To mask, or not to mask

To mask, or not to mask, that is the question being posed by national, state and local health experts. Meanwhile, parents, teachers, essential and non-essential workers are wondering if the heavy boot of government will fall again and place all of us under a mandatory masking and lockdown.

According to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last Sunday, the question was posed: “Do masks reduce COVID transmission in children?

Believe it or not, we could find only a single retrospective study on the question, and its results were inconclusive.”

That comes on the heels of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declaration that all U.S. children and their adolescent counterparts, whether they are vaccinated or not, should wear facemasks.

Would be dictatorial wannabes took the CDC’s decree and made wearing a mask in schools and elsewhere mandatory.

One question that must be posed: Do masks harm children?

To some kids, it’s no big deal. Other kids, for example those wearing glasses to read, struggle with fogging of their glasses. For those adolescents wearing a mask is a perfect breeding ground for acne and a host of other skin related abnormalities. Masks can also cause a child’s breathing through a mask to increase levels of carbon dioxide in his or her blood.

Children wearing masks may also experience anxiety attacks, distracting them from learning in a classroom setting.

An interesting point made in the Journal’s opinion piece stated: “Covering a child’s face mutes nonverbal forms of communication and can result in robotic and emotionless interactions, anxiety and depression.”

This opinion piece offers a commonsense thought process every parent should evaluate before sending their child off to school. Parents should talk with school officials before the school year begins.

Whether one’s child attends Kasson-Mantorville, Byron, Triton or Hayfield, it’s important to review the facts before getting in lock step with any mandates.

LIBERTY

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exit. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the one right which they first of all strike down.” Free speech is the dread of tyrants!

Frederick Douglas