February 2022

An Open Letter to Governor Janet T. Mills, Maine Department of Public Health Director James Markiewcz, Commissioner of the Maine Health & Human Services Agency Jeanne Lambrew, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Pender Makin, all Maine County Public Health Officers, and all Maine Public School Superintendents and School Boards:

We are writing to you today as health professionals and as Maine residents, parents and grandparents. Since this pandemic began, we have been living under highly restrictive COVID-19 policies in Maine, which have caused considerable collateral damage throughout the pandemic. These policies have long lost their justification as necessary for prevention of serious illness and death and continue to negatively affect our professional and personal lives without clear benefit nor any end in sight.

Present policies have driven thousands of people from our state and from our public schools, and we will continue to lose many great minds, great businesses, great families and great individuals if current policy is not righted.

We are particularly concerned about the toll that Covid mitigation policies continue to have on children and teens.

We are writing to ask Maine officials to acknowledge the endemic nature of COVID-19 and immediately shift our public dialogue toward defining a clear and immediate path for removing all remaining COVID-19 restrictions in public schools.

We implore you to do the following:

1.     Acknowledge that any adult and most school age children have now had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated; many thousands of Mainers have also recovered from Covid adding to our collective immunity, and that forcing further mandates, including requiring boosters for children, is likely to increase mistrust and resentment of government and public health officials.

2.     Acknowledge that many families in Maine vaccinated their children for the good of society since children are at lower risk of severe disease.

3.     Acknowledge that the people of this state have been waiting for a major relaxation of restrictions which they have yet to receive.

4.     Acknowledge that the public is weary from two years of restrictions and fighting for schools to reopen and resume in-person learning for their children; the public is weary of shifting messages from government officials, and a failure to acknowledge that the risk of severe COVID among children is practically nonexistent; indeed, it could take well over a generation for government leaders and infectious disease experts to regain the public’s trust.

5.     Acknowledge the incredibly minute risk that COVID-19 illness poses to children compared to the disproportionate toll that mitigation measures have taken on children.

6.     Acknowledge the ongoing mental health crisis that is present in our children and teens due to social isolation and anxiety that has been created by pandemic public policy, which failed to prioritize our children.

7.     Acknowledge the ongoing educational crisis that is unfolding before us so long as children cannot see their teachers’ and peers’ faces and adequately hear and interact with them.

8.    Immediately make masks optional in all school settings.

9.     Acknowledge the potential developmental harm that is caused to children of all ages who do not get to see their caregivers’ and teachers’ mouths when they are being spoken to nor see their full facial expressions in their interactions.

10.     Emphasize one-way masking (N95/KN95 masks are readily available and free) as a protective strategy for those who are extremely risk averse &/or immunocompromised. 

11.     End mindless testing and pooled testing of asymptomatic individuals with no clear purpose given that COVID-19 is here to stay.

12.     Acknowledge that policies on college campuses throughout Maine should recognize that population’s relative low risk, thus not warranting returns to distance learning that deprive our young adults of social interaction that is formative for a lifetime.

13.     Immediately shift away from a public health response that is based on case rates to one that strictly looks at hospitalizations and deaths in a broader context.

14.     Acknowledge that true COVID-19 hospitalizations remain low in this state and particularly in our county, and that we should refrain from panic-driven restrictions that inflict additional collateral damage on our most vulnerable populations, unjustified by a less deadly variant.

15.     Commit to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis for all future pandemic policies to ensure that benefit always outweighs harm, without disproportionately prioritizing prevention of transmission above all other health considerations.
 
We stand ready to help this state establish an immediate path to normalcy in our schools and beyond. We call upon our leaders and public officials to act now.
 
Sincerely,
_____________