The end of masks in US schools divides parents

many states of U.S are abandoning the obligation to wear a mask in public schools due to the improvement of the health situation in the country, but the measure is questioned by parents who ask for collective responsibility against the COVID-19.

The use of a mask in classrooms, recommended by health authorities to stop the spread of the coronavirus, is a very strong political marker in the United States.

It is mandatory in 16 states, mostly Democrats. But the measure is seen as an obstacle to individual liberties by much of the right, and conservative states like Texas and Florida have refused to implement it.

The party lines, however, are beginning to move, as the contagion curve has plummeted for a month.

Four Democratic states (Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and Oregon) have announced an imminent end to face masks in schools. California is working with educational authorities to “update their recommendations” in this regard.

In the state of New York, the mask in closed places will no longer be mandatory from Thursday, but it will remain in schools until March, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul announced.

In Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order in late January allowing parents to send their children to school without a mask.

“This is about determining who is in the best position to make a decision about your child’s health,” he explained.

But the text was suspended by an Arlington court at the request of seven school districts in the state.

Some schools, especially in Democratic strongholds near Washington, have threatened to exclude students without masks or isolate them in service rooms.

A “calculated risk”

Virginia, a state neighboring the capital that fell into Republican hands last November but retains a strong Democratic minority, crystallizes the national confrontation over the use of masks when the wave of the omicron variant recedes.

For Carrie Lukas, a mother of five children ages 7 to 16 who attend school in Fairfax County, the districts that opposed the decree “do not put children first,” who have paid a heavy price since the beginning of the pandemic.

The youngest have suffered “a huge loss in terms” after practically a year of online school, and the mask weighs on the socialization of adolescents, who “cannot see if someone smiles at them or makes faces at them,” he said. .

President of the Forum of Independent Women, a conservative organization, Lukas assures that “an avalanche of research shows that masks do not work” to stop contamination in schools while children and adolescents are the “least vulnerable to COVID-19”.

A study by health authorities dating from September 2021 concluded that the risks of infection were 3.5 times higher in schools where the mask was not mandatory. But these results are disputed, even by non-conservative media.

Carrie Lukas claims a “calculated risk” in the face of the virus: “we all know there are risks, but we allow free people to make their own decisions.”

The “politicized” pandemic

For other parents, however, collective responsibility must prevail.

“When one individual’s choice affects another person’s health, individual freedom ends,” said substitute teacher Amber Bowmer, 42.

Along with 12 other parents of students from Chesapeake, in the east of the state, Bowner sued before the Supreme Court of Virginia, considering that the governor had “exceeded” his prerogatives.

A mother of two children, ages 11 and 14, she says she is “at great risk” because she has suffered from COVID for a long time, which she contracted at the beginning of the pandemic.

“I have a severe form of asthma and any respiratory infection is very dangerous for me,” he explains.

Carrie Lukas and Amber Bowmer regret that the mask has become a political issue in the world’s most mourning country due to the pandemic, with more than 900,000 deaths.

The pandemic has been “politicized at the expense of human life,” says Amber Bowmer.

Virginia has also prohibited its universities from barring unvaccinated students from campuses.

Carrie Lukas criticizes Fairfax County school officials for “refusing to obey the decree of a governor they don’t support.”

But the upcoming end of mask mandates in Democratic states shows that “the walls are crumbling inside the left,” he says.