The mask wars have begun. With the start of the school year, students are going back to classrooms – and that’s certainly cause for celebration. But many are being forced to wear masks against their will – and their parents.

The CDC guidelines call for masks for all students, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support this decision. (see Masks Harmful to Children) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has shown his willingness to ignore such guidelines when the science doesn’t support them, preferring to give parents and adults the freedom to make their own informed decisions for themselves and their children. He has barred mask mandates statewide, leaving the decision up to parents, but local government officials are pushing back in some areas. Now a peace plan has emerged in this culture war.

William Mattox, director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Educational Options at James Madison Institute, says Governor DeSantis has found a solution that should make everybody happy. The Florida Department of Education issued a rule making students who suffer “Covid-19 harassment” eligible for a Hope Scholarship that allows them to attend another public or private school of their parents’ choosing.

Naturally, parents who oppose mandatory masking of their children praised this new policy. Now they could move their children to another school where the masking policies meet their needs. But something unexpected happened; some Covid-wary parents who support mask requirements requested the same freedom of choice. The Department of Education approved their requests, too.

The happy result is that both sides of this war have the freedom to choose a school for their children that meets their needs. They can choose a school that matches their preference for masking their children. This is government at its best.

The Hope Scholarships were created by the Florida legislature in 2018 to allow parents to transfer a child who feels threatened or harassed to another school. When first passed by the legislature, the concern was for bullying from other students. But the department says the law’s language can be legitimately applied when students are harassed or mistreated over masking issues. Hope Scholarship rules and regulations are seen below:

This is a win for freedom of choice – and for school choice. It has become abundantly clear in recent years that giving parents the freedom to choose the best school for their children is an important step in assuring all children the opportunity for a good education. A good education is the key to upward mobility, especially for those children from low-income families. Florida has been a model for expanding school choice and this is just another example of such forward thinking.

The short history of enrollment in the Hope Scholarship program is seen in the graphic below. You can be sure these numbers will grow in the coming school year with this new ruling by the Department of Education.

Mattox says, “By putting the power to make safety-related schooling decisions in the hands of families, Florida acknowledges that parents know best how to weigh Covid’s risks to their children. A household with an immunocompromised family member may perceive the risks differently than one with mental-health concerns.”

This is unlikely to cause a major shift in the school populations, but it gives families that feel trapped by their local district’s policies a way of escape. Mattox says, “It further enshrines the unimpeachable idea behind Florida’s first-in-the-nation student safety scholarship: No child should be required to attend a school that his parents consider unsafe.”

Just another reason why Floridians feel blessed to live in Florida.

As schools reopen, the cultural wars are heating up over children wearing masks. The CDC guidelines call for masks for children over two years, even older children who have been vaccinated. Is this really necessary? Is it actually harmful?

The rise of the Delta variant of Covid-19 is being used as justification for the CDC rolling back previous advice that the vaccinated didn’t have to wear masks. Now it’s being used as an excuse to keep children wearing masks in school. What does the science say?

Drs. Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner give us their opinions in The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Makary is professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Dr. Meissner is chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Children’s Hospital. These two highly qualified physicians say there is no science to support the CDC recommendations.

In fact, they report only one retrospective study even has addressed the question of whether masks reduce Covid transmission in children – and the results were inconclusive. In other words, the CDC recommendations are based on the theory that masks can’t do any harm. The authors strongly reject this theory.

They report the following mask-related harmful effects in children:

• Children with myopia have difficulty seeing due to fogging of their glasses
• Severe acne and other skin problems
• Distraction from learning due to mask discomfort
• Increased levels of carbon dioxide from airway resistance and rebreathing
• Lowered levels of oxygen for the same reasons
• Masks can be vectors for pathogens if they become moist or are used too long

Ireland’s Department of Health recently announced it won’t require masks in schools because they “may exacerbate anxiety or breathing difficulties for some students.” Some children compensate for such difficulties by breathing through their mouths. Chronic and prolonged mouth breathing can alter facial development. It is well-documented that children who mouth-breathe because of enlarged adenoids can develop a mouth deformity and elongated face.

More important is the possible psychological harm of widespread masking. Facial expressions are integral to human connection, particularly for young children, who are only learning how to signal fear, confusion, and happiness. Covering a child’s face mutes these nonverbal forms of communication and may result in robotic and emotionless interactions, anxiety and depression. These problems are multiplied in children with hearing impairment.

How many children are actually being infected with Covid?

All of this discussion about wearing masks is based on the concern of children catching or spreading the Covid virus. How high are the risks of that happening? The CDC reports for the week of July 31 that the rate of hospitalization with Covid for children ages 5 to 17 was 0.5 per million, or roughly 25 patients. The CDC even admits that not all of these children were actually hospitalized for Covid – viral testing is routine for all admissions.

Do children spread the virus to others?

A North Carolina study conducted before vaccines were available found not a single case of student-to-teacher transmission when 90,000 students were in school. Although the more contagious Delta variant has become more widespread since that study, many teachers, parents, and children over age 12 have since been vaccinated.

The authors say that if masks do reduce asymptomatic transmission in children, they likely rank no higher than fourth among mitigation strategies that schools can adopt, after ventilation, distancing, and dividing students into small groups known as pods. They also recommend mandatory vaccination of all teachers and other adults who lack natural immunity (have previously had Covid) – which teachers unions have vigorously opposed.

What recommendations do the authors provide?

Here is their summation statement: “Any child who wants to wear a mask should be free to do so. But forcing them to make personal, health and developmental sacrifices for the sake of adults who refuse to get immunized is abusive. Before we order the masking of 56 million Americans who are too young to vote and don’t have a lobby, let’s see data showing the benefits and weigh them against the long-term harm.”

Makes good sense to me – both for children and adults.

Do parents of small children need to make them wear masks? Do they need to get them vaccinated? These are important questions many parents face today.

To be sure, the government has been guilty of mixed messaging. Healthcare officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky have been all over the map with their advice and it certainly looks like their messaging has been influenced more by politics than science.

As of now, masks are still required for small children over the age of two on airlines, public transportation systems, airports, some schools, and even summer camps. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Ashley McGuire, mother and writer, complains about her nine-year-old daughter who was forced to wear a mask in 98-degree heat while playing tennis at a summer camp run by the prestigious Sidwell Friends School of Washington, D.C., formerly attended by President Obama’s children. Her daughter nearly passed out. This is insanity!

The latest CDC guidelines call for schools to be open in the fall, but still insist children who are not vaccinated wear masks. Since vaccines are not authorized for children under the age of 12 years, that means all younger children still must wear masks. Is this really necessary?

The risks for children getting Covid-19 are very low. New information tells us they are even lower than previously concluded. Denise Roland, writing in The Wall Street Journal, reports on the latest data. Some 99.995% of the 469,982 children in England who were infected during the year and were examined by researchers survived, one study found. Among the 61 child deaths linked to a positive Covid-19 test in England, 25 were actually caused by the illness, the study found. We don’t know if they had other co-morbidities.

This study is an important addition to the data used to make healthcare policy. “Having a larger and larger database . . . adds a lot to our ability to make important decisions,” said Rick Malley, an infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

There is some risk with any vaccine. The current Covid-19 vaccines have shown remarkable efficacy and safety, but there are exceptions. There have been some reports of inflammatory conditions of the heart in some adolescents. This has caused some concern with parents of children of all ages. Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have urged vaccination, saying the benefits outweigh the risks.

The Biden administration is currently advocating door-to-door promotion of the vaccines to get reluctant Americans to accept vaccination. It remains to be seen if they will do the same thing for children if vaccines are approved for them.

The real question at this point in the pandemic is “What role should the government be playing in the decision-making of adults and parents of children?” By now every adult who wants to get vaccinated has had ample opportunity to do so. Any continued hesitancy is a matter of personal choice, and in some cases, doctor’s advice. While I am a strong advocate for vaccination of those who are most vulnerable – especially the elderly and those with co-morbidities such as diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and obesity – I also believe everyone has the right to make their own decision.

Just as the CDC mentioned above, the decision to get vaccinated is a risk-benefits decision. For those whose risk is high, the benefits are great and they should get vaccinated. For those whose risk is low, like the young – especially very young, the benefits may be too little to justify the risks of the vaccines. The same is true for wearing masks. Small children wearing masks certainly does not make sense in any reasonable risk-benefits analysis. The harmful effects of reduced oxygen and increased carbon dioxide levels surely outweigh any benefits of wearing masks to prevent Covid-19 infection. It’s time to let people make their own decisions. It’s time to let science, not politics, influence those decisions.