Prediction: Schools will have kids back in masks within a month

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let it go. Move on. Covid is becoming endemic.

Seriously.
Move on.

Exactly. Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and Frederick County all going mask free. MCPS will be next...in about two weeks (once CDC adjusts their guidance to follow hospitalizations). BOE will discuss tonight and has already been given green light from DHHS. BOE will delay for a couple of weeks. That is my prediction..but they will be out of masks soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let it go. Move on. Covid is becoming endemic.

Seriously.
Move on.

Exactly. Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and Frederick County all going mask free. MCPS will be next...in about two weeks (once CDC adjusts their guidance to follow hospitalizations). BOE will discuss tonight and has already been given green light from DHHS. BOE will delay for a couple of weeks. That is my prediction..but they will be out of masks soon.

Sorry BOE discusses Thursday night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let it go. Move on. Covid is becoming endemic.

Seriously.
Move on.

Exactly. Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and Frederick County all going mask free. MCPS will be next...in about two weeks (once CDC adjusts their guidance to follow hospitalizations). BOE will discuss tonight and has already been given green light from DHHS. BOE will delay for a couple of weeks. That is my prediction..but they will be out of masks soon.

Sorry BOE discusses Thursday night.

Taking masks away doesn’t in and of itself make the virus endemic. Do you all even know what that term means and the applicable standards? This is still a pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Many kids are in cloth masks. They aren’t doing anything. Neither are the ill fitting surgical and Kns with huge gaps. Die hard maskers will put their kids in well fitting quality masks. The rest of us will go mask free. Nothing will happen (see millions of kids in the rest of the country and Europe).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:sorry, but we are moving on. it's time for you to as well.

But you are not, are you? You’re moving exactly at the pace the rest of us dictate. At least in the top schools.

What are you even talking about? The entire country has moved on but for DMV, because of the superiority complex. Get vaccinated and boosted and do same for your kids. Then you can move on too.

While the transmission rates have dropped significantly from the height of the omicron wave, they're still high enough to ensure continued transmission. Attitudes such as this one explain why the rate of spread around the country is still as high as it is.

What is your data point for this statement. You state it as a fact but the data I have seen on case positivities on the CDC website doesn’t support your statement at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll move on when told to do so by us, to protect the others, you selfish little prune.

It will be soon, but not on your schedule.

My top school in Bethesda is mask free. It is very much on my schedule. Love seeing all the smiles!!

There is no top school in Bethesda, by our standards

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I am moving on, too, and think that we all should do so.

I am 'moving on' to accept that there is no going back to 2019: there is now a deadly respiratory virus that mutates quickly to evade immune protection. That virus is here to stay. Compared to pre-2020 levels, there will be more waves of infection, more illness, more deaths of vulnerable folks, and more threat of nagging illness (long COVID) once the acute phase passes. To stay ahead of the virus and prevent more suffering than is necessary, humans will have to adapt more rapidly than we have in the past and we will have to use all of the tools at our disposal to prevent illness (including masking when necessary).This virus moves fast and it is getting faster all the time. We must be equally fast.

Can you provide any data to support your hypothesis? Or si this just a gut feeling you have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/21/1081810074/omicron-ba2-variant-spread

Reasons:

1. Second OMICRON wave will move quickly when BA.2 gets a foothold.
2. Schools are now major sources of transmission (different from earlier in the pandemic)
3. Most kids younger than 12 have only had two shots, if any
4. Masks optional policies will enable rapid spread, taking out classrooms and schools with wide spread sickness within a few weeks

That's what they said when schools opened in the Fall. Then...a big nothingburger.

Same song, different verse. Yawn.

What? Omicron had shut everything down again. More people died. Kids got COVID. It wasn't a nothingburger. You don't remember?

[Anonymous]

Also, from the article OP linked: "Some experts think it's unlikely BA.2 will trigger a massive new surge because so many people have immunity from prior infections and vaccination at this point.

"The most likely thing that's going to happen is that it might extend our tail, meaning it might slow down the decrease in cases. But it's probably not going to lead to a new wave of cases," says Grubaugh."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, from the article OP linked: "Some experts think it's unlikely BA.2 will trigger a massive new surge because so many people have immunity from prior infections and vaccination at this point.

"The most likely thing that's going to happen is that it might extend our tail, meaning it might slow down the decrease in cases. But it's probably not going to lead to a new wave of cases," says Grubaugh."

Put aside the mask/no mask debate, I found the ID/public health specialists had been really disappointing during the pandemic -- for both sides. It almost as if they are reading the same data/journal articles but come to the completely opposite opinions. Some of them are clearly just trying to be play the contarian game to draw more attention. Before the pandemic I thought only social scientists would have done so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, from the article OP linked: "Some experts think it's unlikely BA.2 will trigger a massive new surge because so many people have immunity from prior infections and vaccination at this point.

"The most likely thing that's going to happen is that it might extend our tail, meaning it might slow down the decrease in cases. But it's probably not going to lead to a new wave of cases," says Grubaugh."

Exactly. MOCO DHHS just explained this today in the weekly press briefing. They are not concerned about BA.2. Explanation starts at 23:38.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are in cloth masks. They aren’t doing anything. Neither are the ill fitting surgical and Kns with huge gaps. Die hard maskers will put their kids in well fitting quality masks. The rest of us will go mask free. Nothing will happen (see millions of kids in the rest of the country and Europe).

+1

I think if you really think masking is the cure all, you would have been working to get schools access to KN95s that are actually sized to kids faces a year ago. Instead, we put it all on parents to find, buy, and fit masks to their kids, which led to predictably uneven results in terms of mask wearing. I know there are some privates that are now all in K95s but that's a pretty recent development, and it still didn't prevent Omicron from sweeping through those schools.

We've been haphazard about masking all along and it really hasn't made a huge difference -- waves have been driven by vaccination and the virulence of the mutation, as well as seasonality. Masks likely help on the margins, especially in places like grocery stores and other indoor locations where they are open to the general public and you have no idea who you might be coming into contact with and what their vaccination status is or how careful they are. But schools are a closed environment, especially now. And privates have leeway to mandate vaccines and travel quarantines and other things that public schools will likely have more trouble implementing. It's just not clear that there is a strong argument for masking anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are in cloth masks. They aren’t doing anything. Neither are the ill fitting surgical and Kns with huge gaps. Die hard maskers will put their kids in well fitting quality masks. The rest of us will go mask free. Nothing will happen (see millions of kids in the rest of the country and Europe).

+1

I think if you really think masking is the cure all, you would have been working to get schools access to KN95s that are actually sized to kids faces a year ago. Instead, we put it all on parents to find, buy, and fit masks to their kids, which led to predictably uneven results in terms of mask wearing. I know there are some privates that are now all in K95s but that's a pretty recent development, and it still didn't prevent Omicron from sweeping through those schools.

We've been haphazard about masking all along and it really hasn't made a huge difference -- waves have been driven by vaccination and the virulence of the mutation, as well as seasonality. Masks likely help on the margins, especially in places like grocery stores and other indoor locations where they are open to the general public and you have no idea who you might be coming into contact with and what their vaccination status is or how careful they are. But schools are a closed environment, especially now. And privates have leeway to mandate vaccines and travel quarantines and other things that public schools will likely have more trouble implementing. It's just not clear that there is a strong argument for masking anymore.

Our school strongly encouraged surgical/N95. But we were laughed by moms on this board when someone mentioned it. If you don't want to wear masks you can always find an excuse.
We are grateful that our school hasn't had any in-school transmission so far, despite 10%-15% students have had positive tests at some point in the weekly testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/21/1081810074/omicron-ba2-variant-spread

Reasons:

1. Second OMICRON wave will move quickly when BA.2 gets a foothold.
2. Schools are now major sources of transmission (different from earlier in the pandemic)
3. Most kids younger than 12 have only had two shots, if any
4. Masks optional policies will enable rapid spread, taking out classrooms and schools with wide spread sickness within a few weeks

That's what they said when schools opened in the Fall. Then...a big nothingburger.

Same song, different verse. Yawn.

What? Omicron had shut everything down again. More people died. Kids got COVID. It wasn't a nothingburger. You don't remember?

I'm the PP. Our schools remained open during Omicron. People died, but people die all the time and now, if they're not vaccinated, it is their fault. Kids getting COVID is not a big deal. Yes, I remember. I remember my kid being happy to be in school once again.

[Anonymous]

Funny show many states have been mask fee for over 12 months now. Lmao DC.