Are Covid curbs on our pupils doing them more harm than good?

A new school year begins and here we go again.

Already children not able to come to school, sent home, classes closed, children in bubbles, and teachers isolating – education severely disrupted throughout the province.

And despite all the evidence masks don’t work and are harmful, we are still insisting our children

wear masks, yet in all other parts of the UK children don’t have to wear them.

Here’s what SAGE says: “Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as mask-wearing and social distancing shape the environment in which a virus transmits and may act as selection pressures for increased viral transmission”.

Why has there been still no assessment of the benefits of wearing them, if any, or of the damage they cause?

Why is society still labouring under a flawed PCR test, which is far too sensitive and is producing

huge numbers of “cases” which aren’t cases at all?

According to one professor 5,000 virus particles are needed for a person to be infected or infectious, yet our PCR test is set up to detect four! We are using a cycle frequency of 45 cycles, according to the Northern and the Southern Health trusts, yet the inventor recommended 25 cycles. This means we are sending children home who have tested positive but are neither infected nor infectious, damaging their education and potentially damaging them.

The key issue surely, is have children been helped by the Covid policies? Are the sacrifices made by the children justified?

Exams abandoned, sport curtailed, education – and therefore life chances –

damaged, self harm increasing, mental health in crisis... the UNESCO report on the effects of Covid policy on children is damning, and cites 12 adverse effects starting with interrupted learning.

So, if we put children at the centre of decision making-how would we answer the following questions?

Why do children need masks to protect them when they have a 99.998% survival chance, and when Prof Carl Heneghan of Oxford indicates there is no evidence that masks are protecting children and teachers in schools.

Are children being protected or harmed by being sent home to isolate? How is their learning being affected? Where is the attempt to balance the miniscule risk to children from Covid-19 against the widespread potential for harm?

Worryingly – why is no one asking these questions?

Hugh McCarthy

MSc BSc (Hons) BA

Former principal

Killicomaine Junior High School in Portadown