The more I think about masks in BC schools, the more confused I get. Throughout the pandemic, our PHO has given businesses fairly broad latitude in crafting covid safety plans. If a store wanted to make customers wear masks, they could. If they chose not to, that was fine too.

Recently, the PHO decreed that employees at all public-facing private businesses were required to wear masks when interacting with the public. The public, in turn, is now also required to wear masks when visiting these businesses.

Government offices that provide direct services to, and interact with, the public face the same mask requirements as private businesses that interact with the public.

Public schools, however, fall into a sort of no man's land: They aren't private and so aren't under the mask guidelines for private businesses, but nor are they considered public-facing government institutions that must adhere to the recent mask order.

We're left with a situation where hundreds of people (kids) known to be efficient asymptomatic spreaders of the virus are confined in small rooms with government-employed educators who somehow aren't able to adopt the same orders that apply to public AND private institutions.

The inherent contradictions of this policy were highlighted today when Dr. Henry said that schools are allowed to have masking policies in certain common areas, just not policies that cover the entire school.

In essence, she's saying that a teacher interacting with ONE school cohort isn't interacting with the public, but a teacher who interacts with TWO school cohorts is. But it's worse than this.

Kids who have no idea what their classmates' living situations are like (where their classmates' parents work, for example) are allowed to sit with them, without distancing or masks, for hours at a time IN SCHOOL. But meeting them on the playground after class is forbidden.

It's one thing to carve out policy exceptions here and there as needed. It's quite another feat to contort oneself so far, simply to implement a policy that seems almost purposely harmful to the people it's supposed to protect: Teachers and kids.

And finally, to add insult to injury, both kids and teachers are ALLOWED to wear masks in class.

There is no rational basis for this absurd failure not to require that masks be worn by both teachers and students.

Please fix this loophole, Dr. Henry.
#BCed #BCPoli #COVIDzero