This despite the Victorian Government not presenting any scientific evidence as to why this continues to be a necessary measure.
What difference is it making to keep masking up kids in this age bracket when COVID-19 numbers continue to bubble along across the country? And when mask mandates have been dropped in most other settings?
Please, many parents want to know. Is this measure flattening the curve or preventing deaths? Are nine and 10 year-olds filling hospital beds? The government needs to give us the actual health advice.
As I see it, forcing kids to continue to wear a mask at school simply heightens communication difficulties at a critical stage in their social development. So it had better be absolutely necessary to keep them muzzled.
I have a child in Grade 3 and, like most other kids, she just gets on with having to wear a mask to school day in, day out without many complaints.
But that doesn’t make it fair. Or right.
She has a younger brother who doesn’t have to wear a mask, and those two play and wrestle endlessly. And when they get in the playground with all the other kids, it is a free-for-all, regardless. So again, what is this mandate for grades 3 to 6 really achieving?
It seems the Victorian Government’s motive for the mandate is to drive more kids in that age bracket to get double- vaccinated, but many kids, including my own, have already had COVID, and suffered only minor symptoms.
If parents are deciding against vaccinating their children, then it’s unfair that the children are being punished for a decision that is not in their hands.
The Victorian Government needs to be reasonable here and stop playing hard ball with our kids. Let them get on with their schooling unimpeded. They’ve been through enough.
From the start of next term, all mask mandates for grades 3 to 6 students must be dropped in Victoria, just as they have been across Australia.
The government also needs to consider rethinking its isolation rules for household contacts, which is already causing havoc with businesses.
Many businesses fear not being able to operate over the busy Easter period due to staff shortages.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy this week used his son’s fresh COVID diagnosis to call for change.
“Half the state is in a semi-lockdown,” a healthy Mr Guy said while spending seven days in isolation.
“I could be at work. I don’t feel sick at all but I’m isolating for a week … I’m negative, the other boys and (wife) Renee are all negative but that’s what Victorians are living with,” he told reporters in a Zoom press conference.
“I think you have to apply common sense. If you do a test and you’re negative, and you feel fine, then you should get on with life.
“I just don’t see why in Victoria we’ve got thousands of people sitting at home who are constantly reporting negative tests and yet they’re sitting at home.”
Mr Guy is right.
Finding staff is tough enough, particularly in hospitality, so it hurts when the healthy ones are being forced to stay away.
Living with COVID will continue to present challenges.
But keeping our kids and businesses in a state of semi-paralysis is not healthy for anyone.
