The Maryland State Board of Education has voted on Tuesday, February 23rd 2022 to lift its statewide mask mandate. This will allow school boards to adopt their own policies. The vote was 12-2 and it called for the mask mandate to be lifted by March 1st. Some of their main concerns were that they didn’t want kids who did wear masks to not be teased. What about the risks of these kids catching Covid and bringing it home to their families? Why are their main concerns about kids being bullied and not about kids getting sick? I guess nobody cares until the death toll starts adding up again. Many of the parents agree that masks should be a choice which is crazy to be. Kerry Dingle, the parent of a 4 year old in daycare states ¨Shame on you if you don’t end the mask mandate today.¨ The president of the Maryland State Education Association, Cheryl Bost stated that ¨The current regulations are working and systems are reaching safe levels..¨ There are some people at the board who don’t agree with this lift of the mask mandates and this is why the board is such a mess right now. 

  Some parents argued that kids are not a great risk to Covid-19 which is just not true. Kids 0-18 almost have about a total of 200,000 cases combined, but nobody cares until too many kids die. I really hope that it does not take some of these children dying for them to realize lifting the mask mandate isn’t the right thing to do. In our state and our county we are just numbers. Nobody cares as long as it doesn’t grow out of control. Governor Larry Hogan is all behind ending this mask mandate because Republicans will never be behind him to run for president if he had continued the mask mandate. It is crazy how people in power will put people at risk just to get their publicity up. We are living in a time where nothing is normal anymore, but not forcing people to get vaccinated and letting it be optional to wear masks is going to make numbers skyrocket through the roof. Next week after the lift is official I´m going to write an article on the numbers to see where we are as in terms of Covid case numbers. What do you think about making masks optional?