When should DC drop its school mask mandate?
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Anonymous
Yes. Many of those at our school. I really don't get it. I chalk it up to virtue signaling, but maybe it's legitimate anxiety. |
Anonymous
I will say I have done it recently because I'm very cold all the time. |
Anonymous
Same. It's been freezing. Don't worry about what others are doing. |
Anonymous
You are literally just making things up. Masks are effective in reducing the spread of COVID and they do not have any serious social/emotional/educational impacts on children. Google is your friend. I found these in under 5 minutes: "A recent study (Ruba and Pollak, 2020) investigated the implications of mask-wearing on inferring emotions from facial configurations using a sample of children aged between 7 and 13 years old. They revealed that children could make above-chance inferences about emotions even when parts of the faces were covered, concluding that masks are unlikely to produce serious impairments of children’s social interactions." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33362251/ "While there may be some challenges for children incurred by others wearing masks, in combination with other contextual cues, masks are unlikely to dramatically impair children’s social interactions in their everyday lives.” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243708 "In this survey study of 6654 childcare professionals from all 50 states, child masking at baseline (May 22 to June 8, 2020) was associated with a 13% reduction in program closure within the following year, and continued child masking throughout the 1-year study period was associated with a 14% reduction in program closure." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2788457 Safety of masks: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/11/3935 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-55451-w |
Anonymous
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None of those studies look at the long term effect if daily mask wearing on children during the literacy and socialization acquisition years of PK through 2nd or 3rd grade.
I don’t need a study to tell me that masking means my child struggles to communicate at school. Her teacher has told me she can’t understand my kid at school and that the children struggle to hear each other and it has inhibited friendships and communications. Most of the literature around masking looks at whether it has a negative impact in the moment. Like if I put on a mask and then smile at my kid, can she tell I’m smiling? Yes. Great, that’s one of many reasons why most of us did not complain when asked to mask our 2yo kids 2 years ago. But when you sit there and explain to me that this means there is no negative impact to a child under the age of 6 spending the first 2-3 years of her school career in a masked environment, you sound insane. Of course there’s a negative impact. I see it every day. |
Anonymous
| +1. I'm happy to show you my bills for private speech and literacy therapy over the past two years in a futile attempt to keep up with DCPS's failures. |
Anonymous
I am glad Google helped fill your agenda. I am also the PP about masks preventing my child from receiving proper speech therapy. While I appreciate your ability to use Google, I will go with what the specialists at Children's Hospitals have told me. Masks are a disservice to children with speech issues. They cannot see lip and tongue placement. For 2 years now my child has received less than mediocre speech therapy in DCPS. Our neurodevelopmental doc has mentioned that we should possibly give virtual speech lessons another try; however, virtual sessions 3x a week for 30 minutes is hard for a child with special needs. The doctor recommended virtual as masks would not be worn during sessions (obviously) and my child could see proper lip and tongue placement. For what it's worth, my child was part of a Pfizer covid vaccine study and he's been vaccinated for over a year now. So you're welcome for helping out immunocompromised children. |
Anonymous
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So none of you have any studies AT ALL to back up the BS you are spewing about masks being harmful. Got it.
Many many many many children had speech issues prior to the pandemic (including my own, diagnosed years before the pandemic). I get that you would like to blame your kids' speech issues on masks, but that's not the reason your kid needs speech therapy. |
Anonymous
DP, but wow. People are very calmly telling you of their experiences with their special needs kids. They are saying that their childrens' progress is hurt by masking. I mean, you sound like one of the anti-maskers saying that there have always been immunocompromised kids, so who cares about them now. |
Anonymous
My pediatrician mentioned that there is a marked increase in referrals for speech. I am concerned about my own 2 year old who has spent her life around masked people all day long. You can keep you kid in a mask for eternity, but those that want to get rid of them should be allowed. |
Anonymous
So what you are saying is that your chid was diagnosed and treated for speech issues during a time when no one in school wore masks and there was no issue with your child getting speech therapy from an unmasked therapist? And now your child is older and "doesn't mind" wearing a mask, so you feel like you can tell parents whose kids were diagnosed with speech issues during the pandemic, and now have to fight (often unsuccessfully) to get unmasked speech therapy that they can't complain? And you feel confident that masks have NO IMPACT on speech issues? There is no study that says masking for 2+ years is fine for young kids. There is also no study that says it harms them. That's because WE ARE THE STUDY. You are fortunate that your kid is too old to part of this grand experiment in masking children under the age of 6 for years at a time and seeing how it impacts them. Your child got to go to preschool and kindergarten and likely 1st grade without a mask, got to attend speech therapy without a mask, etc. How wonderful for your child. How dare you tell me that I can't want that for my own child, especially when there is dwindling evidence that mask usage in this age group does anything to protect anyone. |
Anonymous
| To get back to OP's topic and subject sentence: DC should drop the mask mandate as soon as possible! |
Anonymous
Yeah, it's hilarious that the PP is trying to put someone in their place by condescendingly recommending to use Google to find a small, flawed, ideologically motivated study, believing that it proves once and for all that masks don't have *any* negative effect on children. Nothing makes you look more foolish than thinking this question is solved for all time because Google spit out a link to a "study" - even more so when you are apparently unaware that your two links are both references to the same study. I also love how the abstract of that study says that the WHO recommends masks to slow the spread of Covid, while conveniently glossing over the fact that the WHO does explicitly *not* recommend masking children under 5, and masking under-12 year olds only in specific circumstances. |
Anonymous
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My kid was diagnosed with speech issues during the pandemic. He's receiving services where they are both masked. Obviously I don't have access to the counterfactual here, and as was pointed out, no one has run the study on this yet so we don't have access to that as possible body of knowledge. But this obviously isn't ideal. He has trouble with certain sounds, and masks impede both comprehension and seeing each other's mouths. It's not how anyone would choose to do this if what we were trying to do was provide effective services for children.
He is vaccinated. So is the person providing services. They are both tested regularly. And no one thinks this is going to end before the end of the year even if rates plummet. No one would publicly defend this, because of course it doesn't make sense. My kid is collateral damage. Of course I am not ok with this. |
Anonymous
I totally believe that you spent no more than five minutes thinking about this and copying these links to buttress your agenda. As for the childcare center study you cited, here is a link to Vinay Prasad (who evaluates medical studies for a living) going over how poorly designed it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivIEnk2sbIg |