Masks cut covid spread in schools, study finds.

[Tanuki]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/10/nation/masks-cut-covid-19-spread-schools-study-finds/

"Masks have been a cultural flashpoint since the start of the pandemic, and mask mandates in schools have been especially incendiary. Critics have argued that there is no strong evidence to prove that masks slow the spread of COVID-19, and that in any case children weren’t wearing the right kinds of masks or weren’t wearing them properly.

Now a research paper details a so-called natural experiment that occurred when all but two school districts in the greater Boston area lifted mask requirements in the spring. Researchers took that opportunity to make a direct comparison of the spread of COVID-19 in masking and nonmasking schools.

The bottom line: Masking mandates were linked with significantly reduced numbers of COVID-19 cases in schools.

Infection rates were lower among masked students — even in Boston’s public schools, where many buildings are old and lack good ventilation systems, classrooms are crowded and students are more often from at-risk communities — than among unmasked students attending newer schools in communities like Cambridge and Newton.
.....

The data should help dispel misinformation about the effectiveness of universal masking requirements in stemming viral transmission in schools, said Julia Raifman, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and an author of an editorial accompanying the new study.

“Even as recently as this summer, people were saying, ‘Oh, COVID doesn’t spread in schools,’ and there was a misconception that kids don’t get COVID,” said Raifman, who was not involved in the new research. “But what we see in the study is that COVID does spread in schools, and it spreads back home, and it spreads to teachers.”...(more)

[gratuitous]

1. The damage wrought by the former guy is incalculable

How did simple, accessible and CHEAP countermeasures become a cultural flashpoint? Whether you want to call him Typhoid Donny, Patient Zero Trump, or whatever, the former guy cost millions of people their health, their lives, and more. Billions, if not trillions of dollars were wasted, or held up, or never spent to ameliorate the toll the pandemic took on the country.

People watched the clueless braggadochio of the former guy, who styled himself as an expert who knew more and better than people who had worked in the public health sector for their entire careers. His slavering, dumbass followers pretended they were instant health experts even as their ranks thinned while Covid-19 rampaged. The informed advice of health care professionals was ridiculed and even violently opposed by the former guy's partisans, who created a totem of their tribe to loudly proclaim themselves unvaccinated.

As data became irrefutable about the effectiveness of masking, distancing, and hand washing, these knuckleheads persisted, influencing public opinion and even bending the reporting on the pandemic, as media outlets feared to piss off the ignorant with scientific evidence. Yes, "the data should help dispel misinformation," but you and I both know that this report will just re-double the efforts of the know-nothings.

[keep_left]

7. I never could understand why that psychopath would turn the pandemic into another front...

...in the culture war, but here we are.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17242564

DUers may recall that Trump was so stupendously successful in his Covid denial that when he encouraged his moronic followers to get vaxxed, they booed him.

Trump Told Adoring Fans He Got Boosted. Then They Turned On Him

Trump urges supporters in Alabama to get vaccinated, gets booed at his own rally

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Who is surprised by this?

Masks work. I still wear my mask outside at most events

[ProfessorGAC]

5. I'm Certainly Not

I was in schools just as it hit and then again right after they reopened until the experts sounded the all clear (so to speak, as it probably never goes away.)
Mask compliance was super high in schools, admin backed up teachers & subs when they corrected mask behaviors, and kids didn't really care that much. (It was whiny, know-it-all parents.)
Here in Illinois after fall of 2020, there were only around a dozen outbreaks over 18 school months, and we have 1.9 million K-12 students.
Obviously vaccinations helped tremendously, but something kept a particularly virulent virus from spreading through the schools like a brush fire. I'm going with masks.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Schools are giant petri dishes. Masks should be worn when covid or flu pop up.

[sakabatou]

4. I'm hoping mask usage will be used for diseases other than COVID

like cold/flu, and other airborne ailments.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Doubtful Here

At least in schools. I sub 60-70 times a year since I retired. I see almost zero appetite for mask enforcement at this point.
On the bright side, I see some masked kids (obviously their parents are demanding it) and there is zero pushback by other kids against the madk wearers.
So, if kids did wear masks to avoid the flu, they'd be quite free to do so.

[Patterson]

8. Of course they do.