The Case Against Masks for Children

It’s abusive to force kids who struggle with them to sacrifice for the sake of unvaccinated adults

By Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner. Excerpts:

"Do masks reduce Covid transmission in children? Believe it or not, we could find only a single retrospective study on the question, and its results were inconclusive."

"Some children are fine wearing a mask, but others struggle. Those who have myopia can have difficulty seeing because the mask fogs their glasses. (This has long been a problem for medical students in the operating room.) Masks can cause severe acne and other skin problems. The discomfort of a mask distracts some children from learning. By increasing airway resistance during exhalation, masks can lead to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. And masks can be vectors for pathogens if they become moist or are used for too long."

"In March, Ireland’s Department of Health announced that it won’t require masks in schools because they “may exacerbate anxiety or breathing difficulties for some students.”"

"The CDC reports that for the week of July 31 the rate of hospitalization with Covid for children 5 to 17 was 0.5 per 100,000, which would amount to roughly 250 patients. The CDC acknowledges that not all of these children were in the hospital for Covid:"

"Children who do develop Covid symptoms are at minimal risk of “long Covid,” according to a Lancet study published Aug. 3: “Almost all children had symptom resolution by 8 weeks, providing reassurance about long-term outcomes.”"

"A North Carolina study conducted before vaccines were available found not a single case of student-to-teacher transmission when 90,000 students were in school."

"“Many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out,” epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who served on the Biden transition team’s Covid task force, told CNN last week."

"there’s no science behind mask mandates for children. A new research study by one of us (Dr. Makary) and his Johns Hopkins colleagues found that of the $42 billion the National Institutes of Health spent on research last year, less than 2% went to Covid clinical research and not a single grant was dedicated to studying masks in children."

"if masks do reduce asymptomatic transmission in children, they likely rank no higher than fourth among mitigation strategies that schools can adopt, after ventilation, distancing and dividing students into small groups known as pods."