The Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) reimposed its mask mandate on Monday after moving masking to optional just two months ago.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week moved California’s Sacramento County into a “high” risk level, recommending individuals to wear a mask indoors. As a result, the school district brought the mask mandate back, with officials asserting that they are simply following the science. Notably, the district lifted the mandate in April but informed parents of the decision to bring back forced masking last week.
“The case rate is now about 8 times higher than it was when the District lifted the masking mandate in mid-April and hospitalizations have increased to 12.1 per 100,000 people,” the district argued, asking students to begin wearing masks voluntarily last week.
“This decision was made with careful consideration of the current data trends and is intended to limit the spread of Covid-19 in schools and the community,” the district said, adding that the mandate is in place indefinitely.
Sacramento City Unified students to mask up Monday https://t.co/d8kAfhwuRq
— ABC10 (@ABC10) June 5, 2022
“We are following the science. We’re following the data,” SCUSD Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said. “This is a public health issue. We are part of a community.”
Despite the ongoing debate on the efficacy of forced masking, Aguilar made a “greater good” argument, justifying the school district’s action.
“I know that their strong sentiments about this issue in both directions, that is what I’m seeing and hearing in my email inbox,” he claimed. “But again, I’m hopeful that this is a reminder to all of us that this is in the best interest of our community.”
Even the CDC has admitted that cloth and surgical masks are the least effective — something Dr. Anthony Fauci privately admitted at the very start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material,” he wrote in a February 2020 email to former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
A University of Waterloo also indicated that the commonly used cloth and surgical masks are “roughly 10 percent efficient at blocking exhaled aerosols.” Further, Florida never had a statewide mask mandate in place, yet for months reported a lower rate of new cases of the virus per capita than pro-mask blue states. What is more, the Sunshine State frequently held the status as reporting the lowest number of new cases per capita in the entire nation.
