Masks have directly contributed to a speech development epidemic amongst youth who were deprived of their ability to see and mimic mouth movements during their prime developmental stages. This has hit underprivileged kids who do not have english spoken at home especially hard. Masks aren’t free.
Is there research that shows this? Should be incredibly easy to prove given a large percentage of the world consistently masked and another large percentage of the world consistently did not mask.
For reference, I live in a country that had one of the highest masking rates in the world (probably top 10), and this does not seem to be an issue here whatsoever. Not a single time I've heard it mentioned, and given just how huge the focus on child development is here, there's no way it wouldn't be a massive topic.
I’ve spoken at length with individuals directly responsible for rehabilitation of such children. But of course if the facts go against the government narrative, the “studies” will not report them. Talk to people, not studies.
Do you have many cases of children being in homes where they have limited access to people speaking the national language? Do you talk to individuals who are directly responsible for teaching those folks the language?
I think it was clear from my comment that I haven't heard a single person (not just study) here talk about it.
While it's reasonable such an adverse effect would be stronger in cases where at home a different language is spoken than the national language, it's very unlikely that it would only have a noticeable effect for exactly those families, with zero noticeable effect otherwise. And here, where masking rates were extremely high and amount of attention put on/money spent on child development is higher than almost anywhere else in the world, no one has ever brought it up.
This doesn't even touch upon the fact that unprivileged families are much harder hit by epidemics (let alone Covid) in general, due to a host of other factors.
> But of course if the facts go against the government narrative, the “studies” will not report them.
The studies showing that masks were incredibly effective at preventing disease spread went against the US "government narrative" at the time, since I imagine you're talking about the US.
Yes, incredibly small scale data. I can find someone somewhere who has experienced just about anything. Hell, they don't even have to experience it - they just need to say they do.
I've known multiple people who swore potatoes cured their sickness. Yes, potatoes. No, not eaten - worn.
My sample size is greater than yours. Does that mean potatoes cure illness purely by being in proximity to people? Probably not.
People are dumb and unreliable. People are fueled by beliefs. And when those beliefs are challenged, almost every time this is taken as PROOF of the belief. They are untouchable. Agree with them and that's great, disagree and you're being silenced or the government or something thereby giving validity to their belief.
Sure. Now dismantle “scientific” papers published by government agencies with a political motive.
This is beside the point however. Both the government studies and the boots on the ground in fact agree that masking causes significant developmental disabilities, the only disagreement is the extent.
I don't necessarily disagree. But I am extremely wary of people who have a "government bad" mentality. It's very easy for such people to slip into outright science denial. And then suddenly the Earth is flat, covid was planned, climate change isn't real, and 5G controls your mind.
Yes, things can have a political motive. But you ALSO have political motives, you just don't know it. For example the climate change denial has a very real political motive - to protect the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas have been denying climate since the 60s, and our government backed them because of political will.
Masking, during the pandemic, saved lives. This is not up for debate. Whether it's a good idea now is another question all together.
I don’t really have much interest in engaging with your “you think X? you probably also think X Y and Z” strawmanning. It’s bad logic and makes for poor debate.
As for masking during the pandemic, it might have save some lives. It probably did. But it also contributed to long term damage of many others. Refraining from sniping an active gunman “saves lives” too, but that’s hardly the end of the discussion. Context matters.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that simply distrusting the government isn't enough. It isn't enough to support any stance. You need more than that.
> As for masking during the pandemic, it might have save some lives. It probably did. But it also contributed to long term damage of many others
I mean... no, this just isn't true. Masks didn't hurt anyone because they literally can't.
This is what I'm talking about. The reason people didn't want to wear masks isn't because they thought they were harmful, but rather because they were TOLD to. They didn't have anything past that.
Even in the worst-case scenario where masks do nothing, there's still zero reason not to wear a mask. the only reason is "gov bad". That, to me, is not enough. That's a nothing-burger. But millions ran with that. There was also some misinformation about CO2 buildup or something but, go figure, that was entirely made up by alex jones types to justify the fact they didn't want to wear a mask.
I'm sympathetic to your views about government policies manipulating which items get studied (see: previous conservative Canadian government muzzling scientists who made comments about oil)
I also agree that personal anecdotes from trusted parties are more valuable to my decision making than "data" — but those are personal anecdotes, not anecdotes from anonymous Internet personas.
We aren't your friends and we don't know you. Why should we trust you if you are vaguebooking about something that is a common conspiracy trope?
While we’re all internet anons yapping, you shouldn’t trust me. What I implore however, is that if you or someone you share a school with develop a savior complex and start to push for involuntary masking of your children, you should damn sure make time to find some actual boots on the ground to have a good long discussion about how they personally saw those measures affect development during covid.
Curious what they'd say about the effects of long covid amongst children from repeated covid infections. Seems like fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, gastrointestinal issues and heart palpitations is probably not great for learning either.
Even if you do elect to trust the government mandated studies more than the special education teachers directly involved in the situation, the very study the parent cited attempting to discredit me also reaches the same conclusion as me: masks cause developmental damage and their use must be carefully considered, especially as it pertains to forcing young children who can’t say “no” to comply.
