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They're fine. Anecdotal, but I've yet to hear one child once complain that they can't understand their teacher. At this point, I feel like people are creating reasons to dislike masks because they've tied them into their political beliefs. Given that well over 800,000 have died, include plenty of teachers and school support staff, I find the idea that mitigating the spread in some way is worse than the deadly pathogen rather hard to believe.
Of course, every parent knows that children always speak up when they are nervous or don't know something. They are great at advocating for themselves from kindergarten on.
I have no political connection here and gladly wear a mask myself to abide by our local ordinances. I appreciate the fact that it has a great ancillary benefit of giving people a reason to give us all more space and makes people with colds not go out and infect others. But I also know how much harder it is communicate.
They are also missing out on important facial cues. Children are absolutely resilient, but it's silly to just say they will be fine. There will be an affect on this that will reverberate through the whole generation.
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And masks do help reduce transmission rates in schools:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.780039/full
[url=https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.780039/full][/url]
Statistical analysis on a dataset with little regard to observing the classroom and determining if other behavior elements are at play...and it was taken on pre-omnicron variants...which I could see having a greater effect.
let's also add in that, at least in my area, kids are going through the normal non-COVID cold spreading...so transmission is absolutely happening. Obviously, on more easily transmissible colds. But, given the fact that subsequent variants are looking more transmissible, the masks will be less and less effective. If you want to be technically correct for internet points, I will give it to you.
Anyway, i feel we've taken it way off the R&P track now.