media – ResCon1

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.

The Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas B. Modly, resigned today after public outrage ensued from remarks he gave on the USS Theodore Roosevelt in which he called the ship’s former commanding officer, Brett Crozier, “too naïve or too stupid” to be in charge of an aircraft carrier.

As we reported here at ResCon1 Saturday, Modly relieved Crozier of his command because of a letter Crozier had written detailing the dire situation on the Roosevelt and pleading with the Navy to remove his men from the ship.

Sailors there had become infected with the coronavirus, which, given the close quarters on the ship, risked rapidly spreading throughout the ranks. Crozier’s letter was not classified; more than 20 people were on the receipt line; and it found its way into the San Francisco Chronicle.

There’s a lot to be said about this entire affair. For now, let me make just two observations:

First, I have no doubt that Modly spoke from the heart Monday when he explained to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt why he had relieved their beloved skipper, Captain Brett Crozier, of his command.

Moldy’s remarks are salty, but sincere and genuine; and they should not be discounted simply because he spoke in blunt and earthy terms.

Indeed, calling Crozier “stupid,” or “naïve,” and guilty of “betrayal,” as Modly did, is hardly grounds for outrage if, in fact, Crozier did something that warrants such a description.

Second, while Moldy’s language hardly warrants condemnation, the sum and substance of his criticism of Crozier is wrong and needs to be refuted.

Most informed observers seem to disagree with me and say the exact opposite: They criticize Modly for his sharp and abrasive attacks on Crozier, and for preempting the Navy’s uniformed leadership, which already had pledged to investigate the matter.

However, they accept Modly’s essential argument, which is that what Crozier did was fundamentally wrong and a bad mistake at best.

I could not disagree more. I think that what Crozier did by writing and releasing his letter was wise, prescient, and in accordance with the finest traditions of the U.S. military.

Let me explain why.

Modly’s most serious charge is that Crozier’s letter emboldened our enemies and compromised the war fighting capabilities of the Roosevelt. As Modly put it, Crozier’s letter

raised concerns about the operational capabilities and operational security of the ship that could have emboldened our adversaries to seek advantage.

This is, obviously, a very legitimate concern, but one we should reject, and for three reasons:

First, it is no secret that U.S. military personnel serving on ships that routinely dock in foreign ports are at heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus, given their intimate living quarters. So questions were bound to be raised and asked about this.

And in fact, questions were raised about this in the media more than a month ago, in late February and early March 2020.

We live, moreover, in a free and democratic country, where the families of U.S. military personnel rightly demand to know about the health and safety of their deployed service men and women—volunteers all.

The idea that you can keep this information secret in the 21st Century—an age in which everyone has worldwide, instantaneous communication at their fingertips—is ludicrous and unworkable.

Our enemies know that the coronavirus is affecting our military personnel, just as they know it is affecting them and everyone else. A pandemic, after all, is, by definition, an international problem. There are no secrets here to hide or conceal.

Second, our enemies and adversaries—including China, Russia, Iran, al-Qaeda, and ISIS—all have their hands full right now with the coronavirus.

Thus they are in no way ready or prepared to try and exploit this international public health crisis by attacking the awesome power and capability of the United States Navy and Marine Corps.

Third, as Capt. Crozier explained throughout his letter, in very clear and explicit detail, the ship’s war-fighting mission must and always does take precedence over the health and safety of its sailors.

“If required,” he wrote

the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT would embark all assigned Sailors, set sail, and be ready to fight and beat any adversary that dares challenge the U.S. or our allies. The virus would certainly have an impact, but in combat we are willing to take certain risks that are not acceptable in peacetime.

However, we are not at war, and therefore cannot allow a single Sailor to perish as a result of this pandemic unnecessarily. Decisive action is required now in order to comply with the CDC and NAVADMIN 083/20 guidance and prevent traffic outcomes…

“During wartime,” he explained, we

maximize war fighting readiness and capacity as quickly as possible. No timeline necessary. We go to war with the forces we have and fight sick. We never achieve a COVID-free TR. There will be losses to the virus.

In fact, as Crozier pointed out, decisive action was required precisely stop the virus from infecting the entire crew and thereby crippling the Roosevelt’s war-fighting capability. But since “war is not imminent, we recommend pursuing the peacetime end state [emphasis added].

Thus, far from being emboldened to attack because of Crozier’s letter, our enemies instead are deterred: because they know that this commanding officer states explicitly that the ship’s warfighting mission is paramount and will always be pursued regardless of the health of his crew.

In other words, if attacked or called upon, we will fight and go to war come hell or high coronavirus.

The bigger issue here, though, is whether openness and transparency about the state of our military is an operational weakness or strength. I believe that it is a strength because it allows us to quickly identify problems and correct deficiencies.

Modly doesn’t disagree. He just thinks that the review process has to be done quietly and discreetly behind a veil of secrecy. But history proves this just isn’t the case, and that the opposite is true. Without public exposure and debate, bureaucracies grow hidebound and resistant to change.

We saw this problem in an extreme form in the former Soviet Union, which, for 70 years habitually lied to itself to maintain its power structure, despite obvious and manifest failures that immiserated the country for decades.

The United States, thankfully, has not suffered a similar fate; but that is not because our bureaucracy is necessarily any better. Instead, it is because we live in a free and open country, in which bureaucratic decisions—including bureaucratic-military decisions—are routinely subject to scrutiny, criticism and debate.

The media are an integral part of this self-correction and improvement process.

Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffee notes, for instance, that, in 2007, at the height of the Iraq War, the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, thanked USA Today for stories that exposed problems with armored vehicles in Iraq. Gates appreciated USA Today’s reporting because it prodded the Pentagon to make more timely vehicular improvements, which saved American lives.

“Gates, likewise, praised [Washington Post reporters] Dana Priest and Anne Hull for their series exposing problems at Walter Reed,” notes New York Times reporter Peter Baker.

“I would say when there is an article critical of us, don’t go into a defensive crouch. Maybe you’ve just been handed a gift to solve a problem [that] you didn’t know existed,” Gates then said.

Sure, in the heat of battle and the fog of war, secrecy may be paramount and justified. Of course. But aside from those rare moments of actual conflict, secrecy is a big mistake and a weak rationalization that bureaucrats like Modly use to hide their failures and conceal their mistakes.

In truth, the United States, and the U.S. military in particular, benefit from being so open and transparent about our issues and challenges. That is not a weakness; it is a comparative advantage—and it is a big reason we retain a decided edge over our enemies.

Yet, incredibly, Modly told sailors and Marines in Guam that “there is no, no situation where you go to the media: because the media has an agenda.”

A Soviet commissar could not have put it any better. But this bureaucratic edict was bad in the original Russian, and it’s no better in English.

In truth, the media have an important role to play. And a military that has nothing to hide, and which understands the necessity and importance of outside input and review, should encourage, not shun, media scrutiny. Bring it on. Now more than ever.

Feature photo credit: Thomas B. Modly via Newport Buzz.