Wait A Minute, School MASK MANDATES Reduced COVID SPREAD, WHAAAAAAT??????

A new study shows that for all the complaints that mask mandates for in-person schooling caused children to stop learning and turn into furries, school districts in Boston that kept their masking policies in place this year had far fewer COVID infections than districts that stopped requiring masks.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, involved a “natural experiment” that arose when Massachusetts dropped its statewide mask mandates for schools in February. While most school districts in the Boston area quickly rescinded their own masking mandates, the Boston and Chelsea school districts kept theirs in place for 15 weeks longer, until schools let out for summer vacation in June. Big surprise: When the mask mandates were in place statewide, COVID rates were pretty much the same all over the region. But after the state requirement was dropped, schools that lifted their mask mandates saw

an additional 44.9 cases per 1000 students and staff (95% confidence interval, 32.6 to 57.1), which corresponded to an estimated 11,901 cases and to 29.4% of the cases in all districts during that time.

What’s more, the Boston schools that kept their mandates in place tended to be older, more crowded, and less well-ventilated than the more modern schools in the suburban areas that lifted their mask mandates. They also had higher populations of low-income students, students with disabilities, and Black and Hispanic students and staff. All in all, said the researchers from Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, the schools that lifted mask mandates right away experienced at least 17,500 days of missed days for students, and 6,500 missed days for faculty and staff, since people who tested positive were required to isolate for 10 days. Please copy the link to this story and keep it handy for your cousin who won’t shut up about how kids don’t get COVID and masks don’t do any good, the end.

[NYT / New England Journal of Medicine]

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