Reply to Why aren’t schools with high COVID rates masking?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Because most people have already had it.  Because vaccines have been available to almost all age groups for a long, long time now.  Because it’s generally mild for most people, particularly those who are vaccinated.

Perhaps most important, because we need to maintain some capital for requiring masks in the future if a variant emerges that is more harmful to children than this variant.  It’s been over two years of disruption.  It’s been, what, two months of kids being able to forego masks?  Even here, most people don’t have the appetite for restrictions anymore, given the current conditions.

Masking in school reduces some transmission, but thinking that they’re incredibly effective is misinformed.  [/quote]

Please show me evidence for your last statement. [/quote]

Please show me evidence that they ARE highly effective in K-12 school settings.  The burden of proof is on the intervention.

OP, I understand that you're upset, but denigrating people doesn't help.  And, as someone pointed out, the school with the highest COVID rate *is* masking.  If you're hoping for a return to MCPS-wide mask mandates, you're unlikely to get one now.[/quote]

Sure, here you go.

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/mask-mandates-cut-covid-19-spread-in-schools-studies-find/2022/03

I’m not some pro mask hack - I hate wearing a KN95 as much as the next person - but the Pediatrics Duke study shows that schools with universal masking had nearly 90 percent lower infection rates. That seems pretty convincing. 
[/quote]

Thanks - I hadn't seen that one before.  It's one study, of course, and there are others that don't have results as convincing.  Plenty of kids got Omicron during January 2022 here, and we had a mask mandate in place, so there's also that.

Again, the larger point about maintaining political capital for future restrictions is important here.  There are many, many people, even in MoCo, who no longer support universal mask mandates.  If you want them to cooperate in the future, you can't push them too hard now.  Does it suck for some people?  Yes.  Might it suck even harder in the future if we push mask mandates again now, and people refuse to cooperate with other public health measures?  Also yes.

I mean, if MCPS had reopened in-person, or at least *offered* the option back in September 2021, they would have gained some capital with parents who wanted in-person.  But they didn't, and partially because of that decision (among others), here we are. [/quote]

Here’s where I come out: assuming the choice is get covid/my kids get covid or wear a n-95 7 hours a day for years I would get covid. Every time. I would get it twice a year if that was the choice. So there isn’t any data on mask effectiveness that could sway me. I am happy to assume they are 100% effective. I’m still not depriving my kids of fresh air and a normal childhood. And for the record we have not masked anywhere since the mandates lifted and have not gotten covid so this idea that you’ll get it more than once or twice a year seems wrong. [/quote]

So you've presented an N of 1.  That's not how this works[/quote]

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