From the Brownstone Insitute

By  Ian Miller 

It’s late 2024, and masking has managed to remain a contentious issue. Years of misinformation from supposed “experts” like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx and organizations like the CDC have convinced millions of Very Smart People to believe that masks are an effective tool to reduce the transmission of respiratory viruses. This applies also to the flu, despite those same experts and organizations somehow neglecting to recommend masks for the decades of flu seasons pre-2020.

Forcing anyone to mask, given the substantial and robust evidence base showing conclusively that masks don’t work, was an indefensible policy decision. But specifically forcing children to mask was decidedly much, much worse.

And not just because it was a pointless exercise in pandemic theater, with zero evidence of efficacy.

But because it was actively causing harm too, as a new study shows.

New Study Confirms Harms of Masking Children

A new study co-authored by Tracy Beth Høeg delves into the side effects of masking, a subject completely ignored by experts and politicians desperate to exert control over individual behavior.

And in their discussion, it’s immediately obvious why their research and conclusions will be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

“There is a lack of robust evidence of benefit from masking children to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or other respiratory viruses,” they explain. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The highest quality evidence available for masking children for COVID-19 or other viral respiratory infections has failed to find a beneficial impact against transmission. Mechanistic studies showing reduced viral transmission from use of face masks and respirators have not translated to real world effectiveness. Identified harms of masking include negative effects on communication and components of speech and language, ability to learn and comprehend, emotional and trust development, physical discomfort, and reduction in time and intensity of exercise.

It’s a masterpiece. No notes.

As the Cochrane Library review explained, as the data shows, as decades of accumulated evidence confirmed: Masks Don’t Work. For anyone, but especially for children, who could not wear or use masks properly, even if they were shown to have worked. Which they did not.

Experts demanded and politicians mandated that they wear them anyway, based on speculation, hope, and mechanistic studies that were conclusively disproven. And the harms were remarkable.

“Negative effects on communication and components of speech and language.” “Ability to learn and comprehend.” “Emotional and trust development, physical discomfort, and reduction in time and intensity of exercise.”

Just, you know, the basic building blocks of human development that children need to grow as well-adjusted, physically and mentally healthy teenagers and adults.

As Høeg and the other authors explain, this necessarily means that forcing children to mask fails any objective standard of harms and benefits.

Effectiveness of child masking has not been demonstrated, while documented harms of masking in children are diverse and non-negligible and should prompt careful reflection. Recommendations for masking children fail basic harm-benefit analyses.

Their next section is a complete dismantling of the CDC and the US public health bureaucracy, how they handled Covid, and how poor an example this sets for future pandemics.

In many locations in North America, children as young as two years of age were required to wear face masks daily for multiple consecutive hours, both indoors and outdoors, in school and childcare settings [1], [2]. This stood in stark contrast to European countries where masking was never recommended for children under the age of six and, in many countries, never under age twelve [3]. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s child masking recommendations deviated substantially from international guidelines [3], [4], [5]. The CDC continues to recommend masks for children down to age two in certain settings [1], [6], and this is in the absence of strategies for exiting these restrictions. In the event of a future public health threat, clear and consistent communication from public health officials about the criteria that will be used to withdraw temporary public health recommendations while data are gathered could serve to ease public anxiety, lessen distrust, and facilitate a return to a more normal life wherein ineffective recommendations are promptly discarded.

It’s a calm, thorough demolition of the incompetence and authoritarianism of the US public health establishment.

They repeat that there is no evidence to support masking children and explain that there is no real-world evidence showing the effectiveness of child mask mandates, with zero randomized controlled trials conducted to determine whether masking kids would prevent the spread of Covid. It’s inexcusable to mandate a policy with no evidence, but even worse considering the demonstrable harms.

“Speech, language, and learning: Humans rely on visual information provided by a speaker’s face to decode speech. Seeing mouth movements and facial gestures accelerates recognition of words and enhances speech comprehension [12], [19], [20], [21]. The integration of audio and facial information is crucial to speech perception and development. Visually impaired children often have delays in speech and language development [22], which may be due, at least in part, to reduced ability to perceive,” they write.

Masks prevent children from learning, from seeing mouth movements to facial gestures. They fundamentally detract from a child’s ability to develop speech and language. Among many other problems covered in the full study.

These harms were well-known before Covid. This isn’t new information, and it’s obvious common sense. So why did public health authorities ignore it, in favor of promoting evidence-free policies and mandates?

There are few reasonable explanations: panic, fear, or incompetence. Likely some combination of all three.

Forcing their absurd, fatalistic, hyper-safetyism on adults was and is one thing. Imposing it on children is another. And their refusal to admit they were wrong meant the growth and development of kids were most certainly harmed and stunted for years, while ensuring that there would be terrified, misinformed parents who would continue to force their kids to wear masks indefinitely.

When you consider those consequences, rationality fades, and a disturbing likelihood of malicious intent becomes a lot more realistic.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Ian Miller

Ian Miller is the author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates.” His work has been featured on national television broadcasts, national and international news publications and referenced in multiple best selling books covering the pandemic. He writes a Substack newsletter, also titled “Unmasked.”

From the Brownstone Institute

By  David Thunder 

The Irish Government has announced it is scrapping its plans to introduce significant updates to Ireland’s existing hate speech laws, as there is not enough support for the proposed legislation. Remarkably, the legislation had already passed the lower house of the Irish Parliament by an overwhelming margin (114 in favour, 10 against) in April 2023, but began to stall in the Senate as its more problematic features came to light. It had gained international notoriety when it came under fire from X’s CEO, Elon Musk.

Free speech advocates across the world should find solace in the fact that a regressive piece of legislation with dire implications for free speech, is now dead in the water, in spite of being a “sure thing” less than two years ago. This is a piece of legislation, after all, that had already comfortably passed in the lower house of parliament, was supported by all major political parties, and was initially only resisted by a handful of journalists, politicians, and political activists. The Irish government had staked their reputation on the passage of this hate speech law, so they would not have withdrawn it at the last minute unless they had come under intense political pressure.

Ireland already has had hate speech legislation on its statute books for over 30 years: the 1989 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act. However, that legislation set the bar for prosecution quite high, insisting on the need to demonstrate that someone is knowingly and/or intentionally inciting hatred. Consequently, only a handful of convictions have been secured in over 30 years.

The government sought to remedy this situation by drafting the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill in 2022, which would have introduced a more stringent and wide-ranging hate speech regime in Ireland. Had it passed, the Hatred and Hate Offences Bill would have had the following legal effects:

• In the 1989 legislation, categories protected from hate speech were race, religion, colour, nationality, membership of the travelling community, or sexual orientation. The 2022 Bill expanded this list of protected characteristics to include gender, sex characteristic, disability, and descent. So the basis for pressing hate speech charges would have been significantly broadened, had this law been passed.
• In the 1989 legislation, Gardaí (police) may seize physical objects from a person’s home during a search-and-seizure operation, if they “reasonably” suspect such objects contain offensive material that was intended to be published. The updated legislation would have given Gardaí the power to compel citizens to hand over passwords or encryption keys to access their privately stored data.
• The 1989 legislation allows Gardaí to seize physical materials in the context of a search-and-seizure operation, while the new legislation explicitly authorized Gardaí to confiscate electronic data, but also to retain and copy it for as long as needed for the investigation.
• The 1989 legislation allows someone charged with a hate speech offence to avoid prosecution by showing that he did not in fact intend to stir up hatred, and was unaware that the material in question was “threatening, abusive, or insulting.” The 2002 legislation would have made it easier to secure a prosecution, by allowing convictions in case an individual was “reckless” as to whether their actions could incite hatred.
• The 2002 Hatred and Hate Offences Bill would have introduced steeper penalties for hate speech offences. Whereas the established penalty is up to two years in jail, the revised penalty is up to five years in jail.

In spite of the defeat of the government’s new hate speech legislation, Ireland’s Justice Minister Helen McEntee is adamant that she will pass another version of this Bill, dealing with “hate crime” rather than “hate speech,” and has suggested the revised bill would retain the expanded list of protected characteristics, including “gender.” Furthermore, the 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act, which remains the law of the land, contains deeply problematic features, including the right to search private property based on a “reasonable suspicion” that an individual possesses offensive material intended for publication.

Thus, the battle for free speech in Ireland is far from over. Nevertheless, this was something of a David-and-Goliath situation: all major political parties had backed the Hatred and Hate Offences Bill, and it had already passed the lower house of the Parliament by an overwhelming margin – 114 votes in favour, 10 against. Only a handful of mainstream journalists in Ireland spoke out against the Hate Offences Bill. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, along with numerous other NGOs, came out in its favour, and expressed “disappointment” that the Justice Minister was dropping all elements of it pertaining to hate speech.

So this is certainly a victory free speech advocates should savour and learn from. A small but powerful coalition of voices and organizations, including Senator Michael McDowell, Free Speech Ireland, Elon Musk, and ADF International, were able to make enough of an intelligent “ruckus” about the Hate Offences Bill to sink it. Champions of free speech across the world would do well to learn from this uphill victory.

Republished from the author’s Substack 

Author

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society in Pamplona, Spain, and a recipient of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal research grant (2017-2021, extended through 2023), awarded by the Spanish government to support outstanding research activities. Prior to his appointment to the University of Navarra, he held several research and teaching positions in the United States, including visiting assistant professor at Bucknell and Villanova, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program. Dr Thunder earned his BA and MA in philosophy at University College Dublin, and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.