Listened to an NPR story in the car last night that I think changed my view on masks for kids. Pre-vaccination, pre-omicron, I was very much in favor of masking kids in school. But now that everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated and the cloth masks are questionably effective for preventing the spread of Omicron, I think it's time to take them off. Our kids school stopped mandating them in October and despite that we've only had a 2% infection rate, most of which were asymptomatic cases which originated from a parent in the home testing positive first. It's been two years and I think it's time to stop trying to stop this pandemic on the backs of the kids. It just isn't right anymore.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1075842341/growing-calls-to-take-masks-off-children-in-school
I'm still pro mask in school, because here - well, it's really no big deal. Nobody seems to care. Most of the kids have moved from cloth over to KN95 or surgical masks. They are worn indoors, and outside is optional, but most kids wear them outside too.
My son's teacher just got back last week after being out with COVID. She's a yeller. She yells TO the kids, not AT the kids (she's just loud, I guess), so I am very much pro mask.
I think it's funny how the perspectives are different. In my home town (small, rural, Appalachia-ish), people fight the school boards to get rid of the mask mandates. I read constantly about the "poor kids". Well, nobody is masking there - go into any grocery store and you'll see <10% people wearing masks. (Also, their COVID death rate is almost 3%.) If the parents refuse to wear masks, OF COURSE they think it's horrible for kids to wear masks.
Where I live in CA, we are under a mask mandate. We had a brief hiatus last summer, but Delta reared up in August-ish and it came back. So, everyone is required to wear masks indoors, including at work, and it's been that way mostly for a couple of years now. There were some rules about private functions if everyone was vaccinated or tested you didn't need them...either way, the kids have been masked up since school started up again almost a year ago.
I just saw a study from the CDC where they surveyed people about whether or not they'd done any physical activity outside of work in the past month (like going for a bike ride, a run, a walk, playing golf, etc.). 26% of people surveyed said no. So we have significantly more adults that have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine than can even be bothered to go for a short walk around their neighborhood once a month and roughly as many adults that are fully vaccinated that can be bothered to do so. This is just to provide context about how effective I think the vaccination effort has been in comparison to something that everyone knows is important to health and is an order of magnitude easier to do.
I read that too, and I wonder if it's bad now or has always been bad. I can see it though. Back in the day, when I actually worked at the office, I would at least have a longer walk from the office to the bathroom or water cooler. I had meetings in the building a block away. 2-3 times a week I'd clear my head with a walk at lunch, then eat my food at my desk.
These days, I work in my bedroom. The walk to the bathroom is 10 steps, maybe 15. I don't walk to meetings. I don't even stand up during meetings. With kid dropoff and pickup schedules, it's just a lot more work to squeeze in a lunch walk compared to "before times" because there's always something to be done in the house.
(I still exercise every day before work, plus I walk the dog 4 days a week...but it's less than I was getting before COVID.)