Oregon is removing the mask mandate on March 31. Everyone has different opinions on this, but this is a mistake; if you look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] guidelines it is clear that this will spread COVID-19 at a rapid pace again. And not only is this putting people at high risk in danger, but it is also putting unvaccinated people and people in general at risk.
If you think back near the end of semester one you will find that there were a lot of staffing shortages. This made it so substitutes were hard to find and some classes could not find substitutes, so it looked like we might be shutting down again. Since there were not enough staff to go around and many students were out too, almost ¼ of the student body was out in one day!
It was absurd and if we remove the mandate we risk going online again. I know I do not want to go online, since I could not work very well online. I know other people do not want to go online again and cannot work well at home. Thankfully at the end of last semester we were able to keep going through the COVID spike, but we might not be as lucky this time If we remove mask mandates, we might be put in a similar situation where we might have to shut down now, which none of us want.
Even in the CDC’s guidelines for coming back after COVID, you are supposed to wear a mask for five days, but if the mask mandate is removed will this be removed? following the CDCs guidelines would be a good start for preventing this. If you look at state-wide COVID cases you will find Oregon is one of the lowest on the list across all the states and Oregon is one of the only states who still have a mask mandate in effect. The CDCs guidelines are clear: wear a mask indoors if other people are around. They created this guideline to slow down the spread of COVID-19 since our hospitals are full already. We do not want another spike, it would not be good for anyone. Who wants to lose a family member to COVID?; this is our chance, when the mask mandate is lifted choose to still wear a mask for everyone’s safety.
