No masks in schools invites trouble

As Florida’s Ron DeSantis and other governors rule that masks cannot be mandatory in public schools, and Unmask Our Kids signs sprout along our shoreline, I respectfully ask that we consider this: Schools will open in less than a month. Children under 12 are the only members of our population who do not yet have access to COVID-19 vaccine. The Delta variant is highly contagious, and it almost certainly will be followed by even more infectious variants. Youngsters who wear masks to school at their parents’ urging are likely to be teased by the unmasked into discarding them; even if teasing doesn’t occur, young children can take off their masks once they have left home. In short, to begin an elementary school year without masks is to invite a potentially deadly virus to live and mutate in our beloved and most innocent.

Nance Hahn, Westbrook