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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting this herd immunity thing. I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough.

In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now, but people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all - not even their first dose. Those under 18 are not even scheduled to get it.

So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? From what I've seen in media and data (http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk), the virus is running rampant in teenagers now, but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)

Its all well and good making sure at 100% of 75+ year olds are protected, but they're not exactly representative of the people out and about mixing with strangers in shops/workplaces/bars/public transport/gyms/cafes etc

View on HN

> because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)

If one reads the actual studies about "long COVID" (and not sensationalistic media reports that leave all the nuances out), they often emphasize that severity of post-COVID symptoms correlates quite neatly with severity of illness. Because younger people rarely have severe illness, that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them. Not zero, of course, but low as with many other common illnesses for which major societal restrictions are not imposed.

People might be tempted to jump in with "But my friend who got COVID...!", but please don't, this is irresponsible in a scientific context. All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing.

There doesn't really seem to be anything special about "long COVID" that isn't well-known and generalizable to viral infections at large: chronic post-viral fatigue syndrome[0]. It's a thing, it affects a small percentage of people who have viral infections, it really sucks (took me 3 months to fully get over a bad flu when I was a teen). The reason it's noticeable now is because millions of people had a novel viral infection at basically the same time, so there's also obviously gonna be a spike of post-viral fatigue too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome

A quick search on that page does not show any mention of "loss" nor "smell".

While anecdotal, I do know of at one person that has lost their sense of smell and taste for now over 5 months. Even worse, any smell she can actually notice (often the faintest of smells ) is disgusting to her. Independently of what the smell actually is. That person is young and to my knowledge not in a risk group at all. In the UK, she struggles to even get someone to take it more serious than just prescribing antidepressants. I would not be surprised if many of the minority of people with long-lasting effects are unknown to the system, because either they do not search for help, or because the health system does not take them seriously.

So again, one sample is not a study, but I just want to point out that overgeneralising in either direction does not help.

I had COVID in December and just last week I had my sense of taste go out for two days. There’s no way I was re-exposed. Before that my taste had recovered completely. Such an odd thing.

I also had really bad Parkinson’s-like shaking a few times, but luckily that’s gone away. Post viral issues do happen with other diseases and I’m personally glad COVID’s symptoms of it are so unique. From personal experience doctors have a hard time acknowledging fatigue. This should lead to more research on the matter.

Sorry to hear that, it must be very hard for her.

The daily had an episode[1] about a food critic who lost her sense of smell after a COVID infection and the effort she went to in order to get it back. Her descriptions of what it was like to eat her favourite food without being able to taste made me want to wear two masks.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/podcasts/the-daily/corona...

What would count as "get someone to take it more serious" ?

She has a prolonged non-life-threatening condition with no known treatment. There's no tests to run or nothing more to diagnose, that's apparently done already. There's no drugs or procedures prescribed because, as far as I know, there are no drugs or procedures known to be effective for that. And that (looking seriously at her issue and giving a serious answer "do nothing") is a reasonable end state for diagnosis - it sucks, it's less common nowadays than it used to be, but it still happens.

That's it, the next step is acceptance, not continuing to seek soomeone to "take it more serious" - and if acceptance isn't working and is causing distress that's causing further problems, then indeed the next step is psychological help or pharmaceutical help for the psychological issues. Perhaps a few years later (not sooner) there will be treatment for that issue, so when (if!) that happens, then it would be a different discussion, but until that IMHO it's dangerous to encourage people to keep looking, as it can only lead to various snake-oil charlatans who'll make false promises. If the system would deny her some test or treatment that's likely to help, then it would be justified to seek attention and have someone take the complaint seriously and do the thing that needs to be done, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.

I'm sorry as this does sound like a dismissal, but if there are suggestions about what the system should do differently in this case, I'd be glad to hear, perhaps there can be a better way to go about this, but I'm all out of ideas.

"I'm sorry as this does sound like a dismissal, but if there are suggestions about what the system should do differently in this case, I'"

Yes, it's completely inappropriate to say 'just take these weird, possibly life-long systems and deal with it'.

'The answer' is obviously to adjust our policies given the fact that 'a lot of people are having symptoms off-the-record'. Meaning possibly aggressive push for vaccines among youth, and factoring this into 'opening up schedules' etc..

The vaccine policies are important, but not relevant to her case - she already had Covid, and a vaccine would not help her in any way.

The parent post and my response was about "the system" not taking her seriously, about the people where the damage was already done - are there any policy adjustments that would be useful for people like that? For people who now do have these weird, persistent, possibly life-long conditions, is there any better option than "dealing with it"? Denial helps noone, and can be quite harmful.

> The vaccine policies are important, but not relevant to her case - she already had Covid, and a vaccine would not help her in any way

There've been reports that people suffering from long-COVID have seen improvements after getting the vaccine.

Then she should get the vaccine. In fact, the CDC says she should: "Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19."

What additional actions should be taken by the medical system or the political system at this point for a (supposed) disease that has no known treatment or even any understood cause?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

I don't know why this is being downvoted. I've read it, too.

HN votes by how "truthy" something sounds - things can get really random the further the subject is from software/tech. Confirmation bias is a bitch.

Link to an NPR story that reported this https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/31/9827994...

I can't speak to covid because I've never had it, but "take it more serious" can be applied to large swaths of valid medical issues in which doctors brush off as "it's just in your head". In my own case, they quickly jump to the conclusion of stress/anxiety/hysteria without ever asking about my history or my life and without doing any kind of lab work or imaging diagnostics to rule out the medical issues. That is dangerous and thousands of people actually do go untreated for chronic illnesses like MS, Parkinson's, SLE, etc. every year because their providers do not take complaints as serious medical concerns. IMO PCPs are not in a position to adequately diagnose mental issues (especially in a 15 min appointment); that's why we have psychologists. Yet they throw around diagnosis of mental illness like they throw around opiates.

It's an issue of perception and condescending attitudes by medical professionals that is the real problem. If I were a medical professional, I would at the very least acknowledge the problems as genuine physical symptoms and do my best to re-assure the patient that it's being researched by the scientific community so a treatment might be possible in the future.

She has asked to be referred to a COVID specialist group, since there are a few good research hospitals around. Her GP did not do that, but instead prescribed antidepressants.

Have your friend try smell training. No experience or plug, but I listened to this NYT podcast that explained the loss of smell and how you might be able to recover it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/podcasts/the-daily/corona...

I have had post-viral fatigue after flu a couple of times and now seem to have "long COVID". I agree they are probably related but the COVID version is much worse, I have been ill now for over a year with no signs of improvement.

If possible, might be worth trying to get a Covid vaccine. For completely unknown reasons that seems to help a lot of long-haulers

Have had the first shot, worse now than before.

Edit-leaving discussion

You are failing to take into account the hygiene hypothesis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841828/. There is evidence that a lack of exposure to germs is a cause of autoimmune and allergic diseases. While this may-or-may-not be true of exposure to COVID amongst healthy young people, blanket statements like "It’s a disease. It’s not something your body needs to experience" could use a little more nuance.

I've lived my life to the fullest extent possible over the last year, seeing friends on a regular basis, going to bars/restaurants whenever they've been open and even traveling by plane.

I caught COVID recently, and my symptoms were incredibly mild. I like to think that keeping my immune system healthy and exposed to all of the stuff it would normally see played a role in that.

You are part of the 85% who have mild symptoms. Don’t think it’s anything more than statistics, the vast majority of people who get covid either are asymptomatic or get mild symptoms.

It's completely unscientific, which is why I said "I like to think." Not making any larger claim than a personal anecdote and thought.

I am extremely anti-lockdown, however it's worth noting that a mild case of COVID does not have mild symptoms in absolute terms. It's not like a mild cold for example. It's mild relative to moderate or severe cases, which involve breathing problems and hospitalization.

And the worst part is that you may spread it to somebody (or several somebodies) who winds up with severe illness.

You can shelter at home until you have gotten over it, and then you have immunity as well.

You can only shelter when you know you have it which comes after a period of being contagious and unaware.

"research suggests that people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are at their most contagious in the 24 to 48 hours before they experience symptoms." [1]

[1] https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/10/exposed-to-...

Alternatively, the elderly can shelter at home until they're vaccinated. Hardly seems sensible for the world to be put on hold for a year for an illness that only a small subset of the world population are highly vulberable to.

The World Bank estimates 150 million will be pushed into extreme poverty due to COVID-related lockdowns:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/c...

Education has also been severely disrupted:

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/children-cannot-afford...

Yes, except elderly need care. And we didn't have the vaccine available until not that long ago.

Your suggestion that you can safely just quarantine and not be a risk to others is flat out wrong because you are at your most contagious 24-48 hours before you have symptoms.

Also you may not have immunity after you sheltered and recovered.

I'll agree with you that the response was pretty terrible though.

My point is quarantining the healthy majority for over a year, when they are not vulnerable, was not a proportionate response to the pandemic.

The links I provided give some indication of the poverty and educational disruption this causes, but unfortunately it's hard for people to admit that mass-quarantines were and continue to be wrong, because this issue has been politicized.

Maybe you're right, and quarantine after contraction of illness was not a fully effective method of transmission control, but just the elderly isolating, instead of every one, was, and is a much more proportionate and sensible way to deal with a pandemic that only the elderly are highly vulnerable to.

> only the elderly are highly vulnerable to.

This seems to be a big part of your reasoning but I don't think this is true. Yes, risk does skew there. But there are large numbers of non-elderly people who have been severely affected.

No, I know several people who got covid. They described the flu as being worse than covid. Mild mean mild.

Hospitalization by definition is considered severe.

Being less severe than the flu is not my definition of mild. A flu is a pretty bad illness.

> your body won’t ever be the same after it - no matter how seemingly innocuous

Aside from antibodies, (citation needed).

Nearly half of our genome is thought to have had a viral origin. It's a bit of a simplification to say that we "don't need to experience" any illness. We would not be what we are today without it.

Natural selection relies on large swathes of prior human populations dying without having offspring. That doesn't mean that going forward this continuing to happen is desirable.

We do not need to experience a comet strike, although it is a significant component of what made us what we are today.

Please don't delete-edit your posts like that. It leaves the thread incoherent and isn't fair to the reader or to the commenters who replied.

To define "rarely" here are the official numbers from Denmark that I just posted in the comment above:

"...hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease."

Edit: The intensive care numbers are 11 and 15 for the two groups with 4 and 3 with an underlying disease.

Very low is not what I consider knowing 3, ~35 years old, people that were hard hit with Covid. It's 50% of the people i know that catched it.

That's too big of a % in my personal sphere to not consider any chance of "very low"

Edit: perhaps read his comment again.

His conclusion is not definitive, it's his opinion based on some not linked sources:

> that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them.

NHS mentions the following on long covid after actual research : https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-publishes-second-themed-rev...

> For those admitted to hospital, between 50-89% had at least one enduring symptom after two months. Of those not admitted to hospital, 20-30% experience at least one enduring symptom around one.

By all common sense. That is not a "very low" risk for long covid.

That's exactly the irresponsible and useless anecdotal evidence the comment you replied to mentioned.

Anecdotes are not substitutes for science, but the OP didn't post any science. They didn't want to hear anything that could contradict their unfounded claim, but didn't use any actual data themselves.

Anecdotes are not useless, though they can be misleading. There are always exceptions to rules/trends.

Yes OP didn't provide hard numbers or citations, but countering a broad statistical claim with small scale empirical evidence is always besides the point. It tries to weaken the original claim without actually contradicting it at all.

OP didn't try to refrain people from providing opposing views or evidence that actually contradict his statements, he just asked to avoid that common fallacy.

The OP I responded to neither had hard numbers or citations. He had a subjective and wrong conclusion based on "WHO sources", which i can't find and which he neither had linked.

If you want something on long covid, here it is from NHS ( UK):

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-publishes-second-themed-rev...

> For those admitted to hospital, between 50-89% had at least one enduring symptom after two months. Of those not admitted to hospital, 20-30% experience at least one enduring symptom around one month later and at least 10% three months later;

> Long Covid appears to be more prevalent in women and in young people (including children) than might have been expected from acute Covid19 mortality;

That's not "very low"

Here's what the WHO says: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

> Data from one study shows that of more than 3,000 adults ages 18 to 34 who contracted COVID-19 and became sick enough to require hospital care, 21% ended up in intensive care, 10% were placed on a breathing machine and 2.7% died.

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-publishes-second-themed-rev... ( NHS about long Covid )

With any common sense. That is definitely not a "very low" risk.

And it's obvious the actual research I added doesn't suggests it either.

Note "...and became sick enough to require hospital care..." and "for those admitted to hospital...". Only a relatively small percentage of young people without chronic health problems are hospitalized after contracting COVID.

Relatively small != Very low

Additionally, young people without chronic diseases excludes some young people. Your original comment didn't exclude them and made the wrong association.

Chances of dying because of a thunder strike or in an airplane accident is very low.

Having long term covid issues as a young person is not.

"Relatively small" and "very low" are relative statements, and in a discussion of public-health policy like the present one, it is productive to consider them in the context of what the voting public is comfortable with.

In a number of countries, health ministers are complaining that the broad public is no longer observing restrictions, and the ruling party may even feel pressure to roll back restrictions because internal polling finds they could cost it reelection. If a voting public is unconcerned enough with those uncontroversially at-risk groups that have not yet been vaccinated, you cannot expect much sympathy for those relatively few examples of less at-risk demographics who end up with long-term symptoms, even if their risk is somewhat higher than a “thunder strike or an airplane accident”.

Perhaps don't use intensifiers when research doesn't excuse the use of them? :)

"Very low" minimizes the risk people associate with it and it's not appropriate for things that:

- needs more research

- current research doesn't support it's usage

In the context of assessing personal risk factors of readers in the midst of a global pandemic. I think it's kinda irresponsible.

COVID is not a random disease, it's a pandemic infecting many millions of people.

The rate of infection is highest among 'younger people' and though their rates of hospitalization are lower, there's still quite a few people.

And that they may have had 'other complications' like 'obesity' or 'asthma' is almost besides the point.

10% of those admissions is going to be, overall, a potentially serious health issue, affecting quite a lot of people.

We have yet to determine what all of that amounts to and how severe it will be, but it can't be dismissed.

Correlated with severity doesn't mean similar prevalence. Yes people in the ICU get long term effects more than anyone else but that doesn't mean that long covid is as rare as landing in the ICU.

The estimates I see are over 10% across age groups do not fully recover.

The assertion that 'it spreads among teens who don't get long-COVID' is 'unscientific' on the obvious basis that they become major vectors of spread and infect other people who will get it, some will die.

This: 'All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing. '

Is a little bit of a wild claim ('they're all lying!') and unsubstantiated.

What? The majority of people experience no symptoms. Schools(children up to 15/16) are not vectors for disease this is well known now thanks to Sweden’s common sense policies.

Comparison between Finland and Sweden: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbf...

This is misstating the science. Pre-teen school environments have not been documented as being centers of superspreader events, owing to lots of factors (including better adherence in school environments to other mitigation strategies like mask wearing and distancing; schools are better organized and MUCH more rule-compliant than society at large!).

It is not true that kids don't get covid. It is not true that kids don't spread covid.

Again, what?? Schools in Sweden had no special restrictions other than washing hands and desks and making sure to have recess outside. 16 is not pre-teen either. Check out this article that shows students hugging and socializing during the pandemic: https://www.thelocal.se/20201210/how-does-a-swedish-school-d...

Also you didn’t read the report: “Closing of schools had no measurable effect on the number of cases of covid- 19 among children”. They are not major vectors of transmission for COVID.

And again, you're citing a single study (and now a media piece) showing the lack of superspreader events and trying to generalize to "kids don't get covid", and that's simply wrong. Children get covid. Children spread covid. This is documented, and it happens. That SCHOOLS specifically seem not to be superspreader vectors is interesting, but not particularly informative about anything other than school policy.

As far as this odd celebration of a clearly failed national policy, just remember:

https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

The fact that Sweden guessed right on schools and wrong on everyone else really should be guiding you to the opposite intuition here.

Lol the reason I posted a news article is because you said:

including better adherence in school environments to other mitigation strategies like mask wearing and distancing; schools are better organized and MUCH more rule-compliant than society at large!

which for Sweden is clearly not true, they didn’t even wear masks in school. And I never said kids don’t get COVID I said schools aren’t major drivers of transmission. Feel free to continue misreading what I wrote though.

No, kids are 100% a vector of COVID, almost much as any other group.

That some cases go without symptoms is besides the point.

Kids are almost as likely to get COVID as any other group [1], they are just a lot less likely to die.

The epidemiological data on that has been consistent for some months now.

The study you presented was a short time-frame at the very start of the pandemic.

COVID is a wildly infectious disease, so the notion that 'kids don't die from it it so it's ok' is really bad logic: everyone who has symptoms, spreads, and causes other people to get it which creates the pandemic.

Also - you have provided no evidence for your wild claim that all the 'long-covid people were lying about their lyme disease'.

[1] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-s...

(0-19 year-olds are the 2cnd highest cohort. Granted it's a bigger cohort, that said, they are getting infected at very meaningful rates i.e. they are spreaders)

Swedish schools have been open all year and that report used a time period of 5 months COVID was well underway in Europe.

Isn’t it odd that there was no spike in the virus after the protests and riots in the US? Millions of people were out in the streets packed together.

You're misrepresenting the data, and also it's not refuting my point which is: 'children get COVID and spread it' - which they do, unambiguously.

The data was 5 months, starting in January, long before COVID started.

The comparable time-frame was short and it's only a very rough comparison - 'everything' about policies in nations, rates of infection (time of onset) would have been different.

Since then, we have much more data, and we know unambiguously that children get and spread COVID.

That 'people at protests' were or were not super-spreading is besides the point unless you're trying to suggest that 'COVID does not spread' at all? Those events took place outdoors during the summer among healthy people. Since September, with colder weather and more indoor activity (and the start of school), the growth of COVID has been quite spectacular.

550 000 Americans have died from COVID. It's affected everyone.

But all of this is moot: COVID is dangerous not because of individual effects, but because of how rapidly it spreads.

The thing that makes COVID a pandemic is the easy by which it gets into the population.

Because one group is much less likely to die is not hugely important if they serve as vectors for the disease which kills others.

From an epidemiological perspective, kids spread it almost like adults, and therefore 'are a cause' almost like adults. It's great they don't die, but that's only 1/2 of the story.

We have to make sure to keep children from getting infected, just as we do adults.

In short: children should be vaccinated, we may do them last but we can't ignore the population and assume 'it will be fine because they won't die'.

I'm not sure what numbers you're referring to, but if they were released under Tegnell I would take it with a ton of salt.

If you take a look at the BLM riots in the US, a lot of people were wearing masks. It's a contrast to several Trump events, where a lot of supporters famously got infected. That's not to mention the huge spike and spreading after spring break 2020..

I get the sense that you're trolling tbh.

Edit: Let us assume you're not.

"[Trump rallies gauged to] have led to more than 30,000 additional cases and at least 700 additional deaths."

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-10-31/super-sprea...

"We demonstrate that cities which had [BLM] protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,” reads the report called, “Black lives matter protests, social distancing and COVID-19.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/report-blm-protests-have-n...

The CDC states that schools are not particularly bad, and the worst scenario are small, informal gatherings cf. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-spreads-easily-expert...

These 3 articles suggest that it comes down to behavior. So if we assume that the Swedish studies are correct, they would reflect how schools deal with protocols. I think it's fair to assume a different result e.g. outside Sweden or Scandinavia.

It's also premature to say whether this still applies wrt the new variants from Brazil, GB and South Africa.

I don’t recall any superspreader events after Trump rallies either.

And no I just think lockdowns have done far more harm than good. This paper is a meta-analysis of 54 prior studies that involved a total of 77,758 subjects reporting secondary transmissions in households. Conclusion: Asymptomatic people are not a factor for spreading Covid: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315116/

FYI that study has been cited a few times by the CDC even.

So yeah all this masking and social distancing has really not been needed. If you have symptoms then stay home should have been the guidance.

Wasn't this based on a 'research' by a scientist that had to fudge its statistics and was linked to Tegnell (the man responsible for Sweden's Corona policy).

[0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/critics-slam-letter-...

I can't think of Tegnell without thinking of the doctors and nurses they catch murdering patients. Seriously he has to be completely aware that his policies resulted in a 10X death rate compared to neighboring countries.

Here's actual research on long Covid:

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-publishes-second-themed-rev...

> Long Covid appears to be more prevalent in women and in young people (including children) than might have been expected from acute Covid19 mortality;

That's not "very low" and you shouldn't insert your own conclusions on unnamed resources.

Key phrase "For those admitted to hospital". It is very low compared to all infections.

Key phrase, since we're talking about long Covid:

> Of those not admitted to hospital, 20-30% experience at least one enduring symptom around one month later and at least 10% three months later;

Still, not "very low"...

A friend of mine never went to a hospital. It's been four months, and he still can't smell anything. He's 25.

People who haven't been hospitalized aren't likely to end up in these statistics, regardless of whether they have long-term problems or not. It's harder to study them.

This is correct. All the scare studies coming out had no denominator of number of people infected and only used the numerator of severe cases. There’s a reason long COVID is bogus and no studies have come out on it. It doesn’t exist. Perhaps these lockdowns have caused depression/anxiety and thus symptoms like fatigue and headaches...

*Even flu can cause scary effects like temporary paralysis in children

I had Covid ~a year ago and have had a dramatically reduced sense of smell ever since.

It might not be directly life-threatening (I would like to be able to smell smoke again, though), but blowing off peoples' reports of issues that severely reduce their quality of life is toxic.

> So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet?

Yes. It's been one of the dumbest narratives of the last year that "herd immunity" is a single, fixed constant determined solely by vaccination rate. It isn't. The threshold itself is going to differ by subpopulation, and is affected by population mixing, mobility, climate, age distribution, current disease prevalence, natural infection rate and lots of other factors. For example, it's quite possible that large pockets of rural areas will achieve "herd immunity" long before, say, London, simply because there are fewer people interacting on a daily basis.

Even then, it's not like you hit the threshold, and infections just drop off dramatically. It's a shift as you get closer to the "threshold" (whatever that actually is), with infections gradually falling toward (but likely never reaching) zero.

This toy model version of herd immunity is appealing to the Thomas Pueyos of the world, but not at all representative of what happens in messy reality.

In reality, given that the working-age and kid population is like, 80% of the US population, and what we know about COVID R0, it is simply untrue that herd immunity can be achieved with a 20% vaccination rate.

Working age population (205M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S

Total population (328M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB

Under 15 (~60M): https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-popul...

You don't need to guess. The CDC is making daily estimates. As of right now:

* 33% of the US population has had at least one dose (19% are fully vaccinated).

* 42% (25%) of the population over 18.

* 76% (57%) of the population over 65 (who are, not incidentally, by far the most likely to experience mortality):

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations

These numbers are rapidly increasing, and on top of the ~100-120M that have been infected in the US already (current CDC estimates are that actual cases are around 4x the number reported [1]). And of course, as I said, it's not as if "herd immunity" is a single number that is the same everywhere in the US.

Nobody claimed that we're there yet, but given all current data, pessimism is unwarranted.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/geog...

I don't think we disagree about anything you stated in this comment. I disagree with your earlier, unqualified claim:

> > So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet?

> Yes.

Does it even make sense to describe it as a "threshold" in that case? A threshold implies the existence of some kind of vertex, but what you're describing just sounds more or less like a straight line.

Well, sure, but you have to have some instinct for the difference between theory and practice (particularly when the theory is naive, as it is here). The concept is broadly supported, but the uncertainty for any particular measurement is wide -- like most things in biology.

Engineers have a poor sense of the level of slop in biology and medicine. I can tell you with near 100% confidence how PCR works, but if I set out to run PCR in the real world (which is actually one of the most repeatable things in biology, btw), it's just going to fail some of the time, even if I've done the same exact reaction many times before. The biological world is noisy.

Remember the old physics joke about "assume a frictionless spherical horse"? This is a "spherical horse" of the pandemic. It's one of those things that armchair biologists take way too literally, because it's in a textbook. Obviously, first-year mechanics isn't wrong...it's just not all there is.

Over the summer there was speculation that neighborhoods in NYC had achieved herd immunity and the threshold was much lower at ~40%(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-i...).

The thinking was that some people within a community are interacting with many more people than others and that they would be more likely to have antibodies.

Yes, but the problem is that you can't really use "likelihood of spread" as a vaccine priority criterion: it's non-scarce. Anyone who wants a shot early will just lie about how many people they interact with, or worse, actually increase that number to try and get an early vaccine.

Last I heard, the UK had very aggressive mass testing amongst school-age kids regardless of whether they showed symptoms, and it didn't seem to be spreading much aside from a brief spike when schools first reopened for in-person learning.

The mass testing story is not what you think it is. The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students) in many cases and have a 50% false negative rate.

I'm not sure this is accurate - tests on students are twice a week according to this https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/09/covid-testing-in-sch...

My 11yo son was tested in school first couple of weeks after returning, and now have self-testing kits that are meant to be used twice a week.

Again, some schools are running this better than others.

> The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students)

That's rubbish. My kids are stuff swabs up their nose twice a week - and they are lateral flow tests, so we sit there waiting to see whether the double line appears.

Different schools are running things differently. I am glad you used the tests, but they were strictly speaking optional. Lateral flow tests have a very high false negative rate, particularly when not administered by a trained professional.

Not true at all. UK was doing >1million rapid tests a day when schools were open. They will do that again when they are back from easter break.

Also, the false negative rate isn't a big problem IMO. The PCR 'false negative' rate is far far higher because we are only doing a few hundred thousand a day, so 90% of people are getting missed entirely. I'd rather a 50% false negative rate than a 89% false negative rate from PCR.

There is also the problem that PCR takes at least a day to turn around as well - which will result in more spread.

I'm not saying we should get rid of PCR testing and just do LFD but doing both is probably the best option.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rapid-lateral-flow-testing-for-h...

I am not. This is first hand information for me. Nothing I have said contradicts your link either.

> Tests will be available to pupils, students and staff at secondary schools and colleges – so pupils in year 7 and above.

That's the plan yes, but unfortunately some schools have not been sent enough to deliver this.

Misinformation: when your lived experience doesn’t match the government reports. Don’t tell anyone if this happens.

In this case their "lived experience" is directly contradicted by the lived experience of a number of people right here in this very thread.

It may well be they're telling the truth about their school, but that still makes a blanket claim, like the one made above, misinformation when it's presented with no qualification to indicate it's based purely on an anecdote (I'll note the comment has since been edited to water down the original claim)

I don't think that is correct.

It looks like in November/December the rate among grades 7-11 was almost 3x the rate of those ages 35-39.

https://twitter.com/c_drosten/status/1347544994941431808?s=2...

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Also, most schools were closed from the beginning of January to March.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/world/europe/uk-lockdown.... https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51643556

Chart on the bottom here [0] seems to confirm parents assertion - cases for under 18s spiked after school reopening, but are now decreasing. Though atm schools are closed for two weeks (Easter holidays)

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/08/covid-uk-coron...

They're different data sets.

The data I shared is calculated from random population surveillance testing, and is the gold standard on measure of true spread.

The data you linked to is reported cases. Children often have very mild or asymptomatic cases so they are not tested nearly as much and thus many more cases are undetected in children compared to other age groups.

"I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough."

I agree with this part. My guess is that Israel is getting herd immunity at a lower overall immunization rate than expected because behavior is different too. There's still some amount of residual social distancing, social isolating, and so on. Plus whatever number of people didn't get a shot, but have some immunity from a previous (perhaps non-symptomatic) COVID infection.

Also agree here, if the population is living under restrictions then a lower figure than expected could be true.

That number will be higher with no restrictions at all, due to more activity overall.

For me herd immunity is only a way to persuade politicians to remove all restrictions so that we can resume our lives.

And Corona vaccine passes do not have any place in this last scenario.

Probably also depends on whether they are getting the Orthodox population to vaccinate and social distance.

Is the UK’s population that old? 60% of adults, but 0% of those under 50 without conditions? Those statistics surprise me.

People with health conditions and healthcare workers are big part of currently vaccinated groups. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55045639

The conditions to qualify for an early vaccine seems to be quite broad. My wife discovered to her surprise that she had an "underlying health condition" when she got called up for her vaccine a few weeks ago. We weren't - and still aren't - aware of any health conditions!

We think it is simply because when she was pregnant a year or two ago she took some drugs that moderated her immune response. She hasn't taken the drugs since. Apparently it is just a matter of people's health records being searched in a pretty basic way - if you are flagged up as having been prescribed drug X/Y/Z etc (apparently regardless of when) then you are treated as having an underlying condition and get the call.

The UK median age is about 40.

The UK's strategy with vaccine roll-out was very specifically nothing to to do with herd immunity, because at the time that the vaccine roll-out started, there was no direct evidence that vaccination prevented infection - only that it was very good at preventing death, hospitalisation and illness.

So the British government built a vaccination strategy around preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. It was estimated that if the vaccines had been available during the first wave and we had just vaccinated the priority groups we would have saved 90% of the lives lost to Covid.

Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July.

One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.

> Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July.

What do you mean by due?

Ministers have said this will happen but there has not been much else backing this up AFAIK. There was a vaccine roll-out plan from Jan which merely mentioned all adults by Autumn. I haven't heard of an official, detailed plan regarding the healthy under-50s.

Matt Hancock said the UK is on track to vaccinate all adults by 31 July.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56672504

Yes I acknowledged this ( in the second of just two paragraphs).

I’m looking for details. Is it going to be wide open? Or in age brackets? Etc. An actual rollout plan by the organisations delivering it

It's really not that hard to find:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639

I thought I was being pretty clear in what I’m saying should exist: a plan by the organisations involved in the delivery of the vaccine. The BBC is not one of those organisations or a Government department.

That article is very light on detail for the under 50s, which is exactly my point. It sources the covid delivery plan which hasn’t been updated since Jan.

> One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.

Sort of. The vaccine also wasn't tested on 80+ but they were first in line.

My understanding is herd immunity means transmission factor is < 1.0 which means cases will only decrease over time and eventually become zero.

It doesn’t mean nobody will get Covid and as you point out the immunity isn’t evenly distributed - so you could certainly have outbreaks in sub-populations.

But the overall trend should be downward.

“Health conditions” in my area included obesity and fatty liver. Plenty under-50s fit that bill and hence got the jab.

I believe in my borough that 60-70% figure is actually closer to 70-80% by now. Unfortunately Greater Manchester is really a very large system, and a lot of other boroughs have not been as efficient.

No need for scare quotes; obesity and cirrhosis of the liver are real health conditions and can make you more likely to be severely ill from a COVID-19 infection.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...

Well the most definitive measure of herd immunity would be, does the rate of cases stay low? And their rate of new cases has gotten to levels not seen in over six months, even though they have ended the lockdown and other such measures. So, either:

1) they have herd immunity, or

2) the lockdown wasn't really doing anything anyway

Or both, of course. But the theory that accords best with prior knowledge, is that because they have gotten above 70% resistant (either through vaccination or the virus itself), they have herd immunity because that's what we expected.

The real news would be if they did NOT have herd immunity by now, as that would imply that vaccination is for some reason not working. But, good news, it appears to be working.

The UK has very definitely not ended our lockdown. We have started phasing out lockdown measures, but most are still very much in place.

I think the GP is talking about Israel.

Yes, talking about Israel. UK's vaccination rate is better than most countries', but not so high that it would be surprising if they had not gotten to herd immunity yet (given the uncertainty about how many people have already gotten it and recovered). But in Israel's case, their percent vaccinated (and percent recovered) is high enough that it would be disquieting news if they had not gotten to herd immunity.

> the virus is running rampant in teenagers now

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion based on the data at http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Total cases have continued to decrease, with the most recent 7-day average showing a 30% decline, and latest figures showing 39 cases per 100,000 people per week. That's hardly "running rampant".

> people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all

This is not quite correct. There are a lot of people under 50 who've had the jab for other reasons. Frontline health and social care workers were among the first to get the vaccine.

Most health authorities have made a tradeoff regarding vaccination strategy. There is an argument to be made that it would be better to vaccinate the groups that would spread the virus most in their day-to-day activities, such that herd immunity (for the groups that actually spread the disease, making it available to everyone) is achieved faster.

But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. And the difference in time to herd immunity is relatively small if vaccine access is good, only a quarter or two.

> But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing.

You may be right about their motivation, but it does not follow that it would necessarily increase deaths in high-risk groups. To become infected you must first be both susceptible and exposed.

I think there was a clear argument for reserving vaccine doses for high-risk groups when those populations were totally naive to the virus. At this point, though, the marginal returns on the population susceptible-exposed product (i.e. infections) are so low, focusing on targeting the most likely community spreaders--regardless of age or individual risk profile--might have an even greater impact on mortality in high-risk groups.

Vaccinating yourself lowers your susceptibility to infection. Vaccinating others lowers your probability of exposure to the virus. It's not super clear exactly where the best trade-off lies, but I think at this point we need to focus on reducing incidence in the entire community.

Vaccination does not 100% guarantee you will not get sick, it almost 100% guarantees you will not have a severe case. Studies also suggest that it does not completely prevent spread and if you catch virus while vaccinated you can still pass it to other people including risk groups, therefore main focus is on preventing deaths and logical way to do that is to vaccinate the risk groups first.

May be time to develop a scale that factors in interactions per day with total population.

Unvaccinated youth is really interesting because they have such a clear intra age group network of contacts that they could still work like a conductor sending the virus "everywhere" even if they were the only ones susceptible. Even if the rest was 99% vaccinated, the remaining 1% of the rest would likely get it from the "conductor age group", at least unless they have so little contact with the "conductor" that they remain lucky until natural immunisation has happened within the "conductor".

But we'll be safe from scenarios like overwhelmed burial logistics in population centers so there won't be much pressure for action. Which personally I find a bit unfortunate, because with vaccinating going forward an additional month more of countermeasures has a well-defined benefit whereas earlier in the pandemic the benefit was a bit murky because countermeasures might have been just a delay of eventually inevitable infections. Cost/benefit is much better now, but cost of inaction is ceasing to be sensational failure, it's getting subtle now.

Lucky I think are countries like Portugal that have tackled a massive wave just before vaccination ramp-up, I believe that they can just watch as the infection rates recovering from hard suppression slowly creep up before vaccination eventually takes their sting, with little risk of another wave hitting unbearable levels.

It seems like if the disease is circulating among a population in which they don't often get severely sick (non-vaccinated children), there is still a some, possibly high, chance that it will evolve a mutation that enables infection of the vaccinated adults, if it is allowed to circulate unchecked among children.

From the latest ONS antibody study, (which is nearly a month out of date), 40-50% of under 50s have antibodies now. That's driven by previous infection; vaccination (a lot were done under health conditions), and also a lot are carers/health workers/social workers.

> In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now

First jab

Israel has 56% of people fully vaccinated, Chile 22%, US 19%

UK is just 8%

> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it"

The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40.

It'll be interesting to see if they enforce covid passports whilst a large swathe of the population is still not eligible to have a single vaccine dose, let alone have had both

They will, but those not eligible will just get an automatic passport.

They need that system anyway for babies too young to be vaccinated, people with health issues making the vaccine inadvisable, etc.

Who is "they"? In the US it will mostly be individual businesses making whatever decisions make the most sense from a business perspective.

Presumably the UK where there is lots of discussion about the government possibly making vaccine passports mandatory for certain types of businesses (I think large-scale events and nightclubs are examples).

There's been some talk in the US at the state level (esp. NY) but AFAIK the federal government has explicitly said they're not going to be getting into vaccine passports.

UK, as was discussed in the thread above

These are independent things in bureaucracy. Here in Canada they are starting to talk about passports while vaccinations are under 2%

> The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40.

I find this blend of comments disheartening and disappointing, mainly because they appear to come from a place of willful ignorance.

Please try not to forget that the reason all covid-19 vaccination programmes have been rolled out progressively from the older to younger segments of the population is due to the fact that:

a) vaccines are in short supply, thus mass vaccination programs demand a rational approach to maximize it's effectiveness in lowering covid-19 deaths,

b) all covid-19 vaccination programmes prioritize vaccinating at-risk groups within their population,

c) covid-19 is patently known to have a considerably high fatality rate on older segments of the population, while on younger segments of the population it's negligible.

Let's not feign ignorance here. Covid-19 kills old people in spades while young people just brush it off. If you care about loved ones and aren't happy with he idea of seeing your elders die from covid-19 then it's obvious why said elders are moved to the front of the queue to get vaccinated.

This should be so obvious that should require no explanation. Then again basic steps to safeguard the health and well-being of others, such as the ridiculous anti-mask militancy, is sadly a thing. So it's clear that many among us simply care nothing about any issue that does not involve them directly and are so self-centered that interpret basic care for others as an affront to their personal privileges.

It might be the right approach but that’s not at all “obvious,” and the question has philosophical, ethical, and political roots. Do we immunize the most vulnerable to make sure they’re taken care of or do we immunize the most likely spreaders to reduce the risk to everyone, including the most vulnerable, relatively equally? How do you weigh in existing precautions, ongoing changes to those precautions, financial struggles, and employment demands to these decisions? Do we focus on regions currently most affected or do we roll it out equally? There are a million questions like these and the choices aren’t all obvious.

Your post is unnecessarily hostile, ignorant, and insensitive. I knew someone who died of the disease. He was half my age and I’m too young to be eligible for the vaccine. Not all young people “brush it off.”

> It might be the right approach but that’s not at all “obvious,”

1. When the vaccine roll-out was started, there was no proof that it prevented infection - only that it prevented death and serious illness and hospitalisation.

2. In the UK it is estimated that having the vaccine in the first wave and vaccinating the priority groups woudl have saved over 90% of deaths that occurred.

It's pretty obvious

(1) is a good argument for why you should start there when you have that ignorance. (2) is a meaningless hypothetical that does not describe the current situation. Neither addresses even some of the example questions I’ve raised which don’t even cover the space of questions which should be considered.

If you think the answers are “obvious”, you’re either ignoring relevant questions or you are filling in answers with your own assumptions.

The statement is absolutely correct referring to the government and the Conservative party in general.

> The statement is absolutely correct referring to the government and the Conservative party in general.

It really isn't, and reeks of egocentric entitlement. It should be obvious that at-risk groups are a priority. Complaining that the people that likely die from covid are being prioritized over a group that has a negligible risk for no reason other than wanting to jump the line is something that's both baffling and dumbfounding.

They could have said "we need to get rid of jobs and remove your social contact to save a few old people's lives, it's going to cost a fortune, so we're going to implement a one of wealth tax which will mean those who we're destroying the economy for (to implement lockdown and brexit) are the ones that will have to pay for it - the very people that made an absolute fortune from the rise in asset prices, the ones sitting on final salary pensions paid for from the public purse

But they didn't. Instead they do things like closing sure start centres and increasing pensions way more than wages while taxing people 69% marginal rates for a typical middle class job.

It's not just about vaccines rationing, it's vaccine passports, it's housing, it's taxes, it's wealth, it's opportunities, it's job losses, it's pensions, it's triple locks for wealthy pensioners in enormous houses on final salary pensions, but unemployment your young people in house shares

It's not so simple, though. Retired people can quarantine. They might not want to, and they might choose not to, but they're able. Working-age people can't: they have to go out into the world and put themselves at risk in order to keep this show running.

The real question is: is our goal to minimize deaths, or to do what's fair? For the most part, we've chosen to heed the advice of our public health experts and minimize deaths.

But is it really fair that we vaccinate all the old people first, just so they can leave their home and get back to their weekly bingo nights, instead of the younger person working at a grocery store to make sure everyone has food on the table? From an ethics perspective, I don't think the answer is so clear-cut, and I think it's reasonable for people to gripe about it.

The virus as well.

edit: just look at the numbers

“Fully vaccinated” is meaningless. What matters is the first dose. After two weeks, regardless of the vaccine, the person has basically reached a high enough level of immunity to prevent getting sick and spreading the virus.

the UK is 8% fully vaccinated. israel is is 56% fully vaccinated.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...

Only 8% of the UK’s population is fully vaccinated with the second dose.

This..

>"kids don't get sick from it"

..isn't strictly true. A quick look at the local (Danish) health department says that the hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease.

Hospitalisation is defined as someone who have been hospitalised for at least 12 hours with something covid related inside 14 days from a positive test result.

So while only something like 1% needs to go to hospital compared to 27% of the 70-79 age group they do get sick and so get long-term damage too.

[Nitpick fixed. Thanks.]

The period as a thousands separator is common in some English speaking areas. A minority of them for sure, but there are a few that do it that way.

Which ones? I tried to find some before submitting my previous comment, but was unable to find any.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

My favorite one is India's tradition of grouping by hundred thousand.

All of the English-speaking areas listed on that page use a period as a decimal separator.

Interestingly, Canada uses both characters as decimal separators, but English always uses a period, and French always uses a comma. That's probably also why Canada also uses a space as a thousands separator, not a comma like the US.

OP's country of Denmark, for one!: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

See the Examples of Use section of that Wikipedia page for a more extensive list.

Denmark is not an English-speaking area though.

I see it as a feature of Euro English, like writing "XIV century" instead of "19th" or saying "actual" with the meaning of "current". Language change caused by an influx of non-native speakers is not a new thing for English.

It's definitely worth mentioning that "confirmed cases" is going to be a small fraction of actual cases, _especially_ for young people whose disease is most often mild or asymptomatic. I would not be surprised if the number of actual cases were an order of magnitude larger in those cohorts.

The priority everywhere at the moment is still to reduce pressure on hospitals, which (at least in my country, which is slower with the vaccination schedule, probably because countries like the UK and Israel pay the vaccine companies more) is still on the rise despite the number of cases stabilizing and in the past week or so reducing. And of course the number of deaths, which has been sharply declining since the start of the vaccination program, since the most vulnerable people got the jab first.

So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.

I think it was about how quickly and decisively they moved to secure supplies, how competently they negotiated the contracts and how effective they were at organising vaccination programmes. I think ultimately it was decisiveness that made the biggest difference, while other countries dithered about which vaccines to support.

Now arguably this exposed e.g. the UK to using a vaccine with unfortunate rare side effects (I was vaccinated with AZ myself), but on the other hand this has shielded us from a third wave of infections and probably saved tens of thousands of lives.

"the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet" - you don't believe in immune systems? I've never touch touched a mask, in London, I've been fine. If there's a pandemic then I must have had at least one variant by now.

I wonder about the effectiveness of “herd immunity” or at least anti-bodies and the various new mutations I hear about almost daily.

I have what I think is interesting anecdotal data regarding restaurant works. 1st I live in Miami Beach where it’s essentially been spring break for over a month.

Ocean drive has been blocked off since pretty early on in the shutdown with the city giving the restaurants pretty large swaths of the street for outdoor seating. These have restaurants have pretty much been at full capacity since the election if not a little before.

Even though they have been operating what would be full capacity meaning fully staffed, I noticed in the last week many of them now have hiring signs that all read “for all positions”. In my mind this can only mean these fully staffed and operational restaurants must have had larger outbreak amount staff recently. While I don’t know if it’s true, I’m left thinking that mass outbreaks is exactly what happened, meaning once a give restaurant staff is infected the restaurants are simply replacing them with new staff which will subject these new batches of employees to a mass outbreak and some point. It it turns out to be true, it’s essentially the people forced into these temporary jobs where they will inevitably get corona just to be discarded and rinse/repeat all because people need income they will willingly subject themselves to that kind of environment...it really feels like im watching a dystopia of the haves and have nots, and while it’s always been the case to a degree, the scale and stakes are deeply disturbing.

On the other hand it could just be they are expecting even more business and need the extra help. One would hope.

That and restaurant work sucks. Pay is low, turnover is high. Not surprising that restaurants are almost all constantly hiring, if they are doing enough business to be open.

All generally true, but restaurants on Ocean Drive are not the norm. They usually don’t advertise positions, and I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years and never seen signs posted advertising hiring all positions.

What I’m saying is they have been at max capacity for months and have had full staffs for months (maybe December/January). So even with spring breakers they don’t need more staff, it’s their wait lists that are growing not their capacity and need for staff.

I was a server and worked “in the industry” so I’m familiar with the high turnover of restaurants, but restaurants on Ocean drive are a little different in that respect.

It’s one thing for a restaurant on Ocean Drive to to be looking to fill a position or two...usually they won’t need to advertise. It’s very unusual and another thing entirely for multiple restaurants on Ocean Drive to have signs posted outside advertising they are hiring for every single position (servers, busers, hosts, bartenders, cooks).

> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)

If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick. What's foolish or difficult to understand about this? BTW when someone says "kids don't get sick from it" they don't talk in absolute terms. Kids also can get cancer, yet we are not screening their prostate yearly like we do with old men.

Wanting to harm children's future, education, development and mental health because out of your own fear is rather distasteful.

Kids don't get sick but they can still transmit the virus to the adults that care for them.

...which have been vaccinated by now (unless they are young), so why penalise kids for a risk assessment which doesn't exist anymore?

You know most parents with "kids" are under 50, right? OP is complaining that the vaccination rate <50 is too low.

Because vaccines are never 100% effective, and there are plenty of people who legitly can't receive one due to other medical conditions.

An honest question: At what point should we stop trading the healthy development of children for a reduction of risk for certain vulnerable parts of the population?

The general decision seems to be at the point when vaccines are widely available.

Which is in just a few months.

In some countries at any rate.

When everyone that wants a vaccine gets one (well, two).

And I mean everyone in the world unless we a) close the borders completely for absolutely everything, or b) implement covid passports.

That statement is demonstrably false. UK is only at 8% vaccination rate overall. 60% of eligible adults have had a single dose, but that 60% is heavily biased to the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.

The single dose has been shown to provide good protection in the short term, so the 60% number is more relevant than the 8% one. Although percentage of total population rather than adult population would probably be a more accurate representation.

What's your solution to kids that have young parents? Every child of people 50+ years old go back to school, and the others stay behind?

Young parents are also much less likely to get severely ill than older parents.

So the ones that do get infected and die are just part of the sacrifice?

People die of the seasonal flu all the time too. We don't shut life down over it. Covid is much much worse than the seasonal flu for many people. For others, it's less dangerous. That said, people still get hit with it.

You can't get to 0

I don't understand the point of your comment if you admit that Covid is much worse than the seasonal flu. We don't shut life down over the season flu, but we might for a much more dangerous disease. That's the whole point.

> If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick.

There's no data about prevalence of long-term symptoms after an infection yet, regardless of whether people show immediate symptoms.

If the fear is long-term damage, then we must stay locked down and isolated for another two years to first wait for any real long term damage to show and then study it. With this mentality, what's the point of life? Might as well commit suicide, especially those grandparents which might not survive until then anyway.

It's not a binary choice between opening up now and staying in lockdown forever. We could wait a bit longer with opening up till more people are vaccinated, to reduce the risk of getting an infection for everyone (don't forget vaccines aren't 100% effective). We also could decide the immediate harm of lockdown outweighs the risk of long-term effects.

It's a complicated situation, and there's likely no perfect answer. However, it's definitely not as black-and-white as "if they don't get sick, they don't get sick", and such reductionist statements don't help make an informed decision.

Depends if the lock-downs are at your doorstep or at the border. The UK had a few opportunities to pursue a zero covid strategy but squandered them all.

>There's no data about prevalence of long-term symptoms after an infection yet

There's also no data about the prevalence of long-term symptoms of the covid vaccines, since it's literally impossible to test the 2-5 year effects of something that's only existed for one year, so by your logic should non-at-risk populations avoid taking that?

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