Reply to When should DC drop its school mask mandate?

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Reply to "When should DC drop its school mask mandate?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You people are crazy.  There have been more covid notifications at our school in the past couple weeks than during the entire pandemic. [/quote]

Really?  We are back, after the couple weeks after break, to our normal number from prior to omicron (~1/week).  And that's with PK3/PK4 now being tested weekly, where as they weren't before.[/quote]

Same. Omicron swept through the week before Christmas and it was tough on everyone -- we basically had a three and a half week winter break instead of one and a third. But since then we are back to our pre-Omicron numbers with the occasional case but zero in-person spread. I feel like our school, specifically, peaked early on Omicron and we are now ready to start thinking about how we want to handle the spring with very minimal cases. Not saying we should drop masks today (cases still pretty high in the city) but if you are tracking the course of the wave, it seems like it should be a real possibility by mid-March or April.

I also think this spring, when cases are low, would be a good time to figure out what a long-term Covid strategy looks like. If this virus is going to be with us for years, let's craft a proactive policy around health screenings, contact tracing, quarantines, masking, and testing that is sustainable over many years and balances the need to protect kids and adults with other important educational, safety, mental health, and social goals. Maybe we start by telling kids they can remove their masks outdoors, if they want. See how that goes. How about we figure out how kids in speech therapy and young learners can go without masks when they are doing things that really benefit from being able to see mouths move. See how that goes. I do think masking during surges, and for kids and adults who are at higher risk, is going to be a regular part of our lives for a long time. So how do we incorporate that into schools in a way that makes sense and still acknowledges that masks ARE a hindrance to certain kinds of learning and social development.

I just don't understand why we can't be reasonably and measured in this, why this gets divided into two factions, and why the assumption is that the other faction is "crazy". We can be reasonable. Why is that so hard?[/quote]

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