But we really should have the data before engaging in real-world experimentation on children.
The closest we have is some data in macaques. https://massivesci.com/articles/facial-recognition-patches-b...
Perhaps there is some data on how harmful halloween masks are to kids. Or on pubescent Muslim girls/teens... (/sarc)
You are assuming the existence of some implausible 2nd or 3rd order harm (masks harm kids and they are so un-adaptable that it couldn't possibly be mitigated), and then claiming lack of data from another implausible obstacle (that this supposed harm is so obviously bad that no ethics board would allow it to be studied) all as a pretext to avoid a proven-effective measure to prevent a first order, and often deadly harm.
The burden would be on you to show actual harm from wearing a mask when thousands do it without harm all day every day (for work and for disease prevention)
Also it is not just about the kids whom you wrongly assume to be invulnerable - it is about not making another petri dish to both further spread the disease to those whom the kids come in contact. I watched as the infection rates tracked in Britain, Quebec, Israel, etc. all rose with schools going into session, and fell in school breaks.
Public health measures are not about you. Its about everyone taking on just a bit of responsibility to contain a deadly pandemic, and not freeloading on what collective immunity is provided by the more conscientious and intelligent around you.
Calling it trolling is exactly the kind of intolerant hostility that prevents a debate on the issue and puts society on autopilot to never-ending restrictive measures that are wildly disproportionate to the danger posed to children.
>>Perhaps there is some data on how harmful halloween masks are to kids. Or on pubescent Muslim girls/teens... (/sarc)
We don't wear halloween masks for most of every day, every day for months on end.
The vast majority of Muslim girls who wear hijab don't wear a niqab that covers the face.
This a bad faith effort to find comparable situations.
Facial expressions are extremely important for communication. Forcing children to largely make do without them could very plausibly - I would say highly probably - harm their social development.
This is not far-out speculation, and your smug dismissal of it is reckless and irresponsible.
>>The burden would be on you to show actual harm from wearing a mask when thousands do it without harm all day every day (for work and for disease prevention)
We have never had children wear masks for much of every day for months on end.
Even medical professionals - who are adults and have already had normal childhoods without their faces being covered - don't wear masks all day at work on a regular basis. Masks are only worn in specific situations that don't encompass most of their work hours, like time in surgery.
>>Also it is not just about the kids whom you wrongly assume to be invulnerable
The evidence shows they are no more vulnerable to covid than to the flu. Masking the entire population of children is not a proportionate response to the risk covid poses to them.
>>it is about not making another petri dish to both further spread the disease to those whom the kids come in contact.
Children should not be burdened with daily masking to protect adults, and in any case, children are not known to be a high-risk transmission vector:
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/147/4/e202004...
The disappointing thing is that your responses to my arguments have been very weak - like comparing daily mask wearing to once a year Halloween mask wearing - showing you actually don't want to have a good faith debate on this issue.
5 kids have now died in Mississippi from COVID in the current Delta Wave [1]. In all of 2019, there was 1 pediatric flu death in Mississippi [2]. I chose MS because they are in an active outbreak.
[1]https://www.mississippifreepress.org/14800/mississippi-8th-g... [2] https://www.wlbt.com/2019/11/27/mississippi-has-highest-flu-...
Data from England, where Delta variant deaths are tracked, shows that during the period under study, only 8 people under the age of 50 died from it.
EDIT, as I'm being rate-limited:
Even with the differences you note, the fact that England, with a population of 55 million, had only 8 deaths of those under the age of 50 from the Delta variant, after a month of Delta variant propagation in the country, definitively shows it's not a significant risk to children.
It has been repeatedly proven that vaccines, masks (particularly N95/FFP3 level), and ventilation work against airborne diseases in general and CV-19 in particular.
The hard peer-reviewed scientific papers on all of this are so legion that I won't attempt to link them here.
Even if we assume that COVID-19 and flu are relatively similar in risk to children that get it (it's impact is already greater [1], and is already a top-10 killer of children [2]), the fact is that CV-19 has an R0 of 5-9, vs Flu at around 1.2, so being much more contagious, it will affect many more kids, and otherwise unlikely events will become common. Ignoring the risk is foolish.
Schools are already known to be a large vector for airborne diseases, and the CDC advocates all students and teachers who can to get flu vaccines for this reason.
As noted above, I watched as report after report from Israel, BG, Quebec and others showed general population cases tracking school openings, vacations, and closings.
There is solid evidence that Delta is not only a risk among children, but also to the community at large.
Against this, you posit some hypothetical emotional harm to children of wearing masks.
This is absurd on its face, but we'll discuss it.
About masks in general, there are many other professions that wear them all day, not only physicians whom you glibly dismiss. I've read countless physicaian/nurse/HC accounts mentioning wearing masks all day. I've worn masks or even full respirators all day for some tasks in my composites shop, and also when helping others with drywall or other dusty work. There are many other professions that do so. This is not a problem. Hell, I've worn them skiing all day.
There are also multiple cultures who do. You don't think Muslims are a good enough example, consider the Inuit, who wear coverings face coverings for long periods daily almost from birth, barely exposing their eyes.
Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, and children are the most adaptable among us.
Your claims of some kind of emotional harm are pure conjecture. Seriously, you dismiss all other evidence yet produce not a scintilla of your own.
You claim you aren't trolling, but if not, then this looks an awful lot like a lot of motivated reasoning around supporting an "I don't like it" attitude.
Remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The precautionary principle says to FIRST take care of the large, deadly, demonstrable, and present danger.
You want to instead put a marginal, possibly emotional, hypothetical, and at-best-distant danger in the front.
That is not a recipe for success.
[1] https://www.idsociety.org/multimedia/videos/idsa-media-brief...
[2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-kids-s...
It will affect many more kids, yes, and then they will be immune, and subsequent infections, if they occur, will be even milder.
The virus is not going away. Even near total vaccination does not end its transmission in the population:
https://twitter.com/eliaseythorsson/status/14240115421950238...
So barring every one living in bubbles for the rest of their life, every one will be infected by it at least once. Masking at best just delays the inevitable, for a virus which poses an extremely low risk to children who have already seen their lives disrupted for a year and a half in this over-reaction.
>>Schools are already known to be a large vector for airborne diseases,
Children shouldn't be burdened with continuous masking to protect adults. Moreover, children are not major vectors of transmission:
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/147/4/e202004...
>>Against this, you posit some hypothetical emotional harm to children of wearing masks.
I never said anything about "emotional harm". I said it would interfere with the development of communication skills, because it obstructs non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions.
>>This is absurd on its face, but we'll discuss it.
This - trying to gaslight people into thinking their extremely legitimate concern is 'absurd' - is not an appropriate way for you to debate and attempt to push your agenda.
If you want to talk about absurd, it's you comparing one day of Halloween mask-wearing a year, to continuous mask-wearing for every school day of the year.
>>About masks in general, there are many other professions that wear them all day, not only physicians whom you glibly dismiss. I've read countless physicaian/nurse/HC accounts mentioning wearing masks all day.
They don't wear masks all day on a regular basis though. I did not "glibly dismiss" physicians. I pointed out that they do not wear masks all day on any regular basis.
I also pointed out that they are adults and have already had normal childhoods without their faces being covered.
>>consider the Inuit, who wear coverings face coverings for long periods daily almost from birth, barely exposing their eyes.
Do you have a source on Inuit wearing face coverings indoors? And I don't see why, even if it were true of Inuit children that their faces are covered for most of their childhood, you'd assume it doesn't harm their development of communication skills.
>>Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, and children are the most adaptable among us.
Glibly dismissing the harm to communication skills, from not being able to use facial expressions, with over-confident proclomations of the human ability to adapt, is reckless.
EDIT, I'm being rate limited so I'll respond to the below here:
>>... you post nothing but frantic rationalizations ... to put the cart before the horse, the secondary issue before the primary
The evidence I provided shows that the response you are advocating, of masking all children all school year, is disproportionate to the risk covid poses to children. You seem to be emotionally wedded to a position and not able to process arguments against it in a rational way.
>>People who wear face coverings learn to communicate better with their eyes,
Source on this being an equal substitute to facial expressions?
The burden of proof is on you to show that forcing children to use substitutes wouldn't be harmful to communication and social development.
>>and the kids are not in school every day all day. They don't have parrnts, siblings, friends at home?
School is where children engage in much of their socialization, if not most of it. And they're now being required to mask with their friends outside of school too, so that exacerbates whatever harm masking does.
>>Meanwhile you glibly dismiss actual data and a disease that is already (pre-Delta) in the top 10 causes of child death, nevermind other ongoing effects, and knock-on infections.
Which data am I dismissing? Can you provide it?
Sure - here's just one citation about COVID-19 being in the top-10 causes of deaths for children. [1] Note that this was in 2020, BEFORE the Delta variant existed. With Delta being far more contagious and causing deeper infection levels, especially different profiles in the young, this will not get better with Delta.
Sure, getting a jab and a mask is mildly inconvenient, and might impose a bit on your expectation of a fully smooth and privileged life.
But make no mistake, the fact that you are making those arguments in the way you make them shows that it is from every perspective,both current and historical, you are massively priveleged.
The fact is that throughout history the demands of actual survival have, with only rare exceptions, imposed themselves on our lives. Full "self-actualization" is a luxury, not some basic right, and it is only available AFTER survival needs are met.
This is a survival need. People far more expert, and with far more skin in the game are imploring us to take a few simple measures. Yet jokers like you endlessly whine, bitch, and moan about imagined harms that might come to you because it is a bit inconvenient.
Get over yourself, contribute a bit to the general welfare, and you might find things get better. If you don't want your kids to wear a mask, keep them home. Stop imposing your idiocy on everyone else.
In short, YOU are part of the problem, part of the reason we are having a massive spike, while, for example, Germany is not. Stop it.
[1] https://www.wbrc.com/2021/05/23/covid-is-one-top-causes-deat...
From your link:
>>Officials with Children’s of Alabama said in 2020, the virus was one of the top 10 leading causes of death in children.
>>“COVID is the tenth leading cause of death for children in the United States,” Dr. David Kimberlin with Children’s of Alabama said. “It is among most common causes of death in children and adolescents.”
Covid being described as the 10th leading cause of death for children in a single state in a single year is very weak substantiation of your claim. First of all, at 10th place, it is the least significant cause of death among the top 10. This diminishes the potency of your statistical claim.
For context, for the 1-4, 5-9 and 10-14 age groups, pneumonia/influenza are the 6th, 7th and 8th leading cause of death, respectively:
https://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe
So in Alabama, the response to influenza & pneumonia in children should be more drastic than the response to covid.
Second, this is a single state, which could be an outlier, meaning this "10th leading cause of death in children" statistic, as unalarming as it is, may be an over-estimation of the nation-wide statistics.
Do you have statistics showing how many children have died from covid in the US, or what the infection fatality rate for covid is for children?
With resprct to the latter, the CDC says the IFR for children is only 0.002%, which is indeed EXTREMELY low:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
Do you find this significant, and justifying indefinite masking of all children during schooling hours?
>>With Delta being far more contagious and causing deeper infection levels, especially different profiles in the young, this will not get better with Delta.
In England, there were only 8 Delta variant deaths in the entire country for those under the age of 50 in the period under study:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from-the...
So I see plenty of evidence showing that your concerns are in fact unlikely to be realized.
>>Get over yourself, contribute a bit to the general welfare, and you might find things get better.
Take your own advice. Look at the evidence and stop preaching from a soapbox.
People who wear face coverings learn to communicate better with their eyes, and the kids are not in school every day all day. They don't have parrnts, siblings, friends at home? And that is IFF there is actually a problem.
Meanwhile you glibly dismiss actual data and a disease that is already (pre-Delta) in the top 10 causes of child death, nevermind other ongoing effects, and knock-on infections.
You really need to reconsider your self*centered perspective
good night
But outside that common sense based in very well-understood science, there is evidence that the disruption to normal life is dropping childrens’ IQs substantially.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/children-born-...
Care to share some of this boatload of data for school-age (5+) kids?
> there is evidence that the disruption to normal life is dropping childrens’ IQs substantially.
This we can agree on. Your article specifically refers to the closing of schools (not masks). Closed schools and full PICUs are about as disruptive to a child’s daily life as you can get. This is already happening in Georgia and Texas and will only get worse if we don’t take evidence-based steps to control the spread of disease.