WHO: Kids 5 and under shouldn't be masked

WHO shifts guidance on child masking citing "psycho-social" and other developmental issues

Gulf News reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) has shifted its masking guidance and now states that kids ages five and under should not be masked.

The report also says the WHO indicates that kids ages six to 11 should wear masks depending on the level of transmission in the local area and a child's ability to use the masks.

“The new guidance from WHO and Unicef is in contrast to that from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recommends that children aged two years and older should wear a mask in public when they cannot practice social distancing,” Gulf News reported.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky indicated this past week that the agency wants to see mass COVID-19 vaccination of students and would press for continued masking in schools well into the winter months.

Walensky said that just because cases were falling, people can’t be “complacent” heading into winter and that “We also know that from previous data that schools that have had masks in place were three-and-a-half times less likely to have school outbreaks requiring school closure.”

“So, right now we are going to continue to recommend masks in all schools for all people in those schools and we will look forward to scaling out pediatric vaccination during this period of time,” said Walensky.

Walensky failed to explain that even in masked districts, children are being sent home to quarantine nor that most masking data in schools lack a control group. An example of that would be the ASC’s school mask report published in an opinion article in the NY Times. The report, which touted studying one million students in North Carolina, was widely criticized for having no control group but yet asserted masking was the reason for low virus transmission.

In the NY Times opinion piece, ABC Science Collaborative admitted the lack of a control group and that they relied on “outside sources for comparisons.”

“Because North Carolina had a mask mandate for all K-12 schools, we could not compare masked schools to unmasked schools. To understand the preventive impact masks can have, we looked outside North Carolina for comparisons,” the ASC wrote.

The ASC also wrote that “Until all children can get vaccinated, masks remain a well-researched solution for lowering the risk of getting Covid.”