Our letter delivered on July 14, 2021 to His Eminence Wilton Cardinal Gregory:

His Eminence Wilton Cardinal Gregory, Archbishop of Washington,

We are the proud parents of students in your Archdiocese of Washington parish schools. We address you today to ask that you and your diocesan staff devote yourselves to restoring a sense of normalcy in our children’s classrooms this upcoming 2021-2022 academic year. Ending the mandatory mask requirement of our children, regardless of vaccination status, is the first step in restoring the normalcy lost during the pandemic. Our children are young and innocent and deserve to have this burden removed from them.[1]

Evidence is widespread that children, vaccinated or not, are at extremely low risk of becoming seriously ill from covid-19; indeed unvaccinated children are at substantially lower risk than nearly all vaccinated adults. If we assume vaccines are 97% effective, mortality risk for an unvaccinated child is lower than vaccinated adults over 30 years of age and more than 100 times lower than adults over age 75.[2] Of note, the unvaccinated risk to children from covid-19 is substantially lower than the vaccinated risk of influenza.[3]

Furthermore, it is well documented that grade school age children are far less likely to be infected and, if infected, to transmit the coronavirus than adults.[4] Schools across the country have been open full time for an entire academic year and have not been responsible for any significant disease spread. Many European schools never masked; in Sweden, for instance, schools for children under age 16 never closed at all in 2020 or 2021, never masked, and out of 1.9 million schoolchildren there were zero covid-19 deaths. Schoolteachers, with no masks or distancing, had lower rates of serious covid-19 disease than other professions.[5]

With respect to the benefits of mandatory masking in US schools, a recent CDC study of schools in Georgia found that staff masking was associated with lower case rates, but that “incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional.”[6] Another recent study of Florida school data by researchers at Brown University found no effect of student masking, and in fact, the lowest student case rates in schools where masks were required for staff but not for students.[7] Given that a large majority of our diocesan adult school personnel are now fully vaccinated, there is little to no evidence suggesting continued masking of children will contribute meaningfully to reducing covid-19 spread.

As parents, we also worry about reports that masks are harmful for children.[8] The World Health Organization and UNICEF jointly issued guidance suggesting that the decision to use masks for children should be based on factors like “whether there is widespread transmission in the area where the child resides,” which should be weighed against the “potential impact of wearing a mask on psychosocial development.” This confirms what we as parents are seeing in our own children. As mothers and fathers who have intimately parented them for the past fifteen months, we know that masks have detracted from the necessary carefree joy of grade school and have made their young lives harder.

We recognize that our schools may ultimately be subject to governmental regulations or guidance that advise (or even require) children to be masked. Over the course of the pandemic, we have learned that these regulations and guidance are often drafted imprecisely and that they are subject to frequent revision. To the extent that a school mask mandate is on the books in September, we would ask the diocese to seek clarity as to whether the guidance is truly compulsory and truly applies to non-public schools – and to advocate for maximum autonomy for our Catholic schools, and parental choice.

As parishioners and parents, we are committed to partnering with the Archdiocese in whatever capacity needed towards this end. As the primary educators of our children, we have been called to raise these critical concerns with you in the interest of our children’s mental, physical, and spiritual health. We entrust our children to your wonderful schools and ask for courageous leadership on this issue.

Sincerely,

ADW Parents

[1] See for instance the case for normalcy made by Drs. Tracy Beth Høeg, Lucy McBride, Allison Krug and Monica Gandhi, "It’s time for children to finally get back to normal life," Washington Post, May 26, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/26/its-time-children-finally-get-back-normal-life/

[2] CDC deaths with COVID by years of age, observed vs reduced 97 percent, CDC source data: https://data.cdc.gov/resource/3apk-4u4f.csv, https://wonder.cdc.gov/Bridged-Race-v2019.HTML

[3] CDC Pediatric Flu vs. COVID deaths updated June 9, CDC source data: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html, https://data.cdc.gov/resource/9bhg-hcku.csv?sex=All Sexes, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e2.htm?s_cid=mm7014e2_x

[4] See for instance, https://www.rivm.nl/en/coronavirus-covid-19/children-and-covid-19

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0962-9

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.21.2000903

[5] Ludvigsson J, Engerström L, Nordenhäll C, Larsson E, "Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden," February 18, 2021, N Engl J Med 2021; 384:669-671; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2026670

[6] Gettings J, Czarnik M, Morris E, et al. Mask Use and Ventilation Improvements to Reduce COVID-19 Incidence in Elementary Schools — Georgia, November 16–December 11, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2021;70:779–784. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7021e1

[7] Oster E, Jack R, Halloran C, et. al. COVID-19 Mitigation Practices and COVID-19 Rates in Schools: Report on Data from Florida, New York and Massachusetts, preprint posted May 21, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.19.21257467

[8] See for instance, Sarah Knapton, "School masks: face coverings could damage children's speech development, warn scientists," The Telegraph, August 26, 2020. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/26/school-masks-potential-damage-speech-development-far-greater/; Organization for Autism Research, "The Challenge of Face Masks, November 12, 2020. https://researchautism.org/the-challenge-of-face-masks/; Kisielinski K, Giboni P, Prescher A, Klosterhalfen B, Graessel D, Funken S, Kempski O, Hirsch O. Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(8):4344. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084344; Peeters C, Vanden Berghe W, Desmet W, "Psychosocial, biological, and immunological risks for children and pupils make long-term wearing of mouth masks difficult to maintain," September 9, 2020. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021/rr-6