NYC’s woke health commissioner has been provided with security after being confronted at his $4 million home over plans to mask under-5’s indefinitely.
About two dozen protesters were seen by the New York Daily News on Monday night who allegedly shouted death threats while outside Ashwin Vasan’s lavish brownstone property in Fort Greene.
An NYPD patrol car has since been stationed outside the three story home ever since.
The group were upset after the commissioner, together with Mayor Eric Adams, decided to keep a school mask mandate in place for children under the age of five.
Those demonstrating shouted ‘unmask our kids’ while another flew a ‘F**k Biden’ banner.
New New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan (pictured) has sparked outrage for saying mask mandates for kids under five should remain in effect ‘indefinitely’
On Wednesday, Adams criticized the group and the personal attacks on his Health tsar.
‘There’s a group traveling around the city banging on the doors of my health commissioner even though his children are inside, yelling and screaming, threatening his life,’ Adams explained.
Adams and Vasan had stated jointly in March how the mask mandate for children under five would be finally removed on April 4 unless there was a spike in COVID-19 cases.
New York’s Health Commissioner has been given an NYPD security detail after angry parents showed up at his Fort Greene, Brooklyn home, pictured, to protest (file photo)
Infections have indeed begun to rise as a result of the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant of the virus.
On Friday, the pair said children younger than five will have to wear masks while in school for the foreseeable future.
That has infuriated parents who say the risk of COVID posed to young children is extremely low – and that their development is being stunted by the continuation of the masking policies.
Public health experts have backed Vasan’s backtrack.
‘It’s really horrifying how difficult it has become to have rational conversations about complex public health topics. It’s particularly frustrating, because these issues have to be debated publicly since most often there is no ‘right’ answer, only least bad options,’ tweeted Jay Varma, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s top pandemic adviser.
A spokesman for Vasan, Patrick Gallahue, has condemned those who harassed the commissioned.
‘To promote public health, we welcome public debate. But harassment of someone’s family and home is out of bounds and wholly unacceptable,’ Gallahue said in a statement. ‘This should not — and cannot — be tolerated.’
Over 100 parents and their children rallied at New York City Hall just weeks ago to demand Adams ‘unmask our toddlers’ – days after Vasan sparked outrage by announcing that children aged five and under should wear face masks indefinitely.
‘I think it’s indefinite at this point,’ Dr. Ashwin Vasan said when asked about how long the policy would remain in place. ‘People who have tried to predict what’s going to happen in the future in this pandemic have repeatedly found egg on their face, as they say, and I’m not going to do that here today.’
Multiple studies have shown Covid does not present a serious risk for children – with data from from American Academy of Pediatrics showing children accounted for about 19 percent of all COVID cases, though less than 0.26% of those cases resulted in death.
‘With BA.2, we’re not seeing it causes more severe illness in any age group,’ Vasan said in a recent press conference. ‘At this point, we’re very concerned about the effects of long-term COVID in everyone.’
Hospitalizations of pediatric COVID patients are also rare.
‘Hospitalizations have consistently remained higher for this age range, but they’re still considerably low,’ Vasan said, adding that kids 2-4 are able to mask, and are really the ‘target age range when people talk about kids wearing masks under the age of five.’
Vasan, a primary care physician with twenty years in the medical field, epidemiologist and public health expert, has been tasked to address pandemic management and recovery.
He also works on chronic disease prevention, ‘health equity’ and mental health.
Children are pictured out and about in New York City wearing face masks in November. Those aged 2-4 are the last group to be forced to still wear masks – even outdoors in some cases
Children are seen on March 7, playing outside while forced to wear face masks in the city
The mandate for children under five years old has become a flashpoint of parental ire in recent weeks, with several fiery protests outside City Hall garnering hundreds of attendees.
Children aged between two and four are the last remaining category forced to wear masks, with Adams citing the fact that they remain ineligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Children aged five and above, however, can now go mask-less at school after Adams lifted the mask mandate last month.
But one mother told DailyMail.com that it was absurd that there was no requirement to check the vaccination status of five-year-olds before they go maskless.
‘Why do two to four year olds have to mask, when unvaccinated five-year-olds don’t?’ she said.
A father added: ‘Between nap time and meal or snack time, I think they are mask free about a third of the day anyway.’
Parents demanding that the mask mandate be lifted confronted Adams on Sunday
On Wednesday, Adams has said that a city attorney who was fired after berating him over child mask mandates at a press conference was terminated for her ‘inappropriate’ tweets.
Adams told reporters that he had no idea who Daniela Jampel was when the mother of three confronted him during a press conference about mask mandates for kids under five.
The mayor insisted that the city’s Law Department, where Jampel had worked since 2016, had made the decision to fire her prior to the confrontation at Monday’s press conference.
‘Did not know who she was, did not make the call to fire her,’ said Adams. ‘It doesn’t bother me when people call me names — listen I’m an ex-cop, people have been calling me names for years.’
‘But what she tweeted, sent out, it was inappropriate, and the Law Department made the decision and notified me of that prior to that press conference. I had no interaction with that at all.’
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that a city attorney who was fired after berating him over child mask mandates at a press conference was terminated for her ‘inappropriate’ tweets
Daniela Jampel confronted him during a press conference about mask mandates for kids under age five
Adams did not clarify which of Jampel’s tweets had triggered her termination, and a Law Department spokesman did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com on Wednesday afternoon.
Jampel is vocal on Twitter, and on Friday she had written that her ‘summer goal is to chase down the ineffective and spineless NYC politicians (including @NYCMayor) who do nothing as public health petty bureaucrats continue to force toddlers to mask for no other reason than they can.’
Jampel is vocal on Twitter, and it’s unclear which of her tweets Adams was referring to
The Law Department previously told DailyMail.com that Jampel had been fired for making ‘made troubling claims’ in public statements.
Adams said on Wednesday that he did not recognize Jampel when she confronted him on Monday.
‘When she spoke, it was clear that she was not a reporter, but what did I do? I said, ‘allow her to speak’,’ he said.
The mayor implied that she was part of a group that had threatened city officials.
‘There is a group traveling around this city, banging on my health commissioner’s door, shouting and screaming while his children are inside, threatening his life,’ he said.
‘There’s a group running around this city who is the numerical minority, but they are loud so people believe they are the majority,’ added Adams.
Jampel issued these tweets after her dismissal from NYC’s Law Department, saying she regretted nothing and that ‘the fight continues’
A source close to Jampel told DailyMail.com on Tuesday that her firing ‘could not have been performance related’ as she has been out of the office on maternity leave for several months.
The person also says that Jampel received email notice of her termination within 30 minutes of the press conference, and that her direct supervisor in the Law Department did not seem aware that she was being fired.
The source also strongly disputed City Hall’s claim that Jampel ‘lied’ to get into the press conference by posing as a journalist.
‘She did not pose as a member of the media to crash the press conference as has been reported,’ the source added. ‘She entered the press conference as everyone else did.’
A Law Department spokesman told DailyMail.com in a statement earlier this week: ‘We hold all of our employees to the highest professional standards. In public statements, Ms. Jampel has made troubling claims about her work for the city Law Department.’
‘Based on those statements, the decision had been made to terminate her prior to [Monday],’ the spokesman added.
The statement added that Jampel’s ‘decision to lie to City Hall staff and state she was a journalist at a press conference, demonstrate a disturbing lack of judgment and integrity.’
Jampel on Twitter announced her intention to hire an attorney and told DailyMail.com: ‘I can’t really talk about it, until I have a lawyer.’
