Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, this year, due to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines restricting outdoor activities, many children will be stuck inside when they should be outdoors in the sunlight playing, learning new skills, making friends, and enjoying their childhoods. This is not only important for their mental health but also their physical health and enhancing their immune system. And it is even more critically important in those States which have still not reopened their schools fully to in-person learning, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that the CDC had hugely exaggerated their guidelines by saying that less than 10 percent of COVID-19 transmission occurs outdoors, and that the actual estimate of outdoor transmission is somewhere between 0.1 percent to 1 percent. This misleading guidance from the CDC has led to confusion, increased hesitancy to view outdoor activities as safe, and many summer camps have been forced to close their doors again for yet another year. We have known for quite some time that the risk of transmitting COVID-19 outdoors is exceedingly small. In Iowa, there was not a requirement to wear masks outdoors, even though physical separation and maintaining small group size was encouraged.…”