The US policy regarding coronavirus infection in children has not been one of medical science’s great triumphs as is true of its entire package of actions regarding the infection. The epidemic has been a excuse for the imposition of central control of activities formerly felt to be outside the boundaries of government control and up til now the province of free people. The claim of many to medical and scientific expertise regarding the infection does not stand scrutiny.
The epidemic was not very old before it was realized that healthy children were at lower risk of serious disease from this virus than they were from the flu. Also apparent was that children were not a locus for the dissemination of the virus. Yet schools were closed, in many regions for more than a year. Children were masked as were those few they were allowed to approach. Learning was made remote to the obvious detriment of those children in the lower half of the socioeconomic strata. Normal social development was stunted. Finally, they were told or ordered to receive a vaccine that they didn’t need and which had not been adequately tested as it was rushed into use. The risk-benefit ratio of this preventative measure is still not known. The vaccine safety profile has to be close to that of a saline injection when given to a population at so low a risk for the disease.
The issue of masking children has resurfaced with a report that restudied that done earlier by the CDC. The original data from the CDC – Pediatric COVID-19 Cases in Counties With and Without School Mask Requirements — United States, July 1–September 4, 2021 concluded “that increases in pediatric COVID-19 case rates during the start of the 2021–22 school year were smaller in U.S. counties with school mask requirements than in those without school mask requirements. School mask requirements, in combination with other prevention strategies, including COVID-19 vaccination, are critical to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in schools .”
The new study supported by the University of Toronto and still under peer review by the Lancet replicated that done by the CDC however with a larger sample size and with a longer period of observation. Revisiting Pediatric COVID-19 Cases in Counties With and Without School Mask Requirements—United States, July 1—October 20 2021 replicated the CDC study showing a negative association between school mask mandates and pediatric SARS-CoV-2 cases. The authors extended the study using a larger sample of districts and a longer time interval, employing almost six times as much data as the original study. They concluded that “School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. [They] failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval. Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables. Randomized studies can more reliably inform public health policy.” The entire paper is below. The short message is that masks have no protective effect in children against the coronavirus and don’t retard spread of the disease.
The government and those medical scientists allied with it have failed the US population in just about every conceivable way. A serious infectious disease was used as a political weapon and as a means to allow the federal and state governments to seize powers which had not been granted to them by law and which then in many cases made life worse for Americans than it would have been has nothing at all been done. The social, economic, and psychological costs of the unfettered and ill conceived response to this pandemic will cause havoc for years or even decades to come.
I’ll limit concluding remarks to children. There is no good scientific reason for those who are healthy to wear masks, avoid school or interaction with peers. Similarly, there is no need for then to undergo routine testing for the virus if asymptomatic. There is not conclusive evidence to weigh the safety of routine vaccination for this group. I cannot see a good reason to vaccinate them. The manipulation of children in the guise of public health is civic malfeasance that will leave an enduring stain on the public virtue.