Left-Wing Site Acknowledges Kids Should Not Be Wearing Masks
An increasing number of media outlets have agreed to stop promoting COVID-19 restrictions as a net positive for society now that the consequences have become apparent among children.
Notable left-leaning news outlet "The Atlantic," which has upheld support for COVID restrictions, posted a column addressing the inefficiency and risks facing masked children in American schools.
Their article titled "The Case Against Masks at School" called out the variables that inevitably keep mask mandates from working, quietly considering them useless, as vaccination rates help mitigate serious illness without the need for masks. And acknowledging that young children are not at risk from serious effects.
Looking at three CDC studies, Atlantic co-authors Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen and Jeanne Noble addressed the lack of efficiency masks have represented in data from Democrat-run states and counties, which have enforced stronger mandates than the WHO.
"The WHO explicitly counsels against masking children during physical activities, including running and jumping at the playground, so as not to compromise breathing," noted the study, comparing European countries that are siding with the World Health Organization's suggestion over stringent American policies by Dems.
"To demonstrate any independent effect of masks on COVID-19 transmission would have required comparing communities with similar vaccination rates or statistically controlling for differences in vaccination rates, including by specific groups such as teachers and students," the report added. "Without making these adjustments, it is impossible to attribute differences in case rates, let alone differences in in-school transmission, to mask-wearing in school."
The Atlantic's column looked at the disparity in cases and mandates between Davidson and Williamson counties in Tennessee.
"In Tennessee, two neighboring counties with similar vaccination rates, Davidson and Williamson, have virtually overlapping case-rate trends in their school-age populations, despite one having a mask mandate and one having a mask opt-out rate of about 23 percent."
The crux of the story standing against masking children stemmed from international data looking at masking's effect on a younger demographic's psychological development. Evidence cited a speech delay caused by primarily interacting through a mask and various forms of communicative deficiencies.
"Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy found evidence that masking is a barrier to speech recognition, hearing, and communication, and that masks impede children’s ability to decode facial expressions, dampening children’s perceived trustworthiness of faces.
"Research has also suggested that hearing-impaired children have difficulty discerning individual sounds; opaque masks, of course, prevent lip-reading."
Yahoo News published a story highlighting the regression in development seen among high schoolers that went through their final years in middle school enduring COVID restrictions and online classes.
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