Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

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It's not still wrong, because it was never wrong in the first place. The risk to children is exceptionally low as he pointed out, imprecisely as it was. If you delineate between generally healthy children and those with known co-morbidities, it's likely the risk was much, much lower than that.

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.

I find your responses baffling, because on one hand I agree with your main point that Covid is just not very dangerous to children, but on the other, you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers. Children obviously interact with a ton of different adults throughout their day, and "almost immune" would definitely argue to me that these kids wouldn't be a dangerous coronavirus vector, which is false.

you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers

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."

But the whole point is the among children bit.

The infection rates among adults should mirror the infections rates among children - Covid doesn't discriminate, right? But if there isn't any clear delineation between the infection rates of areas where schools shut down and those where schools are open, it likely infers one of two things:

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.

I'm quite interested to see the study that showed infection rates amongst children in lockdown districts weren't significantly different than those with in person attendance.

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.

You can see it at the state level. Kids in Texas and Florida went to school in the fall of 2020. Kids in New York and California did not. And there are many other contrasts regarding policies on public events, mask requirements, restaurant logistics, and much more. But there doesn’t seem to be a significant difference in the resulting infection and death statistics.

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.

Kids ain't immune. It's not only stupid but outright dangerous to assume that.

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