“That a masking requirement of students
failed to show independent benefit is a finding of consequence and great interest,” says Vinay Prasad, an associate professor in University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
“A year ago, I said, ‘Masks are not the end of the world; why not just wear a mask?’” Elissa Schechter-Perkins, the director of Emergency Medicine Infectious Disease Management at Boston Medical Center, told me. “But the world has changed,
there are real downsides to masking children for this long, with no known end date, and without any clear upside.” She continued, “I’m not aware of any studies that show conclusively that kids wearing masks in schools has any effect on their own morbidity or mortality or on the hospitalization or death rate in the community around them.”
...
While concerns about pediatric long COVID are real, evidence from studies that have a control group is reassuring. A large British
study found “almost all children had symptom resolution by eight weeks,” and of the small number of children with longer-term symptoms, most were vague and common, such as fatigue and headaches, which were also found in the group of children who tested negative for COVID. A study in Germany, now in
pre-print, of 1,560 adolescents, found “
no statistical difference comparing the reported symptoms between seropositive students and seronegative students.”
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“There are very good reasons that the World Health Organization has repeatedly affirmed their guidance for children under 6 to not wear masks,” said a pediatrician who has both state and national leadership roles in the AAP but who wished to remain anonymous because they did not want to jeopardize their roles in the organization. “Reading faces is critical for social emotional learning. And all children are actively learning language the first five years of life, for which seeing faces is foundational,” the pediatrician said.
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“Even with a new variant, the
onus is on those who recommend masking kids to robustly demonstrate a meaningful benefit, especially when the pre-Delta study of the Georgia schools did not find one, and when there are obvious socio-emotional and educational harms from masking children for this unprecedented duration of time.”