CHIN UP — My younger son turns 2 next month, so I will have to start sending him to day care with several masks in his baby-blue dinosaur backpack. When the pandemic first hit, he was a snuggly six-month baby who could barely sit up on his own. Now he’s a rambunctious toddler who managed to knock over our TV stand last night — he is fine. Our flat screen is not. I thought for sure by the time he turned 2, I would be writing about craft projects for all those useless masks lying around the house. Instead, I am replenishing our supply of toddler masks. I just found ones patterned with whales and jellyfish. For him, of course, masks are totally normal. They are another entry into the world of being a big kid — like potty training, though he will learn to wear a mask before he learns to use the toilet. For me, it’s yet another reminder of the pandemic’s seeming endlessness. The CDC is now saying that even vaccinated people have to wear masks indoors because of the risks of the Delta variant. Lambda, another Covid variant first identified in Peru, may be resistant to vaccines. It looks like I may have to shelve those craft plans and instead take advantage of mask sales. And recommit myself to good mask hygiene. So I reached out to Jack O’Horo, an infectious disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic, to ask him all the things we need to know about masking, but are too embarrassed to ask 18 months in. This conversation has been edited. I usually wear a cloth mask to drop my kids off at day care and then shove it in my purse. How often should I be washing it? The ideal answer would be to clean a mask after every wearing, though that’s clearly not practical. The next best thing is every few days. One of the good and bad things about masks is when they really need a wash, they make themselves pretty well-known because we wear them right on our face. We’re forced to do the mask sniff test every time we put it on. If it starts to smell like it should be in the dirty laundry pile, it probably should have been a few days ago. Should I be using an N95 instead? The best kind of mask to use is the one that completely covers the nose and mouth. Overall, what’s more important is how consistently you can wear that mask and if you can wear it the right way. Having a high-grade mask that’s being worn beneath the nose isn’t doing much good. The WHO recommends that children older than 5 wear a mask, while the CDC sticks to 2 and up. Which is more appropriate? The WHO recommendation was more of a surrender to the pragmatic concerns of how difficult it is to mask a 2-, 3- or 4-year-old than it was a statement that risk is really lower in a 4-year-old than a 5-year-old. Risk is lower in kids than adults overall for severe disease and complications. It is again non-zero. In these 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds it is appropriate to try to mask them. But we have to be very cognizant that they will require frequent correction and assistance to wear the masks properly. The consistency is going to be less than ideal, but every layer of protection helps. I am questioning, though, whether the costs of masking toddlers outweighs the risks? I have an almost 3-year-old, and this is something I’m considering myself. One of the things I’m considering is how strict can we be, for how long, without really impeding his opportunity to learn and grow? For the next month I think that the risk-benefit analysis errors towards being very cautious about Covid-19 because of how transmissible this Delta variant is. I think it’s going to be a temporary measure, especially with kids’ vaccines around the corner. If we were looking at another year of masking for this group I would have a very different cost-benefit to go through. One day I was getting out of my car and I had pulled down my mask because I was the only one in the car and coming home. I picked my son up to say hi and he picked my mask up underneath my chin and put it up over my nose. This is what the children of the pandemic are like. My 3-year-old is probably more used to seeing people wear masks properly than some adults are at this point. It’s kind of sad that it’s become something you do if you’re a big boy now. That’s the reality of 2021 and I sincerely hope it won’t be the reality of 2022. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com and on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.
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