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Maryland School Official: We're Going to Mask These Kids Forever
Townhall. ^ | Jan 28, 2022 | Guy Benson

Posted on 01/28/2022 7:40:08 AM PST by george76

That headline isn't a direct quote, but it's close. The maniac in question is the CEO of the Prince George's County public schools in Maryland, who wants everyone to know that she is determined to force children to wear face coverings, for hours on end, every day, until COVID doesn't exist anymore. That's not an exaggeration, either. The epitome of anti-child, anti-science, wildly unrealistic "zero COVIDism," right here:

The leader of a Maryland county school district indicated that students will be required to wear masks on school grounds and in classrooms until "COVID no longer exists." "I have not been thinking about a maskless classroom," Prince George's County Public Schools' CEO Monica Goldson said in Capitol Heights, WTOP reported...

"The only off-ramp I want is the one where COVID no longer exists," Goldson said. "I don’t think that that off-ramp will exist. I think this is how our life will be … and we’re showing that we’re adaptable and we can make whatever necessary changes so that we can keep our students learning and safe." Students in the county returned to the classroom for the first time this year on Jan. 18. The school district abruptly decided in December to return to virtual learning for the first two weeks of January due to the omicron variant.

She proudly admits that her "off ramp" is a metric that won't be met, so "this is how our life will be." This is the equivalent of saying, "we're going to mask these kids forever." I wonder if Glenn Youngkin's "Soviet-style police state" is looking increasingly attractive to some Maryland parents these days. Speaking of Youngkin, more and more medical professionals are resisting forced masking, and endorsing his parent-empowering, mask-optional schools policy, based on the science:

...

The overall takeaway from these [CDC] studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered. In two of these studies, this conclusion is undercut by the fact that background vaccination rates, both of staff and of the surrounding community, were not controlled for or taken into consideration...Comparisons of counties in California that did and did not have mask mandates showed that vaccination rates were highly predictive of hospitalization rates, but mask mandates were not. Neighboring Los Angeles and Orange Counties, which had similar vaccination rates but differing masking requirements, had similar case and hospitalization rates.

Likewise, our analyses of data from Maryland show a tight correlation between hospitalizations and immunity rates by county, despite some counties requiring masks in all indoor facilities, some requiring masks only in county buildings, and some not requiring masks at all...

To justify mask requirements in school at this point, health officials should be able to muster solid evidence from randomized trials of masking in children. To date, however, only two randomized trials have measured the impact of masks on COVID transmission. The first was conducted in Denmark in the spring of 2020 and found no significant effect of masks on reducing COVID-19 transmission.

The second is a much-covered study conducted in Bangladesh that reported that surgical masks (but not cloth) were modestly effective at reducing rates of symptomatic infection. However, neither of these studies included children...

Other studies— not randomized trials—have looked at the effects of masks in schools, and their results do not support pervasive, endless masking at school. A study from Brown University, analyzing 2020–21 data from schools in New York, Massachusetts, and Florida, found no correlation between student cases and mask mandates, but did see decreased cases associated with teacher vaccination...

Another recent analysis of data from Cass County, North Dakota, comparing school districts with and without mask mandates, concluded that mask-optional districts had lower prevalence of COVID-19 cases among students this fall. Analyses of COVID-19 cases in Alachua County, Florida, also suggest no differences in mask-required versus mask-optional schools.

Similarly, the U.K. recently reported finding no statistically significant difference in absences traced to COVID-19 between secondary schools with mask mandates and those without mandates...

Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy found evidence that masking is a barrier to speech recognition, hearing, and communication, and that masks impede children’s ability to decode facial expressions, dampening children’s perceived trustworthiness of faces. Research has also suggested that hearing-impaired children have difficulty discerning individual sounds; opaque masks, of course, prevent lip-reading.

Some teachers, parents, and speech pathologists have reported that masks can make learning difficult for some of America’s most vulnerable children, including those with cognitive delays, speech and hearing issues, and autism. Masks may also hinder language and speech development—especially important for students who do not speak English at home. Masks may impede emotion recognition, even in adults, but particularly in children.

This fall, when children were asked, many said that prolonged mask wearing is uncomfortable and that they dislike it.

"As with our existing school-mask policies, no real-world data indicate that [even fitted medical] masks decrease transmission in school settings," the authors conclude. "Imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit, on the grounds that we have not yet gathered solid evidence of its negative effects, violates the most basic tenet of medicine:

First, do no harm...Continued mandatory masking of children in schools, especially now that most schoolchildren are eligible for vaccination, fails this test." There is little-to-no established "discernible benefit" to requiring school masking, but as multiple doctors have pointed out, there are certainly discernible harms. One dramatic example out of Florida, where masking has been blessedly limited. Imagine how bad things must be elsewhere:

...

Stop this toxic, unscientific madness. Stop using children as guinea pigs in tribal culture wars. These types of images are surreal, given what we know about how little kids are at risk of severe COVID, compared to adults:

...

But the adults are vaccinated doesn't work as a rejoinder. Unvaccinated children are safer from COVID than many vaccinated adults (who are also very, very unlikely to die of COVID). I'll leave you with my radio monologue on this general subject. I've had it with the neurotic, ignorant hysterics:


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Maryland
KEYWORDS: arth; covid; mandate; mandates; maryland; mask; maskmandates; masks; masksmandate; masksmandates; schools
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To: SmokingJoe
How does a school have a CEO?

I checked. The 'E' is for 'Executive' - not 'Education.' $$$$$

21 posted on 01/28/2022 7:58:40 AM PST by gloryblaze
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To: george76

Oooo. She can be a candidate for SCOTUS. Yea, something’s got to give.


22 posted on 01/28/2022 7:59:06 AM PST by stevio
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To: george76

The masks are a precursor to a Hijab. I’ve said that from the beginning.


23 posted on 01/28/2022 8:01:33 AM PST by softengine
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To: george76
General comment about our public education system.

1. They have too much money and too much time. They spend a fortune on pet programs that some doctorate level socialologist concocted that do very little to improve learning or worse end up hurting the children by wasting months or even years of the children's education. This has always been the case for many decades.

I witnessed one program — children being taught using a technique that was developed in the Soviet Union as form of social engineering (Tools of the Mind). It cost the district millions, the school faithfully adopted it and applied it and it was a complete failure and waste of at least four years of the children's valuable education years. Common Core is another failure. And then remote learning because of the pandemic. So it is not surprising that the new favored program is Critical Race Theory and it will too fail, will be a complete waste of money, and will end up hurting the children's education.

2. The teachers do what they are told and follow orders. They rarely question because that might get them fired.

24 posted on 01/28/2022 8:02:22 AM PST by dhs12345
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To: george76

Parents need to reconfigure their lives ASAP to cut the public school out of it. Hire tutors. Homeschool. Do whatever you need to do to get your kids out of the clutches of these maniacs.


25 posted on 01/28/2022 8:03:48 AM PST by Antoninus (Republicans are all honorable men.)
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To: george76

These people are psychopaths.


26 posted on 01/28/2022 8:04:54 AM PST by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: simpson96

Doctor Goodson. What BS.
My daughter has a Doctoral degree as a Nurse Practitioner from Baylor.
She doesn’t call herself a Doctor. Doctors have MD, DO, or DDS before or after their name.


27 posted on 01/28/2022 8:07:43 AM PST by Iceclimber58
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To: PeachyKeen; Red Badger; All

Lucky your grandson lives in Florida where he can get plenty of sun and produce his own Vitamin D. Recent studies indicate having optimum vitamin D levels can protect from Covid death. Optimum is 50 to 80 ng/ml of Vitamin D. Kaiser Permanente recently tested me without my even asking. So far our government agencies (CDC, FDA, NIH, etc.) are not encouraging people to take extra Vitamin D if they are living in a northern state, stay indoors most of the time, are elderly or dark skinned/black, and it is winter. Givernmental criminal negligence???


28 posted on 01/28/2022 8:11:35 AM PST by gleeaikin (,Question authority!)
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To: george76

Tar and feather!


29 posted on 01/28/2022 8:12:59 AM PST by From The Deer Stand
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To: george76

Prince George’s County is becoming more and more a sh*t hole jurisdiction. White and Asian students in their public schools are down to less than 4% and 3% respectively. I would expect those numbers to continue to fall under their ridiculous school “leadership”.


30 posted on 01/28/2022 8:13:44 AM PST by House Atreides
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To: george76
Prince George's County is the darkest county in Maryland, perhaps the darkest county in the USA. None are quite so dusky as Maryland’s deepest umbra.

31 posted on 01/28/2022 8:13:55 AM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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To: george76

This will eventually come to blows. The mask-fanatic COVIDian child abusers must be stopped, even if that requires force. But many FReepers agree that children should be masked forever. They’re part of the problem.


32 posted on 01/28/2022 8:20:55 AM PST by backwoods-engineer (But what do I know? I'm just a backwoods engineer.)
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To: Iceclimber58

Doctor of gaming the system so she can have her over-inflated ego stroked throughout her “career” with a undeserved title.


33 posted on 01/28/2022 8:22:05 AM PST by mikey_hates_everything
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To: george76

Just another idiotic statement made by just another idiot bureaucrat enamored with her own self importance.


34 posted on 01/28/2022 8:22:37 AM PST by Roccus (First we beat the Nazis........Then we defeated the Soviets....... Now, we are them.)
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To: joshua c
If this school system really wanted to do something useful, they would invest in "training jail cells" to accustom these delinquents into where they are going to spend the better part of the rest of their lives. It's never too soon to start developing good habits.

35 posted on 01/28/2022 8:25:14 AM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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To: Army Air Corps

Don’t worry, when Jesus returns this virus will go away.


36 posted on 01/28/2022 8:38:37 AM PST by No name given
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To: V_TWIN

She needs to be wearing a face full of bird shot. I hear that wards off vampires and dates. Only in the name of science of course.


37 posted on 01/28/2022 8:42:50 AM PST by Mouton (The enemy of the people is the media )
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To: george76; 6amgelsmama; 100American; AAABEST; aberaussie; AccountantMom; Aggie Mama; agrace; ...

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)

The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.

38 posted on 01/28/2022 8:47:20 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith….)
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To: metmom

No wonder houses, in TX, are selling...with MULTIPLE, COMPETING offers...the SAME day they list.

Praying these n00bs don’t CA/NY/MD, etc., my Texas, with their voting.

Hopefully....they’ve finally learned!


39 posted on 01/28/2022 8:51:56 AM PST by Jane Long (What we were told was a “conspiracy theory” in 2020 is now fact. 🙏🏻 Ps 33:12)
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To: House Atreides

Prince William County, Virginia is going the same way. We call it “PG County West”.


40 posted on 01/28/2022 9:03:26 AM PST by brianl703
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