In the midst of the coronavirus "pandemic," a New Jersey school nurse was suspended for declining to wear a mask, claiming it was "harming students."
"I've seen kids come in with all kinds of dirty masks, the same mask for weeks, surgical masks to have food and dirt on them. I had a student come to me. He came to the nurse's office and said he couldn't breathe," said school nurse Erin Pein Wednesday on "Fox & Friends."
The Stafford Township School District's school nurse goes on to mention that a student reported that he's been "shockingly" wearing a mask for two weeks and informed her he "can't take" the mask off.
"How could this be? This kid sleeping and showering in this mask for two weeks? We tried to take it off and we couldn't, so we actually had to cut it off and throw it away," Pein revealed this to co-host Brian Kilmeade.
Pein, 35, said this is one of the incidents she's seen at the Stafford hospital. The nurse is extremely worried that the students are wearing masks "incorrectly," so she wanted to speak out. The Stafford school nurse decided to contact her boss but her concerns "weren't appreciated."
"They just bluntly told me we are going to be following the mandates put in place by Governor Murphy and that includes wearing masks," she told Kilmeade. "I let them know that, as a nurse, I don't feel comfortable enforcing something that I can see and know that is harming somebody."
Seeing that voicing her concerns to the school heads won't make a difference, she decided to do her own form of protest. She messaged the school superintendent, her principal, and her supervisor that she would no longer be wearing a mask to work. She reported to work without a mask on Friday, and on Monday morning, she was summoned and informed that she had been suspended.
The suspended Stafford school nurse is a mother of three who has been in the medical field for 13 years. The mask mandate, according to Pein, is "child abuse," in a Facebook video shared by Republican gubernatorial nominee Hirsh Singh.
"The mask, unfortunately, don't prevent them from getting COVID because the viruses are so small that you can't be stopped with a cloth masks or surgical masks. Even an N95 mask is not effective in catching the COVID. So, making these kids wear them for six or seven hours a day is awful," she said.
Pein also recounted an incident where a crying child approached her.
"She was wearing a mask. She was crying. She had vomited in class... I pulled her mask off. It was full of vomit. Her mask was full of vomit," Pein said.
She went on to explain that these young students had "severe anxiety" and that it's "heartbreaking" to see.
"Stand up. You can go to America's frontline doctors," Pein said. "You can get information about legal resources of how you can stand up and protect the kids that we are supposed to protect."
Since April 20, Pein has been on unpaid leave. Fox News noted that their request for clarification has gone unanswered by the Stafford Township School District.
