(This is an archive story, refer to following byline for author's name)
By Kialani Siavii
Spring break has officially passed which means there are only seven weeks of school! At the beginning of the year we had the student body split up into two days, blue and grey and some fully virtual. Now, the students who chose in person are on campus five days a week and the students that chose virtual are still fully virtual at home.
As many may know, the Texas mask mandate that was enforced during the summer of 2020 has now been lifted. The mandate was lifted on March 2 of this year. Governor Greg Abbot made this call because the vaccines were being distributed to the people. This lift made Texas 100 percent open, but this does not include private owned businesses. At our school the students and the staff are still required to wear masks at all times.
Shockingly once the mask mandate was lifted the Covid cases in Tarrant County went down drastically, but this is a result of the increase in the availability of the vaccine. There has been great discussion surrounding the importance of the mask and if it actually protects one from the virus. Everyone has a different story as to how the pandemic has affected their families and friends which results in their trust in the mask and how effective they really are.
This pandemic, that has been going on for a little over a year, has brought great pain to many people around the world but we are making visible progress to returning back to the days of 2019. Although it is going to take a good amount of time before the country is fully vaccinated all we can hope for is our return to normalcy.