Remember when Trump was censored by Twitter for "misinformation" what he said that kids are basically immune?
Long Covid is a significant medical problem.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210607/Around-525-of-chi...
For those who don't know the BBC is in the middle of weekend political scandal where a senior Tory director was caught red-handed interfering in recruiting - specifically trying to prevent the recruitment of a journalist who might be critical of the government.
https://www.ft.com/content/82a54037-501d-457b-b8f4-35744c85e...
That's where the BBC is now - a government mouthpiece, and not an objective news source.
“The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low” != “children are immune”
Your child is more likely to die from other issues than Covid = almostnimmune
For example, he probably meant immune by the definition "protected from" with the implied thing being "serious medical harm" rather than "infection".
I agree it's disingenuous to call him a deliberate liar here when the truth is he just speaks with the vocabulary and scientific acumen of a candid 6th grader.
The real shame is triplicate here:
1. That we must settle for a president with those verbal skills
2. That his verbal skills are perhaps more reflective of the average American than we'd like to believe
3. That people with sometimes exceptional verbal skills and education can somehow not comprehend some of the simple truths that he can (children being at extremely low personal health risk should've been obvious to everyone after the first few months of the pandemic)
And in my opinion, the well educated being deluded into a false perception of reality is a lot more startling of a fact than that a person who has an obviously mediocre command of his native language and paltry understanding of scientific fundamentals said something that was incoherent and not technically correct when trying to verbalise his opinions.
Children can get COVID, they just don't get a high rate of complications. They do get sick, but not severely.
That is, in no way, "immune".
I'm not "almost immune" to the common cold because it doesn't make me very sick.
I'm guessing hindsight will tell us the cost-benefit of sending kids to school significantly outweighs the cost-benefit of the school shutdowns. And that's not even mentioning the actual effectiveness of school shutdowns in restricting the spread of Covid. We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not.
In time I expect the narrative will turn to recognize that the policy consequences of "almost immune" would have been much preferred to the "sky is falling" rhetoric that resulted in schools that were closed for more than a year and the resulting educational and developmental damage that has caused.
On the contrary, I specifically said: "We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not."
1) Lockdowns aren't as effective as thought
AND/OR
2) Children aren't as prolific at spreading Covids as adults.
My analysis here is far from scientific, but the data genuinely doesn't seem to indicate that the behavior of children influences the spread of Covid all that much.
If you could link to such a study, it would be worth a conversation itself I imagine, examining the methodology, age groups, zip codes, ect.
I live in Texas. I was assured by all the talking heads and enlightened types that when the governor reopened the state and eliminated all mask mandates, it was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It was premature, short-sighted, and unnecessary, they raved. I was assured we would be stacking bodies at the doorstep. None of that turned out to be the case.
In fact, when things opened up my kids got all the respiratory diseases normally shared over the winter. We had RSV, stomach bugs, colds - the works. Germs that had been at bay for a year were definitely spreading now that life was returning to normal!
Except Covid, that is. Thanks to vaccines and thanks to models that don’t seem to accurately simulate the effectiveness of masks and lockdowns, the apocalypse was averted.
In fact almost nothing Trump said was true.
Even if you can find some examples, there are literally thousands of counterexamples from speeches and Tweets which were clearly nonsense - starting with the claim that he actually won the election, and working through a very long list from there.
For one, the 45th president of the United States DID win the 2016 election. We have an electoral college system, and yes, he WON it.
The output happened to be right but the method to get there was fundamentally wrong and would be faulty if used in other scenarios.
Getting the right answer for the wrong reasons is still wrong in a way, the process to arrive at the conclusion is important.
There's a reason why half of America (~1 in 2 voters) voted for Trump, twice, you know.
I for one don't give a crap about the precise definition of immunity when communicating in everyday conversations; the same way I don't argue with a family relative using a computer science term colloquially. Children are almost immune to covid.
It is over the top to expect leaders to communicate in a way that facilitates effective public policy?
The collateral damage you can do by being loose with words is basically zero.
For a President, it’s literally their entire job to be effective at communicating.
Trump said whatever was politically useful to him in any given situation at best (either by earning him praise from supporters or by distracting his critics) and whatever he felt like or overheard someone else say at worst. That anyone would look at any statement from him and use it to justify praise for him or use its falseness to dunk on him is silly. Factuality wasn't a consideration for him when making any of his statements.
Like how small town book stores are inherently good and big stores evil. Regardless of facts.
Republicans will be portrayed as stupid and dangerous, regardless of facts. So when Trump was saying something it was automatically just that. If need be facts would be twisted until they fit that viewpoint.
For contrast the current president making a joke about running a reporter over is just a laughable moment now. Under Trump it would have been discussed for weeks.
Definitions of Narrative Journalism
Simply put, narrative is the way in which a story is constructed through a particular point of view and arrangement of events.