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][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) [b]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?[/b]

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]

This is absolutely what this is about, and why someone at the FDA thought we should rush the approval (on which the brake was then pulled), and why the removal of masks is linked to the availability of vaccines for the under-5 year olds. It is 100% about parent (and maybe teacher) psychology and feelings and not about data or the actual risks to these kids.[/quote]

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