I'd also note that an even-more-infectious variant of SARS-2 (Delta), in which children transmit just as readily (I haven't seen proof of this whatsoever but let's accept it for the sake of argument), and which largely-but-not-completely bypasses vaccine immunity (this is definitely the case; the Israel data confirms that the approach of vaccinating against just the spike protein was an incredible failure given that a couple point mutations on the spike like we saw with Delta was enough to drop vaccine efficacy to <=40% against infection), should tell us that trying to run away from this virus or wage war on it is folly and that, yes, your kid is going to be exposed to COVID, and that's okay.

This is a bit of a side tangent but it never ceases to amaze me that the supposed asymptomatic spread of COVID (which was never proven; pre-symptomatic was but asymptomatic appears to have been a myth) was used as a justification for the necessity of lockdowns and the like, when really it should have been a screaming indicator that we should stop trying to aggressively contain the damn thing and just focus on population health and focused protection of the severely vulnerable.

By the same logic (this is me basically restating my first paragraph), the idea that a variant that infects kids more easily or as was argued above that kids can transmit more easily, is a sign that we should stop trying to close schools, not that we need to double down. And regardless it seems like people seem to have forgotten that we're now in late September 2021. It's almost been two years of this now.

Hell, I remember catching major flak here (on a different account) in early-mid 2020 for saying that we were going to stay locked down until they coerced everyone into being vaccinated, and at the time I was called a conspiracy theorist; nowadays people act like I'm crazy for not wanting vaccine passports, and will turn around and act as if we all collectively knew they were going to happen from the beginning! More than 18 months of this, a third-world child starvation / missed medical appointment crisis, a massive worldwide uptick in missed preventative care like cancer screenings, a >30% rise in y/y fentanyl overdose deaths in the US alone, and yet people still insist on more of these ineffective and outright authoritarian measures?!