Entries for December 2020 (the vaccine "roll-out") are now available. Navigate to A Covid Diary. The Introduction to "November 2020" has now been added, mostly about masks. Here is the Introduction to the December Diary, most about eye movements, a subject I know a bit about. If it sounds a little angry, tant pis, as they say around here:
"There were psychologists on the SAGE Committee and I assume they were asked to provide informed advice on the psychological consequences of masking. I don’t mean jokes about bandits, but hard-headed advice.
The first and most potent visual stimulus we all encounter is our mother’s face and there are well over 5000 papers published on the topic of mother-infant visual interaction.
I assume their advice was that disruption to the visibility of the mother’s face was VERY likely to have significant adverse developmental consequences. Was that the advice given? If it was, it is alarming that it was apparently so easily ignored.
Did the SAGE psychologists refer to work by David Lewkowicz and colleagues, first published ten years ago and hardly contentious? If not, why on earth not?
For the first few months of life, infants look predominantly at their mother’s eyes – a bright glittering stimulus that moves independently of the face in which it is embedded. However, as they begin to babble their early efforts at language, visual attention shifts to the mother's mouth. Psychologists have known for many years that the infant brain makes use of this information to model the device (mouth, lips, tongue) the mother is using to produce sounds. The baby needs this information and there are almost certainly consequences of not getting it, and not getting it at the right time.
Tell me, what would your advice have been if I had suggested covering the mother’s mouth?
If you think I am hedging my bets with that "almost certainly" I can only respond by saying a proposal actually to carry out such an experiment would not, in my opinion, receive ethical consent."
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There is more information on masks on the Smile Free website.
An expanded version of the December 2020 Introduction was published on the TCW Defending Freedom Website under the title "The Sheep Behind the Masks."