Did kids actually unmask?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not understand these comments about kids who choose to mask being "fearful." My kids, in ES and MS, understand that by continuing to mask indoors we reduce the odds of someone in our family getting covid. They, like we, would rather avoid getting covid so they choose to continue to mask. They don't seem to mind wearing them and their education doesn't seem to have suffered because they are wearing masks. They don't wear masks outside because they know it doesn't make a difference. They also wear KN95s, not cloth, because they know that cloth masks are pointless and if you are going to cover your face you may as well use something that is effective. Their lives are pretty much back-to-normal except for wearing masks indoors. They know that even with mask wearing there is a chance someone in our house will get covid because we are not locking down completely, but they also know that the odds are good that no one in our household will be hospitalized or die.
Seems like rational decision-making to me. It does upset them when other kids accuse them of being "scared," or don't understand that just because masks are now optional, it still might be a good idea to wear them.

You are right, it could be just a rational choice to reduce your risk of getting Covid. (Although you do have to wonder if they are thinking this through long-term -- the virus isn't going away, we will eventually catch it, which for a kid might actually be a good thing because they will build immunity at a low-risk age against a virus they will have to encounter over and over for the rest of their lives. Are they going to mask indoors forever?) But there are definitely kids who are scared. Maybe they are in the minority, but they are not rare. We went hiking with friends recently, and one of their young kids didn't want to take off her mask out on the breezy trail, even though nobody else in our group was. That is a sign of unreasonable anxiety, and I felt really bad for the kid.

This is my thinking. If we are going to keep cycling through acute and calmer periods with this virus for some undefined extended period of time, my kids and I...we all need breaks. We can't stay at DEFCON-1 indefinitely. I'm glad that for many of you, masks don't bother your kids. My kids are super compliant, but really hate them. We didn't take advantage of the pre-Delta lull, thinking that vaccines were coming for elementary-aged kids and *then* we could ease up. And despite our extreme caution and efforts to "do our part to stop the spread", Omicron hit as soon as the kids were vaxxed and they got no reprieve. We've been so careful and conscientious the last two years, and my little kids missed out on A LOT, so this time around, we're going to take more risks than we normally would during this lull (they gleefully unmasked at school yesterday), recognizing we may have to hunker back down, masks and all, if/when things get bad again.

[Anonymous]

DCPS Elementary teacher here. Our school is about 75% unmasked. Personally I’d love for it to be the new normal to mask up when you are sick. I’m not concerned about Covid in particular now as I’m fully vaccinated, but have loved not constantly getting sick from little ones, sent to school with green snot oozing from their noses, coughing/sneezing in my eyes while I’m tying their shoes or zipping their coats. Please, if you have to send your obviously ill/probably contagious kid to school, spare a thought to the teachers working so closely with them and ask them to wear a mask!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS Elementary teacher here. Our school is about 75% unmasked. Personally I’d love for it to be the new normal to mask up when you are sick. I’m not concerned about Covid in particular now as I’m fully vaccinated, but have loved not constantly getting sick from little ones, sent to school with green snot oozing from their noses, coughing/sneezing in my eyes while I’m tying their shoes or zipping their coats. Please, if you have to send your obviously ill/probably contagious kid to school, spare a thought to the teachers working so closely with them and ask them to wear a mask!

I hope we come out of this with norms against going to work sick and toward masking if you have a cold. Although my kids still got every cold this winter even though they were masked.

[Anonymous]

My kids at Deal and Wilson kept their masks and told me that they were (pleasantly) surprised that so many kids in their classes kept their masks on. friend with kids in ES sent kids unmasked and said many kids in the ES were unmasked. so based on my limited experience (also live by a ES and seek kids walk in and out of school), younger kids seem more likely to go unmasked but older kids so far prefer to keep it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At Lafayette there were maybe 2-3 masked kids per room, everyone else had them off.

Wow, I definitely think you will notice a difference between predominantly white schools, and predominately black schools. My school is 90+% black, everyone wore a mask.

I noticed in my predominantly white ES that a much larger percentage of black students were masked than white. That makes sense to me, however. If your community has felt the effects more, and lives with a heightened sense of threat on a daily basis, you might easily be slower to unmask. Our black students who really never fully/effectively masked during the pandemic were unmasked today however.

They are also the group not getting vaccinated at the same rate as white and Asian DC residents, which is taking a much higher risk than not wearing a mask. If they want to mask forever but not get a vaccine, fine, but responsible vaccinated people shouldn't have to mask just to make them feel safer when they refuse to take responsibility for their own health. If they are vaxxed and also mask, then they are being hypercautious -- which is their choice, just like it's mine not to mask.

[Anonymous]

I think quite a few of the families at our school with kids still masking don't want to catch Covid right now because they don't want to mess with upcoming travel/seeing relatives. That's our reasoning. If rates remain low, I'll encourage the kids to unmask after spring break. But for now, I'm encouraging masks on unless they're miserable with them on (which they're not). It's all a risk-reward calculation. We're all fully vaccinate, and no one in our family has had Covid so far (that we're aware of). So no extra protection there. If we'd just had omicron, I'd be more supportive of pre-spring break unmasking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think quite a few of the families at our school with kids still masking don't want to catch Covid right now because they don't want to mess with upcoming travel/seeing relatives. That's our reasoning. If rates remain low, I'll encourage the kids to unmask after spring break. But for now, I'm encouraging masks on unless they're miserable with them on (which they're not). It's all a risk-reward calculation. We're all fully vaccinate, and no one in our family has had Covid so far (that we're aware of). So no extra protection there. If we'd just had omicron, I'd be more supportive of pre-spring break unmasking.

Well said! We fall into the latter category but, yes, I would feel differently if we'd yet to catch it, and certainly wouldn't want our Spring Break ruined. Depending on when that falls, you could also tell yourself you want to get it over with a solid 14 days before the start of your plans. As catch it you will, somehow, somewhere, sometime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not understand these comments about kids who choose to mask being "fearful." My kids, in ES and MS, understand that by continuing to mask indoors we reduce the odds of someone in our family getting covid. They, like we, would rather avoid getting covid so they choose to continue to mask. They don't seem to mind wearing them and their education doesn't seem to have suffered because they are wearing masks. They don't wear masks outside because they know it doesn't make a difference. They also wear KN95s, not cloth, because they know that cloth masks are pointless and if you are going to cover your face you may as well use something that is effective. Their lives are pretty much back-to-normal except for wearing masks indoors. They know that even with mask wearing there is a chance someone in our house will get covid because we are not locking down completely, but they also know that the odds are good that no one in our household will be hospitalized or die.
Seems like rational decision-making to me. It does upset them when other kids accuse them of being "scared," or don't understand that just because masks are now optional, it still might be a good idea to wear them.

You are right, it could be just a rational choice to reduce your risk of getting Covid. (Although you do have to wonder if they are thinking this through long-term -- the virus isn't going away, we will eventually catch it, which for a kid might actually be a good thing because they will build immunity at a low-risk age against a virus they will have to encounter over and over for the rest of their lives. Are they going to mask indoors forever?) But there are definitely kids who are scared. Maybe they are in the minority, but they are not rare. We went hiking with friends recently, and one of their young kids didn't want to take off her mask out on the breezy trail, even though nobody else in our group was. That is a sign of unreasonable anxiety, and I felt really bad for the kid.

So it’s not rare because your friends kids think that?

Obviously, that is just the most egregious example I have observed. But any kid who still chooses to mask at the playground either has crazy parents or is scared, and there are still quite a few of those to be seen.

I have certainly been confronted by parents at playgrounds for allowing my kids to not wear a mask outdoors. And for every time that has happened, I have heard 10 passive aggressive comments about. "We still wear our mask Larla even if other kids aren't as responsible."

Lol. This is the most DC thing I’ve read in a while.

+1

Parents here are so sanctimonious. Meanwhile they drink their single use chai latte every morning and throw it in the trash without a thought in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At Lafayette there were maybe 2-3 masked kids per room, everyone else had them off.

Wow, I definitely think you will notice a difference between predominantly white schools, and predominately black schools. My school is 90+% black, everyone wore a mask.

I noticed in my predominantly white ES that a much larger percentage of black students were masked than white. That makes sense to me, however. If your community has felt the effects more, and lives with a heightened sense of threat on a daily basis, you might easily be slower to unmask. Our black students who really never fully/effectively masked during the pandemic were unmasked today however.

"Slower to unmask" - so much slower, in fact, that masks will be required again before they do unmask, because of all the transmission among those who really needed a month-long mask break.

Your mask does not make you a better person. Enough with the virtue signaling- I respect your choice, you respect mine.

But ya don't - you accuse people of masking their children as being child abusers and cherry-pick pieces of studies or omicron-focused stats - and discourage vaccination. You have no virtue to signal.

You just made my point. Like all you insane people you make assumptions about motivations. FWIW - we are a fully vaccinated and boosted family, and want nothing to do with people who aren’t. But again, masks have becomes more than a piece of PPE - it’s part of the progressive identity. So please just go live in your echo chamber.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I see the people who are allowing their kid to unmask to be more cognizant of 1) the protective aspects of the vaccine, and 2) the low risk to kids to begin with. So the people wanting mask choice have all vaccinated their kids, and are not anti-vaxxers. I think there are some that have read the recent study that the 5-11 vaccine did little in terms of reducing transmission, and that has impacted their thinking about whether it should be required or used as a metric in deciding when schools should unmask.

PP, I think you might be thinking of people that are largely not in DC.

My kids have had the vaccine (5-11). We are still masking and will be for at least the next couple of weeks. Husband and I are highly educated and we understand the science. We chose to continue masking. I don’t particularly care what your kids do. It’s extremely hard to judge why others are still masking or not masking.

Lol, let me educate you.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4046809

FCM mandates in schools were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or
transmission, suggesting that this intervention was not effective. Instead, age-dependency was
the most important factor in explaining the transmission risk for children attending school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I see the people who are allowing their kid to unmask to be more cognizant of 1) the protective aspects of the vaccine, and 2) the low risk to kids to begin with. So the people wanting mask choice have all vaccinated their kids, and are not anti-vaxxers. I think there are some that have read the recent study that the 5-11 vaccine did little in terms of reducing transmission, and that has impacted their thinking about whether it should be required or used as a metric in deciding when schools should unmask.

PP, I think you might be thinking of people that are largely not in DC.

My kids have had the vaccine (5-11). We are still masking and will be for at least the next couple of weeks. Husband and I are highly educated and we understand the science. We chose to continue masking. I don’t particularly care what your kids do. It’s extremely hard to judge why others are still masking or not masking.

Lol, let me educate you.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4046809

FCM mandates in schools were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or
transmission, suggesting that this intervention was not effective. Instead, age-dependency was
the most important factor in explaining the transmission risk for children attending school.

Breath deep in your arrogance, breath deep.

[Anonymous]

Since the Omicron wave ended, I have not asked a student to put on or fix a mask. I rarely asked about masks at BOY and increased enforcement during Omicron. It just leads to power struggles, there was no real enforcement so pick your battles. The data has become pretty clear about the effectiveness of masking. Cloth masks are statistically the same as no mask (per CDC) and “surgical” are around 50% reduction. Although recent data shows that in children, there is no reduction in infection due to the lack of compliance, autonomy issues, fitting, etc…

Personally, I have worn a KN95 every day until Wednesday. From my observations, out of a typical DCPS MS class, probably 50% do not mask or at a level where it could only be considered a decoration or accessory. There are about 25% of students who are effective maskers, and I have never seen their full face. Their masks are always over the nose and mouth. I had a student today ask me a question in the hall and I didn't even recognize them because it was the first time to see their full face. The other 25% are inconsistent, usually under the nose, take it off to sneeze (yes), or drink water (glad the fountains are back on), so no clue about the efficacy. Honestly, if you go to a grocery store (Giant or Safeway, not Whole Foods), it is about the same in the general population.

Since Wed, most decorative non-maskers still only wear a mask around the neck and chin, I can’t explain it. A few non-maskers have totally dropped them. About an equal number of effective maskers (some who had KN95s during Omicron) have now stopped masking. So not much has changed really in the last two days. I would suggest that the greatest change in masking is from the staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Breath deep in your arrogance, breath deep.

Peer reviewed science is now arrogant if it is not in concordance with my presupposition beliefs, neat!

[Anonymous]

If a month from now the numbers are still low and your kids haven’t caught covid going maskless indoors, we will revisit. I don’t see any benefit being guinea pigs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a month from now the numbers are still low and your kids haven’t caught covid going maskless indoors, we will revisit. I don’t see any benefit being guinea pigs.

They'll put their masks back on in a month.
The hospital numbers ("community levels") might be low today in the DMV, but the immediate suburbs show substantial community transmission.