DPS mask mandate harms our kids

Mayor Michael Hancock is doing the right thing to allow Denver’s public health order to expire today and to entrust adults with the choice to mask or unmask. The omicron wave is passing. Cases and positivity rates are in a nosedive.

But like other Denver parents, I continue to send my 5- and 3-year-old children to school wearing masks. This is unscientific, unfair to kids, and at this point, purely political....

... many U.S. states and other countries have managed to keep schools open without mandatory masking. And now other schools in Colorado, like Cherry Creek Schools and others governed by Tri-County Health, are making masks optional. These districts live under the same state rules for quarantining. Somehow they can make it work, why not Denver?...

But in this heated debate, it’s important to remember that the burden of proof is on the pro-mask side. Mask-skeptical parents like me don’t have to prove that masking is harmful (although this is self-evident in the firsthand experiences of many families)...

We are learning more about the full implications of some COVID mitigation measures. For example, Johns Hopkins University has a new study showing that lockdowns did little to limit COVID deaths and instead “they have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” according to authors....

Worse than ineffective, masks on kids may be harmful. While the AAP and other pro-maskers will insist that there is no evidence of any harm (yet), we should keep in mind that this evidence is hard to collect. Harms to the mental, social, and emotional health of children are harder to see and measure, but this doesn’t make them less important....