ACT NOW: Ask your governor to lift COVID-19 restrictions in schools

COVID guidelines are harming our children

Transmission of COVID-19 among children in schools and daycares is very rare. In fact, according to published data by the CDC, 99.99815% of children who contract COVID-19 survive. Despite this, the CDC issued COVID guidance calling for a host of extreme mitigation measures that are harmful to schoolchildren and counterintuitive to learning. Since returning for in-person learning, children across the United States have been subjected to forced masking, being physically distanced from other students, plexiglass barriers, scheduled bathroom breaks, closed lunchrooms and playgrounds, daily temperature checks, routine PCR testing, contract tracing, repeated quarantines and more.

These measures are harmful and unnecessary. As such, we’re asking governors and departments of education to follow the lead of Florida, Texas, Iowa and other states and permanently lift COVID-19 guidelines in our schools. Schools should create school policies —not government bureaucrats with significant conflicts of interest who are completely disconnected from the children they’re making policies for.

The “we will just follow” philosophy is not working

In a time fraught with fear and paranoia, elected officials and school districts have been making decisions without basing those decisions on solid scientific data. Proclamations like, “We will just follow the CDC,” or “We will just follow the governor,” or “We will just follow the health department” have become commonplace.

However, when you peek behind the curtain, the CDC and health departments are not doing the critical risk analysis needed to make appropriate recommendations for our children. That’s why it’s essential for each person to be the ultimate authority on what’s best for their health and their children’s health. In no way should the CDC have the final say on how we care for our bodies or what interventions we adhere to. And, when it comes to kids, parents are always best suited to make decisions for their children — and it’s the school’s job to support those decisions.

The CDC says its guidelines are the best way to keep schools safe and keep them open. Many experts disagree.

We are living in a time of great confusion and uncertainty. With this, many are questioning what parents want, what government expects, what is best for kids, and what is doing more harm than good. We all have reason to be confused, particularly in light of the ever-changing and contradictory guidance that is peddled to us as “law.”

Where’s the beef?

Health guidelines should unequivocally be evidence-based. Yet looking at the pre-COVID science and existing COVID “science,” it’s abundantly clear that the CDC’s guidelines are anything but evidence-based. Guidelines are not science-based when they suddenly change based on millions spent on lobbying by pharmaceutical companies or a powerful teacher’s union. We should be making policy decisions that are grounded in evidence-based practices, and we should be looking at those policies in terms of the real-world consequences they have on the people they affect. Yet somehow, even with strong evidence that school COVID guidelines are harmful, the CDC is still dictating how we operate our schools and care for our kids.

We must ask ourselves what changed between the time the World Health Organization (WHO) stated,

“The widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider…”

and the CDC recommendation for the entire population, starting at age two, to wear a face mask. Even the WHO states that masks worn imperfectly are dangerous. We have to ask ourselves … what about the kids?

It’s time to put kids first

For the last 15-plus months, we have waited — some of us more patiently than others — for the COVID responses to play out. We have now waited long enough. It is time, as a global community, to reflect and make choices that are best for our children — a vulnerable population that’s disproportionately being affected by unnecessary COVID-19 protocols.

“Nothing is more important than facial expressions in how people relate to each other.” Peter Breggin, M.D., world-renowned psychiatrist and medical ethicist

Some children we spoke with report being repeatedly sent home throughout the year because of contract tracing in the schools. Yet most of our schools are “just following orders” and thus, have created an environment of isolation for our children by sending them home to be in isolation for two weeks at a time. Since when do we employ preventative measures on our children that cripple their development? It’s not just the masks — it’s the physical distancing of school desks and people from each other, the quarantines from contact tracing, the constant sanitization measures, the plexiglass barriers, and the faceless environment that perpetuate constant fear. All of it is isolating and harmful!

School isolation is akin to prison isolation

Research shows that isolation within the prison environment can be as distressing as physical torture. Yet we wonder why we are witnessing record levels of behavioral regression, new behavioral issues, anxiety and depression when our children are under protocols that are extremely isolating and that create major barriers to connection in the classroom. We’re then removing that connection altogether when a student is sent home for weeks at a time due to contact tracing. Some of these children are being locked in rooms, away from the rest of their family members, to keep everyone “safe”— even though they’re not sick!

Masking and social isolation have caused unprecedented mental, emotional, and psychological harm to our nation’s children. Suicides among children are at an all-time high.

Children are not at risk

As of April 22, 2021, children (aged 0-20 years) comprised 0.00%-0.19% of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States, while 10 states reported zero child deaths from the virus. Coronavirus does not affect children like a typical virus does; clearly, children account for an extremely low percentage of cases and have a 99. 99.% recovery rate. So why are we submitting them to these untested and harmful school guidelines?
The premise that children can be an “unknown risk” to others rests on an illusive and unproven idea of asymptomatic transmission that’s been the basis for all COVID protocols. However, peer-reviewed research paints an entirely different picture. In a study of 10 million people in Wuhan, 0% of transmission was shown to be asymptomatic! These findings are also confirmed in a study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

There are other (and better) paths forward

Centner Academy is a case study in the heart of Miami, Florida, for what it looks like to maintain a learning environment that is optimal for children while being as normal as possible. With about 300 students from pre-K through grade 8, the school has had no forced masking, no physical distancing, no contact tracing, no parental exclusion, and no plexiglass barriers. The result? The school has had zero hospitalizations among students, teachers and staff.

Dubbed the happiness school, Centner Academy is an excellent observational example that should inspire people to breathe easy, abandon the mass fear and hysteria, and take heart that our kids — and those in our schools who are there to support them— can indeed flourish.

“Parents are not realizing the magnitude of the damage that’s being done to their children,” remarked Centner Academy CEO and co-founder Leila Center. “It’s profound, and its going to be harder and harder to reverse the more they keep their children in these schools with these ridiculously strict COVID measures that have nothing to do with the children.”

Ms. Centner encourages others to take her school’s lead of a heart-centered, children-centric approach. “Children don’t have a voice; we are their voice. So I need and I want parents to fight back to save our children.”

Centner Academy, a school with about 300 children in the heart of Miami, has not followed the CDC’s COVID-19 guidance. Despite this, zero children, teachers or staff members have been hospitalized.

The CDC’s guidelines are suggestions — not law

States and health departments do not have to blindly follow CDC guidelines. They are, after all, only recommendations. Likewise, instead of blindly following their local health departments’ recommendations, school districts have a fiduciary duty to ensure that all children in their schools are properly educated and cared for. The CDC’s recommendations must not be accepted as gospel, especially in light of nonsensical measures like forcing kids at summer camp to stay masked outdoors during all types of activity except when the kids are eating, drinking and swimming. Studies suggest the risk of contracting COVID-19 outdoors is 0.1% or lower.

Take a stand now: urge your officials to get our schools back to normal

Never before has it been so critical to stand up for the rights of our children! Mandatory, experimental interventions such as forced masking, forced social distancing, constant hand sanitization and keeping children in contained spaces have been shown to cause serious physical, emotional and socially developmental damage. Schools with these measures are not suitable environments for children, and we don’t know what damage these measures will cause to them over the long term; they’ve never been studied. However, we do know that COVID measures have led to a severe uptick in depression, anxiety and other mental disturbances. In fact, the rate of suicide in the pediatric population is at an alarming, all-time high.

By adopting the “we’re just following orders” mentality, government officials, school administrators and many educators have created an atmosphere that is not safe for school children. Their draconian measures have fostered an atmosphere where children have become afraid of themselves, other humans and their innate environment; sadly, many are now convinced that the world is a scary place. Countless parents have expressed concerns that our current policies are seriously harming children and interfering with their normal childhood development. But things remain unchanged.

It’s time to stand together and fight for our nation’s most valuable asset — our children. Send a pre-drafted, customizable email to your governor and state department of education urging them to put children first and drop COVID measures for the upcoming 21-22 school year. When you’re finished, please share this important campaign with your family, friends, neighbors and others in your community.