Tipsheet

Major Study: Mask Mandates in Schools Don't Work

This finding isn't exactly news to regular readers, as we've been flogging the evidence and dataactual science – for many months. But with useless-to-harmful school mask mandates on their last legs, it's important to drive the facts home over and over again, lest any of the adult harmers ever consider turning back the clock if and when new variants arise or surges occur. Masking children in schools simply is not a scientifically-supported mitigation strategy for combatting COVID. The latest vindication of that policy view comes from a large study (monitoring hundreds of thousands of students) out of Spain: 


Dr. Nicole Saphier reacts


She is, not so subtly, taking aim at the mayor of New York City – who recently made this nonsensical statement while defending the city's truly insane policy of maintaining mask requirements for pre-schoolers, but not others: 


This has no connection to science or data. New York City is continuing to mask the members of society who are at the lowest risk from this virus, to begin with – with no upside, and myriad downsides. Like this, and this. And, as chronicled in The New York Times this week, like this: 

The kindergarten crisis of last year, when millions of 5-year-olds spent months outside of classrooms, has become this year’s reading emergency. As the pandemic enters its third year, a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic. In Virginia, one study found that early reading skills were at a 20-year low this fall, which the researchers described as “alarming.” In the Boston region, 60 percent of students at some high-poverty schools have been identified as at high risk for reading problems — twice the number of students as before the pandemic, according to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston.  Children in every demographic group have been affected, but Black and Hispanic children, as well as those from low-income families, those with disabilities and those who are not fluent in English, have fallen the furthest behind. “We’re in new territory,” Dr. Hogan said about the pandemic’s toll on reading. If children do not become competent readers by the end of elementary school, the risks are “pretty dramatic,” she said. Poor readers are more likely to drop out of high school, earn less money as adults and become involved in the criminal justice system.

There is heavy overlap between the COVID Safetyists responsible for evidence-free, harmful extended school closures and unscientific school mask mandates, and those who profess great concern about "equity" and "racial justice." How's that going? I discussed these issues on my radio show, and I'll leave you with that monologue: