Sharon Lee: Can't compare masking kids to masking medical professionals

To The Daily Sun:

I’d like to thank Bernadette Loesch for her consideration and response to my letter of Aug. 5. Unfortunately she is discussing my apples to her oranges. She compares EMTs, ER doctors, and surgeons using masks in situations where there are open wounds or cuts to 7-year-olds who aren't sick wearing masks eight hours a day in a school. No one is arguing that medical professionals in a surgery setting shouldn't keep the environment as sterile as possible.

The argument/fact is cloth masks from Target on 7-year-olds have incredible negative impacts on kids and are far from “state of the art.” In fact there are many randomized control trials that show that masks of any kind do not significantly reduce the transmission of respiratory disease (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029744; https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/201/4/491/861190; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0013998; and many more. Look them up).

If Bernadette wants to discuss emotional lows and cringing, how about crying every time I see a line of faceless kids in the after school program crossing from TTCC to Kelley Park? How about mothers and fathers that can’t afford to homeschool whose hearts are broken by their kids coming home with headaches and anxiety because of wearing those “state of the art” masks? How about kids committing suicide because they can’t live a normal childhood and see and touch their friends? That makes me cringe.

Sharon Lee

Bristol