I'm a bit worried that because of a year and a half of mass fear even the slightest risk of covid will be blown up.
I saw this effect here in Barcelona. There was an article on young people thinking they could not get covid. And an ICU nurse was quoted saying that's not true and they have a girl there who is bad.
But this doesn't take into account that the numbers are so low. Many young people die because of traffic accidents and the like. There has to be a point where we say it's mitigated enough and just move on with life.
I'm not saying we're there yet but we should start talking about where that point is.
A society that sacrifices the psychological wellbeing of its children to prevent moderate illness in adults has really screwed up its priorities, and that's increasingly the situation in places where the most at-risk have been vaccinated.
My kid plays in the dirt, but he does it with me, not at preschool (where apparently they don't even do play-dough and sand these days). He does have some recess & free-play time - I can't imagine managing a 3-year-old without it - but it's time-boxed into 30 minute increments.
I’m not really looking back through rose tinted glasses, this was also at a quite competitive academically driven private school (if you did not then pass the 11+, bye bye) but like, you really were free to do a lot. Perhaps things really have changed then (and I really have gotten old), I like to hope not. I dunno - I really just don’t think it’s fair to do that to the young. Especially coupled with the justification that ‘if you do rough and tumble play with your mate you will kill your grandmother’ reasoning that they must have picked up on.
• For age 65+, the infection rate was 23% and the hospitalization rate 4.9%.
• For age 5-17, the infection rate was 42% and the hospitalization rate was 0.27%.
Kids 5-17 were actually the group with the highest infection rate, followed closely by 18-49 at 41%, then 50-64 at 31%, and 0-4 tied with 65+ at 23%.
The hospitalization rates strictly went up with age: 0.26% for 0-4, 0.27% for 5-17, 0.98% for 18-49, 2.3% for 50-64, and 4.9% for 65+.
I wonder if we would have done better to keep the schools open the first few months, but as boarding schools until most children have had it. Once nearly all children have had it, school goes fully back to normal.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
A few problems:
• Parents have to agree to not see their children for several months.
• Adults need to be present to supervise / teach the children, and they will be at risk from COVID.
• Early on, there was debate about whether contracting COVID led to immunity. (I personally thought people were being overly cautious about this, but even so.)
Taken together, I just don't see it working.
I am surprised we didn't see any college campuses (which really are boarding schools) attempt to isolate themselves. Both students and staff (!) are not allowed to leave campus or invite guests, and must quarantine for two weeks before arrival—but in return, you get to live a normal college life. It would be a huge commitment for professors with families, however.
On the one hand, I thought it strange a year ago when some authorities based policy on the assumption that kids didn't spread it. On the other hand if kids are mostly asymptomatic it would make sense that they don't spread it as much. I know that private schools in my area were running normal classes, en masse nothing bad seemed to happen.
Hard data would be nice to see, if it's out there.
Also, old people can be vaccinated now, so fears over children spreading it to vulnerable population is becoming a moot point.
Apart from that, there have been numerous studies showing kids transmit less than others, and this was known mid last year (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200710100934.h...). European countries reacted rationally by opening schools earlier while politically motivated decisions were made in America to keep the country and economy locked down in an intense election year.