CDC needs to answer this question.

We must understand how the agency arrived at its child masking guidance.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been an extreme trans-Atlantic divide on masking children. While European countries never masked toddlers and mostly didn’t mask primary school children — even on public transportation and planes — the United States has consistently masked children as young as two, per CDC guidance. ECDC — the EU/EEA’s CDC — only recommended children over 12 mask at school.

Why the difference? Both the Atlanta-based CDC and Stockholm-based ECDC are world-class disease control agencies staffed by highly-credentialed researchers and scientists. But, when confronted with issuing policy guidance on masking children, they reached very different conclusions.

The ECDC’s guidance (below left) was informed by WHO and UNICEF child masking guidance. We know this, because ECDC’s technical report on “Covid-19 in children and the role of school settings in Covid-19 transmission” says that “advice on the use of face masks for children in the community has been issued by WHO” and links to the WHO and UNICEF guidance in the report’s footnotes.

So, if ECDC drew upon WHO and UNICEF guidance to inform its child masking recommendation, how did the CDC guidance (below right) emerge? How did the scientists responsible for drafting CDC’s child masking guidance decide children should mask from two years of age?