Who Is Masking In Illinois?: Patch Survey

CHICAGO AREA, IL — It's become an unpopular topic for some but one public health officials are again recommending residents consider as COVID-19 cases continue to rise.

Under currently Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, masking, while indoors in public places, should be done for those living in counties with a high level of transmission. Those counties, according to recent public health data, include McHenry, Lake, DuPage, Cook and Will counties.

• Chicago-Area Counties Again Have 'High' COVID Transmission: CDC

Meanwhile, Kane and Kendall counties are at a medium level of transmission.

The CDC says all residents living in high transmission counties, despite vaccination status, should wear masks while indoors in public, including while on public transportation, in K-12 schools and other congregate. The recommendations are a bit more lax for those living in medium transmission areas, with public health officials urging masking while using public transportation, if you have symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19.

Current CDC recommendations also recommend masks while indoors in public for those at a high risk for severe illness in medium transmission area, including additional precautions.

Last July, amid a COVID surge, we asked readers if they'd begin wearing masks again if cases continued to rise. At the time, just under 30 percent of readers who responded said they "always or nearly always" wear a mask indoors in public, while around 12 percent said they do so less than half the time, 7 percent said they do so more than half the time, and a little under 5 percent say they wear one about half the time.

A lot has changed since then. According to the CDC, most residents in the Chicago area should be wearing masks, but are they? Let us know your thoughts on masking in our survey below.

Will Your Children Wear Masks This School Year

There's been no official word so far if the state will provide officials rules or recommendations for schools in the upcoming school year but the CDC does specifically recommend masks in high transmission area for K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.

New Omicron variants, including BA.4 and BA.5, appear equipped to get around vaccines and sicken those who've previously been infected, but public health officials say vaccinations and boosters seem to be effective in lessening the chance for serious illness.

"Variants continue to worry people, and they should worry people," said Allison Arwady, public health commissioner for the Chicago Department of Public Health, during a weekly Facebook live broadcast. "Every time we have a new variant that emerges, it's the part that is the least controlled with COVID. If the COVID virus didn't mutate at all from here on out, I would have no questions about what we do to sort of get us out of COVID.

The problem is, because it keeps mutating, because we keep seeing new variants - every time that happens in some way the virus is changing to be more contagious, which is most of what we've seen, but there's the potential for it to become, you know, more serious. There's the potential for it to become less serious. But you just don't know for sure. And that uncertainty is part of what makes it very hard to fully be able to predict the future."

Last school year, masking became a heated debate in Illinois schools. In February, emotions surrounding masking took center stage after a mandate was abruptly lifted in Illinois schools.

At that time, Patch.com asked parents in an unofficial survey how they were handling the change and how many were sending their kids to school with or without masks. Of the more than 300 responses at the time, more than 55 percent reported requiring masks at the time while 45 percent did not.

We also heard of the backlash families faced because of their decisions.

One mother, whose daughter attended a Plainfield District 202 school and hasn't been wearing a mask, said she was called vulgar names.

"Students have even gone as far as threatening to jump 'antimaskers' and have made several Instagram pages to target students not wearing a mask," according to the mother. Others have used Snapchat to level threats, some parents said.

Children wearing masks were called "sheep" or "snowflakes," some parents said. The mask-free children are coughing on masked children in some school districts, other parents reported. Some parents of high schoolers reported high peer pressure not to wear a mask and only a small number of kids chose to wear masks because of that pressure.

"How can this be ok to put so much pressure on kids already dealing with so much living in this pandemic?" wrote the parent of a high school student in the northwest suburbs.

• No To Mask Mandate, Yes To Masks In Schools: IL Patch Survey

Last summer, as many school districts reversed course on mandates weeks before the first day of school. At that time, Illinois Patch readers who responded — around 48 percent — said they think students and staff should wear masks at school. Slightly less — 46 percent — were against masks in schools, and just more than 5 percent weren't sure. That lines up with the June 2020 survey, in which most Patch readers who responded also felt masks in schools were a good idea.

At that time, 33.6 percent of parents reported they'd consider keeping their child home if masks were not required in schools while another 34.1 percent of parents said they'd still send them. A total of 32.2 percent of the remaining respondents said they weren't yet sure.

• No To Mask Mandate, Yes To Masks In Schools: IL Patch Survey
• Related: Survey Shows Majority Of College Students Plan To Wear Masks This Fall