down masks

"I don't know what my teacher's face looks like."

He is nine years old and has been with this teacher for two, almost a fifth of his existence.

He talks about one of the most important people in his life, with whom many days he shares more waking hours than with his parents, and you wouldn't recognize him on the street if you came across him unmasked.

He said it without giving importance, between the main course and dessert, while his mother and I commented on Daniel Gascón's latest column, the first statement we read in favor of removing the masks from children, with which we fully agreed.

Terrible things are always said unintentionally.

I will not insist that children are not very contagious, nor how the alarms have gone off that, after two years of confinement and masks, detect learning and developmental delays in the socialization of children.

I prefer to underline the discrimination suffered by infant and primary school students: there is no other sector where the measures have been so strict and their compliance has been so draconian.

The offices are not obliged to close when there are positives, as if the classrooms are closed;

office workers have also not had to work with coats in the middle of winter, due to the obligation to keep the windows open, and have enjoyed ample occasions to stretch their legs, drink coffee and take off their masks for a while to smoke, relief denied to all kids.

Removing the mask at recess is a necessary and fair gesture,

The authorities have been especially harsh on them because nobody cares about school and they don't have the strength to make it matter.

By not contributing even a tenth to the GDP, it does not participate in the dilemma between health and the economy that allows other sectors to breathe a little.

To many epidemiologists (the real ones and those from the gatherings), that my son has not seen his teacher smile —who is a wonderful guy, capable of winning the affection of his students even when he is masked—, will sound corny and banal, but this is no longer just a matter of curves, peaks and counts.

As Habermas argued, there is no social issue, no matter how specialized, that cannot be subjected to democratic scrutiny.

In other words: the epidemic is too important to leave it only in the hands of epidemiologists and governments.

It is time to go beyond the decrees and sentences and debate with serenity and information everything that we have not debated in these two eternal years.

Starting with the children would be a delicacy that society owes them.

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