their latest order; children 2 through 4 year old are now being required to wear masks. In the state of Michigan children 9 and younger make up 11.5% of the population and only account for 3.7% of the state’s COVID cases - less than 1% of hospitalizations and less than 0.1% of deaths. If the data was targeted to specifically just children ages 2 to 4 one could reasonably assume those numbers would be much smaller as they account for just a third of that overall age group.

According to the Michigan Department of Community Health website the total numbers of COVID-19 deaths for ages Infant through 14 years is at 0 from January 1, 2021 - April 16, 2021. The number of COVID-19 deaths in all of 2020 for infants through 4 years old was again zero, and only 3 total deaths in the 5-14 year age group.

From the Michigan.gov website as of 4/23/2021 there have only been a total of 98 hospitalized pediatric cases for both suspected and confirmed COVID-19 from all 8 regions of Michigan.

From the CDC.gov website as of 4/23/2021 they report that less than 10% of the COVID-19 cases in the United States have been among children ranging from 5-17 years of age. Compared with adults, children and adolescents who have COVID-19 are more commonly asymptomatic, never develop symptoms, or have mild non specific symptoms. Children are also less likely to develop severe illness or die from COVID-19.

Furthermore the state of Michigan has yet to provide any data to indicate the need for a new requirement masking our 2 to 4 year olds. 

We are asking Governor Whitmer and The Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the new requirements for 2 to 4 year olds and also unmasking our children under the age of 18. Just because they can, does not mean they should.