We are the only so-called developed country that is extensively forcing masks on school children. It is criminal child abuse to do this, it is futile and it hinders educational and social development in addition to terrifying children about virus that poses zero threat to them. The powers that be don’t do real research that would show the pointlessness of masking. Instead they make up research slanted to show what the teachers’ unions want. From Twitter and an interchange with a parent I got the attached chart. For those not from our area, Moorhead is in Minnesota on the Red River and Fargo is just across the border in North Dakota. They are a single metro area. Moorhood schools mandate masks as does the Fargo school district. West Fargo does not. I asked, and several people responded, that not only is mask wearing not mandated, it is minimal, with perhaps 5% to 10% of children in West Fargo schools wearing them. That is important because to really understand whether masks might make a difference you have to know if they are being worn in the comparator schools. In addition, since this is a single metro area, the community rate is likely the same for all the schools, so that removes another significant potential confounder. While this isn’t scientific, and hopefully someone will turn it into real research, you can see that not only do the West Fargo schools not have a higher rate of cases, they have a far lower rate. Now that likely isn’t because the students aren’t wearing masks, but it makes you wonder, and it certainly suggests that mask wearing is irrelevant at best to transmission.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Great example. Masks scare people into getting tested if they feel bad for any reason which in schools cause more to be tested because of useless contact tracing which causes more meaningless cases. In West Fargo they are getting back to normal life where if you feel bad you deal with it until you feel better and don’t care if you had Covid unless you have to go to the doctor.
There have been a number of indications – not sure the status of studies – that point to masks being virus vectors. Likely create a condition of enhanced and concentrated viral load.
A good one to watch in Hennepin County is Orono Schools and Westonka Schools. Neighboring districts, overlapping communities, similar size. Orono has had a mask mandate K-12 since Day 1. Westonka had masks optional for grades 8-12 from the start and optional for K-7 since October 4. District wide student case stats so far:
Week of 9/20: Orono 8, Westonka 10
Week of 9/27: Orono 21, Westonka 24
Week of 10/4: Orono 12, Westonka 17
Will be interesting to watch.
any sense on actual mask-wearing behavior at Westonka or whether the cases there were or weren’t wearing masks?
Very few Westonka 8-12th graders wear them (5-10% at most). More younger kids are masked currently (maybe 1/3) because the mandate was just lifted last week – but every day more kids take them off.
If masks work as intended, and if there is covid exposure, then they will act as covid collection devices. That is their entire purpose. I don’t find it entirely surprising that they might slightly increase incidence.
Maybe if we change the terminology (a very common strategy in the Marxists playbook) from ‘Mask’ to ‘Filter’ we can add some intelligence to the conversation. ‘Filters’ are rated in MERV’s and HEPA. Both standards use .3-10 microns as their measurement range. As a ‘filter’ gets dirtier, it’s performance IMPROVES since the particles collected actually reduce the size of the openings. There becomes a point when enough of the openings are blocked, that the ‘filter’ can’t pass what’s expected to get by and it has to be changed.
In the context of a school face ‘filter’, sub micron aerosols are only potentially blocked when a HEPA ‘filter’ is very dirty. When a minimal amount of air is passing through, just before you can’t breath any more. Putting on a clean ‘filter’ is the worst thing you can do, as it now passes submicron particles again with ease. If you want to have some fun in the classroom, put a few chlorine tables in your pocket and see how long it takes the room full of ‘filtered’ classmates to ask what that nasty smell is …. the answer is : “it’s a virus” !!
Alternative “clickbait-y” headline: “Study proves that twice as many MASKED school children contracted the deadly Delta variant of the Coronavirus than UNMASKED school children!!!”