From sniffling to sneezing, we have all seen classmates exhibit telltale signs that winter and flu season have arrived. Students were either quarantined or mandated to wear masks for the last two winters, but as preventative measures against COVID-19 relax, an increasing number of students are coming to school without a mask despite various viruses still being easily transmittable.
One way to help prevent common wintertime sicknesses is to establish an annual mask mandate at MHS for a few weeks before and after winter break. In the weeks prior to winter break, the weather gets colder and viruses spread easier due to cold weather making the body weaker at fighting them off, according to “Can Winter Make You Sick?” from Northwestern Medicine. If everyone wore masks throughout this period, it would be harder for viruses to propagate resulting in fewer people falling sick. Mask-wearing should also be mandatory in the weeks following winter break due to the possibility of students contracting viruses while traveling.
Although mask wearing was introduced to the U.S. due to the pandemic, it has been a cultural norm for years in many East Asian countries in order to protect oneself and others from sickness, according to “Coronavirus: Why Some Countries Wear Face Masks and Others Don’t” by Tessa Whong from BBC News. While wearing a mask does not guarantee that one will not contract a virus, it offers a barrier that can slow the spread of bodily fluids, such as saliva or mucus, that carry bacteria.
Without masks, ailments such as the cold, flu, strep throat, and of course, COVID-19, can spread extremely quickly in densely populated classrooms. At MHS, many classes have group seating with two or more people sitting mere inches apart from each other. Naturally, students will interact with each other, and without proper face coverings, an engaging conversation could result in being bedridden with the flu for days. On top of contracting sicknesses themselves, students could also carry bacteria home, possibly affecting family members, especially those already predisposed to illnesses such as grandparents.
In one of the first large real-world studies on the effectiveness of masks against COVID-19, free masks were distributed to 350,000 people in 600 villages in Bangladesh, according to “Largest Study on Masks and Covid-19 Demonstrates Their Effectiveness in the Real World” from Yale Economic Growth Center.
Through constant reminders to wear masks, explanations of the benefits of mask wearing, and distribution of masks by researchers during a one-week period, mask wearing actually increased two weeks after the start of the study according to “Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh” from science.org. It was found that symptomatic seroprevalence (the number of people who test positive for a disease) was reduced by 9% overall and 11% in people who wore surgical masks. Although these statistics are based on research done on COVID-19, they prove that mask-wearing protects against other wintertime viruses circulating our campus that can be contracted in a similar way.
While wearing a mask every day during this time might not be preferable for some, falling sick is much less ideal. Whether it’s a surgical mask or a KN95, wearing a mask to school for roughly a month during the winter is a small sacrifice to make in order to ensure a healthy winter season for everyone.