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Doc Group Calling for Kids’ Prompt Return to Normal Met With Swift Criticism
— The “Urgency of Normal” group says pre-COVID schooling, activities should resume next month
by Jennifer Henderson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today January 28, 2022
A group of physicians and scientists has called for all schools and children’s activities to return to pre-pandemic norms by the middle of next month, but their recommendations, published earlier this week, are drawing the ire of others in the field.
As the U.S. grapples with yet another surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the group — including viral immunologist Scott Balsitis, PhD, as well as physicians Lucy McBride, MD; Monica Gandhi, MD; Tracy Beth Høeg, MD; Jeanne Noble, MD; and Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, MD, as well as a number of pediatricians — is steadfast in their belief that children are being harmed by mitigation measures.
The primary goal of the group — known as “Urgency of Normal” — is to empower administrators, teachers, parents, and students to have a full understanding of the current situation and to make the best decisions they can for themselves, Balsitis told MedPage Today.
The group’s recommendations include maintaining in-person learning regardless of COVID case counts; de-escalating fear around getting COVID; applying focused protection measures for individuals who remain at high risk; changing the focus to supporting kids’ mental, emotional, and social health; and making masks optional in schools.
“We believe the data point to restoring full normalcy for children,” said Balsitis, who confirmed the group feels this should happen by February 15. “We really mean the full normal.”
Nearly 400 medical professionals have already co-signed in support of what the group calls its advocacy toolkit via its website, but their recommendations have also been met with swift criticism from peers.
“Proselytizing for a predetermined conclusion under the guise of objective, evidence-based analysis is not junk science, it’s just junk,” tweeted Mark Kline, MD, of Children’s Hospital New Orleans, in response to the group. “With the health, well-being and lives of children at stake, we have every right to expect much more of our physicians.”
In an interview with MedPage Today, Kline, who is also a professor of pediatrics at Tulane University and LSU New Orleans, said that he believes the toolkit was put forth as something people can use to argue against school closures, the general use of masks in schools, and other mitigation measures. He added that he was especially disappointed to see that a number of pediatricians had signed on to the document.
“It’s not an evidence-based discussion of the pros and cons,” he said. “It’s just simply, here is the conclusion we’ve come to, and here is the argument we would use in favor of this conclusion. And I think it’s flawed … start to finish.”
“I think if we were to do as they are proposing, which is to basically do away with mitigation measures where the schools are concerned, and basically throw in the towel and just focus our efforts on a subset of children that are high risk … that it’s bound to lead to more cases of COVID … more hospitalizations among children, and probably more deaths,” Kline noted.
He pointed out that even with mitigation measures, more than 1,000 children have died as a result of COVID-19 over the past 2 years.
Kline disputes the idea that there is no risk to children and that mitigation measures are all risk and no benefit, as suggested in the toolkit, in part because he’s seen many children who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in his own hospital.
Vaccination uptake in children ages 5 to 11 has been “abysmal,” and younger kids don’t yet have the option, he added.
The toolkit also doesn’t take into account the disparities that exist when it comes to access to safe schools and healthcare, among other areas, he noted.
“We are not a homogeneous population, and some children and some families and some communities are at greater risk of this disease than others,” Kline said. “That is not accounted for in the document, at all.”
Lakshmi Ganapathi, MBBS, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, concurred, pointing out that many policy proposals are being shaped by opinions of the privileged.
“They really silence the realities of communities of color,” she said.
Ganapathi further took issue with the group’s recommendations placing the burden of protection on the vulnerable. “We do need to act collectively,” she said. “That’s a core public health principle.”
The Urgency of Normal is also receiving pushback on the data it cited in its toolkit.
A Twitter thread by Tyler Black, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and suicidologist in Vancouver, noted that a line in the toolkit “about ‘deaths from child suicide vastly outnumbering deaths from COVID and are increasing’ is about as awful as it gets. I consider it ghoulish to wield child suicide statistics inaccurately to make advocacy points.” (The line has since been removed from the toolkit.)
Jennifer Henderson joined MedPage Today as an enterprise and investigative writer in Jan. 2021. She has covered the healthcare industry in NYC, life sciences and the business of law, among other areas.
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These Doctors Wanted to Get Schools Back to Normal. Their Botched Effort May Backfire.
The first rule of science: Check your facts before publishing.
- Kiera Butler Senior Editor
After two years of pandemic living, I am utterly exhausted by the idea of wading through another Twitter war about masks in schools. So it was with some trepidation that I began reading through threads about the Urgency of Normal toolkit, a set of slides prepared by a group of nine prominent physicians who believe schools must move to phase out mask mandates and virtual learning by February 15. The toolkit argues that masks are harmful to the mental health of students, and that they’re unnecessary because the Omicron variant is mild in children, comparable to the flu.
The Urgency of Normal’s ultimate goal—to get back to school life as it was before the pandemic—is relatively uncontroversial. Most parents can’t wait for the day when the virus becomes manageable enough that students no longer have to wear masks or slog through zoom classes. And there is some convincing evidence suggesting, for the youngest learners, that masks aren’t especially effective at preventing the spread of Covid. Very few parents actively want public health measures to continue beyond the time when they’re absolutely necessary.
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First, let’s talk about the toolkit format.
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Such efforts also have a way of taking on lives of their own: Once they’re unleashed, the original intentions of their creators don’t really matter. This Frankenstein effect is a terrifying possibility for the Urgency of Normal toolkit, which could be marshaled by groups with fringe anti-scientific views. It’s already happening. Just yesterday, a holistic pediatrician with a track record of downplaying the benefits of vaccinating children against Covid shared the toolkit with more than 55,000 followers. Smith, the George Washington University epidemiologist, said she learned of the toolkit from school board members who’d had it sent to them by riled-up parents. “This has the veneer of certainty and near perfect professionalism and correctness,” Smith told me, adding that she’s concerned the toolkit could “lead you to incorrectly make your own risk benefit analysis.”
But there is a more subtle, and depressing, potential outcome, a result whose ramifications could extend beyond the debates over mask mandates and, indeed, the pandemic itself. When a group of renowned physicians misrepresents science to further a cause, the public trust in science is further degraded—especially in the eyes of people who, because of misinformation they’ve encountered previously on social media, have grown skeptical of settled science. “The same mouth that says ‘you must take your vaccines’ is saying kids must go back to school,” notes Black, the UBC psychiatrist. “And if the evidence for kids must go back to school is that poor, what does it mean about your statements about kids taking vaccines?”
When scientists champion flawed data, they endanger other scientists. We’re already seeing an erosion of confidence in the scientific community thanks to powerful anti-science advocates, including Republican lawmakers and right-wing media personalities. Researchers who once worked in relative obscurity face death threats. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist with Baylor College of Medicine who has written and spoken extensively about what he calls anti-science aggressors, led an effort to develop the first low-cost, patent-free Covid vaccine. He nevertheless found himself “under unrelenting attacks from far right extremists,” he tweeted last year.
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Yet even if the data is corrected, the toolkit authors’ failure to properly vet the material in advance leaves an opening for bad actors to attribute disinformation to respected experts. The Urgency of Normal authors wanted schools to get back to pre-Covid life by February 15—but it could take years to fix the damage they’ve done.
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weehingthong 