By Shane Smith

There is nothing that so perfectly symbolizes the complete failure of our government’s pandemic response quite like the face mask. Despite the fact that no science has ever existed to support the notion of widespread mask usage as an effective safeguard against viral infection, schools, mayors, and entire states have mandated their use. Thus forcing adults and children to suffer in order to merely go about their daily lives or receive an education. And while some states and cities have seen the error of their ways, and repealed the mandates, all too many politicians are in denial, and bullheadedly refusing to budge on the issue.

In this sense, masks have become almost a new religion to a disturbingly large segment of the population, with fights and screaming matches breaking out over a maskless face. We’ve seen footage of violent arrests of non-violent people, the inhuman abuse hurled at bare faces, all over the cloth germ farm that we’re told somehow acts as a shield against a microscopic virus. Imagine what the space aliens must be thinking, as they sit back and watch the chaos unfold from a safe distance.

By now though, enough evidence has accumulated that proves that masks do nothing to slow the spread of COVID-19. When Texas lifted its mask mandate, the usual establishment experts predicted doom. Biden called it “neanderthal thinking.” Over a month later, Texas cases are significantly lower, while states with the most restrictive mask mandates are seeing COVID cases skyrocket. Anthony Fauci was at a loss for words when confronted about Texas’ declining cases. He muttered a variation of “wait two weeks!,” and the obsequious news anchor accepted the answer.

In Florida, a comparison of COVID cases between counties with mandates in schools, versus counties where schools have a mask-optional policy, have found that case numbers are actually worse in the counties where schools require masks.

Every other comparison between U.S. counties based on mask policy shows no difference. The virus spreads regardless. But this doesn’t matter to the mask cultists. The face coverings may be nothing more than an empty talisman, but to them that doesn’t appear to matter at all. Mask-wearing has become an act of vanity, of appearance of virtue and compassion. Their strong emotional attachment to mask-wearing overrides their critical thinking ability, and so they continue to support mandates despite the evidence. There are many now who will live out the rest of their days behind a mask.

Nowhere are the mask cultists so entrenched, and so able to wield unchecked power, than in our schools. School children have borne the brunt of the authoritarian hypochondria that has arisen like a psychological plague over the past year, and it appears that they will be the last group to be liberated from pandemic panic. The 2020-21 school year will surely go down as one of the greatest human rights crimes of our era: Abrupt school closures, off-and-on school re-openings, bizarre and abusive hygiene rituals, ridiculous “social distancing” measures, a strict prohibition on visitors, all accomplishing nothing more than needless suffering on the part of the kids.

Here in Norman, schools have been locked down like Alcatraz. Parents and grandparents haven’t been able to visit their classrooms all year. No school plays, musicals, or events, for an entire year. Masks are mandatory, and to see elementary students file into the building with masks on, and to be forced to put masks on my own kids just so they can receive an education, is miserable. And even while in school, there exists the ever-present threat of mandatory quarantines if a student so much as rubs their nose.

By now, though, all school staff have received their precious vaccines. We have available an abundance of treatment options for anyone who is at risk and happens to catch the virus. So what is the point of continuing the abusive pandemic theater in our schools? In truth, it’s nothing more than appeasement of the unions and administrators who are using the pandemic to extract as much value as they can in the midst of crisis. Our kids are suffering needlessly. This madness has to stop.

Despite the protestations of the mask cult, prolonged mask-wearing inflicts a great deal of harm on the children wearing them. The article, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 Era: A health hypothesis,” does a pretty good job of cataloguing these many harmful effects. To begin with, they are psychologically dehumanizing in a way that disproportionately affects children. Kids need to see the faces of their friends, and of their teacher. They need to read and understand facial expressions. Most importantly, they need to not live in mortal terror of an unmasked face. Masks contribute to fear, insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and headaches. They restrict airflow, activate the flight-or-fight response, cause the build-up of bacteria, hypercapnia, declining pH levels, and the deformation of developing ears.

All of this can lead to premature mortality, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and other horrific health outcomes. It can lead to lifelong psychological damage. Despite the claims of the authoritarian hypochondriacs, a mask is never “just a mask.”

And because COVID isn’t a real danger to kids, this abuse doesn’t accomplish anything. For children, the flu is more than twice as deadly as COVID-19. Avik Roy, of FREOPP, calculated that the chance of anyone under 15 dying of COVID is about one in a million.

Children also do not spread the virus. Researchers have studied this extensively, and found no evidence of child-to-adult transmission. In the study, “Spread of SARS-CoV2 in the Icelandic Population,” researchers used genome sequencing to contact trace COVID-positive individuals and found no evidence that children spread the virus. Another study out of Korea, “Role of children in household transmission of COVID-19,” traced the contacts of 107 COVID+ children and found no incidence of transmission from children to anyone else.

In Sweden, schools have been open since last April – no masks, no restrictions. And out of Sweden’s 1.9 million children, no deaths, and only a handful of hospitalizations from COVID-19. The infection rate among their teachers was actually lower than among adults in the general population. I’ll also note that the Swedes did not buy into the mask scam. The entire Nation’s mask-compliance has hovered well under 15% during this entire ordeal, and their case rates are far lower than nations like the Czech Republic, where a 90% mask-compliance rate is the norm.

We must accept the fact that it is okay for children to catch COVID-19. And once they’ve caught it and recovered, they’re protected, possibly for life. Our immune system works its magic in their young bodies, protecting them better than any mask or lockdown or vaccine ever could.

Masks have become a lingering, hollow totem; the most recognizable symbol of the greatest, and purely man-made, public health failure in history. COVID-19 may have been deadly to a very specific segment of the population, but the hyperbolic, lockdown response has harmed millions who were never in danger from the virus.

The burden of proof for the mandates should be on those who wish to impose them in perpetuity. The mayors, city councils, and local school boards need to provide the science. Why don’t they? Because it isn’t there. Instead, what we are seeing is a rapid accumulation of evidence that not only do masks not stop the spread of COVID, but they inflict serious harm on the wearer.

We must actively resist every politician, bureaucrat, and board member who appears desperate to extend the pandemic far past its sell-by date. The pandemic is over. We have a vaccine, a multitude of effective treatments, and tens of millions who have developed natural immunity. The same people who shut down our schools, closed our businesses, and upended normal life as we know it now want the pandemic mindset to be a permanent part of our lives. No thank you. That road only leads to one place. We must elect a new generation of leaders, ones who will defend liberty most vigorously in times of crisis from the domestic enemies that we now know are everywhere.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren to give them a childhood at least as free and open as we experienced. If the American tradition means anything, it means liberty seen as an heirloom, our most priceless possession to protect, guard, and then pass on in better condition than when we received it. As inheritors of the greatest tradition of liberty the world has ever known, liberty is our birthright, but its defense is also our duty. It is far past time to stand to that duty, and actively work to revitalize that tradition for the sake of future generations.

Shane Smith is a pro-liberty writer based in Norman, Oklahoma. He blogs at: RepublicReborn.com, and can be reached at: digitalsunset86@gmail.com