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Lefties Finally and Belatedly Call for an End to School Masking

Lefties Finally and Belatedly Call for an End to School Masking

By John R Guardiano on January 30, 2022

With the scientific evidence clear and irrefutable, the anguished cries of children and their parents finally are breaking through the blue wall of conformity and compliance. 

“Progressive” media organs, left-wing journalists, and Democratic Party partisans are belatedly acknowledging that the school masking regime, which has done so much to undermine the education of our children, needs to end.

The reasons: a belated recognition

  • that children are at very little risk of serious illness if they contract COVID;
  • that the science behind masking doesn’t exist or is weak at best; and
  • that masking can inflict real damage on children, especially disadvantaged children with leaning disabilities and cognitive challenges.

We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination.

We came up empty-handed.

Who said that? Some Trump-loving right-winger who is anti-science? No, that was written by Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble  in The Atlantic, an impeccably left-wing media organ.

Smelkinson is an infectious-disease scientist who works at the National Institutes of Health. Leslie Bienen is a veterinarian and faculty member at the Oregon Health & Science University–Portland State University School of Public Health. Jeanne Noble is an emergency-medicine doctor at University of California San Francisco.

“Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy,” they write,

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.

Some teachers, parents, and speech pathologists have reported that masks can make learning difficult for some of America’s most vulnerable children, including those with cognitive delays, speech and hearing issues, and autism.

Masks may also hinder language and speech development—especially important for students who do not speak English at home. Masks may impede emotion recognition, even in adults, but particularly in children.

Forcing students to wear face masks, writes Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco, “isn’t a matter of protecting children, their teachers, or their grandparents. It’s delusional and dangerous cultlike behavior.”

Was that published in American Greatness, the house organ of Trumpian conservatism? No, Prasad wrote that in Tablet, “a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.”

“I think it would be naïve to not acknowledge that there are downsides of masks,” said Elissa Perkins, the director of infectious disease management in the emergency department of the Boston Medical Center.

I know some of that data is harder to come by because those outcomes are not as discrete as Covid or not-Covid.

But from speaking with pediatricians, from speaking with learning specialists, and also from speaking with parents of younger children especially, there are significant issues related to language acquisition, pronunciation, things like that.

And there are very clear social and emotional side effects in the older kids.

“That’s why,” writes far-left New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, “I believe that mandatory school masking should end when coronavirus rates return to pre-Omicron levels.”

Whoa! Knock me over with a feather. Who would thunk it?! Michelle Goldberg and the New York Times now acknowledge that masks may pose a danger to children. Miracles really do happen. Lord have mercy!

Not to be outdone, National Public Radio (NPR) now admits:

Numerous scientific papers have established that it can be harder to hear and understand speech and identify facial expressions and emotions when people are wearing masks…

These are critical developmental tasks, particularly for children in the first three years of life.

The United States is an outlier in recommending masks from the age of 2 years old. The World Health Organization does not recommend masks for children under age 5, while the European equivalent of the CDC doesn’t recommend them for children under age 12.

Manfred Spitzer is a psychiatrist and a cognitive neuroscientist in Germany.

He published a scientific review of evidence on how masking could impact children’s development.

Spitzer says the negatives of masking are particularly clear for very young children. He believes that young children’s caregivers should be unmasked as well.

“Kids need to train up their face recognition,” he says, and they need to see full faces to learn to identify emotions as well as to learn language.

“Babies were never designed just to see the upper half of the face and to infer the lower half; even adults have a hard time doing this.”

…Germany doesn’t require masks for children under age 6.

“When speech no longer happens, when communication is interfered with, I think if that happens for a week, that’s OK,” he explains. “But if that happens for half a year, that’s eternity when it comes to brain development, at a very young age.”

He points out that COVID-19 is usually mild for young children, but it’s a critical period for development.

“If you’ve got compelling medical evidence [for masking students],” that’s one thing,” says Virginia State Senator Chap Peterson, a Democrat who represents bright blue Fairfax County in Northern Virginia.

But the evidence to me is showing the exact opposite… School districts need to define an exit strategy for masking… They need to find a way. We need to find a way… The current policy is not best for kids.

“On Monday,” notes National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar,

the Washington Post published an op-ed from three medical experts calling to end mask mandates in schools. The Atlantic joined in on Tuesday. Today, it’s NPR’s turn and @michelleinbklyn in the New York Times.

The dam is breaking.

The only question is when will Dem political leaders in blue cities/ counties/ states follow suit. In Virginia, because [Republican Governor Glenn] Youngkin stuck his neck out on the issue, they’re going to do it so it doesn’t seem like they’re following the GOP’s lead.

True, it would be nice if lefties and “progressives” admitted that conservatives were right all along to be skeptical about the efficacy of masks and the dangers of masking children.

But as Harry Truman once said, “it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Parents and children throughout the United States really don’t care who gets the credit for ending the misguided school masking regime. They just want it to end, and the sooner the better.

Feature photo credit: The Atlantic magazine logo and New York Times’ left-wing columnist Michelle Goldberg, care of The Atlantic Monthly Group and U.C. Berkeley, respectively.

Biden Erred by Diplomatically Engaging Putin

Biden Erred by Diplomatically Engaging Putin

By John R Guardiano on January 27, 2022

U.S. diplomatic efforts have helped Putin while doing little to deter him.

Theodore Roosevelt famously said American foreign policy should “talk softly and carry a big stick.” Unfortunately, President Biden has turned Roosevelt’s maxim on its head. He has talked loudly and carried a twig.

Case in point: Ukraine. Biden and his foreign policy team have raised the alarm because Putin has amassed troops and equipment along the Russian-Ukraine border and Russia seems poised to invade Ukraine.

As a result, Team Biden has engaged in direct, one-on-one negotiations with Russia. They also have agreed to Russian demands that we respond in writing to Putin’s request for “security guarantees” vis-a-vis NATO and Ukraine.

Of course, Russia’s bellicose and threatening behavior toward its neighbors—including several NATO countries—is alarming and needs to be forcefully addressed and confronted.

But Biden’s rush toward diplomacy and engagement with Russia ignores how this actually strengthens Putin politically and elevates his standing, both domestically and abroad.

Putin, as Russia expert Leon Aron explains in a recent Remant podcast with Jonah Goldberg, craves international recognition and status. He craves being treated as an international leader whom other great powers—especially the United States—must contend with.

The Russian people, too, Aron says, wish to see their country and its leader placed on a par with the world’s dominant countries—especially the United States.

So what Biden has unwittingly done, argues Aron, is to elevate and strengthen Putin’s standing domestically, within Russia, as well as his standing vis-a-vis other countries.

How should the United States have responded to Putin’s menacing behavior? With far fewer words and certainly no high-profile meetings and summits. Or, as Roosevelt put it, “talk softly and carry a big stick.” As Aron explains:

It would have been enough to issue a statement at the Pentagon or State Department level: We are monitoring the situation, but the Kremlin has the right to conduct maneuvers on Russian territory.

That would have taken all of the wind out of Putin’s sails. But instead, Putin was given exactly what he wanted: calls from the White House, emergency meetings, a NATO-Russia Council meeting, and so on.

Every meeting with the American president— whether virtually, by phone, or even better, in person—is a colossal domestic gain for any Russian leader: it has been like this since Stalin. Only one country matters to Russia, and that’s the United States.

In his first year alone, Joe Biden has taken part in seven or eight rounds of talks with Putin. This is unprecedented in history. An absolute record and a big mistake. The United States should have reacted differently.

What Biden should have done is quietly provide Ukraine with advanced military equipment for both offensive and defensive purposes.

He should have strategically embedded U.S. military advisers into Ukraine for reconnaissance and intelligence, while redeploying our 34,000 U.S. troops from Germany into Poland and the Baltic States: Latvia, Lithuanian, and Estonia.

And Biden should have done this last spring, when Putin first began amassing troops and equipment along the Russian-Ukraine border.

That would have been a Roosevelian “big stick.” That would have sent a loud and clear message. That would have helped to deter Putin while protecting Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Instead, Biden dithered and delayed because of a misplaced fear of provoking and antagonizing Putin.

Moreover, Aron says,

the U.S. also made a strategic mistake right from the start when it announced that it would neither exclude Russia from the SWIFT Agreement nor impose an import embargo on Russian oil and gas.

Those would have been the only two sanction options that would really hit the Kremlin hard. And they are the ones that were ruled out straight away.

Unfortunately, in international affairs, talk is anything but cheap. Talk can be costly and talk can have deleterious strategic consequences. For this reason, as we are painfully learning through Biden’s belated and voluble response to Putin, it is far better to “talk softly and carry a big stick.”

Feature photo credit: Presidents Joseph Biden and Theodore Roosevelt, courtesy of the Associated Press via SkyNews and Pach Bros via Wikpedia, respectively.

Virginia Parents Fight Ill-Founded School Mask Mandates

Virginia Parents Fight Ill-Founded School Mask Mandates

By John R Guardiano on January 25, 2022

But this time, their governor, newly inaugurated Republican Glenn Youngkin, has their back and is fighting for them.

Brave parents, teachers and schoolchildren in Northern Virginia are waging a valiant struggle for students to attend school unmasked, even as the public schools bureaucracy acts to punish them for their heresy.

This latest skirmish arose because Virginia’s new Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, signed an executive order that allows individual parents to decide whether their children will attend school masked or unmasked.

In so doing, Youngkin is keeping faith with the voters who elected him, as parental rights was a major campaign issue in his 2021 race for governor.

Virginia parents, like parents nationwide, had reached their wits end because of schools that would not open, teachers who would not teach, and a curriculum that would not steer clear of far-left political and cultural indoctrination.

Yet, some prominent school districts in Northern Virginia remain obstinate and unmoved. They literally are turning away unmasked students, or isolating them and segregating them from the classroom.

The issue will soon be taken up by the Virginia State Supreme Court. Gov. Youngkin says he is confident that his executive order will be vindicated by the Virginia jurists. Virginia code § 1-240.1, he notes, says “a parent has fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.”

The problem is that the Virginia state legislature passed a law in 2021 requiring school boards to adhere

to the maximum extent practicable, to any currently applicable mitigation strategies for early childhood care and education programs and elementary and secondary schools to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 that have been provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC recommends “universal indoor masking by all students (ages 2 years and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.”

Of course, the science behind this CDC recommendation is utterly lacking.

Students are not efficient transmitters of the coronavirus and teachers are not at serious risk of contracting COVID from students. “A North Carolina study conducted before vaccines were available,” write Drs. Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner

found not a single case of student-to-teacher transmission when 90,000 students were in school. The faster-spreading Delta [and Omicron variants have] emerged since—but many teachers, parents and children 12 and over have also been vaccinated.

And masks—especially the cloth masks that most students have been wearing and are still wearing—do little to nothing to stop or slow the spread of COVID.

In fact, when, in 2020, the CDC actually studied the efficacy of masking schoolchildren, it found that, in Georgia, “the lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional.”

To date, some 862,000 Americans have died with or from COVID. Nearly 75 percent of these deaths have been people 65 years of age or older.

Only 4.2 percent of these deaths have been people 45 years of age or younger. And only a minuscule fraction of one percent, less than 1,000 deaths, have been people 17 years of age or younger.

The idea that schoolchildren need to be masked to protect them and others from COVID simply is not borne out by either the science or the data.

Thus the Northern Virginia school districts that insist on masking schoolchildren are acting in defiance of the science and, arguably, in contravention of state law. They also are acting against the express wishes of most Virginia parents as shown by Youngkin’s election as governor.

For this reasons, school districts ought to allow parents to decide whether their children should be masked, especially while the issue works its way through the judicial system. That is the right, just, and honorable thing to do.

Instead, schools are punishing students for following a lawful gubernatorial executive order. This is wrong and unconscionable, and the school administrators who are doing this ought to be held accountable by their school boards and by the parents whom they are supposed to serve.

Feature photo credit: Parents protest against school mask mandates and remote learning in Trenton, New Jersey, June 3, 2021, courtesy of Jose F. Moreno, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

To Save Ukraine, Call Out Germany

To Save Ukraine, Call Out Germany

By John R Guardiano on January 23, 2022

German-Russian collusion was a problem in the 1930s and it is a problem today.

One would think that, after starting two world wars and planning and executing the genocide of European Jews and the mass murder of millions of non-Jews, Germany would feel a sense of moral obligation toward the Ukrainians and East Europeans now threatened by Russian military imperialism.

But alas, one would be wrong. Germany, in fact, has been working to appease Putin’s Russia:

In truth, Germany has a soft spot for Russia and is especially soft on Russian military imperialism and tyranny.

This Germanic weakness dates back to at least the 1930s, with the signing of the notorious 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany sanctioned each other’s imperialist ambitions.

This axis of evil, if you will, resulted in Russian and German military invasions of Poland, Finland, parts of Romania, and the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. With the exception of Finland, these countries then were enslaved for decades by the Nazis and the Communists.

Germany Today. Of course, Germany today is not the same country that it was when Adolf Hitler ruled. It is a free and democratic country. And while Russia is not free, it is a far cry from the Soviet totalitarian state that it was under Joseph Stalin.

Still, for countries as for people, old habits die hard. Russia still harbors a desire to subsume Ukraine and to dominate its neighbors. Germany, meanwhile, maintains a disconcerting moral indifference to the plight of other European countries.

Shame Germany. What should the United States and other freedom-loving countries like Great Britain do? Simple: call out and shame Germany. Call a spade a spade. Tell it like it is. Be publicly frank and blunt.

Let every nation know: Germany is actively facilitating the Russian military conquest of Ukraine. Germany cares more about Russian oil and gas than it does about the the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other European countries.

Germany is not a good or reliable ally. Germany is morally obtuse and indifferent.

Redeployment. And then immediately announce plans to redeploy all 34,000 U.S. military troops from Germany into Poland and the Baltic states, where they are most needed, most welcome, and will do the most geo-strategic good.

Then and only then might we avert a Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

Feature photo credit: from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a photo by the Associated Press:  “(Left to right:) German diplomat Friedrich Gaus, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Sovet leader Joseph Stalin, and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in the Kremlin on August 23, 1939.”

Mask Diversion

Mask Diversion

By John R Guardiano on January 18, 2022

Mask fetishists are pushing higher-quality respirators and surgical masks to stop or slow COVID, but they don’t have a scientific leg to stand on.

Now that cloths masks have been shown to be useless at stopping the spread of viral respiratory infections, mask fetishists are pushing respirators and surgical masks (N95s and KN95s) to stop COVID. Are they right to do so?

Evidence. Let’s look at the empirical and scientific evidence.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims that masks “are effective at reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, when worn consistently and correctly…

“Properly fitted respirators, [including N95s], provide the highest level of protection.” However, it is important, says the CDC, “to check that [your mask] fits snugly over your nose, mouth, and chin,” and therein lies the rub.

Can people—especially young school-age children—reasonably be expected to wear a tightly fitted mask all day when interacting with others?

The undesirability of being masked, especially with a tightly fitted respirator or surgical mask, is obvious. Masks are irritating and they can cause health problems, especially when worn incorrectly and for prolonged periods of time. Masks also inhibit social interaction and communication.

For these reasons, no one enjoys being masked. Which is why there is good reason to doubt that these higher-quality masks would do much to stop or slow the spread of COVID in the general population (as opposed to a tightly contained surgical room).

Michael Osterholm and his team of researchers at the University of Minnesota, for instance, found that, since the beginning of the pandemic roughly a fourth of the population has consistently worn their masks loosely and incorrectly, under their nose, with plenty of room for viral leakage.

Is there any reason to think that people would be more fastidious about how they wear respirators and surgical masks?

Mask Study. The media has trumpeted the one and only randomized controlled trial involving respirators and N95 masks; but, in fact, this study showed only a very modest reduction in the spread of COVID. And it occurred in a poor country, Bangladesh, that bears little resemblance to the United States.

“The study did not find a significant impact of masks on coronavirus spread,” writes U.C. Berkeley Professor Benjamin Recht.

My takeaway is that a complex intervention including an educational program, free masks, encouraged mask wearing, and surveillance in a poor country with low population immunity and no vaccination showed at best a modest reduction in infection

Needless to say, and as this pandemic has shown, the American people are fiercely independent and not easily led or corralled into compliance. We are a vast, diverse, and unruly continental nation.

For many of us, “live free or die” is a way of life. Good luck, then, achieving the same results here as the researchers allegedly achieved in Bangladesh with surgical masks.

And even if universal masking here were as effective as the researchers claim it was in Bangladesh, is it worth the costs and tradeoffs involved?

Unimpressive Results. As Professor Recht observes, “community masking improved an individual’s risk of infection by a factor of only 1.1x… That’s not a lot of risk reduction.” In the MRNA vaccine trials, by contrast, the risk of symptomatic infection was reduced by a factor of 20x.

Moreover, the effect size in the study is “too small to inform policymaking.” Ostensibly because of masking, only 20 fewer people out of more than 340,000 participants were found to be seronegative or free of COVID.

“The corresponding efficacy is 11%, still woefully low.” The study thus lacks “statistical significance,” Recht writes.

The bottom line: there is little reason to believe that even higher-quality respirators and surgical masks (N95s and KN95s) would do much to stop or slow the spread of COVID in the general population.

Real-world settings and everyday social interactions simply are not analogous to a surgical room. And the one randomized controlled trial involving respirators and N95 masks yielded unimpressive results that are unlikely to be replicated in the United States and other freedom-loving countries.

Instead of wasting time on masks, public health authorities should focus on what works: vaccines, social distancing, and therapeutics. Masks are a mass diversion.

Feature photo credit: a registered nurse wears an N95 mask in the acute care unit of Harborview Medical Center, Friday, Jan. 14, 2022, in Seattle, Washington (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson), courtesy of KTLA Los Angeles.