OK, Now, we’ve heard everything. Fiction is dead. Only the absurd is plausible.
On Wednesday, in a taped but yet to be aired interview with Craig Ford of WTVA in Tupelo, Sen. Roger Wicker responded to a question about federal/state mandates requiring school children to wear masks.
Here is what Mississippi’s senior senator had to say:
“There are negative consequences to children who are still growing, whose faces are still forming. There’s science to say that wearing a mask does affect their development.”
A year-and-a-half into the COVID-19 Pandemic, we’ve heard all manner of wild, patently false, comically ridiculous claims about the virus and measures to combat its spread:
The virus was intentionally created as a means of biological warfare. You can kill the virus by ingesting bleach. Malaria medicines kill the virus. Vaccines contain microchips. Vaccines make you magnetic. This is a partial list of the lunacy.
But when you claim, as Sen. Wicker does, that mask wearing will turn children into hideously-deformed beings, you may as well call an end to the competition and hand the trophy to Wicker.
It’s a claim that should not require rebuttal for any rational human being, but in a state where there is a mad rush of people taking livestock wormers as an alternative to the COVID-19 vaccines, it probably bears pointing out that there is no science — none — that shows that wearing a mask will disfigure a child’s face.
It took a while, but I think I may have discovered what Wicker was basing his comments on – a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that presented arguments against mask mandates for children. Surely, everyone understands that an opinion piece is not science. But the opinion piece did cite one scientific study to support its argument, although you would have to perform some serious mental gymnastics to make even a tenuous connection between the claim made in the opinion piece and the study itself.
The opinion piece presented a scenario that some students may be more inclined to breathing through their mouths when wearing masks.
And are you ready to jump the shark — heck, the whole ocean — to find the science presumably offered in the study in support of the opinion piece?
The opinion piece states, “It is well-documented that children who mouth-breathe because adenoids block their nasal airways can develop a mouth deformity and elongated face.”
The “well-documented” source cited was a 2016 study about adenoids in children and their effects on the formation of facial bone structure.
The study performed a photographic analysis of children with adenoids whose features had been distorted. According to the study, “The children and parents were asked if any of the following were present in the children: snoring, sleep apnea, daytime sleepiness, poor school performance, mouth breathing during sleep, smoking parents, and restlessness during sleep.”
That’s it.
Nowhere is there any mention of masks and the only reference to mouth-breathing was during sleep.
I suspect the authors of this study would be horrified to learn that their work had been so badly distorted simply to make an absurd and potentially dangerous political point.
If this is, indeed, the “science” Wicker is referring to, he should be ashamed.
It’s one thing if this claim had been made by some random person on the internet, a neighbor or the guy sitting on the next barstool. That influence only goes so far.
But when a U.S. Senator makes such a wild, misleading, unsubstantiated claim, the damage done is greatly magnified.
Indeed, It’s one thing for a politician to make these kinds of reckless claims to score political points in most cases. It’s quite another when a person of Wicker’s standing uses his considerable platform to undermine public confidence in the advice of our health experts at a time when a pandemic has killed millions world-wide and more than 600,000 Americans. It’s not harmless political rhetoric. It’s dangerous, irresponsible and shameful.
Oh, in case you are wondering why Ford’s interview with Wicker hasn’t aired: On Thursday, both Wicker and Ford tested positive for COVID-19.
I hope both quickly recover even as I realize that thousands of others will not, among them people who believed the misinformation they heard about things like masks.
Conservative Mississippi voters may not hold Wicker accountable for his irresponsible comments, but history certainly will.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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