OPINION: To mask or not to mask

GRAPHIC: Emily Tran

PRO: Students should continue masking to stay healthy during the holiday season

Editorial by Naneh Grigor,

BlueDevilHUB.com staff,

Over the holidays when people are traveling from thousands of different places, COVID-19 cases spike, especially now that people have started living life without masks. 

In these past years, cases have risen and dropped according to the time of year it is. “The country is now averaging more than 83,000 cases a day since late October — about a 14% increase compared to a week ago, and 12% more than two weeks ago,” said George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco.

Traveling on a plane creates less room for air to flow and if someone were to be infected on the flight, it would spread to others, even with their masks on. 

Even now, as many people are vaccinated, there are still groups of people who choose not to be. You cannot have control over other people’s vaccination status and you could be exposed if those infected are on your flight. Wearing a mask, even if you are vaccinated, can make a difference in the safety of travel.

People who have an autoimmune disease, are of an older age or those on certain medications are still considered high risk and may still have trouble going out in public or traveling in order to see their family with the third upcoming year of a holiday with the virus still present. 

Students who are going to be traveling for the holidays are surrounded by thousands of students and classrooms every day without the protection of masks. These students then go on to travel in planes and visit elederly family which is part of the rising cases. If one person in one class was infected then they would put the rest of the class at risk.

The virus also affects people that are in a crowded environment every day, like school. 

As a student in high school there is already a lot of stress over lessons and homework. Many teachers have not adapted to a student getting sick and missing school for up to two weeks. This makes it very easy for students to fall behind and this chance only increases when there isn’t the extra protective layer of masks. 

“I still wear a mask since there are still cases of COVID at DHS. I don’t want to risk getting it and missing school work. And in high school when you miss school it takes a while to catch up,” sophomore Vienna Zhang said. 

The cases are going to shift through different times of the year. For everyone to have the opportunity to enjoy the festivities, students should be wearing masks. This is a small gesture that can lead to very meaningful time with family and friends. 

In open places that aren’t as populated, it is understandable why people would remove their masks. However, “I think in crowded places, like airplanes, there should still be a mask mandate,” Zhang said. As this will not only protect ourselves but also those around us during the holiday season and therafter.

CON: The time has come for mask use to be phased out

Editorial by Sean Campbell,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff

Widely available vaccines and a decrease in national deaths due to COVID-19 should lead to masks being phased out permanently.

For nearly two years the COVID-19 pandemic and all of its social and physical restrictions has limited the quality of life for people around the world. According to the World Health Organization, “In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25%.”

The pandemic hit our generation extremely hard as we lost out on many of the most important years for both social and academic development. High school students missed out on things like prom, grad night, rallies and activities that enrich the high school experience.

Physical activity and overall health also decreased during the pandemic. According to Beaumont Health, a major healthcare system based in Michigan, around 42% of Americans gained more weight than they intended during the pandemic. 

Sports at the high school level were canceled for nearly a year which impacted every player and team’s ability to improve and get ready to potentially continue playing at college. 

“The pandemic shutdown baseball for almost a year which sucked,” JV baseball player Andrew Keegan said. “But we were lucky as an outside sport that when we came back restrictions were not too tight.”

On top of these negative effects the amount of deaths due to COVID-19 has decreased immensly. 

According to ourworldindata.com, an online publication that focuses on worldwide issues of health and equality, the average daily deaths in due to COVID-19 in the United States in November is 313 which is down from its peak of nearly 3,300. 

This downward trajectory hopefully will continue as the COVID-19 death toll begins to approach that of the flu due to higher vaccination rates and less deadly recent strands. According to KHealth, an independent healthcare company, around 87 people in the U.S die from the flu each day.

Vaccinations for COVID-19 are also more widely available in the U.S. 79% of the U.S population has at least one dose, 68% percent have a second dose, and a third of the U.S population has a booster dose. One dose is aroundabout 52% effective against the current COVID-19 strands and a booster is nearly 91% effective, according to the CDC. 

At this point COVID-19 is just something we are going to have to live with, just the same as the flu, so the more we can go on as normal the better. In my opinion, with all of the new vaccines, lower death rates and the proven negative short and long term effects of the pandemic, we have now reached a point where we need to return to normal.

Life is short as it is, and while health should be a priority, we might as well enjoy what we have to the greatest extent. There is always going to be risk in everything we do and at what point do we sacrifice freedom and normalcy for a small percentage of safety.

If we aren’t willing to take masks off now, then will that time really ever come?