Kids Were Safe from Covid the Whole Time | Hacker News Reader

Kids Were Safe from Covid the Whole Time

nymag.com

29 pointsdsr1219 comments

".. public-health officials have worried over infections in the young — assuming they would eventually help bring the disease back to those much more vulnerable."

I had wondered why we allowed workers in long term care facilities to come and go and work in multiple facilities. In/out spread transmission vector devastated older at-risk. And NY forced known carrier patients from hospital into long term care, infecting more at-risk.

Also wondering why we aren't allowing low-risk children to get it naturally and develop anti-bodies while young so they can get on with their role of being children.

> Also wondering why we aren't allowing low-risk children to get it naturally and develop anti-bodies while young so they can get on with their role of being children.

As a concerned parent I think the long term unknowns of a novel virus are a big factor. Maybe most kids are asymptomatic today, but will their development be hindered in subtle ways as they grow?

Or is it possible that large communities of infected children could become a breeding ground for the virus to mutate?

Most anything is _possible_.

Any worries about long term effects of the rushed Emergency Use Authorization vaccines, which have zero long term studies?

Great read based on solid science and data.

We need much more of this.

And we knew the whole time, just as we knew kids' grandparents were not safe.

True, but AIUI there was a strange lack of infection chains via children, too.

So? They could just take precautions when visiting them, or self-isolate. No reason to close schools (as happened in some countries) and so on.

> No reason to close schools

I mean, if you ignore the fact that children aren't the only people necessary to an open school.

Well, if you too also ignore the fact that teachers and help stuff can take precautions and tests like, you know, adults...

And the same for the teachers and daycare workers who are needed to run the schools and daycares.

As the article notes, this isn’t new information - it was clear very early on in the pandemic. Infection fatality rates from the CDC and other sources showed people under 50 had very low risk, not just kids. The lockdowns made no sense to me because it felt like everyone under 50 was being constrained so that those over 50 could avoid staying strictly quarantined but instead enjoy partial freedom and go outside of their homes. In reality people, businesses, schools, and so on should have been allowed to take the risks they were comfortable with as individuals. The big dissonance was when many European countries opened up schools around mid 2020 and America didn’t. But little attention was given to this aspect by the public or news media.

So why was there so much fear mongering and safetyism, suggesting that even a small risk of opening up schools is unacceptable? In my opinion a big reason in America was because COVID became politicized in a contentious election year, since a crisis can be leveraged by critiquing how the crisis is managed and by hurting the economy (one of Trump’s strengths going into 2020). This irrational approach and unwillingness to consider data was enabled by a broader rise in safetyism even before COVID, which normalized it to some degree. For instance “vision zero” programs that seek to diminish or ban cars in pursuit of perfect safety. Or kids not being allowed to freely roam on their own. And so on.

I agree there was an overreaction, however it would be risky to open schools before school personnel were vaccinated.

The article talks about mortality. Just because you don't die from covid doesn't mean you are as healthy as before. You still have to deal with LongCovid and in the case of kids with PIMS[1]. The NHS England is creating [15 paediatric hubs[2] to fight this. Now imagine a lot of kids get long term problems caused by covid. This will hurt the economy in the longterm a lot more than lockdowns and closed schools will.

[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisystem_inflammatory_syndr...)

[2](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/06/nhs-sets-up-specialist-yo...)

Just in case you missed it, the article talked to LongCovid too. They brought up issues with study methodologies, and suggested that actual events were rare.

NB the NHS is not building 15 new buildings for “long covid hubs” in the style of Nightingale hospitals. It sounds like they’re just repurposing some areas of existing hospitals/clinics.

In my life experience the best safety in general is at MSHA regulated mines. Real safety to prevent problems. Last year after I got onto mine sites to do my work, it was business as usual. Like the 'rona wasn't an issue there.

One front office was freaked out and would not let me inside to do the site-specific safety cert, but once I got behind the gate it was normal. At another mine in May 2020 they invited me to their pig roast for employees and families. No fake safetyism there; just everyone socializing and eating like it was 1999.

Anyone who thinks for a second that the overblown response to COVID wasn't a direct action by the multinational conglomerates beholden to China to get rid of the first president in years that openly attacked China is being willfully ignorant.

I didn't downvote you, but that sounds like crazy-talk. Vast numbers of healthcare workers conspire with the Chinese government via their vassal multinationals to inflate the number of dead and infected so that the public will vote Trump out of office? Is that your contention?

So why was there so much fear mongering and safetyism, suggesting that even a small risk of opening up schools is unacceptable?

Because teachers are adults. Often, adults over 50.

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