If your going to say "as a scientist, I'm ashamed..." because of this, then you should have been ashamed a dozen times by now by the CDC for the equivalent the past two years. Are you? Or is it acceptable when an "authority" does it?
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/condit...
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... "The limited available data indicate no clear evidence that masking impairs emotional or language development in children."
But if you're asking if I'm ashamed of the CDC's pandemic response? A lot of scientists and medical professionals have complained about the CDC. Yes. They have completely botched the messaging on both masks and vaccines. There should have been a simple statement in March 2020: wear a mask. That's it. Instead, they made the issue so incredibly complicated and polarized that almost a million people died.
In what way is this not simply a naked appeal to authority? Have the CDC or AAP conducted long-running randomized trials to determine what the effects of mass masking might be? From what you have linked, this seems like nothing more than that well-worn rhetorical jibe where they just proclaim "there is no evidence" of some thing they're not actually looking for in the first place.
> Instead, they made the issue so incredibly complicated and polarized that almost a million people died.
Is it your impression that more consistent messaging or public compliance would have prevented all of those deaths?