New advocacy toolkit entitled “Children, COVID and the Urgency of Normal: The Under 5 Edition”, available

For immediate release:

Coalition of scientists, pediatric infectious disease experts, physicians & mental health experts issue urgent call to restore normalcy in young children’s lives

Prolonged masking creates speech and developmental delays for kids under five

New science and evidence-based toolkit empowers parents to advocate for their toddlers to ease pandemic restrictions

(Nationwide) — A group of scientists, pediatricians, infectious disease experts, emergency medicine doctors, mental health experts and ICU physicians has issued an urgent call for a return to normalcy in very young children’s lives as COVID mitigation measures in daycares and preschools are doing more harm than good. After over two years of living with one disruption after another, the evidence is clear: unnecessary pandemic restrictions on social interactions are creating barriers to learning which impact very young children.

To support parents, preschool teachers, and administrators in understanding the risks of COVID to our youngest children, the group has released a new advocacy toolkit entitled “Children, COVID and the Urgency of Normal: The Under 5 Edition”, available at www.urgencyofnormal.com. The toolkit presents clear, understandable data on risks of COVID compared with other common respiratory viruses specifically to children under five and how the measures used to prevent transmission of COVID affect them. The toolkit also includes recommendations based on the evidence presented and is a collaboration between Dr. Ram Durseti, Dr. Jennifer Grant, Dr. Eliza Holland, Dr. Nicole Johnson, Dr. J. Thomas Megerian, Dr. Todd Porter, Dr. Kristen Walsh and literacy curriculum expert, Karen Vaites.

“For most of my 20-year pediatric career, I have been very active in early childhood advocacy. Ages 2-5 encompasses a ‘critical period’ for language acquisition, early literacy and socioemotional learning. I have been alarmed to see our country adopt mitigation strategies such as prolonged enforced masking of children 2 and up, contrary to what the World Health Organization recommends. I have watched helplessly as anguished parents of special needs kids railed against ineffective, masked speech therapy. Unfortunately, as with many of our pandemic mitigation measures, children with the fewest resources have suffered the most. Even more unfortunately, we have very little evidence that these punishing mitigation measures directed at small children actually affect community spread of COVID (let alone morbidity/mortality). I hope we are able to someday do a critical analysis of the effects of our pandemic response on young children, so that we don’t repeat our mistakes,” said toolkit coauthor Dr. Kristen Walsh, Community Academic Pediatrician.

The working group emphasizes that for healthy young unvaccinated children, COVID is similar to other respiratory viruses--and they encourage parents, children and staff to see mild infections as inevitable and not alarming. Teachers remain well-protected by vaccination, with additional protection from boosters freely available for at-risk and older adults. Efforts should be made to prioritize unmasked, in-person learning regardless of case counts and vaccination rates to support students’ overall health.

The group stresses that a return to normalcy, especially with regard to unmasking children under five, is urgently needed to support our youngest children’s health.

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