I tend to be quite skeptical of opinion pieces in our age of polarization but on this one I happen to know and trust the author. She's been a physician for our family and if we still lived in the same location we would still go to her.

Some good points:

>Many parts of the U.S. issued mask mandates in 2020 when COVID-19 was new and poorly understood. It was sensible to take maximum precautions in a chaotic and frightening situation; many thought it a small sacrifice to make while scientists toiled to gain a greater understanding of the virus and to develop vaccines. But two years later we know much more about the virus and how to stop it, including abundant evidence showing the lack of efficacy of some of these measures (cleaning surfaces, masking in schools).

>Lifesaving vaccines are now also widely available. As a physician, I’m well aware that medical knowledge is constantly changing. As our understanding grows, our practice changes. This should be a time to peel back layers of mitigation that we now know to be ineffective, yet many school districts are doubling down.

>U.S. policy is an outlier: the World Health Organization advises against masks for kids under 5 and only selectively for kids under 11, and many European nations have kept schools open without requiring masks.