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How Do We Trust the AAP Again?
I have a five-week-old baby, and I must admit, they’re pretty boring. Up until this point, all they do is sleep, eat and cry. There’s very little time actually awake, although over the last few days, we’ve seen more time with his eyes open, ready to engage the world. And what do we do with him when he’s awake? We talk to him, we make faces at him with exaggerated expressions, we talk to him some more, we sing to him. This is, I think, a natural way for humans to interact with tiny babies; we want to show them our smiles to signal to them that they are safe and loved and we’re exuding happiness in their direction. This natural understanding of how babies work is what made this statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics so enraging:
Babies and young children study faces, so you may worry that having masked caregivers would harm children’s language development. There are no studies to support this concern. Young children will use other clues like gestures and tone of voice. https://t.co/Rj1pnT6Bfk pic.twitter.com/rrO9yTujNi
— American Academy of Pediatrics (@AmerAcadPeds) August 12, 2021
The AAP would like you to believe that we need studies to confirm what we all know: that babies’ development is tied to seeing and responding to faces. In the absence of these studies, babies and toddlers should spend yet another year with masked caregivers, and that the latter can be masked yet another year.
There are a few pediatricians with enough integrity to push back on this outlandish claim from the AAP:
It’s time for a major reframe. Given what we know about kids’ declining mental health, early literacy/language/IQ deterioration in small children, etc—it is clear that masking a child is a MEDICAL INTERVENTION. Parents should demand efficacy data, and info abt adverse effects.
— elizabeth bennett (@ebennett74) August 18, 2021
But here’s the thing: While we may not have studies (because they won’t commission them) about the negative effects of masks, we know the importance of faces. The AAP does too, because they used to tell parents as part of their education efforts:
This is vital information, and since their latest claims about masking and development, this page has now gone missing from their website:
This isn’t just the AAP making absurd statements, they are actively disappearing information they once deemed vital in order to serve a narrative about masking young children and those around them.
In the coming months, the AAP is going to make statements about the safety and vital importance of vaccinating not just against COVID, but against the flu and other childhood illnesses. But now parents are required to double-check all of the information put forth by the medical body that we might have once trusted without the need to verify. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel equipped to analyze scientific and medical information like vaccine safety or the proper dosing of antibiotics; that’s why I have a pediatrician. But if my pediatrician is taking its guidance from the AAP, how can I? The AAP is destroying its credibility at a moment it needs it more than ever. If you want me to give my children an emergency use vaccine for a virus they’re not at risk of, the AAP is certainly going about it in an interesting way.
And the CDC? Don’t even get me started.
The CDC has altered its page showing age-stratified risk of hospitalization & death to obscure the negligible threat to kids. 1st image is prior chart, 2nd is current
They changed the ref group from 5-17 to 18-29, but simply put <1x for kids when it should be 0.1x (eg for death) pic.twitter.com/97iR5tuZZM
— Brumby (@the_brumby) August 18, 2021
Published in General
Guess what? It isn’t the anti-maskers politicizing the issue when the pro-maskers are reversing all previous info in the wake of Covid.
To the CDC, we are just 330 million disease vectors to be isolated.
If anything is more amazing than the AAP’s advice turning 180 degrees it’s that they apparently thought no one would notice.
We may be entering a very dark period in history as long as the Left has a stranglehold on information, speech, and thought. We have been warned countless times by people like Orwell, Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Solzhenitsyn, Ronald Reagan and many others. When I continue to see the subversion of once trusted institutions or history being rewritten, I am reminded of this:
And this from Heinlein:
My trust in pediatricians has been compromised by the extremely left-leaning political statements of some on social media regarding Trump, climate change, etc. Same goes for cardiologists and other doctors in my social network. When my physical therapist told me he listens to an ABC news podcast, I assume he’s mostly getting lefty news. I also think he probably doesn’t know that it’s biased or think that much about politics. And maybe I should listen. But I follow the Washington Post, NY Times, The Atlantic, and other “mainstream” news sources that seem to me to be pushing Covid fear and dunking on vaccine-skeptics who get sick and/or die. The lack of context about age or degree of illness and focus on case numbers is so frustrating.
Didn’t the AAP also endorse sex-free birth certificates? Aren’t they also promoting experimental hormonal treatments and childhood genital mutilation of sexually confused, delusional children?
Don’t trust AAP when anything becomes remotely political.
I think that was the AMA. I trust neither.
Even with the most optimistic assumptions about mask effectiveness, the net reduction in spread from mandates on kids would be infinitesimally small. What “science” could possibly arrive at a conclusion that 25 kids in the same room (with no surgical-suite levels of circulation/filtration/replacement) for seven hours breathing through dirty masks that let 60-90% of viral contamination pass thru even when worn properly would somehow produce an outcome with a measurably reduced risk of airborne spread? Even if the likely harms from the mask mandates are small, they still outweigh the minuscule hypothetical benefits.
Mask mandates on kids is symbolic kabuki solely about preserving the authority and image of people pretending they are Doing Something About It and certifying the bona fides of bureaucrats and non-profit pilot fish who implement the gestures.
The bottom line is that the AAP is comprised of white collar, managerial elite class people who are terrified of appearing to break ranks with their class zeitgeist. Masks now have political and cultural significance which trumps science and even the well-being of kids. Appearing to be part of the elite who are entrusted with Doing Something About It is more important than any duty of candor or of best policy.
You will notice that defenders of mask mandates NEVER explain why the mandates have not worked (nor lockdowns or magic six-foot rituals). Is it the masks? Their use? Or simply the fact that there is a lazy, inertial refusal to deal with the scope of serial asymptomatic small load transmission characteristic of the pandemic that made general suppression strategies blindingly stupid from jump? Only a policy in support of systematic efforts to build PPE-safety zones for the vulnerable had any chance of being useful. Wearing a bandana in a grocery store was never the answer or even part of the answer. And pretending to protect the kids while using them for political window-dressing is just evil.
Do not trust any organization. They have *all* been corrupted. Do not trust what the media tells you. If you are lucky, you can find a doctor that is not plugged into the narrative and you can trust them.
The AAP is simply a political, not medical, organization. In June 2020 they stated that schools should reopen. A week later Trump said schools should reopen. A few days later the AAP reversed its earlier recommendation because beating Trump was more important than the welfare of school age children.
The medical establishments have certainly done much in the last few years (the last 18 months especially) to give the public plenty of reason not to trust their statements and recommendations.
Also more of the public should be aware that the only a small minority of pediatricians are members of the the AAP, and only a minority of medical doctors are members of the AMA. So I do not consider their pronouncements representative of the profession as a whole.
That doesn’t even pass the laugh test. As you note, any person who has held a baby knows that the baby’s primary visual interest is your face. The face of a person cradling a newborn baby is at exactly the right focal distance for the baby’s developing eyesight. Babies react to the facial expressions of other people more than any other thing that the baby sees. Any person who has held a baby knows that covering your face is going to significantly reduce the baby’s ability to learn what is most important to that baby – how to interact with you, and by extension, other humans.
What’s worse is that nothing has gotten better since!
One could understand the desire for victory, though not approve wicked deeds–but now these people are even crazier after victory! Unless, of course, the enemy was not Trump–but ordinary Americans, who are as yet not quite defeated…
More people talking about this AAP memory-holing exercise: ~10k likes, I assume from the somewhat liberal crowd, this isn’t a conservative or right-wing account…
I hope Bethany asks her pediatrician these exact questions. Maybe show the doctor this post and comments.
Very nice.
We are going to follow the science . . . but we are not going to actually do any science that might possibly conflict with our predetermined conclusions.
Obviously the time of trusting government information about anything is long gone. Our institutions have lost all credibility. And the public health institutions are the least trustworthy. Their job is not to truthfully explain or inform, it is to control behavior towards what they think is best. Even if they have to lie to accomplish it. And this is not new, it has been the case at least the “Spanish flu”.
What I found most remarkable is their valid implication that babies exhale carbon dioxide. Its a pollutant, according to the Supreme Court. Its about to make the world uninhabitable, according to Greta, and some of it comes from babies!
Wow! Homerun @BrianWatt !! Anyone who can skillfully employ an extended quote from “My Dinner with Andre“ is my hero!!!
So many doctors are, individually, terrific. So many of their professional organizations have lost their collective minds.
Bar associations seem to have as well.