How long will we continue to torture kids?
And let’s be clear: Forcing them to wear masks all day in school, sometimes at recess, is torture. Saying that even vaccinated kids must continue to wear masks in school, as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday, is torture.
Doctors and psychologists are just beginning to study the effects of mask-wearing on kids, but the early signs aren’t good. Younger children in particular are missing facial cues and social development.
And for what? Writing in the Atlantic, Vinay Prasad, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco, notes that “the potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”
He explains that the World Health Organization “specifically advises against masking kids age 5 and younger.” Many European countries don’t require students to wear masks, and there have been no major outbreaks in schools.
Yet “the science” is ignored.
This isn’t a liberal vs. conservative issue. It’s a statistics issue. In July, New York magazine ran a piece titled “The Kids Were Safe From COVID the Whole Time.” It noted: “Over the course of the pandemic, 49,000 Americans under the age of 18 have died of all causes, according to the CDC. Only 331 of those deaths have been from COVID — less than half as many as have died of pneumonia. In 2019, more than 2,000 American kids and teenagers died in car crashes; each year, according to some estimates, about a thousand die from drowning.”
The infection fatality rate for those aged 5 to 9? “Less than 0.001 percent.”
Democrats have tried to gaslight Americans by saying that masks are not an inconvenience, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a murderer. Walensky cheers the decline in infections but then says it’s not enough. To what goal? Zero cases? By that logic, the pandemic will stretch forever.
Kids never had to wear masks. To say that they must continue to wear them even after they are vaccinated is malpractice.
Panic has replaced common sense. When, when will it end?
