Do masks really harm kids? National Geographic says they don't

They talk to "Experts" and look at the "Science"

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Earlier this year, National Geographic magazine decided to step into the politically charged arena of masking kids and declare that “experts” say they are a smart move. Recently, this article has made a comeback with online hypochondriacs using it as justification to keep masks on children when they return to school after the summer break.

Let’s take a look at why the “experts” don’t think masks harm children and why they think it is a “smart move for families and teachers” to remain masked up. Apparently concerns from teachers and parents (including impairing breathing, slowing social and emotional development and anxiety) are unfounded because the science doesn’t back up those worries.

You know the direction the article is going when it starts with a paediatrician from Yale University saying “there’s no question that masking reduces the spread of disease, but…” Apparently conducting randomised trials would be unethical so instead they will mask all children without their consent (sounds much more ethical) and use these real-life observations for their research. They do acknowledge that this is a “human experiment” but claim the health fears have not been realised.

Theresa Guilbert, a paediatric pulmonologist says that MOST evidence suggests masking doesn’t harm children. “Most”? Does that mean some evidence suggests it does? I’ve certainly seen a lot. Theresa says that masks protect from COVID-19 and other diseases but also mean it is more likely places will stay open which is critical for kids’ mental health and development.

The key here is that these “experts” think schools staying open is critical, which it is, but mainly because of masking, which it isn’t. Schools can and should have stayed open without masking mandates in place. Covid is mild for children and should not force them to have long periods of time off school, especially if they are not even ill. Furthermore, masks don’t actually stop them getting Covid (unless they are properly fitted respirators) so eventually they will catch Covid and have to stay off school anyway.

Much like chickenpox in the UK, if a child is ill and contagious they stay at home for a few days. Other than when they are actually ill, this too is rather pointless and it spreads around the class anyway. Chickenpox is mild for children (yes, I know there are exceptions but there always are) and within weeks the whole class has gained natural immunity and will never have to miss any school again, nor worry about more serious complications in later life.

How masks affect breathing

Apparently “the science” says there is no evidence that breathing is impaired. One study (in JAMA pediatrics) showing that levels of CO2 was too high was discredited and retracted last summer. Ms. Guilbert says that a meta-analysis shows CO2 and oxygen levels fluctuate “well within normal range”. However, it says “children with severe asthma might need to take mask breaks”, surely showing that levels aren’t within normal range. It says “these studies show that most kids can tolerate them”. Most kids? Tolerate? I’m sure they can but that doesn’t mean they are not causing damage.

The reason, according to Ms. Guilbert, that this makes sense is because CO2 and oxygen molecules are “far smaller than the holes in the weave of cloth and surgical masks and should have no trouble flowing in and around the masks.” Hmm a bit like a coronavirus then?

Another reason Ms. Guilbert says masks must be safe is that we haven’t seen “an influx of children with dangerously low oxygen or high CO2 levels in hospitals”. Just because they aren’t causing these specific problems doesn’t mean they can’t cause other issues.

How masks affect language development

Samantha Mitsven, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Miami worried that the inability to see mouths and muffling effects would keep children from understanding and learning new words. And according to the article, studies have shown that masks muffle sound. Did we really need a study for that!?

But the article says there’s no clear evidence this significantly impairs a child’s ability to communicate. “Clear evidence”. “Significantly”. I’d want something much more conclusive before I’d continue with their human experiment.

Mitsven led a study which looked at recordings of preschoolers before and during masking and found no difference in how much the children spoke or the diversity of language used. I would contend that real-world observations from the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) in the UK contradicts this small study.

How masks affect social development

Again, the article admits that studies show that “children have a harder time reading the emotions of people who are wearing masks” and “covering up the bottom half of one’s face with a mask does affect that ability [to distinguish between positive and negative emotions]”. However, that’s fine because it “doesn’t necessarily prevent them from learning how to interact with others”.

Walter Gilliam, a child psychiatry and psychology professor at the Yale Child Study Center says the studies mentioned use photographs and “I’m more than just my eyeballs”. Children pick up other cues such as the tone of a voice and hand gestures. Furthermore, Mr. Gilliam says another study shows “children have no more difficult reading the emotions of a person wearing a face mask than they do a person wearing sunglasses.” Yes, Mr. Gilliam but children and teachers don’t wear sunglasses all day do they? And even if they did, you are still saying it impairs them more than if they didn’t wear sunglasses.

“Everything I know about child development would tell me that they’d adjust quickly”, said Mr. Gilliam. “Adjust” does not mean that something is good for a child. A child would adjust to war or famine or just about anything but it doesn’t mean we want that adjustment for children.

Again, Ms. Guilbert agrees and argues that “it might be key to ensuring they can go to school”. Once more, the “experts” are using the argument that masks are safe and beneficial to children because they mean children can attend school rather than the masks are safe and beneficial in themselves.

How masks affect mental health

Once again, the “experts” say the evidence shows masking mandates are not harmful to a child’s mental health. Ms. Guilbert “says the most significant signal of the pandemic’s toll on mental health came early in the pandemic. Back then children who were doing remote learning experienced increased levels of anxiety and depression because they weren’t at school with their peers.”

According to the Yale researchers, they surveyed childcare professionals in May 2020 and found that a year later, the ones with mask requirements for kids older than two were 13 percent more likely to have remained open. They concede that there study is limited but still claim that it is “compelling evidence that masking policies have more potential to help rather than hurt a child’s mental health.”

This is another example of the researchers only looking at whether a school stayed open or not instead of the actual mental health effects connected with the wearing of the masks.

“We can’t wear masks forever, but you can’t have kids missing 10 days of school every so often because of quarantine,” Murray says. Yes we can’t have masks forever, we should never have had masks for children and yes we can’t have kids missing 10 days of school. These “experts” are correct in some aspects of their analysis but are blinded by the obsession with masks.

How will we know when to drop mask mandates?

The experts caution “that it’s important for policymakers to keep in mind that there are always outliers in a study. So even though the evidence suggests that masking doesn’t harm most children, mask mandates may need to carve out exemptions for children who are deaf and need to read lips or for children with autism who struggle to interpret facial expressions”. It seems the pandemic has given people the excuse to ignore these children. Suddenly, the autistic and deaf children did not matter, so long as everybody complied with the anti-science and made the hypochondriacs feel safe. Even if the measures which massively impacted the autistic kids and everybody along the scale, didn’t actually work, so long as the anti-science religion was followed.

The experts conclude that whilst removing mask mandates might make sense when cases are low, schools need to be willing to bring them back if harmful new variants emerge or if there is a new surge in cases.

Whilst the National Geographic champions masking children and claims to be following the science, they completely ignore many of the actual harms and focus almost completely on masks allowing kids to attend school. The obsessive maskers don’t seem to be able to separate masking and attending school. They can’t see one without the other and so ignore many other harms that are associated with masking. In reality, pandemic policies stop school attendance, not kids falling ill with Covid.

Whilst it is understandable that parents want to look after their children, it is bordering on a Munchausen by proxy syndrome wanting to keep them masked all day for an illness that rarely affects them. With the end of Summer approaching the calls for masking to return are getting louder. This needs to be nipped in the bud.

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