Unmask the Children Now!
A teacher's take on the insanity of forcing children to wear ineffective, harmful face masks
A couple of weeks ago my school held a Halloween “Trunk-or-Treat” day for the students. Parents volunteered to thematically decorate their cars and hand out candy to the kids from their trunks. The students were very excited for this event. They were allowed to wear their Halloween costumes to school, or, if they preferred, to change into them right before the start of the Trunk-or-Treat at the end of the school day. There was only one caveat: They were not allowed to wear a Halloween mask, because they had to have their their surgical or cloth mask on and visible at all times. This obvious attack on the Halloween aesthetic does not begin to detail the inanity of this directive.
On the morning of the event, though, the administration sent out an email stating that the students and their teachers could remove their cloth masks when outside Trunk-or-Treating. This would have permitted the kids to wear a Halloween mask, then, if they so desired. But the administration’s message came too late, since none of the kids brought a Halloween mask to school, as they were ordered not to beforehand. The parents, however, who volunteered their time to help put on this event, were told that they must wear a surgical or cloth mask for the duration of the Trunk-or-Treat.
So, during this outdoor Halloween festivity, parents in surgical and cloth masks handed out candy from their cars to unmasked children, who, for the one day of the year, should have actually worn a mask suitable for the occasion. What an absurdity to witness!
This pathological moment in the school parking lot inspired me to write what you will read below. As I’ve detailed in a previous essay, the notion that asymptomatic people - previously referred to as healthy - spread diseases is a complete myth. It continues to function as the foundational lie justifying most of the ludicrous policies enacted by corrupt governments and school boards, such as the quarantining of the healthy and the forced masking of children. Once one knows that there is no epidemiologically relevant asymptomatic transmission, legitimizing masks becomes impossible. Regardless, in order to completely dismantle the belief that masks provide protection, I will cite the scientific literature proving that they do not stop the spread of respiratory pathogens. Then I will elaborate on the real harms children face from masking all day long in school, before expounding upon the impact masking has on teaching and learning.
Masks Do Not Prevent the Spread of Respiratory Pathogens
Up until the point that Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, the science did not support mask wearing as an appropriate measure to prevent the spread of viruses. In the early stages of the Covid crisis, public health officials cautioned against wearing masks. The Surgeon General in late February of 2020, Dr. Jerome Adams, tweeted that masks “were not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.” Then, in March 2020, Fauci stated on 60 Minutes that “masks might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.” Again, Fauci later changed course on his mask stance, like he did on asymptomatic transmission, but without any actual evidence to support his about-face. Because there isn’t any legitimate scientific rationale that supports wearing surgical or cloth masks to stop the spread of viruses.
In May of 2020, Emerging Infectious Diseases, the CDC’s own journal, stated: “In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs [randomized controlled trials] that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks...” Brown University Epidemiologist, Dr. Andrew Bostom, wrote in July 2020, citing the CDC’s report, that experiential observations “...provide no rational, evidence-based justification for daily, prolonged mask usage by the general public to prevent infection with COVID-19.”
Additionally, The Center for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University concluded that no evidence exists proving that masks have any efficacy in reducing the spread of respiratory pathogens in the community. And early in the pandemic, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine also said: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection...In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
One of the best studies to date on the inability of masks to prevent community transmission comes from Denmark. The Danish mask study remains unmatched with regards to scientific standards; it is the highest quality study we have. What did it find? Of the nearly 5,000 people in the study, 53 people who did not wear a mask had been infected, compared to 42 people who did wear a mask. Director of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, Dr. Carl Heneghan, writes in the Spectator about the results: “In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19.”
It’s quite remarkable that people have been convinced that cloth and surgical masks can stop viral nanoparticles. In a paper titled “Filtration Performance of FDA-Cleared Surgical Masks,” scientists tested the effectiveness of the surgical masks people think afford them protection. This was their conclusion: “The wide variation in penetration levels for room air particles, which included particles in the same size range of viruses, confirms that surgical masks should not be used for respiratory protection.” Cloth masks, obviously, are even worse. Former advisor and top epidemiologist to President Biden, Dr. Michael Osterholm, stated clearly in an interview that cloth masks do not work.
Perhaps most remarkably, surgical masks do not even have any significance for surgeons in the operating room. Surgeons wear masks, however, primarily to prevent bacteria from infecting wounds, not to stop viruses. Because, as noted above, surgical masks do not stop viruses. A study published in 1981 in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England stated that masks did not prevent wound infections in the operating theater. Surprisingly, in 1980, when masks were discarded in one UK study, wound infections occurred less frequently. The author of the paper concluded by maintaining: “the wearing of a mask has very little relevance to the wellbeing of patients undergoing routine general surgery and it is a standard practice that could be abandoned.” This has been corroborated in numerous papers; for instance, a paper published in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, concluded by stating “The available evidence indicates that, for the wearer, surgical masks offer incomplete protection from airborne bacteria and viruses.” Now, the big takeaway here: all of the masks that people have been wearing have been nothing more than comfort blankets, which, as I will now detail, are actually deleterious to one’s health.
Masks Harm Children
Forcing children to wear a mask presents a clear and present danger to their wellbeing. Can we honestly believe that the ways in which kids handle their masks, take them off with unclean hands, even drop them on the ground outside, keep them safe somehow? Parents in Gainesville, Florida did some work for us: They sent the masks their Children wore at school to the University of Florida for examination. Researchers found pneumonia and meningitis-causing bacteria covering the cloth that went over their kid’s noses and mouths: “Half of the masks were contaminated with one or more strains of pneumonia-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with one or more strains of meningitis-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. In addition, less dangerous pathogens were identified, including pathogens that can cause fever, ulcers, acne, yeast infections, strep throat, periodontal disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and more.”
German researchers published a major paper in April 2021 that demonstrated numerous negative physiological and psychological effects of prolonged masking. They concluded their paper by stating: “The described mask-related changes in respiratory physiology can have an adverse effect on the wearer’s blood gases sub-clinically and in some cases also clinically manifest and, therefore, have a negative effect on the basis of all aerobic life, external and internal respiration, with an influence on a wide variety of organ systems and metabolic processes with physical, psychological and social consequences for the individual human being.”
This is pretty startling stuff, considering that schools have been forcing masks on kids. Moreover, as recently as July 2021, JAMA published a paper on the increased risk of carbon dioxide inhalation of children who had to wear masks all day. The researchers found that children inhaled six times the acceptable level of carbon dioxide. They concluded that no child should be forced to wear a mask. However, this paper, which had been peer reviewed, got retracted without comment. By the summer of 2021 many top scientists struggled to publish their papers because of politics influencing editorial boards.
Of course, there have been those that try to legitimize the absurd practice of masking with “studies.” But these pro-mask studies are not science; they are propaganda that try to argue against evidence that goes back a century. There’s the CDC’s laughable mannequin study, for example. With regards to the WHO, here is a paper outlining the flaws in their pro-mask position published by the Swiss Policy Research. The WHO, incidentally, took their pro-mask stance in June 2020 - months after the epidemic curve flattened, and after warning about the harms of masking. This should raise eyebrows to motives. Because, as stated above, nothing changed the known science that goes back one hundred years, for infectious disease expert, W.H. Kellogg, wrote in 1920 about masking during the Spanish Flu: “The masks, contrary to expectation, were worn cheerfully and universally, and also, contrary to expectation of what should follow under such circumstances, no effect on the epidemic curve was to be seen.” Kellogg also stated that, “masks have not been demonstrated to have a degree of efficiency that would warrant their compulsory application for checking epidemics.” One hundred years of science was memory-holed so masks could be forced on people as a symbol of fear and a talisman of safety.
Masks Negatively Impact Pedagogy
Even if masks were safe and effective (which, as I outlined above, the are absolutely not), there would still be consequences to wearing them in schools. Back before the great covid “maskerade” became entrenched in the popular consciousness, Columbia University Psychology Professor, Kathleen M. Pike, published a piece explaining her concerns around masking. She stated that “by putting on masks, we take away information that makes it especially difficult for children to recognize others and read emotional signals, which is unsettling and disconcerting.” Furthermore, Pike references the work of University of Toronto psychologist, Dr. Kang Lee, stating that “it is not until kids are about 14 years old that they reach adult skill levels in recognizing faces. Before then, kids tend to see individual facial features, rather than recognizing the person as a whole.” Mask mandates, especially at school, where children are forced to wear them for several hours a day, are infringing upon their social and emotional development.
Furthermore, a paper published in September 2020 in Trends in Neuroscience and Education detailed the issues around masking in schools. The paper concluded with this comment:
In sum, recognition of, and response to, the outward emotional displays of one's peers’ faces is a critical and necessary component of social interaction in schools. It helps pupils and teachers to modify their behavior in order to align with social communication and behavioral norms. When these emotional displays are inhibited by face masks, our ability to communicate effectively with one another is reduced and we are primarily left with mimicking negative (frown) emotions. All of this happens primarily outside of conscious awareness, and hence, is hard to be consciously controlled or even corrected. Since emotions are a major driver of group cohesion, the decreased emotionality, and decreased positive emotionality in particular, may interfere with smooth classroom action. Given the fact that the very process of learning is facilitated by emotions (this is their main raison d ́être), face masks are likely to cause some interference with pedagogy.
Unequivocally, masks do not work, are unsafe, and negatively impact the teacher student dynamic.
The adults forcing children into mask obedience should take a listen to Fiona Lashells, a courageous eight-year old girl who got suspended 38 times for defying her schools mask requirement before the board finally lifted the mandate. This young child, according to the website her mother created to share her story, “has been steadfast in her unwavering decision to not back down to tyranny and lunacy [sic] vowing to do every thing she can for every child going thru these lawless mandates.” And Fiona knows more about mask harms than most grownups do, as one can hear in the below video clip of her speaking to her school board. She concludes by stating that those who forced her to wear an ineffective and harmful mask belong in jail.
I couldn’t agree more.
Nice job! This was very helpful. Thank you.