Many Highline students say it’s too early to take off their masks.

Mask mandates are ending across the country as the number of COVID cases continues to fall. While many people are tired of wearing masks in public places, others fear the declining number is simply due to more home COVID testing and less reporting of new cases. 

According to the Washington state Department of Health, as of this week 80.5 percent of the state’s population over the age of 5 has had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, and 72.7 percent are fully vaccinated. 

The state continues to have a mask mandate, and people at Highline are required to be masked any time they’re in a room with someone else. 

Still, many on campus say they’re not ready to forego their masks in public. 

“I don’t think it’s time to start ripping off masks among the unvaccinated. The virus is not done with us yet, and my heart aches for our health care workers. But in certain settings, it makes no sense to me anymore to continue wearing masks,” said Dr. Marianne Ide, a political science professor at Highline.

“I think we should keep wearing masks, because it’s not very safe for no masks, especially with new variants like Omicron spreading,” said Haben Kidane, a Highline student.

“I think not wearing masks is fine as long as health care professionals say so,” said Preston L., a Highline student.

Ben Nguyen, another Highline student, thinks “People should continue to wear masks in confined spaces”.

“We should keep wearing masks especially since we’re not as along with people getting vaccinated,” said Mariella Garcia. 

“The pandemic is still here, so we should keep wearing masks to be safe,” said Skye Chirko. 

“We should keep wearing masks even if the state says otherwise, wearing masks is essential because when we cough or sneeze it protects the people around us,” said Isara M., a guest visiting Highline. 

Fatimah Shareef, another Highline student, also thinks it’s essential to keep wearing masks.

“I think we should keep wearing masks because we need to contain the virus and stop spreading it, we also need to take precaution because if we take our masks off cases will most likely go up, causing places to close again,” she said. 

“It’s much more safer if we wear masks,” said Lander Peralta, a Highline student. 

“Personally I think I would still wear a mask just to stay safe,” said student Trish Ho. “I mean if there are people who are willing to take theirs off then I wouldn’t mind as long as I have mine on.”

Her friend Jooria Kim agreed.

“I’d keep mine on because I’d like to keep myself safe because you never know if someone is unvaccinated or has COVID and it’s really hard to tell.”

With Gov. Jay Inslee recently announcing that some outdoor mask requirements will be lifted, some students weren’t sure even that small step was a good idea.

Some people didn’t know that the outdoor mask mandate was going to be lifted for example Sohani Choudhary she stated “I don’t think that we should because the rise of like COVID rates are still pretty inconsistent,” said Sohani Choudhary. “They’ll go down quickly but can go right up and then with that like not having our masks on could make them strike up again. So I don’t think that we should keep our masks off.”

While interviewing Niko Manjares and Keilani Vongsady they were both firm about their answers. After asking them if Highline were to say if we could take our masks off in outdoor settings they automatically said “No,” at the same time. After asking them if there was a specific reason why they said no Niko said while chuckling

“I’m not trying to catch COVID and die,” said student Niko Manjares. “I wouldn’t even be surprised if COVID cases went up again after people started to take off their masks.”

On a different note, Jonya Alkhamis said she thought people should continue to wear masks. She said might unmask outside. “Probably it depends on like if there’s a lot of people outside. If not, probably not.”

Rachel Collins, the general manager of Fireside Bistro, said she would continue to wear a mask in the cafe. 

“Personal preference no, but if they said we could take them off inside I’d still wear it. Because we’re around food and drinks, also since we are working around a large mass of people and some might be more sensitive to concerns regarding their food or drinks,” she said.

If you want more information regarding COVID-19 guidelines at Highline be sure to check out the COVID-19 page.

Some other students are ready to be done with the masks, however. 

“If COVID cases have gone down I think it’s fine that we don’t wear masks,” said Abby Shiru, a Highline student.       

“The mask restrictions should be eased,” said one student. “I believe current mask policy is not effective and implemented to increase the voter counts. 

“For example, if mask mandate were necessary, why they let them put off the mask when they seat on dining table at the restaurant?” the student asked. “This weird standard would not help curve the infection count. The count is dropping because of herd immunity and large group of people already got over the virus. There wouldn’t be too much effect at this point whether people wear mask or not. it should be individual’s decision.”

“The mask restrictions should ease out and should leave to individual’s decision,” said another student, Gregory Han. “A person who is destined to live a short life would end up dead whether he/she wears a mask or not. However, a person who is destined to live a long life would not die even if he catches the virus.”

If you want more information regarding COVID-19 guidelines at Highline be sure to check out the COVID-19 page, https://www.highline.edu/covid19/ 

Reporters Ashley Nand, Jungeun Lee and Nyrelle Vital contributed to this story.