"After 2 years, growing calls to take masks off come from me, some other moms I found and a pediatrician. But most scientists I asked think masks are no big deal"
So why did this pointless article get published? 🧵npr.org/2022/01/28/107…
It should tell you something that Kerry Dingle, who the opening 5 paragraphs of this article are devoted to, feels the need to say that, though she thinks masks should be optional, she is not “anti-vax” or “psychotic.”
Having gotten that out of the way, Dingle quickly moves on to bemoan the “burdening” of little kids with "protecting other people”; namely, "high-risk people."
It’s ironic to talk of the high-risk as if they were the burden when, if I’m being honest, it’s the low risk that seem most burdensome at this point. Here I’m thinking of the low risk’s insatiable & ill-timed need to free themselves of pandemic paraphernalia (like masks).
But neither the author nor Dingle see themselves as the burden because, I guess, they are used to centering themselves in the world and then begrudging having to incorporate “other people” like “high-risk people” into it.
"Isn’t it enough that these pesky others 'can protect themselves' by getting vaccinated – what else could high-risk people possibly want?", you can hear Dingle ask between the lines while the author nods along.
Even putting aside the casual ableism, kids under 5 can’t protect themselves. Neither can children of anti-vax parents. So yeah, I’m not buying the whole “little kids” vs. “high-risk people” epic showdown vibe of Dingle. But back to more mundane complaints.
Panning out from the Dingle-eye view, we see that there are anti-mask mandates groups, pro-N95 groups and a third group that’s both anti-mask and pro-vaccine. They are “getting louder” we are told.
How could we not know they are loud? After all, we are stuck reading this article & not some other, more interesting article about, say, pandemics and airborne infection. No, we are stuck in an eternal hell of privileged people speaking loudly about things that bum them out.
But who am I to make light of bummers? Good masks are hard to find. There. That’s surely a problem. Jeremy Howard, a data scientist, thinks so too.
Howard says if kids can’t find good masks, this is a “huge issue” because “Kids are being left unprotected.” Howard says this as if lack of protection is a problem, not realizing that this is the goal.
Moving on, Danny Benjamin, a pediatrician, admits transmission is lowered by mandating that kids wear masks in school.
But that’s “impractical” Benjamin says as if the standard of pandemic protection was the “practical” shoes a grandmother might wear. Benjamin adds that kids find masks "uncomfortable", as if he hadn’t noticed that kids get used to wearing braces, on their teeth, of all things.
Masks also have to be “replaced often” Benjamin says wrongly.
Bernadette Ngoh wants to know, “What do we do with all the kids that are unable to wear the mask…?”
Brittany Gonzalez then appears, as if on cue, to answer that, for the kids who are unable, masks are not required. Good idea; but maybe add better ventilation.
"What about brains?" you ask. Isn’t it “harder to hear and understand speech and identify facial expressions and emotions when people are wearing masks?”
I don’t know how to answer this honestly. It’s harder to eat with plastic spoons. It’s harder to run than to walk. Is it super hard? No. And by the way, there are entire countries where half the population wears head coverings and they have children whose brains are just fine.
But the problem of brains, whatever it is, hasn’t gone away which leaves Manfred Spitzer, a psychiatrist and a cognitive neuroscientist, to give it a try.
Spitzer valiantly invokes some sort of Darwinian, quasi-evolutionary anti-mask argument saying “Babies were never designed to just see the upper half of the face...” So please, nobody show Mr. Spitzer forks and spoons or, come to think of it, the Olympics.
Granting the “babies aren’t designed for masks point”, they sure do pretty well with them which seems important.
But if you really can’t get over this, there are clear masks.
The rest of the article goes on to be more specific about problems that don’t exist, or that have obvious solutions like using microphones to hear mask-muffled-voices or reducing background noise.
Even Spitzer, our evolutionary “What are babies designed for?” theorist, admits that the challenges masks present are manageable.
In which case, really, if masks are manageable, can be done with these small problems with easy solutions and get on to dealing with the big problem we have now; namely, the pandemic?

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More from @Loretta_Torrago

Jan 31
The American--Speech-Language-Hearing Association and The American Association of Pediatrics both say there is no reason to believe children's language or speech skills be negatively impacted by masks. 🧵
h/t @stricken103
healthychildren.org/English/health…
"....there is no known evidence that use of face masks interferes with speech and language development or social communication. Plus, children can still get plenty of face time at home with mask-free family members. "
".... there are no known studies that use of a face mask negatively impacts a child's speech and language development."
Read 6 tweets
Jan 29
One 'mo time: Covid is not like seasonal influenza.
* Covid is more transmissible than flu. (NPIs "obliterated" flu but not Covid.
* Covid is more deadly than flu.
* We can care about both.
Nice graphic presentation of flu, pneumonia and Covid from @JusDayDa.
Important numbers on flu and Covid with CDC data.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 2
The myth of "mask harms" rests on assuming kids need to see entire faces to accurately recognize emotions. In fact, accuracy is sometimes better with masks. In her Substack, @ProfEmilyOster, guru of cost-benefit analysis, ignores mask's benefits & overstates its costs. 🧵 Image
Oster begins by outlining the role facial expressions have in “conveying emotions.” Image
She then considers whether masks impede the reading of facial expression of whether “seeing half a face is almost as good as a whole face.” Image
Read 28 tweets
Dec 27, 2021
In her latest Substack, @ProfEmilyOster contemplates Covid’s risk to kids under 5 where she carries on her well-established traditions of ableism and a self-centered approach to public health. 🧵
emilyoster.substack.com/p/covid-risks-…
Predictably, Oster begins by bemoaning the sad state of affairs for parents (her) who need to “dispense” with children “to an outside location” (her phrasing, not mine). Quarantines, Oster tells us are “untenable”. Okay, so are pandemics but here we are.
antoniobuehler.medium.com/the-emily-oste…
Oster then moves to addressing a problem she just invented: the exclusion of kids from the world.
Read 24 tweets
Dec 24, 2021
1.
This is my Holiday gift; I’m telling my Long Covid story so maybe you won’t ever have one.

Long Covid is like stopping on a road trip. You get snacks and head back to your car. Except your car isn’t there anymore. There’s a different one in your spot but it’s the only one.
2.
You look around because maybe there’s someone who knows something but it's dark & empty as far as you can see. Who would you ask anyway? Miles from home, there’s nothing but you and this car. You get in; what else is there?
3.
But the dashboard has controls you’ve never seen before. You’re not sure how anything works. The windshield wipers come on as a bright sun lifts overhead. It gets dark but there are no headlights; sparks shoot from the front of the car. That’s all the light you get.
Read 11 tweets

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