(LifeSiteNews) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a new ally when it comes to stopping schools from forcing kids to wear masks.
Professor Vinay Prasad, a medical doctor who teaches epidemiology at the University of California San Francisco, said the costs of masking kids outweigh any benefits.
“The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools,” Prasad wrote recently in The Atlantic. “States and communities that are considering masking policies just to be safe should recognize that being overly cautious has a cost, while the benefits are uncertain.”
He broke from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) which has said that there is not currently proof that masks harm child development.
“Early childhood is a crucial period when humans develop cultural, language, and social skills, including the ability to detect emotion on other people’s faces,” Prasad wrote. “Social interactions with friends, parents, and caregivers are integral to fostering children’s growth and well-being.”
Even pro-lockdown governments like the United Kingdom have not urged masking for kids, the oncologist and hematologist noted.
“In addition to recommending masks for young kids, CDC guidelines also urge masks for most vaccinated caregivers who work in infant day-care centers,” Professor Prasad said. “This advice also deviates from standard practice in other nations, including the U.K. Many studies support the importance of babies seeing caregivers’ faces, and prior to the arrival of COVID-19, many American professional organizations, including the AAP, strongly agreed.”
“Do the benefits of masking kids in school outweigh the downsides? The honest answer in 2021 remains that we don’t know for sure,” Prasad concluded.
With the FDA's decision to officially approve the Pfizer COVID jab, calls to vaccinate schoolchildren and more university students will become louder and more insistent.
But, America's children and young people must be protected from unknown future side-effects of these drugs, and parents' rights must be respected!
Please SIGN this urgent petition which demands that COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities be prohibited in every U.S. state.
This petition will be sent to the leaders of every state legislature and to every governor in the United States, urging them to pass emergency legislation banning vaccine mandates for primary, secondary and university students.
Students simply have the right to be educated without being forced to violate deeply held principles and their own bodily integrity!
But, unfortunately, some private schools, like the Jesuit-run Brophy College Prep School in Phoenix, Arizona, have already mandated the COVID vaccine for their students, in spite of massive parental opposition. If parents or students reject the vaccine, students face intrusive weekly testing and exclusion from extra-curricular activities.
Also, more and more universities have actually started to disenroll unvaccinated students. But, even where that is not happening, not taking the vaccine often subjects students to masking, extra testing and additional administrative obstacles.
And now, with the Pfizer jab approval, Joe Biden's Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, is threatening more mandates.
While it is true that the FDA approval for the Pfizer jab only pertains to those over 16 years of age, the pharmaceutical industry and some state actors have been pushing to get approval for pre-teens!
So, it stands to reason that the Federal government will try to impose vaccines on schools, for those 16 and over, as well as on all university students. But, eventually, such mandates could even apply to younger and younger schoolchildren.
That's why state legislatures and governors must fight back against any attempt to coerce school students to take a COVID vaccine against their will!
Science and logic should dictate public health policy. And both say that mandatory vaccination for children and university students is not only unnecessary, but very likely dangerous for the future health of America's youth.
The CDC reports that the rates of death, injury, and hospitalization are very, very low for children and adolescents and that COVID transmission in schools, both from student to staff and between students, is also very low.
And a European CDC study concluded that "no evidence has been found to suggest that children or educational settings are primary drivers of COVID transmission."
So, right now, we know that schoolchildren are at very low risk of becoming very ill as a result of COVID, or of even transmitting the virus.
But, we don't know how a hastily-prepared, unstudied vaccine will affect the health of millions of America's youth in the future.
Gambling with their future, and the future of our nation, should not even be entertained for one second!
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition urging state legislatures to ban COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities - both public and private. Urge them to respect parents' rights, informed consent and bodily integrity.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Ivy League schools mandate COVID-19 vaccines for fall' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ivy-league-mandates-covid-19-vaccines-for-the-fall/
'FDA approval of Pfizer jab isn’t about our health, it’s about mandating the shots' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/fda-approval-of-pfizer-jab-isnt-about-our-health-its-about-mandating-the-shots
He is not the only one to raise questions about alleged benefits of masks.
LifeSiteNews has identified 47 different studies that question the efficacy of masks. In addition to not being effective, masks come with many costs.
Consequences include “lowered oxygen levels,” “impeded breathing,” and “yeast infections.”
Critics have recently commented on a series of studies on masks that reportedly show benefits.
A recently released study of Bangladeshi villages has been touted by mask advocates, for example. But they are reading too much into it, according to a Brown University health economist.
“The overall effects of this study are miniscule—0.07% absolute reduction in seroprevalence,” Emily Burns wrote on Twitter. “What the study ACTUALLY measures is the impact of mask promotion on symptom reporting,” Burn said. “Only if a person reports symptoms, are they asked to participate in a serology study—and only 40% of those with symptoms chose to have their blood taken.”
A fellow Ivy League professor also weighed in on the Bangladesh study.
“Odd that mask advocates are excited by this study,” Professor Martin Kulldorff said. “As a vaccine advocate, I would be horrified if a vaccine trial showed 11% efficacy. Based on the 95% confidence intervals, we do not even know if surgical mask efficacy is more than 0%.”
Prasad also criticized the mask study.
The study, according to his analysis, found that only surgical masks provided benefits. He said the U.S. has been recommending “the wrong masks” by telling people that cloth masks worked.
“A vast majority of people” have been wearing cloth masks, Prasad said. He noted that most kids wear cloth masks and the study does not “extrapolate” to children anyways.
He urged further study of this issue.
See LifeSite’s extensive resources on masks.
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