ITASCA, Illinois, July 21, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The American Academy of Pediatrics is claiming that all children age two and over should participate in “universal masking” in schools this fall, despite evidence that children do not significantly spread COVID-19 and research which suggests face masks may pose a risk to children’s health.
Based in Itasca, Illinois, with an office in Washington, D.C., The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an organization composed of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists, said it “recommends universal masking in school” as children prepare to return to in-person learning this fall.
The academy, which publicly supports “surgical intervention” and puberty-blocking drugs for gender-confused children, also claims that all school staff should wear masks regardless of vaccination status, and alleges that proof of COVID-19 vaccination may become a necessary prerequisite for in-person learning.
A news release put out by the group July 19 said “all students older than 2 years and all school staff should wear face masks at school (unless medical or developmental conditions prohibit use).”
The AAP added that all “eligible individuals,” i.e. adult staff and children over the age of 12, “should receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” and said it “may become necessary for schools to collect COVID-19 vaccine information of staff and students and for schools to require COVID-19 vaccination for in-person learning.”
Masking, vaccinating kids with experimental shots pose significant risks
The academy receives substantial funding from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which makes an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in collaboration with the German biotechnology company BioNTech.
The Big Pharma corporation funds the AAP’s flagship initiative called The Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) which along with their District Residence Liaisons serves as the AAP’s “boots on the ground.”
The pediatric group provided a list of reasons for recommending universal masking for students and staff, including that “a significant portion of the student population is not eligible for vaccination.”
To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not allow the vaccine for children under 12, but recommends it for children age 12 and older. (American children on the CDC vaccine schedule get far more vaccines than their parents did, including one at birth for a disease, hepatitis B, that is spread through sex with infected strangers or dirty drug needles.)
However, a recent report by the BBC suggested that COVID-19 vaccines might not be offered to children aged 12-17 in the U.K. due to acknowledged ethical issues and analysis of the risks posed to children.
Even Public Health England's medical adviser Dr. Susan Hopkins has warned against forcing primary schoolchildren to wear masks, and the U.K. government has promoted her comments.
It's important that primary schoolchildren don't wear face coverings, says Public Health England's medical adviser Dr Susan Hopkins.
She explains that this is because covid infection rates are low among their age group and wearing face coverings could affect their development pic.twitter.com/HH8a36k6Fo
— Department for Education (@educationgovuk) March 2, 2021
And Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York coronavirus doctor who pioneered effective safe treatments for the Wuhan virus told LifeSiteNews in a recent interview that mask-wearing is creating a generation of autistic kids.
The CDC recently acknowledged a higher-than-expected number of cases of heart inflammation among young people who had received a full round of mRNA injections. The CDC identified 226 reports of heart inflammation discovered in patients shortly after taking the second dose of an mRNA drug, which might constitute myocarditis and pericarditis according to the agency’s “working case definition.”
In addition to heart inflammation, COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to other serious reactions particularly in the young.
At a June 2021 news conference hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a mother of a 12-year-old girl who became wheel-chair bound after volunteering for the Pfizer jab in a vaccine trial said, “Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine, she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends, and had a life.”
Subsequently the pre-teen has been hospitalized three times for two months and has been to the emergency room nine times, suffering from severe abdominal and chest pain.
Maddie suffered from gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor tics, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down, lost bowel and bladder control, and she had a nasogastric tube placed because she lost the ability to eat.
As the BBC noted, “Children's risk of severe disease from Covid is tiny, deaths are extremely rare and have only occurred in UK children with profound underlying and life-limiting conditions. The direct benefits to them of vaccination would be low.”
The American Association of Pediatrics’ guidance claimed that since most children are currently ineligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines, masks provide “protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19 and… reduce transmission.”
The academy also cited a “lack of a system” for schools to “monitor vaccine status among students, teachers and staff.” Most schools are already required to retain students’ medical records pertaining to certain vaccines.
Also listed as reasons for advocating universal masking were the challenges posed by “monitoring or enforcing mask policies for those who are not vaccinated,” as well as potentially low vaccination rates in the community and “continued concern for variants that are more easily spread among children, adolescents, and adults.”
‘The question whether nose and mouth covering increases carbon dioxide in inhaled air is crucial’
The report by the left-wing pediatric association came days after National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci gave an interview on MSNBC claiming that “unvaccinated children of a certain age, greater than two years old, should be wearing masks, no doubt about that.”
Fauci was criticized for his comments, which experts have noted do not align with research which suggests that children are not particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, nor do they spread the disease in significant numbers.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School, and a co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham July 13 that “Dr. Fauci spent last summer campaigning, in effect, to close our schools down.”
The Stanford professor said Fauci “scared parents with talk about how dangerous COVID was to kids and how they were spreading the disease,” adding that “we know now that that’s not true, in fact kids are very inefficient spreaders of the disease.”
In addition to studies which indicate that children are at extremely low risk of contracting, spreading, or even getting very sick from COVID-19, research has suggested that face masks themselves pose a risk to children, causing them to inhale dangerous levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) which becomes trapped behind the material.
According to a randomized clinical trial conducted in Germany by Dr. Harald Walach and colleagues, although “[m]any governments have made nose and mouth covering or face masks compulsory” for children, the “evidence base for this is weak.”
“The question whether nose and mouth covering increases carbon dioxide in inhaled air is crucial,” the study’s authors continued. “A large-scale survey in Germany of adverse effects in parents and children using data of 25 930 children has shown that 68% of the participating children had problems when wearing nose and mouth coverings.”
The study’s peer-reviewed research letter said that children inhaling the trapped air were breathing in more than six times the safe limit of carbon dioxide as put forth by the German Federal Environmental Office.
While the safe limit is 0.2 percent, the air the masked children breathed in was found to contain over 1.3 percent carbon dioxide.
The study suggested younger children were at even greater risk, with one seven-year-old child in the study inhaling air with 2.5 percent carbon dioxide, more than 12 times the safe limit.
According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) excess inhalation of carbon dioxide can cause symptoms including “rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, clumsiness, emotional upsets and fatigue.”
When oxygen is seriously displaced by C02, extreme symptoms may include “nausea and vomiting, collapse, convulsions, coma and death.”
CCOHS reported that “Lack of oxygen can cause permanent damage to organs including the brain and heart.”
Asked to comment on the AAP’s recommendations, Dr. Fauci told CNN that the advice was in line with advice put out by health experts.
“[When] you have a degree of viral dynamics in the community, and you have a substantial proportion of the population that is unvaccinated,” Fauci alleged, “you really want to go the extra step, the extra mile, to make sure that there’s not a lot of transmission, even breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals.”
Fauci said that in putting out its guidance the AAP “just want[s] to be extra safe.”
The AAP’s recommendations calling for universal masking and the vaccination of all “eligible individuals” comes as some U.S. cities and states have begun advancing measures which would permit the vaccination of minors without parental knowledge or consent.
The Washington, D.C. City Council recently approved an act authorizing kids 11 years old and up to receive vaccines without parental knowledge or consent.
In Massachusetts, legislators are considering a series of laws pertaining to immunization, including one which would allow minors of any age to receive preventative treatment for any infectious disease a child is deemed “at risk of contracting,” without first obtaining the consent of parents.
LifeSiteNews reached out to the AAP but was told the association’s physicians were unavailable for comment.