So, the answer to the havoc mask wearing wreaked is more mask wearing?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. – Albert Einstein

I truly believed the post-pandemic era insanity had finally run it’s course. I foolishly thought that, like that fabled Ecclesiastes preacher professed, I’d seen, read, and heard it all. But every time I settle in for a reasonable dose of normalcy some attention-seeking medical “professional,” pandering politician, or other lower life form looks me squarely in the eye only to utter those terrifying words, “Hold my beer!”

This time the ludicrous lapse in logic arrived in the form of a Chicago Tribune op ed by three local medical “professionals” claiming the best defense against the triple threat of RSV, the flu, and lingering COVID cases is re-masking our children.

I’ll pause for a bit to let that abject absurdity sink in…

So, let me get this straight. The answer to the immunological havoc wreaked by ill-advised COVID isolation and mask wearing mandates is even more mask wearing? That’s a lot like saying the answer to all the Florida flooding is more rain. For reference purposes we’ve discussed RSV and the impending 2022-23 flu season in great detail here and here.

Our intrepid authors, one from DePaul University and two from the Northwestern School of Medicine, claim that re-masking children in daycare facilities and schools “is the single best action we can take to reduce cases, decrease the burdens on children’s hospitals, and save lives.”

So, we should further suppress children’s continually developing immune systems just to make their reaction to this pathogen trifecta exponentially worse next year? To call that a “novel medical paradigm” would be the mildest of understatements.

And save lives? As bad as RSV and the flu currently are, there is absolutely no evidence indicating child mortality rates will be worse than any previous iteration. One child under five has died of RSV in California, and while every death diminishes all of us, it’s hardly a statistically significant sample.

As far as this year’s flu, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that, of the 1,300 current U.S. influenza deaths, just 5 of the victims have been children. And we all know that children are not at risk for dying from COVID, particularly when it comes to the omicron variants.

Our terrible trio also claimed that “There is little scientific evidence that any of those concerns [about mask wearing] is true,” citing one National Geographic article that’s blocked by a paywall.

Yes! Because NatyGeo is the first place I go when I want to get medical advice.

Ain’t it funny how I can come up with dozens of studies, like this one, that attribute a 20 percent or greater decline in childhood development as a result of forced COVID isolation and mask wearing. Better yet, ask any teacher – like my wife – about the post-mitigation spike in student physical fights, the lack of age-level gym class coordination, and an inability to contend with any mildly difficult social interaction.

I’d hardly call that “no scientific evidence.”

Our op-ed authors also claim that vaccines are the second-best defense against the flu, but the entire medical profession shot themselves in the collective foot by insisting upon mandated COVID vaccinations instead of encouraging folks to get the shot. So now, in classic case of an eminently predictable Newtonian equal and opposite reaction, Americans are refusing to get flu shots, too.

But what’s even more terrifying than watching these maladies hammer our children is we have three individuals who somehow managed to endure four years of pre-med, four years of medical school and three to seven years in residency without learning the least bit about the concept of cause and effect. They seem to believe that we simply wake up one morning only to hear our immune systems say, “Hey buddy! You’re good to go. I’m off to spend the rest of my time in Malibu.”

The medical evidence is beyond question. If we are foolish to re-mask our children this year, it will only serve to further compromise their immune systems to the point where RSV and the flu actually will start killing them next year.

And the fact that a journalist has to explain this stark reality to three “medical professionals” goes a long way towards explaining my utter lack of post-COVID faith in the medical community.