Stop Masking Children: Redux

In which I discuss some of the pushback I received from the first post and other further musings. Thanks for bearing with me, my droogies.

Perhaps I was too strident earlier, or did not consider all the angles. This is sometimes a fault of mine. It is one of my more diabolical shortcomings—but, then again, maybe it’s not so bad to always question one’s positions and beliefs and remain open-minded to arguments and evidence.

In my last post, I argued that since children are, by and large, not spreading COVID-19 and not coming down with serious symptoms (statically speaking—there are always outliers) that we should stop masking children. It’s not that masks are the worst, most oppressive thing in the world, it’s just that kids don’t pose much of a threat when it comes to COVID-19, even with the dread Delta variant.

My kids both wear masks to school (they’re in 6th and 9th grade respectively) but as soon as they’re out of school, off go the masks. Off they go with friends, maskless, or with us to various events and gatherings where people mingle (usually outdoors) but often without masks now that most everyone we know is vaccinated. What are masks really achieving in schools? Do the cloth masks most kids wear really stop the spread? What about after they take them off?

Teenagers are all kissing and vaping and spreading cooties right and left the moment they get a chance and thankfully many of them are now vaccinated. Younger kids simply don’t spread COVID-19 as much and rarely get serious symptoms—but as readers have pointed out, we still have a dearth of data on the long-term impacts to various age groups.

My question is: How long do we expect our children to wear masks throughout the school day? I don’t trust the government or the “experts” to give me a satisfactory answer at all to this question and I used to be someone who did. A year of living dangerously has turned me into a heretic, my faith in “experts” badly wobbling. Can you blame me? Who still trusts experts? Who still reads the news—outside of straight reporting from the AP—and doesn’t think to themselves, “Okay, so what’s the spin?”

Under Trump, a lack of urgency and seriousness to address the outbreak—and a healthy dose of downright denialism and bad leadership—resulted in the disease’s rapid spread and helped lead to the death of over 650,000 Americans. Truly an atrocious moment in American history.

But Trump wasn’t the only problem. Health experts and other officials and plenty in the media spouted off wild claims or quashed various unorthodox observations (aka the lab leak theory, which is now the prevailing wisdom) and later were shown to be mistaken or flat-out making shit up. By the time we had a vaccine, people didn’t know what to believe. Many still don’t.

Faith in media, government and other institutions is understandably at all time lows across the board after all the mistakes and misfires. Faith in conspiracy theories is on the rise. We live in joyous times.

I should also note that I don’t support governors like Ron DeSantis issuing mandates that prevent local governments and school boards from enforcing their own mask mandates. Local communities should have the right to determine what the right approach is for their community. If that means masks at school, so be it. If that’s a mask ordnance in restaurants, alright. Democracy is messy business. We do our best with the information we have.

I still think vaccines are the real answer to our problem—not masks. A vaccine stimulus where every American adult who had received full doses of any of the current available vaccines was issued a check would not only be an economic shot of espresso, but would almost certainly convince plenty of people on the fence to get the vaccine. An extra one or two grand in the bank is a strong incentive. And hey, I’d take a check. I’ve been jabbed.

Hell, I’ll take another shot in the arm—though if I’m being honest, I’d prefer the third world was given access to the vaccine before I get a booster shot. I had a moment a few weeks ago where reading about Delta had me quite panicky and eager for a booster, but I think poor countries should be vaccinated before rich countries get even more.

Finally, as some readers have pointed out, the real hurdle to actually getting rid of masks in schools is testing—or the lack thereof. We simply do not test as much or as efficiently here as they do in Europe and much of Asia. This is a big country and contact tracing is difficult. With decentralized government and all its inefficiencies (and benefits!) it makes keeping a close tab on outbreaks much more difficult than in smaller European nations.

NOTE: A friend sent me this graph while I was typing this post up and I have to say, okay, this is pretty compelling. In this county, every school district but one had mask mandates. You can spot the one that didn’t quite easily.

Limited data, for sure, but still a stark illustration that masks may indeed prevent infection. Then again . . .

All food for thought. Maybe we’re not there yet. Maybe we’ll be there soon. Maybe people will wake up to the danger and get vaccinated or maybe the powers-that-be will come up with clever ways to lure them in. And who knows, maybe just the right mixture of social pressure and incentives will get us to that magical—what is it? 80%? 90%?—number where all of this starts to look a lot less scary. We can only hope.

Fun fact: According to this tracker in the New York Times, the United Arab Emirates has the highest rate of vaccination in the entire world. And here I thought that we’re number one! We’re number one! We’re number one!