In the past year, the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) released its Reopen & Redesign Plan, which stated: “The health, safety and well-being of our CVUSD students, staff and the broader Conejo community is of the utmost importance to our District.”
This begs the question, “Just what is our understanding of the terms ‘health’ and ‘safety’?”
Hard numbers tell us that during the entire year and a half of COVID, Ventura County, population 841,734, has reported a single death for a child under the age of 18, and a total of three deaths for ages 18-24. This means the risk of death from COVID for a child under 18 in our county is .0001 percent, and .0003 percent for a young person aged 18-24. This is statistically zero.
Even with a nearly non-existent risk factor, the board of CVUSD is choosing to mandate “safety” protocols, including masking and social distancing, both of which are well documented to cause harm. The Epoch Times reports that a laboratory at the University of Florida recently analyzed six protective masks submitted by parents in Gainesville, Florida, who had concerns about the harm masks caused to their children when worn throughout the school day. The lab’s findings detected the presence of eleven dangerous pathogens, including the bacteria that cause diphtheria, pneumonia and meningitis.
Dr. Ben Carson, the renowned and youngest ever Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, recently stated in an interview on Fox News, “It’s almost like they are having a war on our children. First of all, you’re making young children grow up through a socialization process where they can’t see people’s facial expressions. That’s a very important part of socialization.”
The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) reported in “Masking Children: Tragic, Unscientific, and Damaging” on March 10, 2021, that “During April to October 2020 in the US, emergency room visits linked to mental health problems (e.g. anxiety) for children aged 5-11 increased by nearly 25% and increased by 31% for those aged 12-17 years old as compared to the same period in 2019.”
The article continued, “A child unexposed to nature has little defense against a minor illness, which can become overwhelming due to the lack of a primed ‘tuned-up’ and ‘taxed’ immune system. A robust immune system shortens an illness as a consequence of the presence of preprogrammed anamnestic immunity. Preventing children from such interactions with nature and germs can and does lead to overwhelming infections and serious consequences to the health and life of a child.”
In an article on PsychologyToday.com by Emma Seppälä Ph.D., we learn that: “We are profoundly social creatures. At the root of all of our desires is a need to be loved and to belong. A sense of social connection is one of our fundamental human needs and it impacts our mental health, physical health, and longevity.
“One telling study showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. On the flip side, strong social connection leads to a 50% increased chance of longevity. Social connection strengthens our immune system (research by Steve Cole shows that genes impacted by social connection also code for immune function and inflammation), helps us recover from disease faster, and may even lengthen our life.”
As CVUSD fights a threat that isn’t there, Let Them Breathe, a non-profit community dedicated to advocating for a rational, equitable and science-based approaches to eliminate COVID-19 mask requirements for children, continues to press its efforts to liberate children from these requirements. On June 4, the same law firm that successfully sued California to reopen schools statewide sent a legal demand letter to the California Department of Health on behalf of Let Them Breathe. The non-profit announced: “We are partnering with Reopen CA Schools and their 15K members to file a lawsuit to end student mask-mandates, over-quarantining and asymptomatic testing – all arbitrary rules based on fear instead of science – and which harm our kids and deny them their right to an education.”
The fight over who will determine what “health” and “safety” look like in our schools has just begun.
