Several schools in England are asking that pupils aged 11- to 18-year-old wear facemasks in schools again due to a reported spike in staff absences that they attribute to COVID infections.

The Cides believe that it is not only an unnecessary intervention that has been scientifically proven to be of no use but is also causing children harm and we, therefore, agree with Molly Kingsley, of the parents’ campaign group UsforThem who says that: “To consider bringing back any form of restriction on children at this stage shows a wicked disregard for child welfare and must be stopped!

The UK has been threatened with the return of COVID measures due to what has been claimed to be a “rise in COVID infections”. Several schools are asking pupils to wear facemasks resulting from a reported spike in staff absences attributed to COVID. One grammar school in West Yorkshire has claimed that more than 10 per cent of the staff were currently off sick and has written to parents urging that their 11 to 18-year-old children wear facemasks again due to what was perceived to be a “sharp rise” in infections.

A Disregard for Child Welfare

Thankfully schools will soon be breaking up for the summer holidays, but there is concern that a re-introduction of facemasks could be a precursor to further restrictions come the autumn. Molly Kingsley, of the parents’ campaign group UsforThem, said: “To consider bringing back any form of restriction on children at this stage shows a wicked disregard for child welfare.” A disregard that is arguably due to the complete trust in the recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as other public institutions that have led them to believe that facemasks are a tool to curb COVID-19 transmission [source, source].

School Mask Mandates Proved Ineffective

This negates the fact that studies from the past three decades as well as those during the pandemic had concluded that facemasks were not effective in preventing respiratory viral transmission [sources - 1,2,3,4].

Ignoring the science, the implementation of mask mandates became the single most commonly used non-pharmaceutical intervention throughout the COVID-19 pandemic [source].

Are Facemasks Even Safe?

Schools implemented the intervention, enforcing children to wear a face mask for hours a day, but neglecting to first assess their safety. When we say face masks, this simply means any old cloth to cover the nose and mouths of the children, this can include a bandana or even a handmade job made from any spare piece of material. Regulation of governments’ Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency of various masks is an impossibility.

What Are the Children Inhaling?

Nevertheless, risk assessments should have been carried out, especially after April 2021 when the European Commission published a safety alert regarding a popular mask worn by children.

The facemask was found to contain the chemical polyhexanide (PHMB), a preservative and antimicrobial agent that had been restricted for use under EU regulations in 2016. PHMB may cause an allergic skin reaction, but can also cause damage to organs through inhalation and repeated exposure, as well as being suspected of causing cancer .

The mask remained on sale for months after at multiple outlets in the UK, including Sports Direct and House of Fraser.

Mask Mandates Previously Ineffective

These publicised potential harms to pupils have evidently been ignored, as were the studies to show that the risks were still being taken even though the face masks were also shown to be ineffective. One new study, published in May 2022 utilised a large amount of data from American schools from the actual ‘plandemic’ period also benefiting from being a randomised control trial (RCT) reducing bias. The study revealed that there was no significant relationship between mask mandates in US schools and Covid-19 case rates. The researchers stated “we failed to be able to establish a relationship between schools masking and paediatric cases” of the COVID virus (source).

Social Cohesion

Similarly, a team from a university in Louisville, U.S. examined CDC data to calculate the total Covid-19 case growth and mask use in the US. It again found no significant differences in case growth between mandated and non-mandated states during periods of low or high transmission. The researchers concluded “Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges“ and that they “did not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use”. However, what they did find, was that “masks may promote social cohesion as rallying symbols during a pandemic” (source).

Mask Usage and Deaths

Social cohesion did not rally against the harms that masks caused, for example, one scientific study in particular analysed data from 35 European countries to include morbidity, mortality and mask usage over a six-month period and not only found that the widespread use of masks did not reduce Covid-19 transmission, but also that there was a moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe concluding that this “suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences” (source).

Detrimental to Psychological Health

Neither do they seem to have any idea of the psychological consequences of children wearing masks and seem to have also disregarded the research evidencing the negative psychological effect they have on children. Face masks hiding facial expressions affects the basic human need for human connectivity and compromises the psychological health of both the wearer and individuals nearby.

according to research, this is because face masks:
act as an elimination of self-identity
are dehumanising and partially delete the individuality and uniqueness of individuals (source)
inadvertently cause the breakdown of relationships and social connections which are basic human needs

Essentially the effects of wearing face masks can result in poor health mentally and physically, facts that were shamefully disregarded by teachers especially as there has been a known significant increase in child depression throughout the ‘plandemic’.

Children in Survival Mode

Additionally, through wearing face masks children have also been subjected to a constant challenge to their stress responses resulting from low oxygen within the blood. In other words, the fight or flight response that is triggered (which can be helpful when dealing with a life-threatening situation) puts a child into survival mode and causes a prolonged state of stress by triggering the nervous system, endocrine system, cardiovascular and immune. Consequently, the blood pressure, pro-inflammatory state and immunosuppression are raised all of which threaten homeostasis and are detrimental to psychological and physical health.

Masks and the Unknown Threat

A detrimental physical effect of mask-wearing was revealed as early as August 2020 by German physician Dr Zacharias Fögen who conducted a study that aimed to find out whether mandatory mask use influenced the Covid-19 case fatality rate. The research was carried out in Kansas because while it issued a mask mandate, counties were allowed to either opt-in or out of it. Fögen’s analysis revealed that it was in fact the counties with a mask mandate that had recorded a “significantly higher” case fatality rate than counties without a mask mandate.

According to Fögen mask wearing can:

enable virions to be inhaled deep into the alveoli which can cause pneumonia instead of bronchitis
increase the viral load due to virions that instead of being removed from the respiratory tract are being returned
result in virions passing through the facemask exceeding the number of virions shed without facemasks
cause the “Fögen effect” and potential multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children
result in damage by initiating an (auto) immune reaction in most organs

Foegen stated that “Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths, or 50% more deaths, compared to no mask mandates” and concluded that “These findings suggest that mask use might pose a yet unknown threat to the user instead of protecting them, making mask mandates a debatable epidemiologic intervention.” (source).

Schools Have a Wicked Disregard for Child Welfare

It is clear that whether children wore face masks or not made no difference to the number of COVID cases recorded, the wearing of face masks merely offered a “social cohesion” which was ultimately important to the governments ensuring the masses policed each other. This allowed a moral justification when enforcing the cloth of compliance, but no morals were present when neglecting scientific facts warning of the dangers to the public and in particular the children. The intervention (among others) was never “following the science” and schools entrusted with the wellbeing of children have ignored actual scientific studies that revealed the dangers of continually wearing face masks.

So yes, schools that have continued to enforce an intervention that is ineffective, unnecessary and harmful to physical and psychological health, while neglecting to carry out a risk assessment and have no clue as to what the children are inhaling deep into their lungs, for the third year in a row.

Yes, enforcing this ineffective, unnecessary and potentially harmful intervention onto children for the third year in a row, as Molly Kingsley said, does show, a wicked disregard for child welfare, and must be stopped!

Research by Patricia Harrity

Return of the Face Mask in Schools – a Wicked Disregard for Child Welfare