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Op-Ed: Mistreating children as ‘following
the science’
[The Center Square] David S. D’Amato |
The Heartland Institute
For roughly two years,
parents of small children and even toddlers have been forced to mask
them, to cover the faces of kids who, confused and hurt, have fought to
remove their masks and forge their first human connections. Last week, a
state court in Sangamon County, Illinois, granted a temporary
restraining order preventing school districts in the state from
enforcing an unconstitutional command imposed unilaterally by Gov. J.B.
Pritzker. |
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 Pritzker’s order, originally issued in August 2021 without the
input of state lawmakers, attempted to skirt judicial review by placing the
child masking rule within the ambit of the state’s department of education.
Americans have come to accept the assumptive overstepping of our executives and
the meek submission of our legislatures.
We live in a permanent state of emergency in which, our rulers
argue, citizen democracy and individual rights would imperil our safety.
Illinoisans, like Americans more generally, expect and deserve to have an active
role in the democratic process and thus in the rules that affect our lives and
those of our children. This ruling from an Illinois court signals a respect for
the traditional separation of powers that defines our system of government.
It has become clear that the “follow the science” narrative – which has
effectively shut down reasoned democratic debate and imposed harmful,
life-altering rules on our children – was a political tactic to silence dissent,
not an evidence-based philosophy for our protection. Two years into this
political catastrophe, parents and citizens have begun to demand a meaningful
say in the democratic process and a substantive role in the decisions our
children are living with every day.
Americans are now living amidst an unprecedented mental health crisis, orders of
magnitude more dangerous to children and teenagers than is COVID-19. Despite the
grown-up self-delusion that says children are resilient, this crisis has fallen
most heavily on children, who are decidedly not resilient, but confused, scared,
and vulnerable. These children represent the limits of our care and compassion;
they have no money, pressure groups, lobbyists, or political clout – no way to
fight back against the abuse to which we’ve subjected them.
Many articles have misleadingly pointed out that there is no evidence showing
that masks harm children. They state that there are no solid studies on the
compelled masking of children as if that favors covering the faces of children
against their will. It’s far from clear, though, that the lack of good data
should favor the most extreme and authoritarian policy idea. As Vinay Prasad
writes in criticism of forced child masking, “The CDC cannot ‘follow the
science’ because there is no relevant science.” The next time you read an
article pointing triumphantly to the lack of evidence that masks harm children,
think about what that means. We must state the point clearly for those not
paying attention: a proper study on masking children would require something
patently unethical, masking children. Of course, we never organized and carried
out such a study. We knew it was wrong before partisanship compromised our
critical faculties.
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The truth is that we do know what covering their
faces does to kids. Studies have shown that “emotional reading was
strongly irritated by the presence of a mask,” and that “[f]aces are
among the most important visual stimuli,” particularly for children.
Add to that what we know about the importance of faces to humans and
our well-being, and it becomes clear that we’re not following the
science, but resisting it as myopically and insensitively as
possible.
Illinois politicians are infamous for their corruption and tin-ear
approach to the issues that are important to the people of the
state, but recently introduced bills bring these patterns to new
heights. State Rep. Bob Morgan, for example. recently introduced a
bill that would automatically (whether the patient has given express
permission or not) entrust Illinoisans’ vaccination records to a
centralized, government-run database. Pritzker’s promise to
challenge the restraining order is in line with this undemocratic
and authoritarian approach.
It’s important to recognize at this point that coercively masking
children against the judgments of their parents or legal guardians
is not something that comes with an inherent left or right
character. Indeed, before the pandemic (and the Trump presidency),
we might have expected that pro-choice public policies would
naturally be taken up by liberals and progressives, given their
traditional concern for civil liberties and bodily autonomy.
But history and politics are and have always been more accident than
principle, more feeling than theory, so we have vulnerable adults
unmasked at pro sports arenas and children masked in small groups
with their classmates. At every stage of the pandemic, we have
failed our children. We’ve comforted ourselves with platitudes about
their resilience, but the truth is children are vulnerable – and
we’re seeing that fact express itself in a terrible and worsening
mental health crisis. If we as adults want to indulge our panics,
manias and neuroses, we should be free to, but let us at least stop
foisting these on children, to whom COVID-19 presents no serious
risk.
David S. D’Amato (d.s.damato@gmail.com) is an attorney and a policy
advisor at The Heartland Institute.
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