About 20 participate in mask-burning protest

LOGAN - Nearly 20 people - about half of them children - participated in a mask-burning event Saturday morning to protest those mandates for children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tonya Perez, who organized the event in front of the Cowboy Chuckwagon restaurant along U.S. 54, said she was prompted to organize the protest after hearing a rumor that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will require schoolchildren to wear masks during the next school year.

"Hopefully, this will put a stop to the masks," she said of the protest. "Masks are not needed. It's just ridiculous. They don't protect the kids. COVID went through every school here. They were masked up and did all the guidelines that the governor set in place, and COVID still came through the schools. She didn't go by science; she went by politics over kids."

Perez said when children catch coronavirus, most of the time their symptoms are mild, much like the flu.

Health experts caution the Delta variant of COVID-19, which originated in Brazil, is getting a foothold in the U.S. and is more contagious. Because of that, health officials are urging full vaccinations, plus masks for the unvaccinated.

The protest was peppered by protest signs. "I can't breath, either," "Set us free; burn the mask," "Kids over politics" and "Free the kids of New Mexico" were among the messages. One protester waved a relic from 2020 - a Trump for President flag. Organizers offered a $50 gift certificate to Cowboy Chuckwagon for the best sign.

After waving to motorists on U.S. 54 with their signs, children and adults tossed masks into burn barrels in front of the restaurant.

Mask mandates remain in place for children younger than age 12 because they're not eligible for any of the COVID-19 vaccines on the market, though manufacturers are trying to get their approval for all children before summer's end.

State and federal health officials said several weeks ago that people who've been fully vaccinated generally can go without masks. New Mexico high-school athletes who were fully vaccinated also were allowed to go maskless in mid-June. The governor also announced the lifting of most health restrictions, effective July 1, because of the state achieved a 60% full vaccination rate.

Those recent developments didn't satisfy Perez.

"You should not have to have the vaccine to be mask-free. No masks, no vaccine ... it's a free country," she said. "Every other state is free. We've been to Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Texas ... everybody is free, no masks. And here we are, New Mexico still is shut down."

Perez claimed children breathe in toxins and carbon dioxide while wearing masks - a notion disputed by most health providers, including the Mayo Clinic.

She also asserted "you don't need a vaccine" if people take ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment and that hydroxychloroquine can cause other serious health problems.

Debi Ware of Grady attended the protest.

"Our children don't need to be wearing masks," she said. "I've been a teacher for 38 years, and there's no way they can focus on what they need to be studying when they're wearing the masks and trying to breathe."

Perez's husband, Kyle, is a Logan school board member who questioned the mask mandate during a May meeting.

"The longer they keep us restricted like we are and keep us masked up, this disease isn't going away," Kyle Perez said during the meeting. "If they take the masks off, let it go through out school system, we'd be back to normal."

Kyle Perez also falsely asserted during the meeting the Texas Panhandle had seen "zero" cases of COVID-19 since the state lifted its mask mandate in early March.

During the meeting, superintendent Dennis Roch appeared by videoconference because he was under quarantine after being exposed to a COVID-19-positive person.

Logan has recorded more than 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since mid-April.