For better or worse - San Franciscans are done with masks in schools

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uclaLabrat

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Aug 2, 2007
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They are the area where mask wearing has the least benefit and the most harm. Staff should be vaccinated by mandate so they should be low risk, children themselves are very low risk, compliance is bad because they are kids, and costs to social interaction are at their highest.

If anyone is arguing for masks in schools they should be simultaneously be arguing for the closure of all bars, restaurants, etc. I don’t see people doing that.
I think you're overestimating the impact masks have on kids. Social isolation from zoom classes, sure. I have seen mask compliance quite high and I'm not sure that's the biggest issue. Combine that with many school age kids have siblings too young to be vaccinated and I think the rationale for masking in schools is incredibly strong. My biggest caveat there is most school still have kids eating indoors, which defeats the entire point.

Am I for shutting down bars? Indoor in almost all cases yes. My county has 80% eligible population "fully vaccinated" and yet fully 2% of the population is ACTIVELY INFECTED, and that number was over 5% only three weeks ago. We're still at total case rates more than double what we saw in the back to school surge, and we're getting close contact notices from our kids' school about twice a week.

Even our 5-11 kids are at 54% unvaxxed. This is not the time to remove masks in school.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
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Kids super don't care about masks. It's just parental projection at this point. We're still at 100k cases daily as a country and pediatric infections are still higher than they've been in the last two years. Just chill our shit, suck it up and ride this out a bit longer. I swear to god American adults are the biggest babies on earth.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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I think you're overestimating the impact masks have on kids. Social isolation from zoom classes, sure. I have seen mask compliance quite high and I'm not sure that's the biggest issue. Combine that with many school age kids have siblings too young to be vaccinated and I think the rationale for masking in schools is incredibly strong. My biggest caveat there is most school still have kids eating indoors, which defeats the entire point.

Am I for shutting down bars? Indoor in almost all cases yes. My county has 80% eligible population "fully vaccinated" and yet fully 2% of the population is ACTIVELY INFECTED, and that number was over 5% only three weeks ago. We're still at total case rates more than double what we saw in the back to school surge, and we're getting close contact notices from our kids' school about twice a week.

Even our 5-11 kids are at 54% unvaxxed. This is not the time to remove masks in school.

Very strongly disagree. The odds of a severe COVID case for children under 12 are small, similar to influenza. We didn't radically alter our schooling practice for influenza, and we shouldn't for this either. For children too young to be vaccinated the risk is even smaller - in fact this has been one difficulty for Pfizer's trials among that age cohort - bad outcomes are so rare it makes it difficult to measure impact! We do know however that face masks impair student learning and social conditioning.

It's time to accept the fact that COVID is endemic and children and vaccinated individuals are at such low risk the cost of nearly any mitigation is higher than the benefits, and the cost of masking students is not trivial. I personally am in favor of mandatory vaccination for all Americans but I am now opposed to any and all other mitigation efforts.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
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Oct 28, 1999
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It's time to accept the fact that COVID is endemic and children and vaccinated individuals are at such low risk the cost of nearly any mitigation is higher than the benefits, and the cost of masking students is not trivial. I personally am in favor of mandatory vaccination for all Americans but I am now opposed to any and all other mitigation efforts.

You've been following how infectious and how little regard Omicron has for vaccines right? Schools do have metrics in place that say if X number/percent of cases hit a school they have to go virtual. Virtual is worst case scenario. It sucks for parents. It sucks for kids. It sucks for teachers. It sucks for everyone. If masks can help mitigate just enough percent to avoid those triggers then fucking wear the masks till we get through this thing.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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You've been following how infectious and how little regard Omicron has for vaccines right? Schools do have metrics in place that say if X number/percent of cases hit a school they have to go virtual. Virtual is worst case scenario. It sucks for parents. It sucks for kids. It sucks for teachers. It sucks for everyone. If masks can help mitigate just enough percent to avoid those triggers then fucking wear the masks till we get through this thing.
Oh I’m also opposed to virtual learning. All mitigations should end, no more virtual school.

As for regard to how little concern Omicron has for vaccines that’s not even remotely true - vaccines are super effective against it! They don’t stop infection so well, but they stop severe outcomes very well and that is what we should care about. Children are already very low risk and vaccinated staff are generally at very low risk. We won! It’s time to accept victory.
 
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fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2002
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Very strongly disagree. The odds of a severe COVID case for children under 12 are small, similar to influenza. We didn't radically alter our schooling practice for influenza, and we shouldn't for this either. For children too young to be vaccinated the risk is even smaller - in fact this has been one difficulty for Pfizer's trials among that age cohort - bad outcomes are so rare it makes it difficult to measure impact! We do know however that face masks impair student learning and social conditioning.

It's time to accept the fact that COVID is endemic and children and vaccinated individuals are at such low risk the cost of nearly any mitigation is higher than the benefits, and the cost of masking students is not trivial. I personally am in favor of mandatory vaccination for all Americans but I am now opposed to any and all other mitigation efforts.
Annual deaths from flu are estimated in the 30,000-50,000 range. Current 7 day covid death rate is 2000 per day, covid kills 10 times more people than flu.

N95 masks are effective at slowing down the spread with little to no downsides. It is the height of stupidity to drop masks when 2000 people are dying every day from COVID.
 
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fskimospy

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Mar 10, 2006
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Annual deaths from flu are estimated in the 30,000-50,000 range. Current 7 day covid death rate is 2000 per day, covid kills 10 times more people than flu.

N95 masks are effective at slowing down the spread with little to no downsides. It is the height of stupidity to drop masks when 2000 people are dying every day from COVID.
Serious questions:

1) what percentage of those 2000 people are school aged children or vaccinated adults?

2) what percentage of those 2,000 people are wearing N95 masks around, even in cases where there are mask mandates?

I feel like liberals’ response to conservatives’ absolute irresponsibility and insanity when it comes to COVID has been to be irrational the other way. (The two are not equivalent though, what conservatives did is far worse)

What I think liberals need to do is set down concrete metrics for when they are willing to eliminate ALL COVID restrictions.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
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Oct 28, 1999
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Oh I’m also opposed to virtual learning. All mitigations should end, no more virtual school.

As for regard to how little concern Omicron has for vaccines that’s not even remotely true - vaccines are super effective against it! They don’t stop infection so well, but they stop severe outcomes very well and that is what we should care about. Children are already very low risk and vaccinated staff are generally at very low risk. We won! It’s time to accept victory.

I don't disagree with you. But unfortunately there's policy and unions to navigate. It's not as simple as declaring victory and moving on.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
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what i find hilarious is that kids don't seem to have issues masking up. adults, on the other hand, do.

Older children, teenagers perhaps, but young children NEED to see faces, in person. Or their development will be harmed.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Well we know that would surely be preferable to building more houses, so I imagine you agree.
I neither build or stop houses from being built. I believe that the cause of homelessness is that housing is not affordable and that raising the property tax of people who once were able to vote to protect themselves from becoming homeless by keeping their property tax bill from causing them to lose their homes shouldn’t now be targeted as the solution to homelessness.

That just makes housing more expensive. You pursue that solution because you live in a fantasy that a single family home in a desirable urban location will magically turn into a skyscraper when, if it somehow could appear where a house once stood, it would be poor people who would move in. Look at rents in NYC and compare them to rents in Kentucky.

The issue is that there is no such thing as a home the homeless can afford. Such housing can only be built by the government at tax payer expense and even if you might vote to pay for it, it will still never pass in state legislatures. And that is why the homeless problem remains unfixed. People are barely able to take care of themselves much less pay to house others.

California has already committed billions to free medicine. To build and give away at a price the poor could afford would cost billions more.

Perhaps the issue will be solved if Elon Musk takes an interest in it in addition to moving people to Mars.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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I neither build or stop houses from being built. I believe that the cause of homelessness is that housing is not affordable and that raising the property tax of people who once were able to vote to protect themselves from becoming homeless by keeping their property tax bill from causing them to lose their homes shouldn’t now be targeted as the solution to homelessness.
I know this - you want special tax privileges for yourself while crushing new homeowners with the bill. We've been over this.

Remember, my only position is that everyone should pay the same tax rate, no special privileges for anyone.

That just makes housing more expensive.

False, the opposite is true. The price of housing is based on the purchase price of people buying one now - freezing property taxes encourages people to turtle in properties larger than what they need because it is cheaper to own a three bedroom house with two bedrooms you don't use than it is to downsize to a one bedroom because your taxes will take a huge hit. This decreases the available housing stock and makes housing more expensive.

You pursue that solution because you live in a fantasy that a single family home in a desirable urban location will magically turn into a skyscraper when, if it somehow could appear where a house once stood, it would be poor people who would move in. Look at rents in NYC and compare them to rents in Kentucky.

A single family home won't magically do anything. All I want is for people to stop banning it from becoming a skyscraper if that's what the owner wants to do. And no, the homeless wouldn't move into a new building - I mean do you think poor people buy new cars? The rich would move into that building, but they would move out of their current residences to do so, enabling those less rich than them to move into their old place, and so on, and so forth, thus decreasing the total cost of housing.

I mean using your logic we shouldn't build any new cars because only rich people will buy them. This is the problem with NIMBYs, they keep trying to make up new excuses to try and make their selfishness seem somehow altruistic. I would prefer if you just came out and said 'I want more money and I want to force people to live in the houses I deem acceptable for them.'

The issue is that there is no such thing as a home the homeless can afford. Such housing can only be built by the government at tax payer expense and even if you might vote to pay for it, it will still never pass in state legislatures. And that is why the homeless problem remains unfixed. People are barely able to take care of themselves much less pay to house others.

California has already committed billions to free medicine. To build and give away at a price the poor could afford would cost billions more.

I don't even know what to say to someone so delusional that you don't think the price of housing DIRECTLY AFFECTS who can afford them, and therefore who becomes homeless. Did it seriously not dawn on you that the huge increase in homelessness and the huge increase in housing costs in California might be related?

Again though, I encourage you to take this piece of wisdom to a homeless encampment near you - 'the cost of housing isn't an issue for why you're homeless, you couldn't afford something no matter the price!'

It is funny though that you seem to believe only the government can step in to solve a problem that is almost entirely caused by government regulation.

Perhaps the issue will be solved if Elon Musk takes an interest in it in addition to moving people to Mars.
I'm pretty confident Elon Musk would agree with me.
 

Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
32,119
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Older children, teenagers perhaps, but young children NEED to see faces, in person. Or their development will be harmed.
So they can go maskless during outdoor recess times, which are lower risk?

Remember, by demanding maskless and in-person classes, you are:

1) demanding teachers to take additional risk to themselves - without commensurate hazard pay I might add
2) putting the children's family members at risk. Even if the children aren't affected or as severely, they can pass it on as a carrier to an immediate family member

When is the pandemic "over" and when can we throw away masks? Outside of saying "when widespread community transmission no longer exists" I can't provide more of an opinion than that. I don't know if that means a positivity rate of 1% or 0.1% or 0.0001%. I'll leave that to public health professionals.
 
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woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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Those school board members are morons. Instead of dealing with the schools in a constructive way, they spent their time debating woke renaming a bunch of schools. Even in SF, people aren't quite as far left as people assume.

I've been opposed to school mask mandates since the vaccines came out, and I've always been opposed to "distance learning." Based on my sister and her husband, her a grade school teacher and him a high school teacher, telling me it is a disaster for education.

Omicron has had a positive benefit, by being extremely infective but with low lethality comparable to the flu for anyone under 70. It's spreading around natural immunity for both the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. It's time we consider ending all mitigation measures except vaccine requirements. For one thing, the constant alarmism over COVID does not help Biden's approvals, and that is extremely important for the future of the country.
 
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fskimospy

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Mar 10, 2006
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So they can go maskless during outdoor recess times, which are lower risk?

Remember, by demanding maskless and in-person classes, you are:

1) demanding teachers to take additional risk to themselves - without commensurate hazard pay I might add
2) putting the children's family members at risk. Even if the children aren't affected or as severely, they can pass it on as a carrier to an immediate family member

When is the pandemic "over" and when can we throw away masks? Outside of saying "when widespread community transmission no longer exists" I can't provide more of an opinion than that. I don't know if that means a positivity rate of 1% or 0.1% or 0.0001%. I'll leave that to public health professionals.
1) The risk teachers face is extremely small if they are vaccinated. We commonly ask professionals to take far larger risks so this is not even remotely persuasive to me.

2) The risk to the children's family members is also extremely low if they are vaccinated. If they aren't vaccinated then they have brought this on themselves so I have no sympathy for them.

People need to remember that all of these mitigations have costs - closing the schools at all was a gigantic mistake that we will be paying for for a generation, there's no need to make things worse than they already are. The kids will be fine, the staff will be fine, time to move on and go back to helping these kids.
 
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woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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I feel like liberals’ response to conservatives’ absolute irresponsibility and insanity when it comes to COVID has been to be irrational the other way. (The two are not equivalent though, what conservatives did is far worse)

Exactly. We are now a nation of extremists. That is not good. Extremism is incompatible with democracy.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
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Oh I'm all for dumping the damn things for outdoors. I take my son to the school playground for an hour after school is out and masks are required. It's just... not necessary there. OR as a state is supposed to ease off mandates indoors next month assuming our hospital counts are down. We still have a shit ton of Covid patients taking up ICU space.
 

fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2002
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Serious questions:

1) what percentage of those 2000 people are school aged children or vaccinated adults?

2) what percentage of those 2,000 people are wearing N95 masks around, even in cases where there are mask mandates?

I feel like liberals’ response to conservatives’ absolute irresponsibility and insanity when it comes to COVID has been to be irrational the other way. (The two are not equivalent though, what conservatives did is far worse)

What I think liberals need to do is set down concrete metrics for when they are willing to eliminate ALL COVID restrictions.
What difference does it make? There is a reason why schools were colloquially referred to as "petri dishes" even before COVID. Even if children are unlikely to die, they are just as likely to spread the virus. At least half of my friends who had covid got it from school/college students. Schools are a huge exposure/spread vector for aiborne disease. My wife is a teacher and a few weeks ago practically half the school had to quarantine because parents haven't vaccinated their kids. An irrational position would have been remote learning. Nobody is arguing for that, masks in school is very much a middle ground position to allow in person learning while limiting community spread of decease that is currently killing 2000 people daily.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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What difference does it make? There is a reason why schools were colloquially referred to as "petri dishes" even before COVID. Even if children are unlikely to die, they are just as likely to spread the virus. At least half of my friends who had covid got it from school/college students. Schools are a huge exposure/spread vector for aiborne disease. My wife is a teacher and a few weeks ago practically half the school had to quarantine because parents haven't vaccinated their kids. An irrational position would have been remote learning. Nobody is arguing for that, masks in school is very much a middle ground position to allow in person learning while limiting community spread of decease that is currently killing 2000 people daily.
What difference does it make? If COVID didn't kill anyone and just made them sick we would never have cared much about it to begin with so the number of deaths seems to be by far the most important point.

It seems that we agree that the kids themselves are at nearly zero risk, so the argument now seems to be that we should enact mitigations in schools to protect people other than students or school staff. Well, the hazards to vaccinated adults are also extremely low so if those individuals that the students come into contact with are concerned about their vulnerability to COVID they have an easy answer - get vaccinated. If they don't care, then why should we?
 
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emperus

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Apr 6, 2012
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They are the area where mask wearing has the least benefit and the most harm. Staff should be vaccinated by mandate so they should be low risk, children themselves are very low risk, compliance is bad because they are kids, and costs to social interaction are at their highest.

If anyone is arguing for masks in schools they should be simultaneously be arguing for the closure of all bars, restaurants, etc. I don’t see people doing that.

I haven't seen any study that says that children can't transmit covid. Unless I'm missing that research, I think that is the element some people are missing. If a school gets infected, the children take it home and infect their households who in turn infect the broader community. Again, I could be wrong if there is a study that says kids are low spreaders.
 

pauldun170

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Sep 26, 2011
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Kids super don't care about masks. It's just parental projection at this point. We're still at 100k cases daily as a country and pediatric infections are still higher than they've been in the last two years. Just chill our shit, suck it up and ride this out a bit longer. I swear to god American adults are the biggest babies on earth.

You can tell which kids have no issues with masks based on the academic performance the student and education level of the household.
Maybe the kids that do have problems with masks are simply lonely since mommy and daddy are staring at their phone all day trying to figure out which rally to attend on social media.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
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I haven't seen any study that says that children can't transmit covid. Unless I'm missing that research, I think that is the element some people are missing. If a school gets infected, the children take it home and infect their households who in turn infect the broader community. Again, I could be wrong if there is a study that says kids are low spreaders.
Children can and do spread covid. What I’m saying is we shouldn’t care anymore because the risk to kids and vaccinated adults is very low, and masks have costs to student learning and socialization.
 

emperus

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Apr 6, 2012
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Children can and do spread covid. What I’m saying is we shouldn’t care anymore because the risk to kids and vaccinated adults is very low, and masks have costs to student learning and socialization.
I hear you. Masks do have some costs, but in the midst of a virus or new strain of a virus of which we aren't sure of it's mortality rate, I think we can cope. And another month(until the cases counts come down) of masks won't hurt. Those decisions were political. Now, I think everything should be done for them to be in school. But we keep nibbling around this virus instead of doing the things we need to to move on from it, which prolongs it.
 
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pauldun170

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2011
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I haven't seen any study that says that children can't transmit covid. Unless I'm missing that research, I think that is the element some people are missing. If a school gets infected, the children take it home and infect their households who in turn infect the broader community. Again, I could be wrong if there is a study that says kids are low spreaders.

Anecdote: In our community, majority of household infections came about from the kids catching it at either school, sports or band and bringing it home.
Every story was always "We thought it was allergies....we thought it was just a little cold....we though she was tired because of blah blah blah....its been months now and my taste hasn't come back. I've had a metallic taste in mouth for weeks....this headache never goes away....my gums hurt all the time."
Fortunately the majority of folks we know were vaccinated (including kids) and boosted so most got off pretty light.

There was one anti vaxxer dad who was a habitual asshole catching it and then brushing off the sickness as "It's just the flu!!!". Went to Colorado with his kid and died after the fact since his body couldn't handle the thinner air.
 

emperus

Diamond Member
Apr 6, 2012
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Anecdote: In our community, majority of household infections came about from the kids catching it at either school, sports or band and bringing it home.
Every story was always "We thought it was allergies....we thought it was just a little cold....we though she was tired because of blah blah blah....its been months now and my taste hasn't come back. I've had a metallic taste in mouth for weeks....this headache never goes away....my gums hurt all the time."
Fortunately the majority of folks we know were vaccinated (including kids) and boosted so most got off pretty light.

There was one anti vaxxer dad who was a habitual asshole catching it and then brushing off the sickness as "It's just the flu!!!". Went to Colorado with his kid and died after the fact since his body couldn't handle the thinner air.

Wow. I think that's the part people aren't talking about. Kids spreading the virus. When your kid is sick, in that moment most parents aren't thinking about their own welfare.
My brother always made us wear masks around his unvaccinated children, which we were happy to do. But in hindsight I wonder if that protected us more than them.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
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Oct 28, 1999
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Nearly every one of my wife's peers that have been out of work from covid since January were because of kids bringing it back into the house. Even vaccinated ones.