Op-ed Essay- The Benefits of Masks in Schools

Op-ed Essay- The Benefits of Masks in Schools

The debate on whether school children should wear masks in schools should be mandated is argued from political and legal perspectives. However, the scientific viewpoint is much being ignored in such debates. Schools are a critical unit of the wider society. They are the basic infrastructure of communities. Accordingly, schools create an environment where children, adolescents, teachers, and other staff and individuals congregate.

Due to the nature of the transmission of coronavirus, which is responsible for the global COVID-19 disease, schools and other learning institutions have been highly considered in the development of preventive measures. There is a need to approach the debate of mandating the donning of masks in schools from a more scientific perspective than just arguing on matters of health from careless political and legal viewpoints.

From a scientific standpoint, it is beneficial for school children and the wider society to consider masking up while in school. Since the development of vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 virus), nationwide and global vaccination drives have been evidenced. The development of vaccines has seen governments lessen the previously existing counter-measures against the diseases, such as wearing masks, social distancing, and isolation. Such changes have been made with the belief that high COVID-19 vaccination rates will likely affect transmission patterns in schools and communities. In general, wearing masks has been scrapped as a precaution against coronavirus infection.

Despite the mass vaccination across the US and other regions across the globe, the vaccines are not all-around protection against future reinfections, especially as new COVID-19 variants are getting identified across populations. A study on the effectiveness of vaccines against newer variants such as Delta and Omicron variants involving participants who had received two COVID-19 vaccine doses and a booster dose concluded that vaccines were effective on Delta variants and had no effect on the Omicron variant (Andrews et al., 2022). This means that the effectiveness of vaccine protection wears out with time after the vaccine is received.

According to CDC data (CDC, 2022), Omicron cases across the US now account for over 70% of all new cases. This makes the variant the most transmissible and dominant in the US. A majority of these cases are reinfections, meaning those previously infected are still in danger of suffering from the virus again. School children and adolescents play a central role in the transmission of the virus due to the contacts they make in and outside of their classrooms and the school in general. The omicron variant largely refuels the pandemic due to reinfection cases. This creates a need to reconsider the debate on masking in schools as a precaution against further reinfections.

Various studies have identified the wearing of masks as a considerable contribution to containing the spread of the virus, even in places where other countermeasures were not properly observed. A study by a group of researchers noted that wearing masks among the youth and conforming to other precautionary social measures substantially reduce the spread of severe coronavirus diseases during high school activities (Mueller et al., 2021). Essentially, this means that masking in schools can be beneficial in containing the spread of the coronavirus in schools and the community.

Wearing masks in schools is a tiny requirement for individuals within school settings. The wearing of masks in schools needs to go beyond the careless thought of infringement of student freedoms and rights to an actual act of taking a stand against the risks of serious illness and even eventual death.

It is clear that those against the mandating of mask-wearing in schools, due to political and legal views, do not consider science or the health and safety of the immune-compromised individuals within schools and society. However, before passing the mask mandate, it is important to consider the comfort of the masks for school children and students and design specific masks for schools.

References

Andrews, N., Stowe, J., Kirsebom, F., Toffa, S., Rickeard, T., Gallagher, E., & Lopez Bernal, J. (2022). Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness against the omicron (B. 1.1. 529) variant. New England Journal of Medicine.

CDC. (2022). Variant Proportions-Monitoring Variant Proportions. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 30 March 2022, from https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions.

Mueller, A., Diefendorf, S., Abrutyn, S., Beardall, K., Millar, K., & O’Reilly, L. et al. (2021). Youth Mask-Wearing and Social-Distancing Behavior at In-Person High School Graduations during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(3), 464-471. https://doi.org/10.1016/

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Overview: Compose an “Op-Ed essay” that makes an informed argument on a topic of your choice related to this course.
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Op-ed Essay- The Benefits of Masks in Schools

Some key points on how to write an op-ed
Journalists are looking for a news hook. Researchers and health policy experts need to convey a clear message that can be easily digested by journalists and news editors.
Many academic researchers feel there are gaps between research and media coverage. Researchers are inclined to be cautious and not make wide-sweeping “miracle cure” statements that journalists tend to like. Scientists frequently use more academic language, while journalists use simpler language to reach a lay audience. Most journalists don’t have scientific training and it can be difficult for them to understand science and translate it into language accessible to a lay audience.