San Diego schools have reimposed indoor mask mandates for summer school students, reports Domenick Candelieri. The city is seeing a flare-up of Covid cases.
District leaders don't seem to care if the rules accelerate enrollment loss, writes Matt Welch on Reason. San Diego Unified Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne told KUSI News that summer students can drop out if they don't want to wear masks. If the mandate remains in the fall, those who object can take online classes or find another school, she said.
All 50 states have dropped masking rules for public schools, reports Adeel Hassan in the New York Times. Hawaii, the last hold-out, will end the indoor mandate on Aug. 1 when students start the new school year.
In addition, infections will no longer trigger quarantines.
“We really are looking at trying to move toward a more normal classroom experience this fall,” Dr. Sarah Kemble, the state epidemiologist at the Hawaii Department of Health, said at a virtual news conference.
My husband and I (and my daughter, one niece and a son-in-law) got Covid at a family wedding in June. All of us had cold symptoms, which appears to be the norm. My elderly neighbor has Covid. She has cold symptoms. I don't think the public will accept new mask mandates to prevent the spread of cold symptoms.
In a Harvard poll conducted for Politico in March, 46 percent of parents said masking in school had harmed their children's social learning and interactions, 40 percent said it hurt their schooling experience, 39 percent their mental and emotional health and 33 percent their education.
California has scaled back, then postponed plans to require students to be vaccinated against Covid. It's hard enough to get students back in class. At this point, it's like mandating an annual flu vaccine. Not going to happen.
I just got back to work after covid--one day of bad aches, then lessening symptoms for a couple days before mostly normal. Meanwhile, here in L.A., they are talking about reinstating the indoor mask mandate, but got some inadvertent pushback. The county is pointing to increased hospitalizations, but a presentation done at one of the county's own hospitals leaked, which stated there were only a handful of patients in the hospital actually *for* covid, most were just there *with* covid. It also said no one was landing in the ICU anymore, and that they haven't put anyone on a respirator since February.
Angelenos, however, are complete sheep. They will happily don the mask again and many will be upset if…