Masks, Mandates, and the Children Impacted

My two-year fight against mask mandates, invasion of privacy, faulty data, and the harm done to children

In 2020, I served on the Virginia Beach School Board when COVID entered our daily vocabulary and reshaped nearly every decision I made for the next two years. Like most people, I initially trusted what government officials told us. But as I dug into the research myself, the story they told us and the facts I found began to pull apart. What followed was a lesson in how quickly official guidance could shift, how easily "public health" could become a tool of control, and how the children I was elected to represent paid the price.

The first issue: masks. In February 2020, Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Americans to stop buying masks because they didn't stop the spread of the virus. In a now revealed Feb. 5, 2020, email, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci said, "the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material." At the time, I had never heard of Fauci, so I had no reason to distrust him.

In a March 8, 2020, news interview, Fauci said, "right now in the United States people should not be walking around with masks." When pressed on that comment he went on to say, "when you're in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is." Fauci further commented that wearing a mask could cause problems because people would constantly touch it, spreading their germs.

Less than a month later, on April 3rd, Fauci appeared on "Fox and Friends" and said that people should wear masks. By January 2021, he was claiming that wearing two masks was "common sense."

Government Control

In October 2020, I attended a political event. Nearly two weeks after the event, I received an email that an attendee had tested positive for COVID. I disregarded the message but then I received a voicemail from the director of the local health department asking me to contact her about a "public health matter."

I didn't immediately return her call, so she sent an email to my school board account. When I called her back, she informed me that I had been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID and that I and my family needed to quarantine for at least 5 days. My family didn't attend the event. I was furious that a government bureaucrat was trying to dictate my family's movements. I kindly let her know that she didn't control me or my family and that we wouldn't quarantine.

This was the same health director advising my school board on whether to keep schools open or mandate masks for children. The local version of Anthony Fauci.

Children Needlessly Harmed

As a school board member, I was one of eleven elected leaders responsible for whether 65,000 children would be forced to cover their mouths for 7 hours a day, a decision that directly affected their ability to learn. So, I did my own research. I talked to physician friends, and I observed elementary children wearing the same filthy mask all day constantly touching them, then touching everyone around them. It became clear this wasn't about safety. It was about control and it was clearly unhealthy to force children to wear masks.

Young children need to see mouth movements to effectively learn speech and form words. I fought hard to keep children in school and masks off their faces, but I was in the minority on my school board. It was controlled by Democrats, and it was devastating to watch how children were treated. They were needlessly harmed and the teachers' union contributed to their learning loss.

One evening, I arrived at a school board meeting to find dozens of cars filling the parking lot, windows rolled up, horns blaring— all members of the teachers' union. They even had a masked figure dressed as the Grim Reaper walking around carrying signs warning that keeping schools open would kill teachers.

HAPPENING NOW: The Virginia Beach Education Association is holding a “Pack the Parking Lot” car rally to tell the @vbschools board to start the school year virtually. They say this is the safest option for everyone amid the pandemic. COVID cases are surging in Hampton Roads. pic.twitter.com/vDKZ2ekQjL

— Geena Arevalo (@GeenaArevalo) July 28, 2020

In September 2021, a new health director, Nancy Welch briefed our school board. She inaccurately informed us that "individuals who are unvaccinated have almost a 100 percent chance of being able to contract COVID when they are exposed." Yet in a follow up meeting two weeks later, school administrators shared data that unvaccinated students and staff who were required to quarantine due to exposure only contracted COVID at a rate of 1.42 percent for students and 1.87 percent for staff. Dr Welch didn't respond when I questioned her about these facts.

I remember in 2021 when the Director of the VB Dept of Health, the local Fauci, told me in a school board meeting that unvax'd people who were exposed to covid had a 100% chance of getting it. A report the month before this meeting showed it was really an 8% chance. Other data… pic.twitter.com/CxioJ0mzmS

— Victoria Manning (@HoneyBadger_USA) July 30, 2026

In an e-mail with the subject line "VDH [Virginia Department of Health] recommends quarantine," the Superintendent at the time, Aaron Spence, told his Chief of Staff and Chief of Communications "Let's try to keep our conversations off email." Clearly there was information Spence didn't want the public to obtain through records requests.

I found other discrepancies that I questioned Dr. Welch about. Reported numbers in my city regarding child hospitalizations were as much as 20 times higher than other regions. After I pressed the health department about their suspicious numbers, I learned that they had reported incorrect data for our city. These numbers directly impacted whether the Democrat school board members would shut down the schools. They treated the public health officials like gods. I approached them with great skepticism at best.

While most of us want to forget the COVID nightmare, it's an experience we must share so it is never repeated. Government directives were about control, not safety. Masking guidance flipped within weeks. A health director's dire prediction was contradicted by data two weeks later. Numbers were wrong, and no one corrected them until I pushed. Democrats said to "follow the science" but that really meant "don't ask questions." Children were the ones who suffered the most and that is a lesson I will never forget.

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