No. of Recommendations: 10
LurkerMom:
'COVID rules are blamed for 23% dive in young children's development: Disturbing study shows scores in three key cognitive tests slumped between 2018 and 2021, with face mask rules among possible culprits'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10247315/...Umm, did you read the
actual study?
I'm going to take wild guess and say "no". Well, maybe it's not such a wild guess because the study doesn't actually state what the venerable Daily Mail claims about masking (although even the Daily Mail used the word "possible" in its copy).
First, that study does not appear to be published or peer-reviewed.
Second, the study says that children born
during the pandemic have worse scores on social and motor screening tests at 6 months.
Perhaps a more likely cause is the stress in parents brought on in the early months of the pandemic by hundreds of people dying daily and emergency rooms and ICUs filling beyond capacity.
And, in separate studies, Canadian researchers report increased risk of developmental delays among 1-year-olds born between April and November 2020 and a link between higher levels of distress experienced by pregnant women during the pandemic and changes in their babies' brains. (The studies are also awaiting peer review.)And the Brown study has all kinds of disclaimers, such as:
One aspect also not investigated here is the impact of mask-wearing by the study staff during child visits and assessments [53]. The inability of infants to see full facial expressions may have eliminated non-verbal cues, muffled instructions, or otherwise altered the understanding of the test questions and instructions."So, sorry, despite what the Daily Mail suggests, there's no definitive reason that scores declined... and no reason to believe they will not rebound.
But RFK Jr is gonna' love you.
https://hechingerreport.org/how-the-pandemic-is-af...The study you cited:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.10... 