There have clearly been many, many aspects of our Covid response that were and remain inexcusable.
Vaccine passports and mandates, the nonsensical curfews and capacity limits, general mask mandates, and of course, closing beaches, should never be forgotten.
But few, if any of our pointless, ineffective Covid-era restrictions were as indefensible as child-masking. And thanks to the awe-inspiring incompetence of the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States was a global outlier, obsessively dedicated to forcing toddlers as young as two years-old to wear masks.
Schools, youth programmes, camps, on aeroplanes – anywhere children gathered, they were forcibly masked. Horrifying videos emerged of teachers or flight attendants putting masks on crying children.
Calls to mask children in schools have disturbingly continued into late 2023 in certain parts of the country.
But new research has confirmed what was obvious to anyone who studied the data and evidence over the past few years: it was all for nothing.
Child Masking is Ineffective, New Study Finds
“Trust the science”, “Follow the data”, “Listen to the experts”.
Starting in 2020, those phrases became a relentless mantra of an oppressive Government/pharma/media playbook. Instead of examining the actual evidence, data and pre-Covid consensus, politicians, administrators and huge swaths of the public put their faith and trust in a few unreliable, self-interested individuals. And with disastrous results.
Following the actual evidence would, in theory, have meant using evidence-based methods as espoused by experts in that field, such as Carl Heneghan from Oxford University. Primarily, that means using a hierarchy of studies, based on quality, to create systematic reviews of well-conducted research.
Instead, we were fed the CDC’s reporting of non-statistically significant results based on phone surveys, and we watched as those results were included in pro-masking reviews designed to promote an ineffective policy.
But a new systematic review from Tracy Beth Høeg and a number of other researchers has just been released on mask mandates for children. And unlike the pro-mask propaganda, it actually attempts to use high-quality evidence to come to its conclusion.
Background Mask mandates for children during the COVID-19 pandemic varied in different locations. A risk-benefit analysis of this intervention has not yet been performed. In this study, we performed a systematic review to assess research on the effectiveness of mask wearing in children.
They even used independent reviewers to ensure that there was no bias involved in the study selection criteria.
Methods We performed database searches up to February 2023. The studies were screened by title and abstract, and included studies were further screened as full-text references. A risk-of-bias analysis was performed by two independent reviewers and adjudicated by a third reviewer.
That meant that out of 597 studies screened, just 22 were included after meeting the criteria. And in a sign of how the CDC abdicated its responsibility, none were randomised controlled trials. Sure enough, when filtering out information at a risk of serious bias or confounding, there was no association between forcing kids to wear masks and infection or transmission.
Results There were no randomised controlled trials in children assessing the benefits of mask wearing to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection or transmission. The six observational studies reporting an association between child masking and lower infection rate or antibody seropositivity had critical (n=5) or serious (n=1) risk of bias; all six were potentially confounded by important differences between masked and unmasked groups and two were shown to have non-significant results when reanalysed. Sixteen other observational studies found no association between mask wearing and infection or transmission.
As every intellectually honest scientist, researcher, or expert would admit, their inescapable conclusion is that the “current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID-19”.
Conclusions Real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence. The current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID-19.
Low-Quality Research Used to Create Low-Efficacy Policy
The details of the studies involved in this systematic review are even more damning.
Of the six observational studies that supposedly showed a benefit to masking kids, all were fatally flawed in important ways. Specifically, there were significant confounding differences between unmasked and masked children that undermine any of the reported results.
Differences included the “number of instructional school days, differences in school size, systematic baseline differences in case rates in all phases of the pandemic, testing policies, contact-tracing policy differences and teacher vaccination rates”. With differences that substantial, it’s impossible to determine whether or not the claimed reduction in infection or transmission is due to masks or one or many of those other factors.
This is why randomised controlled trials are so important. And why the CDC should have conducted them during the pandemic years. Yet at the same time, considering the results of masking RCTs conducted on adults, it’s pretty obvious why it didn’t. Because its officials knew it would show that masks didn’t work.
The researchers also touched on the fact that some of the studies promoted by the CDC saw their effects vanish upon re-analysis. Specifically, one “observational CDC-funded study” in the U.S. claimed to show an association between county-wide mask mandates and paediatric case counts.
Yet when subjected to “expanded reanalysis” that association disappeared.
That initial result though, is how you use low-quality studies to launder low-quality information. The CDC funds a study with what it expects are pre-determined results, the media reports the results of that study – despite being misleading. Expert researchers reassess using conventional methods, and the supposed benefit disappears. But the correction receives none of the attention of the original, because it shows a result the CDC deems unacceptable.
Even observational reporting has shown masks don’t matter at a population level for younger aged individuals. Virginia faced massive criticism for ending school mask mandates early in 2022, only to see cases collapse after a massive surge with mask mandates in place.
Similarly, cases in Philadelphia schools dropped two weeks after the mask mandate was lifted in 2022, and rose substantially for two weeks after the mask mandate in January 2023 came into effect.
As often discussed, in a sane world this systematic review would permanently shut the door on further discussions of forced child masking. Higher quality research has confirmed that there is no evidence masks are effective and eliminating bias and confounders unsurprisingly shows the same result with children.
But sanity is dead. Therefore the current CDC director defiantly refuses to admit that masking toddlers was a mistake.
She doesn’t have to.
Høeg and the other researchers who conducted this review said it for her.
Ian Miller is the author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. He writes a Substack newsletter, where this article first appeared.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Amen. And their conclusions are almost certainly valid for all age groups.
They get a kick out of abusing children, this is how evil these ppl are.
So true. They are truly evil and despicable.
The used car salesman knows more about cars than me. ———Do I always buy one? ———–NO
A certain Major in the US army has done review of mask evidence:- https://www.realmaskscience.com/references
Haven’t looked at it all, but seems to be fairly thorough. It is quite interesting to see the chart of evidence, what the CDC does and does not quote. There is one RCT in favour of masking and a dozen against it. However, wasn’t the argument that if not COVID then not valid? Well that means three RCTs against, and 1 in favour of masking, but then a load of poor quality studies and laboritry experiments rushed through in 2020 & 2021 in favour. Well not quite 100% true, but close.
And even the lone RCT in favor of masking (the infamous Bangladesh study) was fatally flawed, and basically falls apart upon reanalysis.
I dread to think how future generations, looking back, will regard our disgusting behaviour towards our children! ‘Draconian’ ‘Medieval’ will probably be the words used!
Just think of what we know now, and how we look back on the ignorance of our forebears! It will be shameful
Trying to talk them into using drugs originally invented for chemical castration of certain kinds of sex offenders to – well – chemically self-castrate probably won’t earn anyone much praise, either. At least hopefully so.
It was a disgrace all over the world and disgracefully omitted from the sham covid inquiry.
At our school the social emotional communication developmental damage in my view was distressing to see, long term and significant.
One boy lost teeth as the closed schools meant he lost our care and mask wearing for long lengths of time Increases bacteria.
I gave my anecdotal evidence to inquiry but those running it are just on a selfish gravy train, paid large salaries to push an earlier lockdown outcome.
This was a door which should never have been opened. A statistic¹ I recenltly came accross details soldiers of the German army 1914 – 1918 hospitalized because of various diseases, including the number of those who died. For influenza, including the so-called Spanish flu in 1918, the numbers are
303,544 hospitalized
999 died
Other sources (Der Weltkrieg von 1914 – 1918²) claim that more 85% of those who fell sick with influenza didn’t need to be hospitalized. This means about 2,023,626 soldiers became sick and 999 of these died, making for a case fatality rate of 0.05%. Even the most avid Covinistas admit that COVID was much less lethal than the Spanish flu. Hence, masking children including toddlers (force-masking anyone, for that matter) to slow infection and transmission was objectively nothing but pure sadism.
¹ https://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC16062494/184/#topDocAnchor
² https://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC03617607/545/
In other news, study finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east. And a bear does its business in the woods.
All of this was extremely predictable from the get-go, and yet our “leaders” and “experts” wilfully ignored it, because reasons.
Will today’s children, and future generations, ever forgive us? Because quite frankly, I don’t think such forgiveness is deserved. What was done was unforgivable, and history will NOT be kind at all!
“But…but…kids are resilient!” That is technically true, to a point, but there is no such thing as infinite resilience for anyone. There are always hard limits at some point, and it appears that we have crossed them. And it was all for naught.
Seriously, NEVER AGAIN. Full stop. With NO asterisk.
Didn’t dare watch the video – BP high enough as it is. I would’ve done violence on any person forcing a toddler into a face mask. Luckily I brought up my own children quite a lot of years ago…