Making children wear masks in the classroom is 'child abuse'

Making children wear masks in the classroom can stunt language skills and exacerbate anxiety, a health report commissioned by the Irish government has found.

The Health Information and Quality Authority's report published in March informed Dublin's decision not to mandate masks for children in elementary schools.

The HIQA paper noted that transmission of Covid was low in schools and that young children found it difficult to wear face coverings properly.

The scientists also gave evidence that masks had adverse psychological impacts, including causing anxiety and inhibiting the development of communication skills.

Tucker Carlson last night drew attention to the report on his Fox News show, describing it as 'child abuse' to force young children to 'wear moist paper burkas.'

'The question is, what's the benefit of doing it?' he asked. 'The Irish government looked into it and decided there is no benefit. Kids in Ireland are not getting sick from COVID. They are not transmitting COVID either,' Carlson said.

'So in the end, based on the scientific research using the disappearing art of rational decision making, the Irish government refused to implement mask mandates in school.'

The report found that since the pandemic started 'the extent of transmission between children or onwards to households by children, has been low.'

It said that while masks for adults were associated with lower transmission of Covid-19, the data showed a reduction in mask efficacy among children 'which may, in part, be due to reduced ability to comply with face mask wearing.'

Furthermore, the paper went on to add that 'there is concern regarding the potential harms associated with face mask use, for example, anxiety or negative impacts on the development of communication and language skills, particularly for younger children.'

In Britain, school children under the age of 12 have never been required to wear masks during the pandemic, neither at school nor anywhere else.

Public Health England's medical adviser Dr Susan Hopkins said in March: 'The consensus view is to not advise schoolchildren at primary school age [12 and under] to wear face coverings.

'This is for two reasons: firstly they can have difficulty wearing them and keeping them on all day, and the second part of that is that it's really important that they can see facial expressions in order to develop their communications and language skills.'

The mask mandate for British secondary schools was dropped at the end of May.

Carlson last night said that the US had proceeded with its guidelines on masks for children without 'any data to justify it.'

'As of today, there has not been a single comprehensive study in the United States showing that children should wear masks in school or that masks would help them or anyone else in any way,' he said.

The host cited one study by researchers at Duke University which was published in The New York Times on Tuesday, with the headline: 'We studied one million students, universal masking works.'

According to Carlson, a fatal flaw with the study was that all of the kids in the study were at schools with mask mandates. 'In other words, there is no control group,' the Fox host said. 'Therefore, by definition, there was no way for the researchers to determine whether or not mass mandates work.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9887207/Making-children-wear-masks-classroom-child-abuse.html

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The CDC Just Proved Milton Friedman Right (Again!)

I hate to say “I told you so.” Well, actually, I really enjoy saying “I told you so.” And, when it comes to the Centers for Disease Control and its pandemic power grabs, I did indeed tell you so.

In September 2020, I wrote for FEE that, “From draconian lockdown powers to taking over the rental housing market, it’s extremely unlikely our elected officials will cede all the authority they’ve seized during the pandemic.” We’re now witnessing my prediction play out in real-time.

Under the Biden administration’s purview, the CDC just unilaterally renewed its so-called “eviction moratorium.” It did so after the nationwide near-ban on eviction of non-paying tenants expired Saturday and in spite of Congress not passing legislation to renew it.

The new CDC order is somewhat more limited than the original one, claiming to only apply to areas with “substantial and high levels of [COVID-19] community transmission.” But this reportedly applies to roughly 90 percent of the US under the CDC’s definition. The two-month extension will now run until October 3. (When, presumably, there will again be a push for its extension).

“The emergence of the delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said. “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”

The CDC is renewing this policy, yet again, even though the Supreme Court only narrowly upheld its last iteration. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh specifically wrote that “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

Short version: The CDC doesn’t have the authority to do this.

And guess who agrees? The Biden administration. White House officials have repeatedly acknowledged that the federal government lacks constitutional authority to renew the order without Congress.

But this renewal is more than just an example of flagrant lawlessness and unconstitutional government overreach. It’s yet more illustration of the principle described by Milton Friedman when he said “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

The Nobel-Prize-winning economist argued that we should be wary of “temporary” expansions of government power, because more often than not they become permanent, or at least part of the expansion remains. Why? Well, as Friedman explained, “temporary” programs “establish an interested constituency that… lobbie[s] for their continuation.”

Essentially, the public will acquiesce to more than it otherwise would under the promise that the infringement is temporary. But, then, the intervention will benefit some key parties so much that they will fight to keep it in place permanently after public scrutiny fades.

This is exactly what has played out with the CDC’s eviction moratorium dysfunction.

Even setting aside the fact that the first order was flagrantly unconstitutional from the get-go, it never made any sense. Ordering a halt to evictions without compensating landlords is like passing a law saying anyone may go into a grocery store, load up their carts with food, and walk out without paying. Applying this broken logic to rentals (predictably) bankrupted many middle-and-working class landlords and led to many rental properties being taken off the market altogether.

The moratorium has also created a $21 billion backlog in unpaid rent and millions of evictions that will occur when it is allowed to expire—costs that grow even bigger with every day it is left in place.

This has, as Friedman predicted, created a strong constituency demanding its extension time and time again, prompting the CDC’s latest move. But even setting aside the Constitutional questions, we can’t feasibly continue the policy forever any more than we could force grocery stores to hand out food for free into perpetuity. The shelves would run bare, and so, too, rental units will continue to evaporate from the market—ultimately leaving even renters themselves worse off.

The CDC order is essentially a ticking time bomb, bound to explode and hurt people whenever it ultimately lapses. But the government has every incentive to delay this damage as long as possible, even though it only grows more harmful with each delay. The result will likely be permanent and long-term dysfunction, all thanks to a “temporary” government measure that has proven to be anything but.

The CDC has created an absolute debacle, but there may be one small upside. Perhaps now more Americans will understand why Milton Friedman so famously warned the public to be skeptical of “temporary” government programs.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/08/10/cdc-milton-friedman/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

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