#State guidance on making kids mask in summer camps remains utterly idiotic

After several days of outrage, Team Cuomo softened its appalling mandate requiring children aged 2 and over to wear masks at summer camps and day care — but its guidance is still idiotic.

Kudos to regular Post columnist Karol Markowicz for leading the charge against the rule and for flagging the insanity of the related CDC guidelines. That helped push several counties into open revolt over the outrageous mandate, prompting the partial state retreat.

Set aside the absurdity of pretending preschool teachers could keep masks on rambunctious toddlers for hours at a time: The simple fact is that young children almost never get the virus, and so can’t transmit it.

And the idea of requiring masks during activities outdoors (which is most of summer camp) is beyond insane, since even adults rarely spread the virus in fresh air.

It’s particularly absurd for the Cuomoites to claim they were just following the CDC, when the governor has made a big deal of having independent experts check the feds’ findings on issues as complex as the safety of COVID vaccines.

Also nuts: The state is still “encouraging” camps to make kids mask. That’s despite UNICEF and the World Health Organization issuing joint guidance — last summer! — on masking children, advising that age-5-and-unders should be exempt completely, while making older kids mask for vigorous physical activity could “compromise their breathing.”

British schoolchildren have gone maskless for months. Dozens of US communities are removing mask mandates for schools. And yet Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s minions chose now, when the pandemic is all but over, to make restrictions tighter than ever for the age group that is least at risk.

Do the leaders of New York state even know what science is?