When does it end? Some would say the answer is “never” given the inclination of adults to continually afflict Covid-19 restrictions and impositions on school-aged children that they themselves repeatedly refuse to follow.
The ongoing offender is still the unnecessary and harmful masking of kids despite mountains of evidence that Covid-19 is far less lethal than influenza for children 18 and younger.
Beyond that, of course, is the data that indicates masks are ineffective are reducing transmission among children, especially young children, given how they rarely wear the masks properly.
As TIME reported some days ago, mask mandates are now popping back up in school districts around the country as Covid cases rise in some areas:
The Providence school district tracked about 60 COVID-19 cases per day last week among staff and students—a dramatic increase from a low of about 10 cases per day in March and early April, according to district data.
“The additional mitigation layer of masking will help us manage this new COVID surge and keep more students in the classroom where they learn best,” Javier Montañez, superintendent of Providence schools, said in a statement on Monday.
Philadelphia schools also resumed a mask mandate “to help protect everyone’s health and well-being as COVID-19 case counts continue to rise in the Philadelphia area,” superintendent William Hite said in a statement. And Brookline, Mass. reinstated an indoor mask mandate in all town-owned buildings, including public schools.
Why are school districts still trying to impose a Covid transmission deterrence policy that has been proven ineffective and dangerous to childhood social development?
It’s simple. The CDC is still telling them to based on faulty data and flawed methodology.
Watch this clip from Dr. Marty Makary from October of 2021 on the effects of masks on children:
Since the original CDC study came out on school masking, a study which has been lampooned and debunked numerous times, newer studies with solid methodology and actual scientific basis have found just the opposite to be true, such as this study from The Lancet:
There has been considerable debate around mask requirements in schools in the United States and other countries during the Covid-19 pandemic. To date, there have been no randomized controlled trials of mask requirements in children. All analyses of the effectiveness of school mask mandates have relied on observational studies.
The Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. have released multiple observational studies suggesting that school mask mandates significantly reduce case rates. However, there have also been numerous additional US and international observational studies finding no significant effect of school mask mandates on pediatric cases.
In other words, the CDC’s data is flawed and its “observational studies” have now been debunked by actual data sets from studies conducted in a scientifically rigorous manner. These include both studies undertaken domestically as well as studies from Europe.
Why then would school districts, and the CDC, continue subjecting children to mask mandates that are harmful and simply do not work to reduce transmission?
Beyond that question, whatever happened to consideration for whether someone had immunity, either from vaccination or naturally from actually testing positive for Covid-19?
A lot of time has passed since March of 2020, we know far more than we did then. The data is very clear that mask mandates in schools did little to stem transmission or keep schools open.
There are two data points worth looking at.
First, not only did mask mandates not accomplish the intended goal, but districts with mandates actually suffered more disruption and learning loss than districts without mandates:
Children in masked districts experienced, on average, 4-times the number of disrupted learning days as those in mask-optional districts (Figure 1). The same districts also had 2.5 times higher case rates during the same period as we demonstrated in analysis published on March 9th, 2022.
Furthermore, the masks themselves seemed to have little or no effect on transmission rates in schools:
As we demonstrated in our analysis of March 9th, during the January peak of the omicron wave, masked districts had 2.5-fold higher case rates than un-masked districts. Yet, during the same period, as we saw in Figure 1 above, those same schools experienced more than 4-fold higher rates of school disruptions—significantly higher rates of disruption even than their increases in case rates.
There is no excuse for further inflicting mask mandates on school children or anyone, for that matter. None.
The learning loss they’ve suffered is already long-lasting and will alter the course of their lives, not only their education.
Do the adults in those schools adhere to the same policies outside of school they inflict on children inside the school? Do they wear masks at parties and gatherings? Do they wear masks to the grocery store? Do they get punished if their mask slips off while they’re chatting with a neighbor? No, they don’t.
During lockdowns and school closures in 2020 and 2021, substance abuse among adolescents and adults rose sharply. The damage from the increase in substance abuse among children during Covid shutdowns far outweighs any risk they could’ve encountered from the actual virus, yet the adults around them decided that disrupting their developmental years was worth it to “do something” to fight Covid-19 even if that “something” proved to be worse than the disease itself.
Adults and elected officials must hold the line against re-imposing Covid-related mandates if not simply because enough damage has already been done, but scientifically there is no basis for them any longer.
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