(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) The fearmongering over COVID has spread across the nation as many students returned to school only to find themselves masking up again in mostly blue states. Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland, a wealthy D.C. suburb, became the first school reinstating mask mandates after a few kids tested positive for the virus.
Clay Travis, a conservative radio talk show host, posted a letter on Twitter from the principal of a school, Rebecca Irwin Kennedy. The letter informed parents that due to “3 or more” positive COVID cases among third-grade students, all students must wear masks for the next 10 days. Moreover, students must wear N95s, it noted, despite substantial evidence proving the effectiveness of any masks.
“Additional KN95 masks have been distributed and students and staff in identified classes or activities will be required to mask while in school for the next 10 days, except while eating or drinking,” the letter read. The principal “assured” parents in the letter that “masks will become optional again following the 10-day period.”
A DC area elementary school — Montgomery County, Maryland — is reinstating a mask mandate — N95’s — for third graders over a few kids testing positive for covid. Here’s the letter. They’re coming with masks for your kids again. Get ready. Read this insanity. pic.twitter.com/LZs4N19XLL
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 5, 2023
The letter also informed that rapid tests would be distributed home to students even if parents haven’t requested them. However, testing was optional, and reporting positive results was mandatory.
“We have lots of students who get sick and if parents want to know if their kids get sick from flu, or COVID, they have the test,” defended a representative from Rosemary Hills School told The Post Millennial.
COVID-inspired restrictions varied greatly among schools but slowly crept back into the classrooms. Masking is making a comeback in several parts of the United States, including California, New York, Georgia and Alabama.
Schools in Alabama were encouraging students and staff to wear masks as COVID cases continued to rise. The Talladega City School district posted a message on Facebook encouraging mask wearing, while a high school in another part of the state asked for mandatory masks for everyone on campus. New York announced it has distributed tests and masks as kids returned to school amid the rise in COVID cases.
Former President Donald Trump slammed institutions that were reinstating mask mandates due to the rise in new coronavirus variants, he linked it to “fearmongering.”
“The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fearmongering about the new variants that are coming,” the Republican primary frontrunner said in his video message.
Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance also joined the chorus of ending mask mandates. He announced plans Sept. 5 to introduce the Freedom to Breathe Act, which would permanently stop the federal government from reimposing federal mask mandates in the United States.
“We tried mask mandates once in this country. They failed to control the spread of respiratory viruses, violated basic bodily freedom, and set our fellow citizens against one another,” said Vance in a news release announcing the legislation.
