'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host says our leaders are 'too incompetent to care' For a full year, our children never saw one another's faces. They didn't see their teachers or their playmates. They were cut off. They were masked. Masks were mandatory in schools and in most public places. Masks were the key to fighting the great global pandemic, they told us again and again. Our public health authorities repeated that every day. So our children complied with it. They had no choice. Very few of their parents questioned it. Adults who refused to wear masks in public were arrested for it. And that sent the clearest possible message. Shut up and do what you're told. So people did.