Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A speech therapist says that mask wearing during the pandemic has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers.
Jaclyn Theek told WPBF News that before the pandemic, only 5 per cent of patients were babies and toddlers, but this has soared to 20 per cent.
Parents are describing their children’s speech problems as “COVID delayed,” with face coverings the primary cause of their speaking skills being seriously impaired.
As young as 8 months old, babies start learning how to speak by reading lips, a thankless task if parents and carers smother themselves with masks to comply with mandates.
“It’s very important kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,” said Theek.
The news report featured one such mother, Briana Gay, who is raising five children but having speech problems with her youngest.
“It definitely makes a difference when the world you’re growing up in you can’t interact with people and their face, that’s super important to babies,” said Gay.
According to Theek, since the pandemic, autism symptoms are also skyrocketing.
“They’re not making any word attempts and not communicating at all with their family,” she said.
As we previously highlighted, Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma.
A study by researchers at Brown University found that mean IQ scores of young children born during the pandemic have tumbled by as much as 22 points while verbal, motor and cognitive performance have all suffered as a result of lockdown.
Michael Curzon noted that two of the primary causes for this are face masks and children being atomized as a result of being kept away from other children.
“Children born over the past year of lockdowns – at a time when the Government has prevented babies from seeing elderly relatives and other extended family members, from socialising at parks or with the children of their parent’s friends, and from studying the expressions on the faces behind the masks of locals in indoor public spaces – have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born before, according to a new U.S. study. Tests on early learning, verbal development and non-verbal development all produced results that were far behind those from the years preceding the lockdowns,” he wrote.
Perhaps all the virtue signalers who think of themselves as such morally upstanding people for wearing masks will change their behavior given they are literally contributing to causing major cognitive problems in children.
Or maybe they simply won’t care, given that the mask is now a political status symbol above anything else.
The latest example of why people shouldn’t blindly follow ‘the science…as decreed by bureaucrats’, arrived Friday, when Bloomberg reported that a study undertaken by the British government to justify forcing children to wear masks in schools has forced them to admit that the evidence for the efficacy of face masks stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools is “not conclusive.”
Additionally, according to University of Oxford Professor Jim Naismith, when England dropped face mask mandates back in July and Scotland maintained them, it made “no meaningful difference” to infection rates.
Oxford Professor: Official Data Shows Face Masks “Made No Meaningful Difference” To Infection Rates
University of Oxford Professor Jim Naismith asserts that despite England dropping its mask mandate in July and Scotland keeping its rules in force, official data shows this “has made no meaningful difference” to infection rates.
Highlighting the absurdity of the rules, face masks are mandatory in takeaways but not restaurants, meaning you have to wear one if picking up a takeaway but not if you stay inside the restaurant for a sit down meal.
According to Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, masks are largely pointless.
…….
Naismith’s verdict on face masks is backed up by UK government SAGE adviser Dr Colin Axon, who dismissed masks as “comfort blankets” that do virtually nothing, noting that the COVID-19 virus particle is up to 5,000 times smaller than the holes in the mask.
Cloth masks are of little use against COVID-19, according to a recently published analysis.
Federal health authorities and a slew of jurisdictions require or recommend wearing masks as a way to limit spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.
But a trio of researchers pored over the studies often cited by the officials and found they were poorly designed and offered scant evidence supporting mask usage.
Many of the studies are observational, opening them up to confounding variables, the researchers said in their analysis (pdf), which was published on Nov. 8 by the Cato Institute.
Of 16 randomized controlled trials comparing mask effectiveness to controls with no masks, 14 failed to find a statistically significant benefit, the researchers said. And of 16 quantitative meta-analyses, half showed weak evidence of mask effectiveness while the others “were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks,” they added.
“The biggest takeaway is that more than 100 years of attempts to prove that masks are beneficial has produced a large volume of mostly low-quality evidence that has generally failed to demonstrate their value in most settings,” Dr. Jonathan Darrow, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times in an email.
One widely-cited study (pdf) by mask proponents, of rural villages in Bangladesh, found that surgical masks appeared to be marginally effective in reducing symptomatic COVID-19 but that cloth masks did not, Darrow and his colleagues noted. The other real-world randomized controlled trial examining mask effectiveness, conducted in Denmark, did not find a statistically significant difference in infections between the masked and unmasked groups.
“The remainder of the available clinical evidence is primarily limited to non-randomized observational data, which are subject to confounding,” the researchers said, including accounting for other differences in behavior among those who don’t wear masks.
They did say that there is evidence masks reduce droplet dispersion, though cloth masks are unlikely to capture the particles even if worn properly.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers cannot wait for higher-quality evidence to support masking, but from an ethical standpoint, they should “refrain from portraying the evidence as stronger than it actually is,” the researchers concluded.
Some outside experts’ views align with the researchers, including Dr. Martin Kulldorff, senior scientific director of the Brownstone Institute.
“The truth is that there has been only two randomized trials of masks for COVID. One was in Denmark, which showed that they might be slightly beneficial, they might be slightly harmful, we don’t really know—the confidence interval kind of crossed zero,” he said. “And then there was another study from Bangladesh where they randomized villagers to masks or no masks. And the efficacy of the masks was for reduction of COVID was something between zero and 18 percent. So either no effect or very minuscule effect.”
Some experts, though, say the existing evidence does support masking recommendations, and several reacted strongly to the new analysis.
The analysis drew some pushback, including from Kimberly Prather, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment.
Prather noted on Twitter that researchers said masks reduce the amount of virus in the air and believed that ran counter to their conclusions.
Darrow responded by saying the amount of virus in the air was a surrogate, not a clinical endpoint.
“The amount of pathogen in air (to be inhaled) directly determines the dose. This is directly linked to risk,” Prather added. “Or can you explain how less virus in the air could be higher risk? It’s equivalent to saying that less pathogen in drinking water is higher risk so don’t filter water.”
“If the theory diverges from what you see in real life, which one do you believe?” Darrow said.
Study Shows How Masks Are Harming Children
Story at-a-glance –
This article was previously published February 27, 2021, and has been updated with new information.
A late 2020 and early 2021 retrospective study shows that children have experienced great psychological, behavioral and physical harm from the mandates and lockdowns handed down during the COVID-19 pandemic. This harm affects the next generation of leaders and has dampened the spirits of people around the world. Yet, there is one place that appears to have side-stepped this damage.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, there have been events that have changed the world. They include the two World Wars, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.1
The current pandemic has undoubtedly been the most traumatic period for many people. The devastation that has been wrought on the world is incalculable, including things that aren’t easily measured like mental health, food insecurity and physical abuse.
The harsh reality is that virtually none of it was necessary and the real damage has been the result of decisions made by global health and government officials who appear to have been acting in concert, according to some predetermined plan.
The fallout from this event will be experienced by many for the remainder of their lives. Suicide rates,2 child abuse3 and drug deaths4 have risen dramatically. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs had risen 31% and for antidepressants by up to 22% by mid-2020.5 But children, whose voices are not often heard, may be suffering the most.
Children Show Physical, Behavioral and Psychological Harm
A retrospective study,6 published online in late 2020 and updated periodically through early 2021, uses data from Germany’s first registry showing the experience children are having wearing masks. Parents, doctors and others were allowed to enter their observations; the registry had recorded use by 20,353 people as of October 26, 2020.
Editors have since added disclaimers to the text claiming “this study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask wearing and the reported adverse effects in children,” as you can see, the data gathered on 25,930 children were specific and intriguing. The average time children were wearing a mask was 270 minutes each day.
There were 24 health issues reported that were associated with wearing masks that fell into the categories of physical, psychological and behavioral issues.7
Of the problems that children were having wearing masks, 68% of them were reported to the registry by parents. The researchers concluded the frequency of registry use and the variety of symptoms being reported indicated the importance of the subject. They recorded symptoms that:8
“… included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”
Added to these concerning symptoms, they also found 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.9 Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.”
Measurements of anxiety or depressive disorder jumped dramatically for adults between January 2019 through June 2019 and January 2021. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,10 the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder was 11% in the first quarter of 2019, but jumped dramatically to 41.1% across the nation by January 2021.11
Evidence has shown that there is a positive relationship between a child’s behavioral problems and mental health with maternal mental health12 and parental mental health.13 This means that independent of their own stress and physiological harm from mask-wearing and lockdowns, children will also respond negatively to the rising rate of anxiety and depression exhibited by adults.
More Families Seeking Drugs to Manage Remote Learning
In spring 2020 began an unprecedented remote learning experiment for schools around the world. Suddenly, tens of millions of students were at home, plugged into their computer for their education. In one survey, Educators for Excellence14 reported 67% of teachers said their students’ homework or assignments were completed “somewhat worse” or “much worse” than before remote learning was mandatory.
In another survey,15 teachers reported their sense of success dropped from 96.3% when teaching in the classroom to 73.1% teaching remotely. On average, the same teachers reported that only 60% of their students were engaged in learning activities.
Remote learning has been especially challenging for young children and for the 20% of students living in the U.S. who do not have access to the necessary technology.16 According to Education Week, 80% of teachers believed their students were having trouble focusing during the shutdown.17
Each of these factors may contribute to the growing number of parents who are seeking treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for their children. NBC News reported18 specialists are flooded with questions and requests for diagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD.
Dr. Melvin Oatis from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry believes that the pandemic has “been a tipping point that has pushed some families to get help.”19
However, Dr. Arthur Lavin, who is a pediatrician with service on several national committees of the American Academy of Pediatrics, warns, “Our concern is that pediatricians and families be very careful to not simply list the symptoms of ADHD, but to look at the child’s history and use differential diagnosis to make sure we have the best possible explanation for the symptoms.”20
The fuzziness surrounding a diagnosis of ADHD has also led to some over-identification of these issues. University of Minnesota psychologist Stephanie Carlson finds that students are often misidentified as having deficits in executive functioning skills when the behavior is within normal limits.21
For example, younger students are more likely to be labeled with ADHD than their older peers. Boys are labeled more often than girls, and black and Latino students have a lower probability of being diagnosed or taking medicine.
Schools Are Not Super Spreaders
Early data are now available from a study22 performed by the University of Warwick in the U.K. looking at information on school absences between September 2020 and December 2020. The researchers were interested in students who stayed home from school sick because of COVID-19 infections and how the number who became ill varied across time.
The study evaluated pupils and teachers and how those absences changed during November lockdown and in December when the lockdown was lifted. What they found was that the infection rate in the schools matched the wider community, indicating there was no evidence that schools were a driver in producing more cases of COVID-19.
As in the U.S., students in the U.K. have been offered remote learning options. Dr. Mike Tildesley is one of the researchers and a scientific adviser to the U.K. government. He suggests using a staggered approach as plans for reopening the schools are underway.23
While the rates of infection between the schools and community were the same, the researchers could not comment if the students and teachers who did have COVID-19 caught it in the school or the community.24 As would be expected with what is known about the virus, the rate of infection was lower in primary schools than secondary schools.
When speaking to a BBC reporter, Tildesley had a telling comment about how decisions to reopen schools should be made: “You could potentially think about doing early years first. But this is a political decision.”25
Face Masks Do Not Effectively Reduce COVID-19 Infections
The first randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 was published in November 2020 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.26
During the trial, researchers evaluated more than 6,000 individuals and found that masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection of COVID-19. Among the people who wore masks, 1.8% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% among the control group.
When the researchers removed those who did not adhere to proper mask-wearing, the results remained the same — 1.8%. This suggests that in this group of 6,000 individuals, wearing a mask made no significant difference as to whether they would acquire COVID-19.
In the group that reportedly wore their masks “exactly as instructed,” 2% tested positive for the virus as compared to 2.1% of the controls. Despite a lack of evidence that mask-wearing in the general public was effective, widespread mask mandates were rolled out.
At the end of December 2020, researchers from Rational Ground revealed results of data analysis evaluating the use of masks from all 50 U.S. states.27 It was completed by data analysts, computer scientists and actuaries, who divided the information into states that had mask mandates and those that did not.
They evaluated data from May 1, 2020, through December 15, 2020, and calculated how many cases per day occurred by population with and without mask mandates. Among states without a mask mandate, 5,781,716 cases were counted over 5,772 days, which worked out to:28
- No mask mandates — 17 cases per 100,000 people per day
- Mask mandates — 27 cases per 100,000 people per day
In other words, the evidence does not support the use of masks and school lockdowns. And, there is powerful evidence that masks and school lockdowns are causing significant damage to the physical and psychological health of children. Yet, these mandates and lockdowns have garnered support from schools and parents, likely driven by fear.
Sweden Bucks Countrywide Mandates Driven by Fear
In fact, fear seems to have been the force used to drive mandates the public would not have otherwise accepted — except, that is, in Sweden. In a 45-minute documentary, Claudia Nye shows how Sweden has approached COVID-19.
Under the guidance of chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, Sweden did not institute a universal lockdown, close small businesses or schools, or enact mandatory mask mandates. Instead, they chose to use enough reasonable strategies to protect their citizens. According to Tegnell, “We don’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily, but we want to have as good effect as possible.”29
Using this as the basis for their decision-making, only some schools were closed during certain periods of time and only office workers were asked to work from home to minimize crowding on public transportation. Retail shops, gyms and restaurants remained open, a vast difference from what happened in other countries around the world.
Businesses recommended social distancing and masks, but it wasn’t a strict rule. Around the globe, people were told to stay home or face jail time. Yet, in Sweden people were asked to take commonsense precautions based on their individual circumstances.
It was recommended seniors and other high-risk individuals stay home, use social distancing and wear masks. All others were free to live as they normally would. Tegnell noted that in Sweden, “We have chosen a voluntary way and it’s proven to be sustainable and it’s proven also to be effective.”30
According to the Imperial College of London model, Sweden should have experienced a death toll of 80,000 by the end of June 2020 without a lockdown.31 However, the true number September 30, 2020, after no lockdowns, stood at 5,893,32 a vast majority of whom were elderly with comorbidities.
In fact, of those, only 872 were a direct result of COVID-19. The rest had one or more conditions that contributed to the death.33 Nye tells more of this story in her engaging documentary that won the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Los Angeles International Indie Short Fest film festival in January 2021.
Fast-forward to September 2021 and evidence shows that Sweden ranks 40th in deaths per capita,34 behind dozens of other countries that instituted strict lockdowns and mask mandates. Compare that to Los Angeles, which has had only 37 days where people were allowed to go maskless in the 530 days since the pandemic was declared. Their COVID death rates rank in the top 10 worldwide.
Then compare fully-vaccinated Israel to Sweden: in September 2021 Sweden was averaging about 90 cases per million. Israel was averaging 1,218. More specifically, the comparison is even more stark when you look at it this way, ZeroHedge points out: Between July 10 and September 7, 2021, Sweden reported 56 total deaths. Israel reported 56 just on September 8, 2021.
I believe without being aware of how your behavior is being influenced, the world will continue to become decidedly different and more difficult.
It may seem like science fiction, but just a year and a half ago you probably could not have imagined the world as it is today. Unless and until more people understand the direction that leadership is sending the world, it will only continue down the same path.
The Mask Debate
Why Masks Are a Charade
Masks Are Meaningless-Every Comparison Shows
Mask Science-Experts~Studies & Masks Are Making You Sick?
MASKS: THE SCIENCE (DR. LEE MERRITT)
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