Masks Are One Of The Few Proven COVID Prevention Measures In Schools That Are Worth The Effort | Talking Points Memo

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1384714
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Masks Are One Of The Few Proven COVID Prevention Measures In Schools That Are Worth The Effort

Uh… there’s also the preventive measure where you choose not to mix groups of children from 30 different otherwise non-interacting families in indoor spaces 7 hours a day 5 days a week.

Don’t open the schools. That is the only sane thing to do. Everything else is about as useful as a rain dance.

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I disagree. Many schools were able to be open last year with mitigation efforts. This difference is last year all of the adults around the children were still wearing masks in public so they wouldn’t bring home a virus to their kids.

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Pre delta.

The purpose of amateur mask wearing is to protect bystanders from the wearer. They do little if anything to protect the wearer. And do you think the amateur mask wearer is going to continue to wear the mask when at home with the children?

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As a middle school teacher, the very first thing I did was show my students a short video clip from a medical doctor explaining why this particular Delta Variant is so dangerous. We talked about the importance of keeping your mask on and I told the kids if they want to stay in school they have to wear masks and stay safe.

I’m in Arkansas so I may get in trouble for explaining the situation to my students but I’m not backing down. This is my last year of teaching and if they want to fire my ass I’ll draw unemployment and go to the house. I have better things to do than argue with parents and administrators over keeping people safe.

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Good for you. And I don’t mean that sarcastically, keep up the good fight. And if we do have to put kids in schoolrooms (which means compiling risk from 30 different family pools, 7 hours a day five days a week) then we might as well get them masked. But, without masks it’ll be a fiasco in two weeks. With masks, four weeks. My point is, we should instead not do the fiasco.

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Why do Republicans want to kill our children?

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It’s just collateral damage when they are busy killing their own children. And they don’t care.

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Like many people, I am so done with COVID. As done as I am with COVID, Anita Sicar (an infectious disease specialist in Los Angeles) is more fed up than even I am.

She points up the stupidity of taking hydroxychlorquine (something some people are still doing), Regeneron, and Remdesivir to treat COVID after passing on the vaccines because they aren’t (yet) fully authorized by the FDA. All those treatments are (was in the case of hydroxychlorquine) available under EUAs: the same status as the vaccines. The evidence for any of these treatments is equivoval at best. The evidence for vaccines’ efficacy is clear and convincing, as is the evidence for their safety.

The whole piece is worth a read. If you don’t have time, here are the nut grafs:

If you believe the pandemic is almost over and you can ride it out, without getting vaccinated, you could not be more wrong. This virus will find you.

If you believe I’ll just wait until the FDA approves the vaccine first, you may not live to see the day.

If you believe if I get infected I’ll just go to the hospital and get treated, there is no guarantee we can save your life, nor even a promise we’ll have a bed for you.

If you believe I’m pregnant and I don’t want the vaccine to affect me, my baby or my future fertility, it matters little if you’re not alive to see your newborn.

If you believe I won’t get my children vaccinated because I don’t know what the long-term effects will be, it matters little if they don’t live long enough for you to find out.

If you believe I’ll just let everyone else get vaccinated around me so I don’t have to, there are 93 million eligible, unvaccinated people in the “herd” who think the same way you do and are getting in the way of ending this pandemic.

If you believe vaccinated people are getting infected anyway so what’s the point?, the vaccine was built to prevent hospitalizations and deaths from severe illness. Instead of fatal pneumonia, those with breakthrough infections have a short, bad cold, so the vaccine has already proved itself. The vaccinated are not dying from COVID-19.

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Looks like TX Gov Abbot is getting schooled in the covid first hand.

How do you all say it? Isn’t that a shame…

M. Paul

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Abbott is an idiot, but he isn’t a stupid idiot. He’s been vaccinated, and had already received a booster dose. The most likely adverse event is a bad cold. Although, if he was shedding virus at that fundraiser (and he probably was) he probably infected a bunch of GQP donors, so it isn’t all bad.

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Masks are very effective. Which is why Biden should have started with a mask mandate before escalating to a vaccine mandate.