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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]February 28th, as soon as Bowser drops indoor mandate for DC, schools should follow suit immediately! [/quote]

Do most people think it won’t be extended beyond the 28th?[/quote]

I agree 2/28 because we have such a high vaccination rate and low number of new cases.  We also have a very high percentage of kids vax at our school.

But I don’t think the mask mandate will be dropped at schools until the 3-4 year olds in ECE have access to vaccines, at least in elementary.[/quote]

Well that has been pushed back 2 months.  Probably best, I don't see the advocacy of a 2-year-old vaccine that does not stop transmission, in a population that has a lower chance of being hospitalized as compared to the actual flu. [/quote]

But this is also precisely why basing the mask decision on access to vaccines for this group is frustrating.

I've reached a point of acceptance that my now-4yo will need to be vaccinated before he can stop wearing a mask to school. But it feels like a frustrating merry-go-round of facts that for some reason always add up to a crappy experience for him:

(1) He's at very low risk for Covid in general because of his age,

(2) But he can still transmit it, so we need masks,

(3) But mask-wearing for this age-group is not super effective because they have to take it off for multiple meals a day plus rest time (so removing at least 4 times a day, adding up to over 2 hours of the day), and also because 4yos (and 3yos, and 5 yos) are not great at wearing masks, plus they are almost all just wearing cloth or surgical masks, which aren't very effective over a full school day,

(4) And also masks seem especially bad over the longterm for this age group, because they are still in basic language development mode, and pre-literacy, plus are supposed to be gaining important socialization that might be inhibited by masks over a period of years instead of months, as we originally hoped it would be,

(4) So they need to get vaccinated, except the vaccine doesn't work for the 3- and 4yos, so it hasn't been approved,

(5) But now they might try to approve it anyway even though it doesn't work? So I guess we'll give these tiny kids vaccines that don't work so we can all feel better for some reason?

It's like a logic puzzle you can't logic your way out of. I would LOVE for my kid to be able to drop the mask at school because we are hitting a point where I'm genuinely worried about the impact on his learning and socialization, and I'm happy to vaccinate him if we had a vaccine that worked, and yet it feels like none of that is possible because reasons, and yet I find myself reminding myself that he's at very low risk from Covid to begin with. See? Impossible.[/quote]

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