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]I was shopping for booster seats this morning and had an epiphany related to masking in schools.

The best-in-class, safest high back booster seat on the market costs $400 and a steel frame. It weighs a ton and can a beast to install and use, BUT if done properly, it has a near perfect crash test rating (a 9/10).

I know a bunch of rich parents who could easily afford this seat. They all care deeply about their kids and are generally pretty cautious. And I don’t know anyone with this booster. Why? Because not only is it the most expensive, it’s also hard to I stall and use, and hard to move into a different car. It’s less convenient. And you also only get the added safety from it if it’s perfectly installed and used, and what if you make a mistake? Most people use boosters that cost half that (or less), are easy to use and move around, while still providing good safety (say a 7/10, or even an 8/10 for done models). The added safety is not worth the costs in other ways.

And that’s how I think about Covid measures. If ALL we care about is protecting kids from Covid, then we should mandate K95s for all people, require daily testing, and close schools when ever cases go up. But it’s not all we care about, nor should it be. As in every other decision parents make, we have to weigh priorities and practical concerns like costs and convenience. Doing so doesn’t mean we don’t care about kids or safety. It means we are using our judgment to balance factors. We do this all the time. Why is Covid any different?[/quote]

It's different because public health officials have scared the sh$t out of people for the past two years, have worked hard to give the impression that everyone, including kids, is at grave risk from this virus (instead of acknowledging the enormous age gradient of this particular virus) in order to generate compliance and support for NPIs, and it's very hard to un-scare people once you have created this kind of mass hysteria.

Secondly, it is different because this country doesn't really have a plan for transitioning to endemicity, and when to stop treating this virus completely differently from other viruses and from how it needed to be treated in 2020. A lot of parents want mask mandates to stay in place because they believe that they help prevent some of the spread, and they are worried that if cases spike too much, schools will be closed again, or asymptomatic kids will have to miss school for ten days. As long as these policies are in place, masks seem like a sensible precaution even to those who aren't afraid of Covid but do believe in their effectiveness. I personally question how much they actually do, but I do agree that our whole approach to this virus should ideally change along with the mask policy.[/quote]

It’s different because folks in DC have followed the rules, gotten vaccinated, gotten our kids vaccinated, masked, distanced and done all the things.

I do think DC is in great shape, I think mask restrictions can be lessened and for our kids slowly removed etc.

What I struggle w is that while we all worked hard, too many didn’t (non DC folks) and they made it political, about freedom and BS like that.[/quote]

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