THEN: ONLY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS THINK MASKS ARE BAD FOR CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT.

NOW: CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development. “For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions. These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. . . . It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from ‘virtual learning’ environments to forcing children to wear face masks.”