Ban Mask Mandate for School-Aged Children

PETITION AGAINST MANDATED MASK-WEARING OF SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN 5 AND ABOVE

We, the undersigned, are petitioning the Commonwealth of Virginia Governor Ralph S. Northam, to issue an amendment to Amended Executive Order 79, which is effective May 28, 2021, and mandates that school-aged children five years old and above must wear a mask on school campuses.1 In consideration of the scientific data outlined below, we assert that the consequences of mandating mask-wearing are more of a health hazard than are the known complications of Covid-19 to school-aged children. Therefore, masks should instead be optional for youth and an amendment to or rescission of Section D in Executive Order 79, to this effect, should be made effective immediately.

MASK INEFFICACY:
Masks (surgical or cloth) do not delay or prevent the spread of covid-19. The covid-19 virus is reported to be .06 to .12 micron; once bonded to water or mucus increases to 1 micron and even as a droplet, “the pressure and plosive force that pushes virion clusters through a [mask] weave will act as a nebulizer.”2 With masked exhalation, there is “90-95% leakage of aerosolized virions that hang in the air for a week.” Id. An infectious SARS-CoV-2 dose contains approximately 300 virions and one minute of normal speaking releases 750,000 virions, making infection prevention negligible.3 There has been one large randomized controlled mask trial found mask wearing “did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of Sars-Cov-2-infection.4 Data from 1.5 million K-12 students and staff, even before vaccination, indicated that mask mandates were “not associated with student or teacher infection rates.”5

Studies by entities such as, the U.S. CDC, New England Journal of Medicine, Cochrane review, Norwich School of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, reveal slight to no effectiveness of cloth face masks as a means of source control or as personal protective equipment against respiratory or infectious diseases in community settings.6

Across the United States, states with rigid mask mandates had 10 more cases per 100,000 persons than states without a mask-mandate.7 Similarly, European countries that did not impose a mask mandate did not experience higher infection or mortality rates than their neighboring countries that required masks be worn. (Id.)

COVID-19 RISK:
Even at the pandemic’s start, it was announced that the elderly and immune-compromised were at greatest risk and healthy adults and children were at the lowest risk.8 Per the CDC, 282 children 0 – 17 years old have died with the virus between 1/1/2020 and 5/5/2021 and a 99.997% covid-19 survivability rate for 0-19 year-old kids.9 Virtually all the children had co-morbidities or a terminal illness.10 The seasonal flu is more dangerous to children, resulting in death for those without underlying conditions; CDC reported approximately 480 deaths for kids 0 – 17 in 2018-2019 flu season.11 Moreover, the Hospital Journal published that “pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 were overcounted by at least 40 percent, carrying potential implications for nationwide figures” because of not accurately distinguishing between children hospitalized with versus for covid-19.12 Compellingly, Stefan Baral, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist and physician at Johns Hopkins reported, “the risk-benefit calculus of vaccinating children against a disease that poses a “very low likelihood of severe outcomes” to them, does not meet the definition of an “emergency.”” Id. Now with the U.S. positive rate below 3% and being at near herd immunity with about 80% of immune adults, covid-19 risk is dramatically declining.13 Thus, neither masking nor vaccinations are necessary for school-aged youth.

ASYMPTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:
Asymptomatic transmission is rare.14 Notably, at a June 8, 2020 press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid-19 Technical Lead for the WHO, unequivocally stated that asymptomatic transmission was very rare based on contact tracing. 15 Virus transmission depends on an active infection manifested through symptoms such as coughing.16 Dr. Fauci understood the rarity of asymptomatic transmission when he unequivocally stated, “in all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. … it is always a symptomatic person.” 17 A study of children’s v. adult’s infectivity found that kids aged 0-17 had “about half the odds of containing culturable virus than adults… and do not appear to be the main transmission drivers,” and the chance of one asymptomatic child transmitting the virus and resulting in a severe outcome is 0.0000003%. 18

MASK HARM:
PHYSIOLOGICAL
Studies have revealed that there are detrimental and even irreversible physiological consequences of long-term mask-wearing.19 The two primary medical health hazards fall within the risks of hypercapnia and hypoxia and their attendant conditions. Id. Re-inhaled CO2 from mask-wearing increases “arterial CO2 concentration and acidosis” and damages the internal organs. Id. Interestingly, one of Dr. Fauci’s research teams discovered there was a “severe surge of bacterial pneumonia deaths” during the Spanish Flu, which was correlated to mask-wearing. Id. Reduced O2 intake, known as hypoxia, promotes oxidative damage, which inhibits brain and cognitive development. Id.

COGNITIVE
Wearing masks dramatically reduces the brain’s ability to identify people and subsequently, impacts our regular engagement with others.20 Research indicates that it is 15% more difficult to recognize masked individuals; losing the critical facial recognition features of nose and mouth, “holistic processing” of faces is “disrupted.” Id. This presents its own level of cognitive and social stress in educational and social settings. A December 2020 German registry of 20,353 parents report that based on an average of 270 minutes per day of mask-wearing to reduce the spread of Covid-19, their children experienced the following conditions: irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), unhappiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%), and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).21 Moreover, young school-aged children learning letters and numbers sounds (phonemes) are demonstrating the negative consequences of masks impeding their ability to pronounce and enunciate properly.

EMOTIONAL
Masks dehumanize children and treat them as disease vectors, which is an undeserved burden of guilt and shame. They unnecessarily stoke fear and anxiety in children that have no reason to fear the virus. Science has proven that sharing a smile produces endorphins and when children are deprived of this brain activity it leads to depression. Psychologically, masking implicates the notion that their voice is not to be heard and promotes a culture and forced acceptance of anonymity versus individuality.

SUMMARY:
The full scope of physiological, social, educational, and emotional growth is devastatingly impaired by
wearing masks.22 It is not medically sound, logical, or moral to succumb millions of school-aged children to the real dangers of mask mandates in response to a virus that has a 99.997% survivability rate. Unmask our children.

1 See http://tiny.cc/yx6ytz

2 See https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/your-mask-protects-me Explaining the finer virion aerosols hang in the air for up to 2 weeks and do not transport in a 6ft line. Citing Aerosol filtration efficiency of household materials for homemade face masks, 10/8/2020, with even a 2% gap in mask fit (b/c there is no perfect fit), there is 75% aerosol leakage. It’s commonly accepted that masking is ineffective at stopping respiratory illnesses and the WHO well documented it in 2019, which is why it, the CDC, and NIH’s Dr. Fauci said in March 2020 not to mask if not symptomatic. Id. Additionally, both the UK’s The Royal Society of Medicine and the AAPS continue to assert the “lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infections contamination in their respective publications. Id. Specifically, a “well controlled study (n=3.088)” compared patient post-op infection rate between masked and unmasked surgeons and found a 34% increased infection risk with the masked surgeons. Id. Throughout the existence of numerous respiratory illnesses and coronaviruses, masking has not been recommended; masks as source control for this virus was not based on science. Id.

3 See https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2030886 . One minute of normal speaking expels up to 3000 1-micron particles and each particle has 250+ virions (virus particles), resulting in 750,000+ virions, making face masks unlikely to prevent an infection.

4 See https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

5 See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/26/its-time-children-finally-get-back-normal-life/#click=https://t.co/6aHsLGnZ0V

6 See Are Face Masks Effective? The Evidence, Updated May 2021, https://swprs.org/covid-masks-review/, citing, inter alia, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20049528v1

7 See http://tiny.cc/8y6ytz See Are Face Masks Effective? The Evidence, Updated 5/2021, https://swprs.org/covid-masks-review/, citing, inter alia, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20049528v1

8 See http://tiny.cc/cy6ytz Quoting “in the leading journal Nature estimated the Covid-19 survival rate to be approximately 99.995% in children and teens.” Also stating that CDC recently reported “very rare” in-school virus transmission among 90,000+ students and staff in 11 North Carolina school districts.”

9 See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge See https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html#box1 Reporting IFR among demographics. See also https://www.thepragmatist.co/post/bad-public-health-kills-100-000-americans-died-not-from-covid-but-trying-to-stop-the-spread

10 See https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932e3.htm Among 222 (38.5%) of 576 children with information on underlying medical conditions, 94 (42.3%) had one or more underlying conditions.

11 See https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/99d35b02-a5cb-41e6-ad80-a070f8a5ee17/WhitePaper_ExperimentalVaccinesCovid-19_Feb23.pdf Covid hospitalization rate for ages 5 – 17 is 6/100,000 whereas with the flu (2018-2019) is was 39.2/100,000.

12 See https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/05/study-number-of-kids-hospitalized-for-covid-is-overcounted.html?__twitter_impression=true The hospitalization numbers for children were already extremely low relative to adults — at the pandemic’s peak this winter, it was roughly ten times lower than for 18-to-49-year-olds and 77 times lower than those age 65 and up. See also https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/ Noting “0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.”

13 See https://nypost.com/2021/05/21/risk-of-covid-is-now-very-low-its-time-to-stop-living-in-fear-doctor/

14 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102

15 See WHO Says Asymptomatic Transmission is Rare, Then Backtracks, 6/23/20, https://www.bostonjournal.net/who-says-asymptomatic-transmission-is-rare-then-backtracks/

16 https://www.hartgroup.org/asymptomatic-spread/ And a positive PCR asymptomatic person “is often evidence of immunity.”

17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1orSO094uY

18 See https://www.cmaj.ca/content/193/17/E601 See also https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774102 Secondary attack rates were higher to adult contacts than to child contacts is consistent with empirical and modeling studies. Households will continue to be a significant venue for transmission of SARS-CoV-2. See https://twitter.com/TracyBethHoeg/status/1395619804673761280?s=20 The calculation: .0007 (prevalence) x .007 (asymp transmission) x .007 (hosp. rate of infected child) = .00000003 x 100 = 0.0000003% (chance a child could contract covid from asymptomatic individual and be hospitalized)

19 See Masks, False safety and real dangers, Part 3: Hypoxia, hypercapnia and physiological effects, by Boris Borovoy, Colleen Huber, Maria Crisler, https://pdmj.org/Mask_Risks_Part3.pdf

20 See The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces, Erez Freud, Andreja Stajduhar, R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Galia Avidan & Tsvi Ganel, 12/21/2020 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33349645/

21 See Corona children studies “Co-Ki”: First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose covering (mask) in children, Silke Schwarz, Ekkehart Jenetzky, Hanno Krafft, Tobias Maurer, David Martin, 1/5/2021, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-124394/v2

22 See Science Says Open The Schools, Dr. Scott W. Atlas and Paul E. Peterson, 6/1/20, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/500349-science-says-open-the-schools