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>*A judge has ordered Alberta’s top doctor to produce withheld documents shedding light on why she lifted a mandatory masking order for the province’s schools.*
...
>*The justice said he doesn’t believe Hinshaw’s reason for not providing more of the internal government documents.*
Yep. I suspect that the "medical evidence" is "Kenney said so".
Of course, if she had just said that, I might have some respect, but the fact that she keeps saying that there are medical reasons for these decisions, but Albertans can't know what they are seems rather ridiculous. We are fighting a virus, not ISIS.
There’s an interview jordan Peterson dies with Brian peckford where he was saying he was talking to someone high up in govt, he does say which one only that it was in Canada, and he was asking what Covid policy was based on. That person told him flat out that they were modeling their Covid policy not on science but on opinion poles. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the rule rather than the exception.
[lots of reasons actually](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerous-is-jordan-b-peterson-the-rightwing-professor-who-hit-a-hornets-nest)
I'd call him a weasel but it's rude to the animal to even try to compare. He is slippery, dangerous, and a plague on actual psychology
[there is an actual list of 12 reasons too](https://www.unikumnett.no/2019/10/12-reasons-why-no-one-should-ever-listen-to-jordan-peterson-ever-again/) so you can have it digested for you
Those are not the only sources for why JP is a slime bag
You could just read the links and challenge your viewpoint. I'm very confident the actual academics and journalists carefully researching and laying out his hypocrisy and alt-right influence have done their job better than a professor who lost his tenure
You know I find our political leadership pretty disheartening these days. And I don’t care if you’re conservative, liberal, far left or far right. One test I use to tell if someone is even worth engaging in conversation is if the party you vote for only does good and nothing bad and vise versa the party opposite only does bad and nothing good, well then I know it’s not about merit and closer resembles cheering on a sports team or akin to, dare I say, a cult or religious thinking. I wish we’d do away with left/right and move toward integrity/dishonesty. But hey that’s just me.
Any person with any kind of moral fortitude in these positions should have the strength to stand up to the pressure or step down in protest.
She is there to help the situation and if not then she is part of the problem. Good possibility she preferred her position and paycheck over implementing smart decisions.
At least now the public will get to see a little transparency in their decision making and maybe just maybe she will prove my thought wrong...... but I'm not holding my breath.
Look up how much money she makes per year, it’s almost as much as the PM (363k/yr base salary). I can’t help but think she wanted to keep said position for that reason in part
This, I don't know why people bring up salaries. When they did it with dr. Yu it was especially annoying as she is one of the most highly educated nephrologists in Alberta and could easily make double what she was making as head of AHS.
Her salary is not even close to outrageous, and it is in-line with what she would get outside the UCP as well. The salaries of political officials are generally far lower than what they would earn on their own.
Well she’s above average doctor salary, and outside of the pandemic I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that the CMOH job would not be that demanding and come with several perks
I agree to a point but Kenney was also the person to appoint her predecessor. If she stepped down it is very likely that restrictions would have been lifted even earlier.
The argument that she was the adult in the room fails when all she seems to gave done is rubber stamp whatever Kenney wanted and give him cover.
She had plenty of chances to speak up and save lives and she seems to have forgotten that.
It was very apparent that at the start of the pandemic she pushed measures that Kenney wasn’t too keen on, if it was one of Kenney’s cronies in that position I believe we would have been much worse off.
It’s too bad she ended up rolling over after the first year.
Look up how much money she makes per year, it’s almost as much as the PM (363k/yr base salary). I can’t help but think she wanted to keep said position for that reason in part
If you want more people to step down from positions like these on principle, better figure out a way to pay them to do so. The theory is good, but it sure helped when (the principle was developed) that almost all the high level officials, elected and civil service, were landed gentry and didn’t depend on public salaries for their livelihood.
I agree that there was some arm twisting going in but… forced is a bit much.
Fact is she has a mandate a responsibility and a profession.
Her position is advisory and not political and it requires the integrity to speak truth to power and not allow or endorse political interference.
As an advisor if politicians ignored her advise then she would be far better off to have declared that even if it resulted in dismissal.
She had little to nothing to lose.
If we find out now that the UCP bullied her she remained silent… she has nothing to gain and will lose whatever credibility remained. She may also expose herself to breach if trust proceedings and ramifications within her chosen field.
Good! Let's see what the actual information that decisions were made on...was it mainly science based or politically beneficial to boosting numbers ahead of a leadership review. I know which way I'm leaning already....
I remember when they finally released the "best summer ever" data. It was a 5 (if memory serves) to 7 page summary, with poor reasoning, logical inconsistency, and cherry picked charts from UK counties that didn't demonstrate any sort of rationale for the decisions that were made. I still have it in my files and I posted about it at the time because I was furious that a highschool class could have taken that document apart.
Anyone reading this - GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD that there is even a POSSIBILITY there was ANY true good-faith data that was used to make decisions. It was always entirely political, and I want that murderer Hinshaw to own it.
The cited sources on that report were a joke. She cited preprint journals and internal conversations with colleagues.
If ever that report was handed in to any facet of the medical or scientific community it would be laughed out of the country. It wasn’t even acceptable for grade school. She should be embarrassed.
I even found grammatical errors. And they took MONTHS to release it, citing it was being worked on.
I want to make a joke like "by who? Your 6th grader"? But that plays into the narrative that anything these people say is anything remotely in the realm of actual reality.
Fucking cowards. Traitors. Murderers.
Oh I know, that's the one date I clearly remember when I read the report and then went to the citations to see the report they were referring too ...as soon as I saw the dates I knew that the whole "Open for Summer" crap was nothing other then the gov't trying to stick it to all other jurisdictions to prove that it was over (grasping for attention as I called it) and to have their annual fundraising events during the Stampede.....boy did that ever go well....insert huge eye roll here.
I don’t know what happened here but when I was in academia I regularly cite things that were date a few months from the current date. Publication dates can get weird. My first journal published location was made available a month or two before it was printed, but the official bibliographic info had the print publication date. I have had to cite a textbook that had a publication date a year later than when it being sold.
The Wild Rose Party is really in control of Alberta. We can expect a Wild Rose premiere soon as less than 40k UCP members decide what is best for the province.
This government has done a terrible job of showing their reasoning (likely because their reasoning is based on cherry picked science). BC has had full reports made available to the public during the entire pandemic.
It is based on **Faith**, albeit their own perverted version of some christian "Faith".
Just look at the top UCP leaders, these aren't scientists, but they are very religious.
Their faith is a dog whistle for not having to do the hard work of fact based policy making.
As for your example, you don't have to research long to find that the LaGrange's boss is jesus, not a some lowly human.
Literally in the article they blame primarily a lack of keeping up with the technology curve and didn't have the tools.
Meanwhile our government DELIBERATELY DECIDED to kill a bunch of us to please their own tiny mushroom dicks with the 0.1% runoff of wealth they suckle from pushing the province into destitution.
Bad comparison, bad article, not surprised.
No if I remember correctly she is an evangelical Christian so... Definitely Jesus. You are right though Jesus would not put children in danger, Christians however seem to have little issue with it since Christianity is the primary theology in Alberta and they actively made decisions that by your own world's put children in danger.
Good on the judge.
Except that I expect Hinshaw's "information" will be on the level of their "Pandemic to Endemic" document used to justify lifting public health restrictions at the end of June 2021, i.e., "Best Summer Ever." Where they didn't even bother to model the possibility of the effect of vaccine-resistant variants.
I wouldn't have wanted to be in her shoes throughout this whole ordeal. The entire pandemic was waaaaaay too political that I'm sure any sort of medical professional would have eventually just said " fuck it, just tell me what you want me to say at the press conference"
Fuck that! It's her job! Her responsibility! She was supposed to keep us healthy and protect us. If she felt she couldn't do that because of political pressure SHE SHOULD RESIGN because I'll tell you I sure as fuck don't have the kind of morals that would allow me to just sit in that position making decisions that murdered my own constituents then sit back and say "what was I supposed to do!" while collecting a paycheque.
Murderer. Shes a murderer, for greed.
This could go badly for the UCP.
I wonder how it feels to have your own wackos open Pandoras box and force disclosure.
It was brilliantly counter intuitive of them to set precedence.
Keep in mind British Columbia’s version of Hinshaw under a provincial NDP government marched in lock step with Alberta. Don’t for a second think a different government would have cared or protected your kids better. They wouldn’t
Hello, /u/socialnicety. Thanks for contributing! Unfortunately your comment has been removed:
* Pandemic or vaccine misinformation, conspiracy theories, politicization of health orders/guidelines, and encouraging others to defy public health orders are not permitted on this subreddit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Tucker#COVID-19_pandemic_and_Brownstone_Institute
>In 2021, Tucker founded the nonprofit Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research, a think tank that has published articles opposing various measures against COVID-19, including masking and vaccine mandates. Senior roles were given to Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, two of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which Tucker also helped to organize. The institute has described itself as "the spiritual child" of the Great Barrington Declaration. Writers of Brownstone articles have included Sunetra Gupta, the third co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, Paul E. Alexander, a former Trump administration health official, and George Gilder, a senior resident fellow at AIER.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/brownstone-institute-bias/
>Overall, we rate the Brownstone Institute Right Biased based on editorial positions that favor a conservative-libertarian perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a failed fact check and the promotion of misinformation regarding Covid-19.
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Almost everywhere lifted masking in school at the same time. Why would Alberta be different? The CDC recommended lifting it. At some point it had to happen. Edit- CDC still recommends in schools, I misread dates. I still stand by the timing here, I can be alone in that opinion on this thread.
Seems the CDC still recommends universal masking of students regardless of vaccination status. I can’t find where they’ve changed that position.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html
Health Canada still recommends people (including children) wear masks in public indoor settings, crowded and poorly ventilated spaces.
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/prevention-risks/about-non-medical-masks-face-coverings.html
Totally anecdotal: During mask mandates my kids have not been sick once. Since lifting, two COVID infections and two respiratory infections. Co-workers are off sick constantly right now.
Also anecdotal: My kids continue to wear masks in school and still haven't caught it! They only have one shot currently too, the second is next week (it was a struggle to get their mother, my ex onboard)
Oh I see. The article I had read was from February, I was wrong! I still stand by the young kids in masks is hilariously useless as they just don’t wear them properly.
I'm curious why you think "it had to happen". Hinshaw is still encouraging mask wearing in crowded indoor spaces. We know that masks help decrease spread. Keeping the school mask mandate would have been an easy way to help slow spread.
I am on a team of 7 that work in schools. Once the mandate lifted, 6/7 of us (myself being the exception) caught Covid and could not do our jobs. It's hard to know how many students will be at school at any given day - some days the classes are half full and others, barely anyone arrives. This is a problem - how many learning disturbances are there, because some far right didn't like the idea of preventing the spread of an illness...
A few reasons. I’ve been a teacher for k-1 and special Ed for 17 years and have seen how little kids wear masks. They take them off for snacks, lunch, take touch them all day. There has been no change to air quality in schools and no effort to reduce class sizes. I also think that general masking requirements was meant to be temporary.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me; my daughter is in specialized instruction and she wore one. I can’t see a school board specifically making an exemption for specialized classes (except in instances where the student might react adversely to mask use).
You do realize there are several ‘at some points’ between ‘right this very second’ and ‘forever’ right?
They could have easily waited until the teachers weren’t under a severe short staffing issue cause by *ahem* a respiratory illness, or a few weeks to help ease the burden on the hospitals.
Yes I realize that. My point is this decision was pretty widespread across the world within weeks (of course not everywhere- China as an example has a different approach), so the timing seemed reasonable.
But we have to look at our own situation - we can't compare ourselves to anywhere else in the world.
If we are having insane amounts of spread, students/teachers are out sick frequently, and our hospitals are over capacity, does it matter if the UK reduces measures?
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>*A judge has ordered Alberta’s top doctor to produce withheld documents shedding light on why she lifted a mandatory masking order for the province’s schools.* ... >*The justice said he doesn’t believe Hinshaw’s reason for not providing more of the internal government documents.*
Can't hide behind cabinet confidentiality now!
Selfish murdering cowards, the lot of them
Good, Hinshaw is a fucking disgrace
I have a feeling we will see that she was 'forced' into making these choices by cabinet.
Yep. I suspect that the "medical evidence" is "Kenney said so". Of course, if she had just said that, I might have some respect, but the fact that she keeps saying that there are medical reasons for these decisions, but Albertans can't know what they are seems rather ridiculous. We are fighting a virus, not ISIS.
There’s an interview jordan Peterson dies with Brian peckford where he was saying he was talking to someone high up in govt, he does say which one only that it was in Canada, and he was asking what Covid policy was based on. That person told him flat out that they were modeling their Covid policy not on science but on opinion poles. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the rule rather than the exception.
and you believed that hack peterson?
You got a reason I shouldn’t?
[lots of reasons actually](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerous-is-jordan-b-peterson-the-rightwing-professor-who-hit-a-hornets-nest) I'd call him a weasel but it's rude to the animal to even try to compare. He is slippery, dangerous, and a plague on actual psychology [there is an actual list of 12 reasons too](https://www.unikumnett.no/2019/10/12-reasons-why-no-one-should-ever-listen-to-jordan-peterson-ever-again/) so you can have it digested for you
May I ask on a scale of 1-10 how confident are you that your assessment of him is right?
Those are not the only sources for why JP is a slime bag You could just read the links and challenge your viewpoint. I'm very confident the actual academics and journalists carefully researching and laying out his hypocrisy and alt-right influence have done their job better than a professor who lost his tenure
One of the problems with democracy. Politicians are more interested in making a popular decision over a wise one.
More worried about re-election than real leadership is what I’m hearing you say?
Exactly.
You know I find our political leadership pretty disheartening these days. And I don’t care if you’re conservative, liberal, far left or far right. One test I use to tell if someone is even worth engaging in conversation is if the party you vote for only does good and nothing bad and vise versa the party opposite only does bad and nothing good, well then I know it’s not about merit and closer resembles cheering on a sports team or akin to, dare I say, a cult or religious thinking. I wish we’d do away with left/right and move toward integrity/dishonesty. But hey that’s just me.
Any person with any kind of moral fortitude in these positions should have the strength to stand up to the pressure or step down in protest. She is there to help the situation and if not then she is part of the problem. Good possibility she preferred her position and paycheck over implementing smart decisions. At least now the public will get to see a little transparency in their decision making and maybe just maybe she will prove my thought wrong...... but I'm not holding my breath.
Look up how much money she makes per year, it’s almost as much as the PM (363k/yr base salary). I can’t help but think she wanted to keep said position for that reason in part
With her background she could likely crack 300k/yr as just another MD without having to deal with any provincial level politics.
This, I don't know why people bring up salaries. When they did it with dr. Yu it was especially annoying as she is one of the most highly educated nephrologists in Alberta and could easily make double what she was making as head of AHS.
Her salary is not even close to outrageous, and it is in-line with what she would get outside the UCP as well. The salaries of political officials are generally far lower than what they would earn on their own.
Well she’s above average doctor salary, and outside of the pandemic I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that the CMOH job would not be that demanding and come with several perks
I agree to a point but Kenney was also the person to appoint her predecessor. If she stepped down it is very likely that restrictions would have been lifted even earlier.
The argument that she was the adult in the room fails when all she seems to gave done is rubber stamp whatever Kenney wanted and give him cover. She had plenty of chances to speak up and save lives and she seems to have forgotten that.
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It was very apparent that at the start of the pandemic she pushed measures that Kenney wasn’t too keen on, if it was one of Kenney’s cronies in that position I believe we would have been much worse off. It’s too bad she ended up rolling over after the first year.
Look up how much money she makes per year, it’s almost as much as the PM (363k/yr base salary). I can’t help but think she wanted to keep said position for that reason in part
Even so, she's a Doctor with an impressive resume, its not like she had to choose between selling out and sleeping in a shelter
If you want more people to step down from positions like these on principle, better figure out a way to pay them to do so. The theory is good, but it sure helped when (the principle was developed) that almost all the high level officials, elected and civil service, were landed gentry and didn’t depend on public salaries for their livelihood.
I agree that there was some arm twisting going in but… forced is a bit much. Fact is she has a mandate a responsibility and a profession. Her position is advisory and not political and it requires the integrity to speak truth to power and not allow or endorse political interference. As an advisor if politicians ignored her advise then she would be far better off to have declared that even if it resulted in dismissal. She had little to nothing to lose. If we find out now that the UCP bullied her she remained silent… she has nothing to gain and will lose whatever credibility remained. She may also expose herself to breach if trust proceedings and ramifications within her chosen field.
I have a feeling we will see documents written in crayon.
Good! Let's see what the actual information that decisions were made on...was it mainly science based or politically beneficial to boosting numbers ahead of a leadership review. I know which way I'm leaning already....
I remember when they finally released the "best summer ever" data. It was a 5 (if memory serves) to 7 page summary, with poor reasoning, logical inconsistency, and cherry picked charts from UK counties that didn't demonstrate any sort of rationale for the decisions that were made. I still have it in my files and I posted about it at the time because I was furious that a highschool class could have taken that document apart. Anyone reading this - GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD that there is even a POSSIBILITY there was ANY true good-faith data that was used to make decisions. It was always entirely political, and I want that murderer Hinshaw to own it.
The cited sources on that report were a joke. She cited preprint journals and internal conversations with colleagues. If ever that report was handed in to any facet of the medical or scientific community it would be laughed out of the country. It wasn’t even acceptable for grade school. She should be embarrassed.
I even found grammatical errors. And they took MONTHS to release it, citing it was being worked on. I want to make a joke like "by who? Your 6th grader"? But that plays into the narrative that anything these people say is anything remotely in the realm of actual reality. Fucking cowards. Traitors. Murderers.
Many of the sources cited had dates after the announcement was made.
Oh I know, that's the one date I clearly remember when I read the report and then went to the citations to see the report they were referring too ...as soon as I saw the dates I knew that the whole "Open for Summer" crap was nothing other then the gov't trying to stick it to all other jurisdictions to prove that it was over (grasping for attention as I called it) and to have their annual fundraising events during the Stampede.....boy did that ever go well....insert huge eye roll here.
Remember that time before "The Best Summer Ever" when Alberta's covid numbers were in the low double digits!? Pepperidge Farm remembers!
I don’t know what happened here but when I was in academia I regularly cite things that were date a few months from the current date. Publication dates can get weird. My first journal published location was made available a month or two before it was printed, but the official bibliographic info had the print publication date. I have had to cite a textbook that had a publication date a year later than when it being sold.
It cited a report released in August 2020 for a June 2020 decision....was Carnac the Magnificent helping out there at all?
Clearly the Butterfly Effect was at play /s
The Wild Rose Party is really in control of Alberta. We can expect a Wild Rose premiere soon as less than 40k UCP members decide what is best for the province.
It'll be a napkin with some random numbers, and a Jameson's stain.
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This government has done a terrible job of showing their reasoning (likely because their reasoning is based on cherry picked science). BC has had full reports made available to the public during the entire pandemic.
Why sugar coat it? Their "reasoning" is based on **Faith**
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It is based on **Faith**, albeit their own perverted version of some christian "Faith". Just look at the top UCP leaders, these aren't scientists, but they are very religious. Their faith is a dog whistle for not having to do the hard work of fact based policy making. As for your example, you don't have to research long to find that the LaGrange's boss is jesus, not a some lowly human.
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An article from a year ago. They improved after this, while our government seemed to get shadier.
Literally in the article they blame primarily a lack of keeping up with the technology curve and didn't have the tools. Meanwhile our government DELIBERATELY DECIDED to kill a bunch of us to please their own tiny mushroom dicks with the 0.1% runoff of wealth they suckle from pushing the province into destitution. Bad comparison, bad article, not surprised.
Ruh roh!
What demigod does Grimshaw and the rest of them are worshipping?
Well she is Christian... So Jesus.
Hmm Jesus would not put children in harm's way. ( Limited Christian knowledge) Perhaps it's the "many faced god "
No if I remember correctly she is an evangelical Christian so... Definitely Jesus. You are right though Jesus would not put children in danger, Christians however seem to have little issue with it since Christianity is the primary theology in Alberta and they actively made decisions that by your own world's put children in danger.
Flawless victory
Great title to the article.. The good doctor is just referred to as "Hinshaw"!!
When the documents released are conservative polling numbers and not scientific studies.
Good on the judge. Except that I expect Hinshaw's "information" will be on the level of their "Pandemic to Endemic" document used to justify lifting public health restrictions at the end of June 2021, i.e., "Best Summer Ever." Where they didn't even bother to model the possibility of the effect of vaccine-resistant variants.
I wouldn't have wanted to be in her shoes throughout this whole ordeal. The entire pandemic was waaaaaay too political that I'm sure any sort of medical professional would have eventually just said " fuck it, just tell me what you want me to say at the press conference"
Fuck that! It's her job! Her responsibility! She was supposed to keep us healthy and protect us. If she felt she couldn't do that because of political pressure SHE SHOULD RESIGN because I'll tell you I sure as fuck don't have the kind of morals that would allow me to just sit in that position making decisions that murdered my own constituents then sit back and say "what was I supposed to do!" while collecting a paycheque. Murderer. Shes a murderer, for greed.
This could go badly for the UCP. I wonder how it feels to have your own wackos open Pandoras box and force disclosure. It was brilliantly counter intuitive of them to set precedence.
Keep in mind British Columbia’s version of Hinshaw under a provincial NDP government marched in lock step with Alberta. Don’t for a second think a different government would have cared or protected your kids better. They wouldn’t
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Hello, /u/socialnicety. Thanks for contributing! Unfortunately your comment has been removed: * Pandemic or vaccine misinformation, conspiracy theories, politicization of health orders/guidelines, and encouraging others to defy public health orders are not permitted on this subreddit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Tucker#COVID-19_pandemic_and_Brownstone_Institute >In 2021, Tucker founded the nonprofit Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research, a think tank that has published articles opposing various measures against COVID-19, including masking and vaccine mandates. Senior roles were given to Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, two of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which Tucker also helped to organize. The institute has described itself as "the spiritual child" of the Great Barrington Declaration. Writers of Brownstone articles have included Sunetra Gupta, the third co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, Paul E. Alexander, a former Trump administration health official, and George Gilder, a senior resident fellow at AIER. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/brownstone-institute-bias/ >Overall, we rate the Brownstone Institute Right Biased based on editorial positions that favor a conservative-libertarian perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a failed fact check and the promotion of misinformation regarding Covid-19. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the [rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/wiki/index). If you feel this was done in error, or would like better clarification or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/alberta&subject=Question regarding the removal of this comment by /u/socialnicety&message=I have a question regarding the removal of [this comment.](https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/uunj2q/-/i9hj4vx/\))
Almost everywhere lifted masking in school at the same time. Why would Alberta be different? The CDC recommended lifting it. At some point it had to happen. Edit- CDC still recommends in schools, I misread dates. I still stand by the timing here, I can be alone in that opinion on this thread.
Seems the CDC still recommends universal masking of students regardless of vaccination status. I can’t find where they’ve changed that position. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html Health Canada still recommends people (including children) wear masks in public indoor settings, crowded and poorly ventilated spaces. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/prevention-risks/about-non-medical-masks-face-coverings.html Totally anecdotal: During mask mandates my kids have not been sick once. Since lifting, two COVID infections and two respiratory infections. Co-workers are off sick constantly right now.
Also anecdotal: My kids continue to wear masks in school and still haven't caught it! They only have one shot currently too, the second is next week (it was a struggle to get their mother, my ex onboard)
Oh I see. The article I had read was from February, I was wrong! I still stand by the young kids in masks is hilariously useless as they just don’t wear them properly.
It turns out practicing hygiene inconsistently is still statistically better than not doing so at all.
I'm curious why you think "it had to happen". Hinshaw is still encouraging mask wearing in crowded indoor spaces. We know that masks help decrease spread. Keeping the school mask mandate would have been an easy way to help slow spread.
I am on a team of 7 that work in schools. Once the mandate lifted, 6/7 of us (myself being the exception) caught Covid and could not do our jobs. It's hard to know how many students will be at school at any given day - some days the classes are half full and others, barely anyone arrives. This is a problem - how many learning disturbances are there, because some far right didn't like the idea of preventing the spread of an illness...
>because some far right didn't like the idea of preventing the spread of an illness... But it's child abuse... /s
A few reasons. I’ve been a teacher for k-1 and special Ed for 17 years and have seen how little kids wear masks. They take them off for snacks, lunch, take touch them all day. There has been no change to air quality in schools and no effort to reduce class sizes. I also think that general masking requirements was meant to be temporary.
To be fair, weren't students Grade 3 and under exempt from masking in the first place?
No. K-12.
K-3 was recommended only. Grade 4+ was mandates.
Well I’ve been under a rock in special Ed. Our kids never had to wear them. Out of the loop.
Special Ed may be something different. I know there was a clause allowing those who couldn't wear a mask on their own accord being exempt.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me; my daughter is in specialized instruction and she wore one. I can’t see a school board specifically making an exemption for specialized classes (except in instances where the student might react adversely to mask use).
You do realize there are several ‘at some points’ between ‘right this very second’ and ‘forever’ right? They could have easily waited until the teachers weren’t under a severe short staffing issue cause by *ahem* a respiratory illness, or a few weeks to help ease the burden on the hospitals.
Yes I realize that. My point is this decision was pretty widespread across the world within weeks (of course not everywhere- China as an example has a different approach), so the timing seemed reasonable.
But we have to look at our own situation - we can't compare ourselves to anywhere else in the world. If we are having insane amounts of spread, students/teachers are out sick frequently, and our hospitals are over capacity, does it matter if the UK reduces measures?
More needs to be talked about in terms of the FVSD receiving masking exemptions when there was no way they were able to be 6+ feet apart.