Face masks for Secondary Pupils in classrooms

[FatPatty]

I can’t see this being reported anywhere but the Daily Fail are reporting masks to be worn in Secondary schools for first few weeks back.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9287275/Secondary-school-pupils-wear-face-masks-lessons-weeks-school-return-March-8.html

Well there is enough scientific evidence that masks benefit the wearer and the people around them, in terms of reducing the spread of infection, for there to be a strong general scientific consensus that we need to adopt them in many settings as a society.

It is important that this is a pandemic in which many people could become ill or die and there are important gains from reducing infection spread right now.

So “they protect other people, but they don’t protect me. Therefore, they are useless.” ? That’s... a statement.

I’m also not so sure you’re correct on your “healthy people never wear masks” tack either. In hayfever season, people wear them as a preventative measure. In the case of a few friends of mine, because they didn’t have time to do their makeup before work that morning. In other more polluted countries, perfectly healthy people wear masks to protect themselves from pollution.

And in my own case, when I was pregnant I tested negative for rubella antibodies, and my doctor told me to wear a mask every time I went to a shopping centre, places with people and when I went to work (in a school). Despite me being completely healthy. So 7 hours in a usually boiling hot classroom, teaching through a mask, heavily pregnant for the last two months of that. I can only put my lack of death from hypoxia or bacterial lung infections down to some kind of unrecognized superpower.

This

Sorry, my post was of course for UsedUp

I’m really surprised to hear that, @UsedUpUsername. I lived in Japan and the Japanese would wear masks for a good six months of the year whether they were healthy or not. You would teach classes full of students and each one would be wearing a mask, for a whole term and beyond. It was a nightmare for communication lessons!

@haba I got them from here
foggywipe.com/

Agree with a pp that when they stop working they create a whole different kind of condensation which is really weird but I do find they last the working day

Thank you @Fiddlersgreen, much appreciated!

By the way, I used to wear a mask when I was a child after an episode when I nearly died of pneumonia and sustained lung damage. I wore the mask on the advice of the paediatricians, on my way to and from school. This was 1970s London, to protect me from the fog of pollution. I was 5. Wearing the mask was not much of a problem. So I suppose from my own experience, I don't see that mask-wearing is going to be insuperable for secondary school kids.

Similarly, I had a lot of time off primary school because of chest infections. I spent weeks at home recuperating and read lots of books. When I got back to school I found myself more and more in front of the other kids (because of the reading). I suppose this might be a bit unusual (I really liked reading). But again my own experience was that having a bit of time off school wasn't necessarily much of an impediment in terms of keeping up (or getting a very good university level education later in life).

So, I think we should be doing everything possible to help kids catch up, while also feeling quite optimistic that we can get them through this.

Why are particles flying across rooms

Thanks for that - cheered me up after a day of online teaching Diffusion is the answer. We cover it in year 7 in science. It's the same reason you can smell a fart that someone in the corner delivered - particles 'flying' across rooms.

Seems not missing months of school didn't give you much of an edge over today's teenagers knowledge levels.

Yeah, I've been using the wipes since September and I think I've had two occasions where they've just not behaved as they should. On balance, definitely worth trying. Other teaching colleagues have found the same.

More and more I see this bizarre combination of extreme arrogance and deep ignorance. A person who is ignorant but humble is grand and has the capacity to learn loads. A person who is a arrogant but is at least pretty well informed may be abrasive but not dangerous. People both arrogant and ignorant are fucked in terms of ever learning and dangerous.

@TheHoneyBadger

Why are particles flying across rooms

Thanks for that - cheered me up after a day of online teaching Diffusion is the answer. We cover it in year 7 in science. It's the same reason you can smell a fart that someone in the corner delivered - particles 'flying' across rooms.

Seems not missing months of school didn't give you much of an edge over today's teenagers knowledge levels.

Love that explanation. Bet the kids love you

A person who is a arrogant but is at least pretty well informed may be abrasive but not dangerous

😬

People both arrogant and ignorant are fucked in terms of ever learning and dangerous.;

Abso-bloody-lately right. None so blind as those who will not see.

I do think this thread has demonstrated perfectly the values placed on conformity within the education system over the last few decades.

What's that face for? Did the fart just reach you?

Good luck with getting teachers to conform to anything. If you can pull it off I recommend a career as a headteacher. Can't even get them to consistently apply the behaviour system in my experience.

@TheHoneyBadger

What's that face for? Did the fart just reach you?

Just resembling that comment

You're not arrogant but your being well informed and articulate threatens the ignorant and their defence is to call you arrogant.

Common phenomenon.

@noblegiraffe

How is sharing studies from reputable journals spreading misinformation?

You didn’t. You made a confident claim that you did not evidence. When picked up on this you then suggested I Google a study which still doesn’t back up your claim.

It is an inconclusive study. It doesn’t support your claim that masks don’t protect the wearer. It says ‘they might, they might not’.

Herecomes linked to studies that show that they do.

It is the most conclusive study we have. It’s one that is real-world with a control group. If you want to tell me that masks protect the wearer, you are going to have to do better.

The Danish mask study does not conclude that the mask protects the wearer. But you are ignoring the ‘not statistically significant’ part and only listening to an article that confirms your biases.

You are saying they work to protect the wearer. But there’s no evidence to suggest that. Most current guidelines say you should wear them
to protect others, not yourself.

Why don’t you just admit that you want people to wear masks just in case they work? There’s nothing wrong with that opinion!!!

Why would wearing masks to protect each other be a bad thing?

Is this a I only care about my child selfish rant? I don't get it or at least I hope I don't.

Personally I want all my childs class mates and the teacher as safe as him.

*OTHERS

@AlexaShutUp

I lived in Japan for years too. It's perfectly normal for healthy people to wear masks in the hayfever season. I was also there during the SARS epidemic, and although SARS wasn't an issue in Japan, quite a lot of healthy people chose to wear masks as a preventative measure. It's perfectly normal and no big deal in Japanese culture, though there are Japanese anti-maskers, just as there are British ones. Some people will always think they know better than the scientists, wherever they happen to be from.

It’s obviously normal for hay fever sufferers to wear their masks during the season. It’s still a health issue, so not a ‘healthy’ individual wearing them as such. And obviously, not all Japanese suffer from hay fever.

I’m talking about universal masking of healthy people, which was never a thing in Japan. Only kids that were actually sick wore masks. As you know, it’s considered a courtesy to others.

To be clear, I’m not against wearing a mask if you are sick to prevent spread. I’m against universal masking of healthy people.

How do you know you aren’t sick - you could be asymptomatic?
Wearing a mask is a small price to pay to move on from the pandemic.

@UsedUpUsername, as I said, quite a lot of healthy people in Japan chose to wear masks during the SARS epidemic, including children. Just as many are again wearing masks now because of covid.

It's fair enough that you don't like them, but I don't really understand the level of resistance to mask wearing.

[quote AlexaShutUp]@UsedUpUsername, as I said, quite a lot of healthy people in Japan chose to wear masks during the SARS epidemic, including children. Just as many are again wearing masks now because of covid.

It's fair enough that you don't like them, but I don't really understand the level of resistance to mask wearing.[/quote]
I was not there during SARS but was masking universal and required? Or did parents make that choice on behalf of their child?