The masked are in the minority here at Morton East.  Will it stay that way?

Remember at the beginning of last year, when the majority of students were still wearing masks?  It was the random person who was seen without, even though they weren’t required.  Now, the majority has flipped: only 6% of students continue to wear a mask at school, compared to the majority who are now maskless.

At the start of 2020, the covid-19 outbreak started in the city of Wuhan, China. The outbreak led to a global pandemic that required people to wear masks in public and get vaccinated. People had to wear masks even in their homes if someone got infected with covid. Now many people have stopped wearing masks because they don’t feel a need to wear them, and many people consider covid-19 over or not a problem anymore.

In a survey of Morton students, 94% of the students don’t wear masks anymore; many of them believe covid-19 to be over.

“I didn’t really like them, but I think it was good for me because I didn’t have to worry about fixing my makeup or worrying if it was messed up during the day or even put on makeup,” senior Yaili Cruz said.

Nowadays students feel like wearing masks are not as much of a priority as it was during 2020-2021 when covid-19 was just beginning to spread.

“I don’t wear it because we don’t really need to and it be kind of weird to wear one when everyone doesn’t,” senior Alexis Serna said.

However, Alexis Serna did say he “wouldn’t mind” if he had to wear a mask again. Others felt like it was inconvenient and irritating.

“Honestly wearing masks was a pain but it was helpful during covid-19. Especially in school wearing masks were not it, it made it hard to breath and made us even hotter having something cover our face. Many people liked it cause it covered their faces, but i hated it, it gave me ear pain wearing it all day and I just felt suffocated,” senior Brisa Valadez said.

However, for some it was a confidence boost.

“Honestly, I felt more confident during the times that we had to wear a mask, I would overthink about how my face looked during the day and I well get these dysphoric feeling where I imagined that I looked bad, but with the mask on I wouldn’t have to worry about it because no one could see my face which helped me control my stress and actually focus on school because I wouldn’t have to worry about looking good,” senior Valerie Almanza said.