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Comment by jasonlaramburu | Hacker News Reader

My point is that we have evidence-based strategies to reduce transmission in schools that have virtually no documented downsides: kn94 masks, ventilation, desk spacing, shots for staff.

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For some of the ages we are talking about... I'd be surprised if those measures do anything.

Speaking as a parent of kids under six. Many of them literally suck on the masks they are wearing...

Edit: though, big plus one on the shots for staff. I take that as a given.

Sometimes doing the right thing is hard. We need to give kids the right masks (it’s true, cloth masks don’t do anything, but multi layer/N94/95 do reduce transmission). We need to teach kids to wear them properly, and train staff to keep up with them. A small datapoint obviously, but my child’s (< age 6) school mandates at least 3 layer masks. The kids can choose patterns and designs to match their clothes and do fine wearing them. They have had zero covid cases since day 1.

After the admission that cloth masks don’t do anything, we don’t need to speculate about N95 masks at all, we can just look at the countries which had a N95 (FFP2) mandate, namely Austria, or at the single German state which enacted a N95 mandate: Bavaria.

If we compare Austria to it’s neighbors, or Bavaria to it’s sister states we see no effect.

What day is it? And how often are you testing? Not just looking for symptoms, right?

Edit: I should underscore that I agree with your opening points. Doing those things seems straight forward enough. I'm asking if we would still expect a rise in cases due to reintegration.

I would imagine we will. Georgia started school already. They have high caseload, no mask mandates and unsurprisingly schools are closing due to outbreaks.

Adults are already very bad with correctly using N95/FFP2 masks when mandated to do so, I can’t imagine how kids would do.

We already ask kids to do way more complex things than wear a mask. Ever tried playing the recorder?

My child’s school provides training. It works.

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