Universal Masking Reduced COVID-19 Spread in Schools by 72%


Mask-hole parents who disrupt and threaten violence against school boards over mask mandates look like even bigger idiots than they did before. A new study forthcoming in the journal Pediatrics shows that masking is effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 at school, just like the public health people have said all along.

Researchers studied within-school transmission in the last six months of 2021 among over a million students and over 150,000 staff member in 61 K-12 districts in nine states. Six of the districts had optional masking policies, nine had partial masking policies (changing over time or based on conditions), and 46 had universal masking policies.

The differences were big. For every 100 community-acquired infections, the universally masked districts had 7.3 cases acquired in-school, while the optionally masked districts had 26.4 cases. That is a rate 3.6 times (or 72%) higher. Districts with partial masking policies had rates 2.4 times higher.

This seems obvious. Take a bunch of kids, who are good a spreading illnesses to begin with. Pack them together into a poorly ventilated room and introduce an airborne virus. 

Of course that is going to be a recipe for effective transmission. Now apply a mask, which anybody can see for themselves prevent the virus-laden droplets from getting into the air, and you have an no-brainer way to cut down transmission.

Unfortunately we seem to have a surplus of no-brain adults these days.



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