Kids getting COVID ‘inevitable,’ SC school board member says after voting out masks
After voting to stop requiring students to wear masks in school, a S.C. school board member told a concerned parent that it is “inevitable” children will come down with the disease and that we should “take control of the circumstances at which they get it.”
Days after the school board in Lexington-Richland 5 voted to make mask-wearing optional for the last few weeks of the school year, board secretary Nikki Gardner made the comment in an email to a parent concerned about how the change in policy would affect her child.
Sarah Snodgrass wrote to board members the day after the vote asking what accommodations could be made for her preschool-age son, since he doesn’t have the option to move to a virtual platform. Gardner responded by denying that children are at greater risk of catching COVID-19 now that the masks have been removed from classrooms.
“(Y)ou’ve disregarded evidence that wearing masks has never proven to work in the classroom,” she said. “And you’ve disregarded the fact that (there) have no COVID cases in our D5 schools. Quit fearing and laying this on us.”
Snodgrass disagreed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus via airborne droplets people breath out, which are caught in the cloth masks. The S.C. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Environmental Control recommend students do wear masks in schools, even after Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order this week lifting mask requirements statewide.
But Gardner’s next response suggested the spread of the disease could now be controlled.
“In fact we were told by the experts that we all need to get it and will get it we just want to be able to help those who are at risk,” Gardner wrote. “So we have to be very calculated with the spread. Now that vaccines are available the children can spread it without giving it to an at risk parent or adult. But children are not at risk of serious complications from COVID. They actually need to get childhood colds in order to stay healthy. It’s basic immunology.”
Snodgrass wrote back that the suggestion children should contract COVID-19 was “insane and dangerous.”
“I am in disbelief that you would admit to this,” she said. “No one should advocate for anyone to get a deadly disease.”
But Gardner replied, “I’m not saying we want them to get it I’m saying they will but let’s take control of the circumstances at which they get it,” later writing, “We don’t want them to get it but it is most likely inevitable but it will be ok. They are not at risk. But when they grow up they will be at risk. They can safely build their immune systems now.”
When contacted by The State, Gardner reiterated that she believes children are not at serious risk of harm even if they do contract coronavirus.
“I’m an insurance agent,” she said. “When we talk about risk, we mean a loss. A child getting sick is not a loss. Dying is a loss.
“We’ve been told all along we’re only flattening the curve, so we can slow down the virus until we get a vaccine,” she said. Now that vaccines are available, she believes it’s time to phase out masks, even as other mitigation efforts in schools remain in place.
She pointed to data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics that 0.03% of childhood COVID-19 cases have resulted in the child’s death.
But Columbia pediatrician Deborah Greenhouse warns that children can still suffer serious health consequences from catching the virus.
“While COVID in most children is milder than in adults, it’s not always,” Greenhouse said. “Some children get very ill and end up in the hospital,” adding that South Carolina hospitals have seen an uptick in children admitted with COVID-related symptoms in recent weeks.
But contracting the disease “is not inevitable,” Greenhouse said, and she encourages her patients to continue taking precautions like wearing masks.
“Please follow the science, and not the politics,” she tells them. “This should not be political.”
Gardner says contact tracing has not shown COVID-19 cases have been transmitted in schools, and she believes children will benefit from gaining immunity by exposure to the disease, although it’s unclear if long-term immunity can result from contracting COVID.
Snodgrass said she was so disturbed by the email exchange, she pulled her son out of the 4K program at Oak Pointe Elementary after talking to the principal. She told The State she’s unsure when or if she will let him go back, since she now doesn’t believe his health and safety is a priority for the people running the district.
“It’s insane to try to use children as pawns in some strange case study to see if masks are effective,” Snodgrass said. She compared the idea to parents who once threw “pox parties” to expose children to chicken pox, believing it would boost children’s immunity to the disease.
“They didn’t know chicken pox gives you shingles later in life,” she said. “What if there is some long-term effect from COVID?”
Greenhouse said she’s already heard of students who do choose to wear masks being bullied in school.
“We know masks help,” Greenhouse said. “What makes schools safer is because of the safety precautions in place. Removing those creates a greater risk, and we’re removing them for no reason.”
While public health guidance is evolving on masks, health agencies have said for months that wearing face masks is an important way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between unvaccinated people in close quarters. Vaccines against COVID-19 are not yet approved for minors under the age of 12.
But Gardner expressed distrust of the official guidance on wearing masks, suggesting prolonged mask-wearing could have adverse health effects of their own.
“The CDC is run by corporations,” she said. “They have a spin ... you can find other science out there that they aren’t willing to put out that (masks) are bad for us.”
The CDC, or Centers for Disease Control, is the public health agency of the federal government run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Researchers have found no evidence that long-term mask wearing has negative effects on healthy people.
But Gardner believes a resurgence of the virus at this point would actually undermine faith in the guidance of public health officials.
“If we have to re-mask, people aren’t going to trust the CDC and DHEC,” Gardner said. “Because when you put a mask on, your body knows it’s not right. We’ve gotten use to it, and we’ve gotten our children used to it. But we need to listen to what our bodies are telling us.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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