The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday against mask requirements for K-12 schools in Pima County.
Supervisor Matt Heinz presented the proposal for masks in schools in response to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Pima County.
Pima County recently co-authored a study with the CDC that found K-12 schools without mask requirements in Pima and Maricopa counties were 3.5 times more likely to have a COVID outbreak than schools with mask mandates.
“In light of the information that literally came from this county and Maricopa County in Arizona and the CDC,” Heinz said, “I think it makes a lot of sense for us to take a look at this again.”
Heinz reiterated his view that masks protect students and teachers from COVID and that data supported his opinion.
Dr. Francisco Garcia, Pima County’s chief medical officer, was asked to discuss the potential mandate with all 12 school district superintendents in Pima County. He presented their feedback during the board’s regular meeting.
Garcia reported only two out of 12 superintendents were in favor of a county-wide school mask mandate. The two who supported the mandate already have mask requirements in place.
“Among the folks who felt this would not be useful, the big concern is they have figured out how to manage the political demands on their school board and to put it in the words of one of the superintendents, ‘This just kicks the hornet’s nest,’ ” Dr. Garcia said.
Superintendents are concerned that passing the mandate might reignite anti-mask protests. They said negative feedback has settled during the past few weeks. They also told Garcia they believe getting 5- to 11-year-old children vaccinated will be a bigger issue for them.
After Garcia’s testimony, Supervisor Rex Scott said he would pay attention to their concerns.
“I’m gonna vote against it again because we cannot say that we are demonstrating leadership or that we are helping the cause of public health if we are telling other governments to enforce our mandate,” Scott said.
Steve Christy (R-District 4), Sharon Bronson (D-District 3) and Scott voted against the mandate.
“It needs to be decided by parents, it needs to be decided by the school board and it needs to be out of the purview of the Board of Supervisors,” Christy said.
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2021.
This is proof positive we have too much government.
“Leave those kids alone…”
“Pima County recently co-authored a study with the CDC that found K-12 schools without mask requirements in Pima and Maricopa counties were 3.5 times more likely to have a COVID outbreak than schools with mask mandates.”
Look closely at the study:
https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.110.60/…
There is a table on page 2.
What that table shows (row 10) is that the schools without mandates, at least that they used in their comparison, were two and a half times as likely to be high schools than the schools they used in their comparison with mask mandates.
Then, go to row 15. That row shows that the no mandate schools they used in their comparison were 2 times as likely to be in a zip code with a community infection rate over 100 as compared to the schools with mandates.
Then, go to row 24. That row shows that the no mandate schools they used in their comparison were 4 times as likely (yes 4 times) to have a student enrollment over 1,650 as compared to the mandate schools they used in their comparison.
Then, go to paragraph 2 on page 2.
“In the crude analysis, the odds of a school-associated
COVID-19 outbreak in schools with no mask requirement
were 3.7 times higher than those in schools with an early mask
requirement (odds ratio [OR] = 3.7; 95% CI = 2.26.5). After
adjusting for potential described confounders, the odds of a
school-associated COVID-19 outbreak in schools without a
mask requirement were 3.5 times higher than those in schools
with an early mask requirement (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.86.9).”
This paragraph is relevant for lots of reasons. First, the “adjustment for cofounders” obviously is small, moving the risk only 5%, (3.7 to 3.5 is a 5% change) much less than the obvious change in risk for the factors I’ve listed above.
Second, it attempts to deceive.
Look at row 2. That row shows that 76% of schools without mask mandates did not have an outbreak. Then, combining the two groups of schools with mandates shows that 85% of these schools did not have outbreaks.
Then look at the picture of masks on the clothesline of this story. Those masks are worthless, maybe even less than worthless. This virus is one-tenth of one millionth of an inch. It sales right through those masks. Those masks likely even disperse the virus in a contagious fog. They’ve done laser studies illustrating this phenomena.
76% versus 85%. No-mandate versus mandate. That’s incredible. That’s all they were able to squeeze out of this data despite the obvious intellectual corruption.
As schools get larger and students get older, they spend more of their school day indoors. As student enrollment gets larger, a student is much more likely more likely to encounter other students in their six foot radius. As students get older, they are much more likely to be obese with all the ACE2 receptors this virus loves and incur a much higher likelihood of infection than younger students.
They need to redo this study.