Anthony Walden
As inevitable as the topic of Covid is, it seems that everyone is tired of it. You can’t blame people for avoiding the topic; we’ve been in a worldwide pandemic for almost three years now. However, time isn’t everything, and as Covid seems to evolve, peoples opinions on the matter don’t. Omicron, the most recent Covid variant, is the most contagious as of now. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommends people to wear masks with at least two layers, a wire above the nose, one that covers your nose and mouth, and one that fits your face. Wearing a mask is nothing new, but wearing one with more than one layer is new, as most people wear reusable cloth masks.
A lot of teenagers here at Central think that they’re invincible, which isn’t something that came out of nowhere. As teenagers, we are constantly told that this is the best time of our lives and that we need to enjoy it. That it’s a time for opportunity. An opportunity to better ourselves, hone in on our skills that we’ve worked on our whole lives and/or make new ones that we can develop into a career. These opportunities don’t stop at just being good, as this is also a time where we are most vulnerable. Vulnerable to things like drugs, alcohol, and diseases along with lifelong trauma. We are not immune to these things (nobody is), but as mostly kids we are very influenced by the things around us.
Anybody can catch Covid, even if you’re vaccinated or not. Wearing masks is important but people just can’t put their heads together to agree on that. The thing is that wearing a mask is more for other people rather than yourself. I’m wearing a mask to protect you from me, the same goes for you, by not wearing one you are telling me that you do not care about me, that other people in this world who aren’t yourself do not matter. You can see this from a lot of kids in school, not just by how they don’t wear a mask, but also by how they act.
I’m not here to dictate how you act, but I am here to inform you that there are other people in this world, that you are not the only person with a life to live. Every single person you see has their own life with their own struggles, and you are only helping to increase those struggles by not wearing a mask.
We should not be in school, we should be at home learning virtually. This is just a problem with how school works, the unit only gets money based on how many students are at school. Unit 4 has shown time and time again that it will do everything in its power to continue the school day even if it puts the people who actually work and learn at the school in danger.