If an epidemiologist who was the Director for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota publicly stated for the record that in his professional opinion, cloth masks did little to no good in stopping the spread of Covid, would you accept this to be true? Would you still support mask mandates for young children trying to learn at school?
Michael Thomas Osterholm is an American epidemiologist, Regents Professor, and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. In November 2020, he was named a member of President-elect Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board. His credentials and experience are lengthy and you can find all this information easily online.
I would like to share a video recorded in the first week of August 2021 and aired on PBS regarding masking. Dr. Osterholm was interviewed regarding his opinion on cloth masks and a short segment of it is linked here:
To quote him directly as he summed up, “By telling people that in fact just putting a cloth face covering on is going to protect you, it’s just simply not true.” After watching the video, I am trying to understand the rationale for masking our kids and teachers in school. In addition, given the fact that for the 75 million children in the US, the statistics show that the risk of one of them dying from Covid is 0%, I am further dumbfounded. Mask mandates are being imposed on the theory that masks can’t do any harm. This simply isn’t true. While some children may seem fine with mask wearing, many are not. Some governors and leaders are trying to persist with this mandate, but I am hoping that reason and sanity will prevail.
I write this as a parent, an educator, a speech-language pathologist, and a responsible citizen who loves her country and cares deeply about the welfare of all its citizens, young and old alike. I take this virus seriously and have been following the science surrounding it very carefully from day one. While I do not have a medical degree, I know how to evaluate research and interpret data, and that is what I have been doing from the very beginning. I am not a medical doctor, but I am a communication sciences and disorders specialist and take great pride in the amount of knowledge and experience I have gained after working in the field for 25 years. I am very comfortable, therefore, speaking to the effects of masking on communication and development in children.
We can all agree that this pandemic has had a negative impact on our children educationally, socially, and psychologically. While our teachers worked hard to do their best in the virtual setting, it was less than ideal for most students. Between school closures/virtual learning, contact tracing and quarantines, on again-off again in person learning, masking, plexiglass glass and social distancing, we have robbed them of two plus years of their youth. They have been deprived of what are supposed to be carefree times that they can never get back. They have been made to isolate, fear close contact, miss out on important milestones such as graduations and other ceremonies and traditions, as well as opportunities to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities that they love so much and that are so crucial to their happiness and psychological well being. It has been reported that the need for psychological counseling for our youth due to stress and anxiety caused by this pandemic has skyrocketed. What are we doing to alleviate this problem for our children? We are certainly not helping this situation with continued mask mandates. In addition to maintaining full-time, in person schooling, getting back to a normal routine free of mask wearing can and should be part of the solution.
In order to help our kids, we need to get them back to more typical experiences with communication and socialization. Our children should be able to communicate with peers and adults freely and without barriers. Mandatory masking poses a significant barrier to communication and does not allow our children to fully access the curriculum. They are guaranteed by law to have an education in the least restrictive environment. Mask wearing restricts their access to the curriculum and interferes with their development. It creates anxiety for children and causes them to fear face to face interaction. Here I will detail the many ways in which mandatory masking interferes with full and unobstructed access to the curriculum, which in fact violates laws that are in place that guarantee our children a free and appropriate public education.
Most obviously, masks are a significant barrier to clear and unobstructed speech. This is a problem for typical speakers, but particularly challenging for those with speech impairments. Speech is harder to understand with the mask, and for a child who needs help in learning how to properly form the sounds, this is a problem. A child needs to see a speaker’s full face in order to watch and learn how to speak. We see this in babies in the earliest months of life as they watch the speaker’s mouth and try to imitate different oral postures. There are numerous studies available that have explored patterns of visual attention to faces and how this information is used for learning speech and language. There is also research about the evolution of attention to specific areas of faces from infancy to adulthood and the types of visual facial information used in some special needs populations. As humans we learn how to communicate by watching the face. Without these opportunities, it is very difficult for speech and language to develop normally. While a child with special needs may be able to obtain a mask exemption, it does not do any good for this child if everyone around her still wears a mask all day. As an example, let’s look at mask wearing for a child with autism. For children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), research has shown that they favor looking at the mouths of speakers rather than their eyes. For this population, having visual access to the mouths of speakers and other areas of the face besides the eyes is crucial. How can we justify masking these children and all those around them for an entire school day? This seems like a cruel punishment.
There is growing evidence that the year of lockdowns has had an impact on young children's language skills, according to research. Data from 50,000 pupils and a survey of schools across England have shown an increased number of four- and five-year-olds needing help with language. Evidence shows poor speech development can have long-term effects on learning. Of 58 primary schools surveyed across England, 76% said pupils starting school in September 2020 needed more support with communication than in previous years, and 96% said they were concerned about pupils' speech-and-language development.
All the research shows that if a child has issues with language at a young age, by adulthood they are four times more likely to struggle with reading, three times more likely to have mental health issues, and twice as likely to be unemployed and have social-mobility issues. Success in the areas of language and literacy from an early age is literally the key to children's futures. We can’t let mask wearing further exacerbate a deficit in skills that has resulted due to this pandemic.
Speech is muffled behind a mask. It is often difficult to hear what the other person is saying. Imagine the challenge that this presents for students who are hearing impaired. We do have children in general education classrooms with hearing impairments that range from mild to severe. Some children have mild hearing impairments that might not even be diagnosed as they recover from a middle ear infection and have some residual fluid in the ear interfering with hearing. These children will often rely on lip reading to fill in the gaps and help them to fully comprehend what is being spoken to them. Speech perception is not just an auditory process, but results from combined information from all the senses working together. Studies show that when it comes to recognizing speech, the brain uses both seeing and hearing simultaneously for auditory perception and decoding. Some people may suggest wearing a mask with a clear window. However these fog up terribly after a few minutes of wearing and still muffle speech sounds. Mask wearing makes it extremely difficult for the hearing impaired student to fully access the curriculum. The truth is that there is no good way to ensure full access to spoken information for a person with hearing impairment if the people speaking to them are masked.
Much of communication is non verbal. We often need to see facial expressions in order to fully grasp the message someone is trying to convey. This is something we learn over time as we watch people and learn to read facial cues. It makes us better communicators when we can add the non verbal component to the message. The possibility of psychological harm due to widespread masking is particularly concerning. Facial expressions are integral to human connection, particularly for young children who are only still learning how to communicate emotions. Masks prevent these skills from developing and maturing. They mute these forms of non verbal communication and can result in emotionless interactions as well as anxiety and depression.
Some children have difficulty with saliva control. In other words, they drool. For these children, by mid-morning their mask is soaked through with oral secretions. They touch it, then eat lunch and interact with other children. After lunch they put that soaked mask back on. Even if they bring a second, dry mask to use after lunch, it is wet again within a half hour. How is this helping with fostering a sanitary classroom environment? We know that children are generally not good with wearing a mask properly to begin with. They are constantly touching it and readjusting. For a child with a saliva soaked mask, this raises serious concerns about the spreading of germs in the classroom. Not just Covid, but any type of virus or bacteria could be easily spread. If in fact mask mandates remain in place, I think at the end of each week the masks the children have worn should be taken to a lab and tested for viruses and bacteria. Parents should be provided with a copy of that report on a weekly basis. Seems like that would be following the science, don’t you think?
When masks are worn for any length of time, it has been shown that breathing can become more difficult. Oxygen levels may drop, which interferes with clear thinking and of course can lead to weakness and passing out. In addition, in an effort to get more air to breathe, people often resort to open mouth breathing. Ask any dentist what open mouth breathing does to oral health and also to development of facial structures. It’s not good. Mouth breathing leads to increased risk of dental caries. It causes malformation of the facial structures, including the jaw and palate and has a negative impact on the shape of the face during critical periods of growth in children and teens, such as causing elongation of the face.
Many children have sensory challenges. Can you imagine how difficult it is for a child who is sensory defensive to have an uncomfortable piece of fabric rubbing up against his face throughout the entire day? This is extremely distracting and without a doubt interferes with that child’s learning. In addition, long-term masking can cause acne and other skin lesions and infections. Let’s also consider children with myopia. As anyone who wears glasses already knows, mask wearing can be a challenge. Glasses fog and impair vision for a child already struggling to see.
So basically, mask wearing impairs 3 of the 5 senses - sight, hearing, and sensation (notice I left out smell because cloth masks as you know let in enough particles to preserve the sense of smell, just as they allow small viral particles to pass through, rendering them useless). In addition, masks impair social interaction and emotional connection, yet somehow they have been mandated in the learning environment for young children. This is absurd.
I don’t understand the rationale for masking our children for a virus from which they have statistically a 0% chance of dying. The science and facts show us that children recover well from this virus. The teachers, staff and children now have had every opportunity to get vaccinated. So then, what are we doing here? Why continue to mandate masks? And where does this end? Frankly, it’s child abuse at this point. That’s the reality.
We must stand up for the rights of our children. Any family who wants their child to mask has that choice. But we should not be forcing our kids to make personal, developmental, and educational sacrifices when the science simply does not support it. Do what you can to speak up and fight against these mask mandates. If enough people speak up I believe we can make a difference and change policy. We need to pressure the officials to put the best interests of our children at the forefront so that for the first time in two years, we can do right by our children.