The Augusta County School Board held a special session on July 29th to discuss what turned out to be two issues.
The main issue was the recent Commonwealth decision that all schools needed to have a non-discrimination policy in place in regards to transgender students. Specifically, whether transgender students should be allowed to use the restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
The school board, pressured by hundreds of people who didn’t want them to implement this decision, decided to NOT enact it. Essentially the school board has opened itself up to a ton of lawsuits because the members of the board flouted what is now state law.
The second, and somewhat smaller issue on the agenda that night was “mitigation policies” for the school year. Specifically, the school board would discuss what they would do for masking, social distancing, etc… in the elementary, middle, and high schools. The board, in a not-so-shocking occurrence, voted to make masks optional. This new optional mask-wearing goes against established science from the World Health Organization, the American Pediatric Association, and the Centers for Disease Control.
Masking K-8 students (at the very least) should be a “no-duh” policy decision. They are unvaccinated and are at higher risk to not only catch the COVID-19 Delta variant but also act as spreaders to a community where not quite half of all the people are vaccinated.
I’ve heard all the reasons why students shouldn’t have to wear masks. They break down as such:
- The type of masks the general public wear don’t really work well.
- It’s taking away their childhood and making them fearful.
- Schools should butt out of a parent’s personal health decisions for their child.
- Children are not affected by COVID in anywhere near the numbers as older populations are.
The most pernicious thing about the four reasons listed above is that each of them is at least partly true. Unfortunately, they are all also guilty of the sin of omission. So let’s take them one at a time.
Masks don’t work really well. While masking is not a perfect solution, there are decades of research that bear out that masking in fact DOES work to mitigate the spread of viruses and disease. Here’s a solid article that goes through how masks work, and WHY they work. Yes, cloth masks are not as effective as N-95 masks that healthcare workers use, but they do work. Masks are certainly not foolproof, which is why social distancing is also often practiced in scenarios where people are in close quarters and inside. It’s kind of like wearing a seatbelt AND having an airbag in a car. One is safe, two is even safer.
Taking away their childhood and making them fearful. This argument always seems to fall short for me, because as a parent it’s our job to do our due diligence on WHY our kids need to do something and then find a way to boil it down and explain it to them so it doesn’t make them afraid. My kids would OF COURSE rather not wear masks, but they essentially look at them as accessories at this point, trying to match a mask to the dress they’re wearing that day. Mask wearing isn’t fun, and it can be irritating. The health benefits far outweigh the discomfort. If your child is fearful and scared that might be a YOU problem. How have you framed the reasoning? Have you essentially allowed them to overhear you saying that “masking is stupid, and doesn’t work?” This comes down to informing yourself with the proven data and science and not giving into propaganda and political forces that seek to divide. Here’s an article that points to the framing question.
The government (schools included) should stay out of parental health decisions. I agree with this except when it comes at the detriment of public health. We are citizens and as citizens, we have agreed to a social contract that we work to keep those in our community safe. That’s the very idea and concept of citizenship.
Most places in the country require vaccinations before a student is allowed into a school. In the ’50s most people looked at it as their patriotic duty to get the polio vaccine. Schools in many cases didn’t even ask parents. The smallpox vaccine was administered at schools without parental consent. Mostly because most people would have found it insane NOT to be inoculated against something that could kill you. The great polymath Isaac Asimov once wrote about the “cult of ignorance” in the United States. The article was written in 1980. One of his main points was that :
“the strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’. ”
We cannot let a cult of ignorance override the knowledge of hundreds of thousands of doctors, epidemiologists, and biologists that all say “to keep kids safe, have them mask up.” We need to stand up loudly and proudly and display our knowledge and share it with others. Doing what’s right sometimes goes against what the loudest and most ignorant among us want.
Children are not affected by COVID. It’s true that most children who contract COVID have very mild symptoms. It’s vanishingly rare for a child to have an adverse reaction. But let’s just be honest about something in this paragraph: the vast majority of scientists, laypeople, and everyday citizens have no idea how this virus works, why it attacks certain people, and why it sometimes creates incredibly adverse reactions. The scientific community won’t necessarily be able to answer some of these questions for years or decades. The virus mutates and changes when people contract it. It’s a chimera. It constantly changes. Scientists STILL study the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and that happened more than 100 years ago!
The fact of the matter is that children DO get COVID, and it can really affect them seriously. The Delta variant is even more uncharted, but it seems it is tied to a higher incidence of cases in children, and also coupled with RSV it can lead to major complications.
The scientific community might find out that this might just be anecdotal. It might not hurt children worse than COVID Alpha. But that’s just the point isn’t it? WE DON’T KNOW. What we do know is that masking and social distancing work. It worked in schools in Europe, and it worked in the United States.
I write all of this without even discussing community spread. Keeping children unmasked in school with a Delta variant that is as easy to catch as chickenpox, and has a transmission rate that is potentially eight times worse than the alpha version of COVID should be more than enough to have our kids wear masks. For their safety, for the safety of our community, and for the safety of the immunocompromised.
