Any scientists? Why it’s ok for kids to wear masks all day in school?

[HaggisBurger]

My DH is really anti-mask. And anti lockdown. Our kids school have brought in a rule that they need to wear masks in lessons now - as well as moving around the school. He’s gone nuts and wants to email the school. He’s claiming I don’t care about our kids health and welfare as I don’t feel strongly against this. I know it’s uncomfortable and not ideal - no one likes wearing a mask. But I am feel it’s worth it if the school feels it’s worth doing.

But I have no science with which to refute DH’s claims. Or indeed if I’m in the wrong it’s good to know. Can anyone help?

@kittykat35

I'm a scientist...a microbiologist to be precise and I have been wearing mask in my job FOREVER!! In the lab it's necessary unfortunately. Your dh is being extremely dramatic and needs to get a grip! It doesn't effect oxygen levels!, never have they given me a headache and as for mask particles....I'm not even going to respond to that 🤣

If you are a scientist then you should be aware that your own personal experience should never be extrapolated to a whole population. You should also understand that your environmental situation is not the same as a school and that as an adult you are not the same as a child. As a specialist in microbiology you should also be aware that other scientific specialists will be better informed on matters outside your specialism.

@haggisburger

There may not always be scientific evidence or peer reviews of available scientific evidence - the absence of this doesn’t mean that the practices (of wearing masks in this case) are harmful, it simply means no studies have been yet carried out on a grand scale. It may not always be necessary to carry out these studies before recommending some measures, especially during a pandemic where the research efforts and resources are stretched.

There is a reason why clinical staff all wear masks, gowns and gloves when they are caring for immune-suppressed individuals - because masks cut out droplet spread of droplet-bourne infections.

There’s a reason why immunosuppressed individuals wear masks and try to avoid crowded, poorly ventilated places - so that they reduce the risk of breathing in droplets from their surroundings which may transmit infections.

From these two practices, it is very fair to infer that a droplet-bourne virus may be more difficult to transmit / catch if both the transmitter and the recipient are wearing masks. The barrier is not 100% but being able to catch open-mouthed sneezes and coughs within a mask cut out a significant amount of droplets being aerosolised.

The air breathed in through a mask is fresh, albeit through a barrier. The blood oxygen levels will not be affected by surgical or fabric masks. Even the tightest fitting N95 masks do not significantly affect pulse oximetry readings.

Headaches could be related to the ear elastic straps being tight on the ears for long periods. Tie masks or a special clip to relieve tension on the ears will help this discomfort significantly.

Ventilated classrooms with open windows and doors, while students have appropriate clothing and coats on are the best way to ensure air is moving through if there are infectious droplets in the air. The windows do not need to be all fully open in this weather - it’s the current of moving air that is more important for ventilation, hence the open window and an open door.

Finally, beware the ‘studies have shown that masks are dangerous’ type of headlines that are clickbait. Just because it’s on the internet somewhere does not make it sound science. If your husband has mostly made up his mind (and the things he says doesn’t seem to be info from solid sources), he may not be able to appraise the information with a cool head. It’s good to know you are being level-headed about his theories. I do think children benefit from being in school and with other students and as far as possible, if masks are needed to maintain this balance, then I think the benefits outweigh the perceived risks.

I have to say when I went back to work 7 weeks ago it was masks for the duration of the shift, and the first week I had headaches and really struggled with the sensation of it - used to disappear to the toilet to have five minutes of not wearing one. Now, I forget I am wearing one and its the bloody visor doing my head in instead! I'm sure eventually that'll be part of the furniture of PPE. I'm a glasses wearer as well and 99% of the time, it isn't a problem anymore. If your children need to wear a mask all day, except to eat, then it will take a bit of getting used to but it'll be alright in the end. I think your DH might need to have a look at both sides of the argument to help him step away from the antimask activists and realise that mask wearing has been common in workplaces for longer than coronavirus. I might even prewarn the school that they may receive an email from him...

If you are a scientist then you should be aware that your own personal experience should never be extrapolated to a whole population. You should also understand that your environmental situation is not the same as a school and that as an adult you are not the same as a child. As a specialist in microbiology you should also be aware that other scientific specialists will be better informed on matters outside your specialism.

I was merely answering the OP's dh's viewpoints...I'm not going to get into a major scientific debate on Mumsnet @Billie18. I never once stated that my personal experience applies to all!! I just stated my personal experience and thoughts. Stop reading between the lines to suit yourself.

Oh and @Billie18 I work in a top global pharmaceutical company so I am extremely well educated/trained on the use of masks and other PPE in the workplace. Thank you 😊

@JamminDoughnuts

are children wearing masks in school lessons now? i wasnt aware. is this at secondary school.?

No across England generally afaik - but theirs is an independent school.

@toolatetooearly

Your husband sounds very annoying

That’s putting it mildly tbh

I do also understand your husband's concern and agree with @Billie18 that we just don't know the long term effects and that does worry me. What about if wearing them for long periods of time does have longer term health consequences we don't realise. In 10-20 years time we could find out there are increased cancers from breathing the particles from detergent through mouths all day or that the younger children of today are more susceptible to all sorts of other diseases because their immune systems were not exercised in the age old way. Hopefully this isn't going to be the case but I just find it strange that people won't entertain the idea that we don't know there aren't downsides so we should be cautious. It's not like asking people to wear gloves or something- this is blocking someone's mouth and nose for hours with all varying types of materials.

[quote Puddlepop]@haggisburger

There may not always be scientific evidence or peer reviews of available scientific evidence - the absence of this doesn’t mean that the practices (of wearing masks in this case) are harmful, it simply means no studies have been yet carried out on a grand scale. It may not always be necessary to carry out these studies before recommending some measures, especially during a pandemic where the research efforts and resources are stretched.

There is a reason why clinical staff all wear masks, gowns and gloves when they are caring for immune-suppressed individuals - because masks cut out droplet spread of droplet-bourne infections.

There’s a reason why immunosuppressed individuals wear masks and try to avoid crowded, poorly ventilated places - so that they reduce the risk of breathing in droplets from their surroundings which may transmit infections.

From these two practices, it is very fair to infer that a droplet-bourne virus may be more difficult to transmit / catch if both the transmitter and the recipient are wearing masks. The barrier is not 100% but being able to catch open-mouthed sneezes and coughs within a mask cut out a significant amount of droplets being aerosolised.

The air breathed in through a mask is fresh, albeit through a barrier. The blood oxygen levels will not be affected by surgical or fabric masks. Even the tightest fitting N95 masks do not significantly affect pulse oximetry readings.

Headaches could be related to the ear elastic straps being tight on the ears for long periods. Tie masks or a special clip to relieve tension on the ears will help this discomfort significantly.

Ventilated classrooms with open windows and doors, while students have appropriate clothing and coats on are the best way to ensure air is moving through if there are infectious droplets in the air. The windows do not need to be all fully open in this weather - it’s the current of moving air that is more important for ventilation, hence the open window and an open door.

Finally, beware the ‘studies have shown that masks are dangerous’ type of headlines that are clickbait. Just because it’s on the internet somewhere does not make it sound science. If your husband has mostly made up his mind (and the things he says doesn’t seem to be info from solid sources), he may not be able to appraise the information with a cool head. It’s good to know you are being level-headed about his theories. I do think children benefit from being in school and with other students and as far as possible, if masks are needed to maintain this balance, then I think the benefits outweigh the perceived risks.[/quote]
Thanks @Puddlepop - this is very helpful.

For very young children I think there is a cost/benefit analysis to be made about language development and social skills

Young children are in accelerated levels of brain development and social cues, expressions, hearing what people are saying are very very important and also have a critical cut off point (i.e. much harder to learn after a certain age).

I do hope we never ever enforce masks on very young children.

As for older children, the evidence for masks is that they reduce the r rate by 0.02

I am not entirely sure that is a cost worth paying tbh but I know people like to feel like they are doing something

@hamstersarse (great username btw). What’s the evidence of 0.02 reduction - do you know? So much of the issue here is that this is all new and we just don’t really have any data.

Laughing my arse off at the people who want scientific evidence before doing anything.

Have you any idea of the sheer volume of things you do for which there is no scientific evidence that it’s safe.

You’re being absurd. Completely and utterly absurd.

I’m constantly embarrassed by being English - we’re a country of cretins.

@noblegiraffe

Ask him to gather his peer reviewed scientific evidence to present to the head of his claims, instead of trying to dispute them?

This.

Those saying the OP's dh is right, where is your peer reviewed scientific research to support your claims?

There are a number of studies showing such claims aren't substantiated. So where are the ones proving them to be the case?

Just to add to PuddlePop's amazing message, the reason O2 levels don't drop when you're wearing a mask is because the O2 molecules are so tiny they pass right through the mask.
You might wonder: if oxygen molecules pass right through, won't SARS-Cov-2 do the same? The virus alone will (which is why medical professionals partaking in procedures in which the virus is aerolised wear N95 masks), but droplets containing the virus as released from someone coughing or sneezing are big enough to be stopped.

As for researchers not wearing fabric masks: it is true in ordinary times we wear disposable ones, because they usually cost pennies, but ever since prices skyrocketed (as well as the exchange rate) the laboratory I'm in has everyone wearing fabric masks since we can no longer buy disposable ones without exceeding our budget. I am in a tropical country with conditions very favourable to contamination of samples that we are working on, and fabric masks so far are doing the job.

Glasses fogging up when wearing a mask means the mask isn't properly fitted, and therefore its use will be less effective. Try using your glasses to pinch the mask into your nose, sealing it, and if that doesn't work look for a better fitting mask. One size fits all fabric masks... don't fit all. Try and find ones made in different sizes, especially for children. There are also different shapes of masks: I find that muzzle like masks, like Hannibal's in Silence of the Masks, work very well for me.
While the masks are generally made out of cotton, they are not all the same. Thin cotton in two layers feel more breathable than one thick layer.

Good luck!

The fact that people think masks are a useful measure for teenagers makes me wonder if anyone has ever met a teenager. Say a 14 year old has covid. They wear a mask for three hours, covering it in infected spit and, potentially, snot. They then pull the mask off and leave it on a desk, where another kid picks it up. Or they adjust the mask, touching the inside of it and touch doors, their friend's pencil etc. Essentially what you're doing is concentrating highly contagious bodily fluids on a piece of cloth for more efficient distribution. It's fucking ridiculous. And yet people really believe they work. I genuinely don't understand it.

On a previous thread about masks in schools, one poster commented that her son had had four masks stolen. That's four dirty masks, taken by another kid. If that child had covid, essentially what was stolen was a piece of cloth covered in infectious material. How is that beneficial??

Just to add, I'm of the opinion that the ability to be infected via door handles and other touch points is very very low. The one situation in which it's likely to be much much higher is if you encourage infected people to breathe all day into a piece of cloth, which they then take off/fiddle with at various points throughout the day, hugely increasing the level of contamination on their hands and thus the levels of transfer onto surfaces, therefore greatly increasing the potential for infection to be passed on via touch.

Hopefully your husband has been petitioning so that health care staff don’t need to wear masks in hospitals, dentists etc.

After all he wouldn’t want them to have reduced oxygen levels etc. I mean, reduced oxygen levels must have caused thousands of healtcare staff to become ill, make mistakes etc.

If he thinks surgeons etc should wear masks, ask him why he is happy for their health to be ‘damaged’.

No masks in schools for primary aged dc. It's cruel and unnecessary and completely unacceptable. It's inhumane.

My dc have been wearing masks indoors in public places and I wear masks anyhow. But it's inhumane and unacceptable for kids under 11 to wear masks for 6 hours a day.

For clarify this is a senior school 11+

Kids over 11 so high school kids should be able to wear them imo. It's inappropriate and inhumane for younger children to wear masks for long periods of time. Developmentally, they are too young and vulnerable, the likelihood for this to cause trauma and other issues is huge.

WHO advice:

www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19

Before introducing rules that force healthy children to wear a mask and especially to wear a mask for long periods of there should be ...

Bloody Hell, as if writing ethics applications wasn't hard enough. The evidence threshold Billie asked for above isn't actually what happens for non-pharm interventions like face cover wearing, nor what an IRB would expect.

100% agree I'd like better quality evidence for efficacy, but the threshold for do-no-harm from this type of measure is not as high as Billie made out. In the available RCTs on community wearing there is poor quality reporting standards on potential adverse effects. That just means they didn't report systematically. Low adherence rates are a sign that the face masks aren't well tolerated but mostly not clear why. Habit could be the main reason.

I suggest OP convince her partner to let their own kids try the masks and then listen to what the kids say about whether the masks are causing them problems. OP's partner doesn't actually care about whole groups, just their own kids. Only protest if your own kids say they are having problems.

@savagebaggagemaster

Slightly off topic but is it just me or does anyone else feel more out of breath after climbing stairs in a mask?

I certainly do. I had covid back in April and breathlessness has been a bit of an issue for me anyway, but when I have to climb stairs in my mask I have to slow myself down because I just can't do it. When I can finally take it off, the fresh air feels like heaven to me.

www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19

Any child who has symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 should wear a medical mask, as long as they can tolerate it.

really? You'd make a poorly coughing child with a high temp wear a mask? I think not!