Of all the many maddening aspects of our usually nonsensical, generally ineffective, and often counter-productive reaction to the Covid virus, the most frustrating have been the dramatic flipping of the obvious burdens of proof, and the inability of even overwhelming real-world data to alter misguided polices. There is no better/worse example of this phenomenon than the forced masking of kids in schools, which tens of millions of healthy children — including my own 9-year-old daughter — are about to endure, without even a hint of an exit strategy for how this foolishness ever ends.
Of all the various layers of lunacy in this effort, now being led by President Joe Biden who has been far more aggressive about forcing kids to wear masks in state-run schools than he was in keeping the Taliban from overrunning Afghanistan, the most infuriating is the overt shifting of the burden of proof. In a supposedly free country, there is ZERO question that the responsibility is heavily on the government to justify the forced wearing of masks, especially by helpless children.
Based on well over a
Despite an unprecedented amount of potential data from which to choose, there is still simply no real-world data to justify mask mandates in general, and school mandates in particular (it cannot be overstated how totally overwhelming the real-world evidence in favor of masks would be by now if it actually existed). And yet, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis simply said that masks are “not proven to be effective”–while correctly asserting that mask mandates are motivated by political “ass covering”–he was mocked by numerous media outlets for making a “totally wrong” claim, as if “experts
To be clear, as someone who was anti-mask from the start (just like Dr. Fauci and many “experts” used to be before the politics changed for them), I would have been thrilled to change my mind if there was actual evidence to support their effectiveness. Sadly, I cannot say the same about the pro-maskers who have conclusively proven they are so emotionally/politically invested in them that literally no amount of data—or even the widely accepted discovery that the virus spreads in a manner which explains WHY “normal” masks do not work–could ever alter the tenets of their religion.
The absurdity of all of this is insane-making enough when it comes to adults, but it is greatly intensified when it comes to children in schools. Despite the best efforts of the alarmist “experts” and their allies in the news media to make parents afraid, while the Delta variant has apparently made it more likely a child can get the virus, there is no strong evidence that the chances of them having a bad outcome from it have changed from the start of this nightmare, which has always been near zero (and there is no indication from schools around the world which have held regular classes without masks that this creates a more dangerous situation).
Then there is the issue of the potential harm
The common sense reality is that wearing masks—forgetting that in the real world they are not clean—dramatically alter the school experience for the worse. First, the student associates school with the act of being forced to wear a mask, which, like my child, most of them see as a significant discomfort, thus greatly negatively impacting their view of schooling in general by bathing that perception in fear.
Secondly, they clearly restrict a child’s basic ability to communicate with both teachers and peers. A simple smile or lack thereof is how a child knows if the teacher approves or disapproves of what they are doing, or if a fellow student wants to be their friend or not (it is absolutely infuriating to know that my child, who currently—partly due to Covid restrictions–has very few friends and desperately wants to make some, will be greatly restricted in communicating with her fellow students, all so that liberals can be made to feel better about having been duped by masks).
Then there is the scientific ridiculousness of believing that a classroom full of kids spending most of the day together, inside, with no social distancing and inherently poor mask
Logically, the biggest flaw in the Biden plan to prevent governors from stopping schools from having mask mandates is the notion that somehow those red-state governors are trying to BAN masks in schools. NO ONE is saying that if a parent needs their child to wear a security blanket that they can’t wear a mask in school. They are only saying that no kid should be FORCED to wear a mask, especially now that all teachers who want to be are fully vaccinated.
This leads to the final, and perhaps most important, element of the current spike in masking madness. If masks are still mandated by the government for a part of the population which is barely impacted by the virus, even AFTER teachers are vaccinated, and while the vast majority of our hospitals are nowhere near being “overwhelmed,” then when would this senselessness EVER possibly end?!
My greatest fear, and why this issue has always provoked such outrage in me, has always been that once this practice is started there is simply no going back. When I predicted on Twitter at the start of mask mandates that they might be here
Polls indicate that people with my view are clearly in the minority, which is not at all surprising given how completely in the tank the news media has been for masks once they became politically popular as an anti-Trump signal of virtue. But you can be assured that, at least for most of us, the hill of protecting our children from this sort of abusive tyranny is one on which we would gladly “die,” and we will NEVER forget the fascist cowards who selfishly did this to our kids.