Prominent medical journals highlight harm to children from masks, death risk from COVID vaccines

The range of acceptable opinion on COVID-19 mitigation efforts may be widening, with peer-reviewed medical journals recently publishing research  finding that masks likely harm schoolchildren and questioning whether benefits from COVID-19 vaccines outweigh risks.

Measured carbon dioxide content in "inhaled air," observed in a study of masked German schoolchildren, was at least three-fold higher than German law allows, according to a research letter published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics.

Last week, the journal Vaccines, affiliated with the American Society for Virology, published research that estimates every three COVID-19 deaths prevented by vaccination are offset by two deaths "inflicted by vaccination," using Israeli and European data.

The papers share a lead author, Harald Walach, a professor in Poznan University of the Medical Sciences' Pediatric Clinic in Poland and University of Witten/Herdecke's psychology department in Germany.

"Most of the complaints reported by children" in a Germany-wide register on mask-wearing, including irritability, headache and reluctance to go to school, "can be understood as consequences of elevated carbon dioxide levels in inhaled air," the JAMA Pediatrics paper said. It cited the "dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time."

In light of "impairments attributable to hypercapnia," or the bloodstream buildup of CO2, policymakers should reconsider requiring children to wear masks, it said.

The study passed muster at the University of Witten/Herdecke's ethics board, given that it required each child to wear various masks for a total of 15 minutes, in contrast to the "several hours" they spend masked in school, the trial protocol said.