Reply to Will your DC wear mask to school when Youngkin lifts school mask mandate next week?

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Reply to "Will your DC wear mask to school when Youngkin lifts school mask mandate next week?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hope my kids wear masks every winter to be honest. It’s been nice to escape the constant colds they usually have from November-March. [/quote]

It’s how kids build their immune system, ugh.  Will you be able to provide sterile environment for them their entire lives? What if they start going unmasked when they are in HS or College? They will be up for really rough times then with barely functioning immune systems or extreme allergies or worse. [/quote]

NP.  Before I had kids I was all for just throwing the kids into whatever situation to "build their immune systems."  Then I had kids.  Through a ridiculous amount of sickness, urgent care, ER, and other medical appointments we figured out that our kids have asthma.  They also ended up with RSV and pneumonia at different times.  We had to stop doing all of our "normal" activities because we observed other parents sending their kids to inside activities regardless of whether their noses were a dripping faucet or whether they were coughing all over everyone.  The winter before COVID I would notice older (happened to be Asian) people waking around with masks and wonder if they were protecting themselves or others, and made a mental note to look into whether we should start doing that.  Now we all know that masks protect the wearer and other people.

I'll never forget an early conversation I had with my husband about the pros and cons of day care.  Our pediatrician told us one benefit is that kids in day care tend to not get sick as much in kindergarten because they've already been exposed to so much. My husband's valid point was that at least by kindergarten kids aren't sticking the same toys in their mouth and might wash their hands sometimes or cover a cough occasionally. The point is as people get older they should understand how to keep their germs from spreading all over everything and everyone around them. In general society has (hopefully still does) expect people to keep their germs and viruses to themselves. I hope one thing we've all learned is how widespread various health issues are, and that you can't tell someone's health status by looking at them, especially with kids.[/quote]

I wish I was blissfully ignorant. I am the parent who used to let young kids eat food that fell on the ground because I believed in building immunity. This is unfortunately a novel virus that the human immune system is stymied by and it manages to attack multiple body systems including the vascular and nervous systems. I have kids under 5 who cannot be vaccinated until June or later and a seemingly mild infection that can lead to MIS-C, long Covid, and trigger T1 diabetes is not a mild cold. I desperately don't want my vaccinated ES student to bring it home or at least come down with a high viral load and infect their siblings. In other countries, if masks are not required in primary school, there is more frequent testing than what is done in Virginia public schools. Given the difficulty in implementing more frequent testing in schools, masks provide an added level protection and opt-outs shouldn't occur while rates of transmission are extremely high and hospitals are operating under a state of emergency.

Remember that we wear masks to protect others? While there may not be many kids under 5 in an elementary school (although some have preschools attached to them), there are students and teachers who are very vulnerable from an immunity standpoint. Public schools must provide students with disabilities, including those who are immunocompromised or at high risk of severe illness despite vaccination, a "free appropriate public education" and that does not mean offering them a virtual option, or having them go to the library while the rest of their classmates are in music or PE, it does not mean having them take a circuitous route around the school to avoid passing by many other students, it does not mean only being able to do group work with masked students. A separate but equal existence at school is not equality.[/quote]

Except that if I’m not positive then I’m not putting you in danger. I’m sitting at a conference now of 350 all vaxxed people, all of whom tested negative on rapids thus morning.  We’re all sitting around in masks. It’s pure theater and beyond absurd [/quote]

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