Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

georgethethirteenth t1_j2ay89d wrote

Reply to comment by shiningdickhalloran in Masks will be asked and expected at BPS for 8 school days but won’t be made mandatory. by lucifer0915

Anecdotally, when my school (not BPL, but Boston adjacent) dropped the mandate during the last school year I was fascinated by the fact that well over three-quarters of our students elected to remain masked - even as nearly all of the teachers and staff dropped theirs.

Since the last week of August, I'd say between 10-15% of my students have been masked daily and there was a sharp uptick in masking the two weeks leading up to Christmas break - surely helped by the influenza present in our population that resulted in the hospitalization of one of our students.

My district almost surely won't introduce a mandate next week...but we did send students off to break with masks and home test kits and I wouldn't be shocked to see somewhere around a third of our students masked up come Tuesday.

I, too, thought that kids would rip those things off as soon as they were able. Leaving aside any arguments on the effective of masking - whether it comes from parents, peer pressure, or something else - I've been surprised about how many of my students have remained with mask over the last year.

Anecdotes do not make data and I'm sure this experience differs by school (like I said, not Boston for me) and age (I work mainly with fifth through seventh graders) but I've been surprised at the lack of eagerness my students have shown to discard them.

38

Oh_Hae t1_j2azg1i wrote

Same at my Boston adjacent school. November-December a nasty stomach bug and the flu was going around and I saw a lot of the older students coming to school with their masks, even overheard a gaggle of middle school girls saying they were gonna keep masking up since they didn't want to be sick on winter break.

13

wsdog t1_j2bjx01 wrote

Hm, I never saw a masked kid at school for about a year now.

7

blackholesinthesky t1_j2bw2yx wrote

> well over three-quarters of our students elected to remain masked

Because the kids don't care. You're seeing one of the incredibly rare cases of Mass Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.

Everyone crying "think about the children" as an excuse to not wear PPE has the emotional capacity of a toddler and will use literally anything as a springboard to talk about their own feelings.

3

bb5199 t1_j2az8tb wrote

Can you blame them? The covid hysteria has been immense and they have basically been led to believe that getting covid is a serious thing, which, of course, it is not at their age.

−25

SmilingZebra t1_j2b8u87 wrote

It’s not so much about whether the kids get, it’s who(and how many people) they bring it home to, and whether they give it to the staff etc

13

iBarber111 t1_j2bfa74 wrote

The risk that current variants pose to vaccinated adults is EXTREMELY small. This point is outdated by like a year.

2

SmilingZebra t1_j2bg0xk wrote

Risk of death? Sure, you’re right. But there’s a bit more to the equation than that.

8

iBarber111 t1_j2bgc8q wrote

And the risk of serious illness, when you contextualize it with illness risks our society has always tolerated.

3

SmilingZebra t1_j2bho0a wrote

And minimizing the community spread to prevent the rise of new variants, increased infections of elderly, risk of long covid. It’s not a big ask for kids to wear masks for two weeks after school break. Just look at the MA wastewater data, infection rates are way up after the the last week, and it’s only a small effort to keep it in check. I hate masks also, and rarely wear one, nor do my kids, but it seems reasonable that they do for a bit.

6

Wtf_is_this1234 t1_j2ckd4m wrote

Two weeks of cloth mask wearing in a school environment where kids are constantly taking their masks on and off will achieve close to nothing.

4

shiningdickhalloran t1_j2bj1wm wrote

Omicron is now running buck wild in a nation of 1.4 billion people. Masking kids in BPS to prevent new variants is a bizarre point of view. And that's before we recognize that all the world (outside of a few nations in East Asia) has completely moved on. And if you're on favor of masks, then why are you targeting kids? It's adults 65+ that are falling sick and ending up in hospitals. Mask them instead.

−1

bb5199 t1_j2bmb2l wrote

You sound like someone armed with a set of teacher's union talking points from two years ago. Frankly it doesn't matter what people like you want in terms of masks, masks mandates aren't coming back.

−3

iBarber111 t1_j2bimyw wrote

Genuine question - do you also favor returning mask mandates to transit/stores/bars/gyms/offices? It makes exceptionally little sense to me to have masks in schools & not these places.

Edit: also - we're so far past lowering community spread having an impact on new variants, lmao. Did previous mask mandates stop new variants from spawning? The data shows they hardly even impacted community spread, much less enough to meaningfully reduce new variants. Your points are weak af & not supported by data.

−9

SmilingZebra t1_j2bjywe wrote

You’re saying masks don’t work, sorry, I’m done

7

Wtf_is_this1234 t1_j2ckhua wrote

It's not wrong though. Cloth masks don't work, nor do masks that people wear incorrectly or take off to eat or drink.

The only way a mask mandate works is with strict adherence to N95's, which is impossible, even more so in a school environment.

−1

SmilingZebra t1_j2biu53 wrote

No, just places where we pack 2000 kids together for 6 hours a day

3

iBarber111 t1_j2bj39t wrote

So not the T, where we pack hundreds of people in a space smaller than a classroom? Insane contradictions here.

1

JacksRagingBile_Duct t1_j2beeth wrote

The students are brainwashed and uninformed, that’s why. Any serious and objective person looking at the data knows that Covid poses effectively zero risk to them.

−36

Jesusish t1_j2bmcpx wrote

OP: One of the students recently got hospitalized for influenza

You: They're brainwashed for wearing a mask because covid isn't a risk to them

23

iBarber111 t1_j2bf5ii wrote

Right?! Children have been put through an insane level of stress over this virus despite the fact that the data shows that even OG, vaccine-less, covid posed a tiny risk of serious illness to them. This is to say nothing of the Omicron/vaccine world.

It drives me up a wall that people who claim to be intelligent/objective won't look at the data staring them right in their face, just because it's saying something good.

−19

Jesusish t1_j2blwbz wrote

Children weren't required to wear masks because of the the risk of serious illness to them. It was the risk of illness to others who they may spread covid to (teachers, parents, grandparents, etc.) along with the overall increase in infections from having 50 million unmasked students.

Also, the risk of serious illness isn't the only reason to wear a mask. Given the choice of being sick for a few days (covid, influenza, etc.) or not being sick for a few days, I'd much rather not be sick.

8

Wtf_is_this1234 t1_j2ckrcd wrote

>Also, the risk of serious illness isn't the only reason to wear a mask. Given the choice of being sick for a few days (covid, influenza, etc.) or not being sick for a few days, I'd much rather not be sick.

People caught covid while wearing masks...

Presenting masks as a 100% effective way to prevent getting sick is completely nuts.

−5

Jesusish t1_j2cq57r wrote

And not wearing a mask doesn't mean that you'll 100% get sick. That's why it wasn't presenting either as such. I'm saying that trying not to get sick (regardless of severity) is also a reason people wear masks. As opposed to the OP's comment that only takes into account the risk of a serious illness.

6