Did you ever wonder why childhood seemed to take so long, yet as you age, time seems to slip by ever faster?  I am of an age where I am well acquainted with this phenomenon.  I propose an explanation based on simple biology: relative life experience.  This bears on the issue of masking children.

Consider a typical high school student — say, sixteen years old.  For the last two years, he has been required to wear a mask in school (when he wasn't at home zooming) and often out of school as well.  What does that mean from his perspective?  It means that for one-eighth of his life, he has had to wear a mask.  Look at what that might mean to a forty-year-old.  It would be equivalent to wearing a mask from the age of thirty-five — five years of mask-wearing instead of two.

Let's go younger.  A ten-year-old child has been wearing a mask since the age of eight.  For the forty-year-old, this would be equivalent to wearing a mask since the age of thirty-two — eight years.

The younger the child, the larger a percentage of his life has been constrained by a mask.  For a child in kindergarten, the percentage is equivalent to a forty-year-old having to wear a mask since the age of twenty-six.  You see how this works?  It isn't the two years that counts; it is the fraction of experienced life under constraint that matters.

Worse, we not only know that this was entirely unnecessary — children are little affected by COVID, but we know that mask-wearing is profoundly deleterious.  It causes harm physically, it causes harm psychologically, and it causes harm developmentally.  Masking children is pure cruelty!

There are at least two ways that masking physically harms people of all ages.  First, masking restricts the flow of air out as well as air in.  This means that people wearing masks are rebreathing carbon dioxide.  The relative oxygen levels in their blood are reduced, and their blood chemistry is unbalanced.  For very short times, this is not of great concern.  However, when rebreathing for hours, or for most of a day, it certainly is.  For growing children, the effects of rebreathing might be especially pernicious.  It might limit their physical growth and neurological development.  This needs to be studied.

Beyond the rebreathing problem, the masks themselves quickly get contaminated.  Breathing through a mask filled with germs and other unhealthy debris cannot be desirable.

There is psychological harm as well.  Look at it from the child's perspective.  He is being physically constrained.  He can't breathe.  He can't play.  No matter what the teachers may say is the reason, he has to feel he is being punished.  But punished for what?  No one tells him.  It is natural that he is going to feel there is something terribly wrong about himself — but he can't discover what it is.  It doesn't matter that his companions are likewise suffering or that some politician gave the order.  This is about him, about his suffering.  He feels he is being punished.

This is psychological torture.  It is no surprise that there are increasing reports of child suicides and other psychological breakdowns.  The really amazing thing is how many children somehow survive the experience with a degree of psychological health.

Finally, there is developmental harm.  A young child soaks up language without the slightest effort — many languages if they are being spoken.  An adult struggles for years and only very rarely masters the subtleties of a new language, and almost never its true pronunciation.  This is only one of many examples of how easily the young brain sponges up what is needed for life — and how important it is for the child to be free to learn naturally, without constraint.

Especially important is the need for socialization in the young.  Anything that gets in the way of this normal youthful development causes permanent harm.  We can say categorically that masking the very young has damaged them, probably beyond complete repair.  Our future society, as well as these individuals, will suffer the consequences.

Yes, what we have done and, in some places, are still doing is criminal.  I mean that literally.  Almost all jurisdictions have criminal laws protecting children from abuse.  Even the federal government has such laws.  And yet, for the last two years, we have seen civil authorities engaged, quite deliberately, in child abuse.

It should be noted that school administrators and teachers have no excuse.  They cannot use the ruse that they were "just following orders."  If the orders are illegal, no matter the source of the orders, the resulting actions are likewise illegal.

Perhaps some enterprising district attorney will find a way, under existing statutes, to launch prosecutions for masking (and vaxxing) as child abuse.  It would take only a single local prosecution to break the matter wide open at the national level.  There would be no way that authorities, or the media and Big Tech, could suppress the major political fallout. 

Clearly, we have a problem.  For two years, our youths have been abused.  They have been abused physically; psychologically; and, worst of all, developmentally.  It is long past time for this nonsense to stop and for the perpetrators — and I do mean the responsible politicians as well as the abusive school officials — to be brought to justice.

Image via Max Pixel.