It seems everyone is an armchair epidemiologist these days.
I don’t profess to know much about infectious disease, other than what I’ve observed over a half century of my life. Gov. Murphy recently broke a promise to New Jersey citizens to reopen schools fully in the fall without a mask mandate, and to leave any decisions about masks to local boards of education.
I pen this op-ed informed by 27 years as an educator working at all levels – from school teacher, special education supervisor, head of the Maryland State Advisory Board for Special Education, university professor, and school accreditation specialist – as well as experience serving to build capacity of border security, customs and police units to detect and interdict transnational organized crime in Central Asia.
The mask mandates need to be rethought. These policies, as well as previous mask mandates and school lockouts, have hurt our children and are tantamount to educational malpractice.
Seventy to 93 percent of communication is nonverbal. I emphasized this point during the 10 years I taught school teachers and administrators nonviolent crisis intervention as a certified Crisis Prevention Institute instructor. So much of communication is based on facial gestures. During the three years I worked as head of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, I helped to build the capacity of police and border guards in that country on myriad topics including the ability to detect lies during investigations — by carefully observing non-verbal cues. Teachers communicate so much, and children – especially our youngest and most vulnerable disabled populations – decode so much meaning by having access to the full complement of non-verbal cues.
Unfortunately, masks hide much of our ability to communicate. They change the inflection and character of a person’s voice, thus inhibiting the listener’s ability to ascertain tone and meaning. Time will tell how many children will manifest learning disabilities, anxiety disorders, or expressive and receptive language disorders in the coming years as a result of mask mandates, school lockdowns, and other government dictates. How many kids, for example, did not receive appropriate occupational or physical therapy interventions in a fully virtual or hybrid teaching model? How many fell behind because online only and hybrid teaching models did not match their learning styles?
How many developed anxiety as a result of changes to their routines and the fears associated with the sensationalized media coverage of the pandemic? But after a year of mask mandates that did not work, it is time for educators, teacher unions and government to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Research is ongoing, but several studies indicate that otherwise healthy children below the age of 21 have a miniscule risk of severe complications from SARS-COV2. Gov. Murphy cited 13 children statewide who have been hospitalized with the Delta mutation of the virus – 13 out of a statewide population of 1,938,978 … or 0.00067 percent.
What he won’t tell us is how many of those children have weakened immune systems from significant serious co-morbid conditions (e.g., diabetes, cancers, etc.). Extensive research data also shows that up to 80 percent of this population have natural immunity from antibodies their own bodies manufactured from fighting the disease. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the population either has mild or no symptoms after exposure to COVID. An Oxford University study showed 52 percent of children below the age of 21 who tested positive for antibodies never logged any of the 20 symptoms of COVID.
That is, most people who get COVID don’t even realize they have it.
According to the CDC, as many school districts across the U.S. returned to in-person instruction last school year, the widely feared uptick in COVID infections didn’t materialize. Why was this? It wasn’t because every teacher and student in America wore N95 masks perfectly for every second of the day. Nor was it because every student and staff member kept 6 feet apart at all times. In reality, research shows the infection made its way into the bloodstream of our children spurring the production of natural antibodies as they were exposed to the virus, yet showed no symptoms. The natural immunity, though invisible to the eye (or even those awful nasal swabs), is a compelling reason to reject mask mandates and mandatory vaccination.
With all that said, as the latest mutation wends its way through our country, anyone with cold-like symptoms should stay home and quarantine. Everyone, and every parent should have the right to wear a mask themselves and require their own children to do so if they want.
In my opinion, vaccinated teachers and children should not be required to wear stifling masks in indoor settings. Vaccinated teachers especially should be able to teach without masks. As a rule, they stand more than 6 feet away from their students during classroom instruction.
In April, after a blood test showed I was negative for the COVID antibodies, I got the Pfizer vaccine doses. In addition to getting vaccinated, my family followed other government requirements to socially distance, to refrain from travel and social gatherings. In Ocean City, we stayed off the beach and boardwalk, both of which were closed. We wore masks everywhere and stayed inside for most of the months of March and April 2020. Following Gov. Murphy’s mandates did not “flatten the curve” because he and other governors failed to take a more common sense approach, especially in light of emerging CDC and WHO data. While kids were locked out of school, mass transportation wasn’t shut down. After schools reopened, children had to wear masks – even while outside at recess. Yet HOV requirements weren’t lifted on the New Jersey Turnpike. Pupils sat behind plastic barriers in the classrooms and at lunch, 6 feet apart from their friends. At the same time, people living in densely occupied multifamily apartments weren’t relocated. Field trips and dances were canceled. But those living in hotspots around our state weren’t restricted from traveling to other areas. Students deemed to be in “close contact” were put out of school for two week quarantines. The sickest and most vulnerable people weren’t quarantined.
We all were.
And yet, the media, fueled by medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and governors like Phil Murphy, tell us that returning to the same failed measures will work this time around to stop the Delta variant in its tracks. They scare us with stories about hospitals filling up, and morgues being overwhelmed. They know sowing fear works and moves us further away from getting back to normal, back to the business of this great country and back to educating the next generation of leaders.
It’s time for Governor Murphy and big government to stop interfering with local school districts and imposing policies contrary to the best interests of the education of all students. After all, shouldn’t the goal of educators be to fulfill the promise that is locked inside every student? We cannot handcuff the outstanding teachers in this district by limiting their capacity to communicate, or frustrate their capacity to unlock the promise inside every child in their classrooms.
Even though kids and teachers in most states aren’t required to wear masks in school this year, if the only path forward to reopening Ocean City schools for full-day instruction is by mandating masks, then, by all means, mask up. And wear two for good measure.
Robin Shaffer, MEd, resides in Ocean City. The Another View column offers members of the community and others to share their points of view with the Sentinel’s readership.