Masks in Schools
According to information found on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, in order to protect against the transmission of COVID-19, masks are recommended anytime you are around anyone outside of your immediate household. This is claimed to be one of the easiest ways to prevent the spread of the virus.
Yet despite months-long mask mandates requiring masks for all in public settings, infections from COVID-19 actually increased. The site clinicalnews.org has links to all of the data supporting this statement, including from the CDC and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Mask usage, or even mandates, were not found to have an impact on the rate of spread of COVID.
Despite this scientific evidence, everyone over the age of two is recommended to do their part by wearing a mask. That means that at all of life’s events outside the home, children are masked up.
A group of parents in Florida, who saw how gross their children's masks were looking after one school day, had the University of Florida Mass Spectometry Research and Education Center test 6 face masks as they were concerned about the potential contaminants on the masks and the impact of those contaminants on their children.
The resulting study detected bacteria, parasites, fungi, a virus other than COVID, various pathogens, including eleven dangerous pathogens, on new or freshly-laundered masks that had only been worn for 5-8 hours during a typical school day. The control masks (unused masks) did not have any pathogens, meaning the pathogens were all picked up during wear in the course of the school day. At the conclusion of the study, one of the participating parents pointed to the need for more research as to the safety of masks, as having a “warm, moist environment for bacteria to grow” cannot be healthy for children!
The CDC’s own site shows that there have been less than 350 deaths total in children age 0-17 due to COVID. As it’s been proven masks are ineffective, or at the very best the results of their effectiveness are inconclusive, the minuscule number of deaths is not due to mask protection but due to the negligible effects of COVID on children. Additionally, compare this to the data that influenza, which has been infecting humans for years, caused an average over the past 8 years of 456 deaths in children. Masks were not used to stop that infection, and deaths were greater. Why then are we masking our children for COVID?
Children need to learn to interact with one another, albeit as safely as possible, but masks make no difference in terms of their safety.