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Today’s entry: I have looked high and low for an answer to this question. You do an amazing job uncovering the hard-to-find stories. Florida’s school mask mandate has been in effect for several months now. Shouldn’t there be enough data available to determine if counties with mask mandates fared better than counties without mask mandates? Wouldn’t that answer be the best argument for or against the mandates? Everyone has an opinion, but the data is the data.
Bottom Line: I love your line about the data being the data. So, true. The reason you’ve not found a concrete answer to your question is because it is complicated from a scientific standpoint. Like any scientific experiment, to arrive at an accurate result you need to isolate the variables. The problem in analyzing the potential impact of school mask mandates is that it’s impossible to isolate the variables that could affect the results.
Current data available on South Florida’s School District COVID-19 dashboards. Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach County happen to be the three most populous in the state so they serve to provide a good sample size in addition to being the most relevant to those of us in South Florida. For the current school year in Broward, there are 271,000 students, there have been 2,954 infections. As for Miami Dade, there are 350,000 students and there have been 3,227 infections.
Three large South Florida school districts, all with school mask mandates, with three significantly different rates of infection. Why is Miami-Dade's rate of spread 22% lower than Broward’s? With such wide variance within otherwise reasonably adjusted controls, it’s clear other factors have come into play that has nothing specifically to do with the mask mandates. I’ve previously looked into the dynamics and reported on it. Fast forward to today and the vax rates are ever so slightly higher in each county with the underlying facts remaining. It’s impossible to provide an empirical analysis of the impact of the mask mandates. Anyone who attempts to do so without having a clear explanation for the variance between school districts is being intellectually dishonest.
As I’ve routinely mentioned throughout this debate there are numerous studies posted to the National Insitute of Health’s website which illustrate that having children masking at school can have negative mental and physical health impacts on children along with learning loss. And the learning loss with masks on has proven to be universal. Teachers teach less and students to learn less at every grade level with masks on. The learning loss has been determined to average 7% to 10% as a result of the masks. That’s why it wasn’t an accident that the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Education jointly came together to make a determination that struck a balance with all of these facts in hand. Schools could implement mask mandates, but parents could opt their children out. That’s pragmatism and that’s what the mandates never had, in addition to empirical evidence as to their overall effectiveness.
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