Unfortunately, since this is also a political issue, erring on the side of caution with mask requirements and being wrong generates more mistrust amongst the older people who have opted out of the vaccine (i.e. those already distrustful of the CDC and at risk of serious illness just have one more reason to dig in and ignore the advice to get vaccinated).
It's possible that such mask mandates for young children may prove harmful because they further entrench anti-vax sentiment (even if is ultimately proven that they have marginal benefits in reducing spread).
This is a fascinating and complicated issue indeed...
Being treated like a toxic disease vector for two years surely has direct health downsides. Not learning to read faces surely has direct health downsides. Breathing god knows what those masks are made of every day surely has health downsides.
And it isn’t even my job to prove any of that. People that want to force kids to wear masks at school need to prove those aren’t something to worry about. They can’t just shrug they crap off and say “yeah well covid”. We are well beyond being able to simply use covid as an excuse to enact some restriction. Prove kids need masks and prove they won’t suffer long or even short term effects from wearing masks all day. Then and only then can you even dream of forcing kids to wear masks.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
It's the older kids (who could have received the vaccine but opted out) who will have more "adult-like" patterns of transmission and should be more of a concern (not for their own health, really, but they might infect their elderly or infirmed unvaccinated relatives). One would expect masking to help prevent spread from these people.
But of course... these kids and their families likely already self-select and associate closesly with other anti-vaxers outside of school to begin with, so school seems like the least of their worries. At a certain point you kind of have to ask whether it's worth trying to protect people from themselves.