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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I’d really appreciate folks who disagree that in-person education for kids is a priority providing substantive evidence to support that position.  So far, I’ve seen none.  If I’m missing it, I want to see.  
[/quote]
Who is saying that?

Like people already said, schools are open. Sure, there have been some temporary switches to virtual for outbreaks but there's seemingly no threat of all-virtual all the time.

I read through this packet yesterday and it didn't seem to offer anything new.

If we're talking about what we'd like to see discussed - where's the support for masks being harmful? That's what I expected to see in this toolkit because a lot of people seem to be making that claim. But the toolkit authors simply say, "Potential harms from long-term masking are poorly understood, and reports on mask removal have noted social and emotional benefits for students."

That's very similar to the language used to evaluate masks effectiveness, which is more or less a big shrug.

So, again, what's new here?[/quote]

They're proposing transitioning to optional masking by February 15.

I'm most interested in the issue of masking children under 6, who aren't masked anywhere else in the world. That fact alone is the best evidence of its harms. Literally every other public agency in the world has considered the evidence on child development and concluded, through each sure and variant, that it's inappropriate to mask children under 6 in care/school. Many have never masked kids under 12, with no obvious adverse impacts.

Masking our youngest children is not a benign intervention. Children need to see full faces (https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fdev0000750) during the forty hours they spend in daycare each week in order to learn (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-child-language/article/abs/attention-to-the-mouth-and-gaze-following-in-infancy-predict-language-development/209AED7224CC2D4C42D72A4109F00918) to speak (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096517303028?via%3Dihub), process emotions (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666535221001221#bib6), read social cues (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1990.tb00885.x), and build the foundation for literacy (https://archive.md/yM9cv). Even the CDC’s masking webpage acknowledges the costs of masking around young children (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/types-of-masks.html#masks-situations).

Some argue that there is “no known evidence” that masks are harmful to children’s development. This is because obvious ethical concerns (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666535221001221#bib6) preclude any review board from approving a controlled study to quantify the developmental impacts of masking young children. Yet longitudinal (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34401887/) studies and other relevant research (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257740) are emerging that measures those harms:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33891614/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7462459/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669432/full

[/quote]

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