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Comment by TurkishPoptart | Hacker News Reader

And part of it is what public schools are doing to our kids. My 6 year old is required to sit outdoors to eat her lunch in 40ish degree (F) weather, and is not allowed to socialized. My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids. I'm at my wit's end with these school administrators. Hoping to be in Wyoming in 6 months' time.

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This is an interesting thread. The meta-issue here is that communities differ in their risk tolerance too. You just discovered that you are an outlier in your community.

People can agree 100% on the “science” and still disagree on the risk-reward tradeoff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

PS: the risk tolerance varies by issue. E.g. blue cities seem to have a lot of risk appetite when it comes to lenient treatment of crime. Or gun-use in other parts of the country.

> that doesn't kill kids

While the numbers are low, it is not 0. This is, sadly, categorically untrue.

It's a double-digit number among healthy kids nationwide. Fewer than from influenza, peanut allergies, and accidents.

Can you provide an example of a child in that age range dying when without a secondary illness that made them high risk? All the examples I've seen are children with cancer or something else.

The percentages still don't pan out to having such massive restrictions on children that young.

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-reports-third-covid-19...

The title of that article should be enough to let you know how outside the norm that is.

Do yourself a favor and look up leading causes of child death.

> Can you provide an example

> Can you provide an example of a child in that age range dying when without a secondary illness that made them high risk? All the examples I've seen are children with cancer or something else.

Can you assert that without them getting covid, they would have died as quickly?

> The percentages still don't pan out to having such massive restrictions on children that young.

Which was never my assertion.

All of aspects of life has risk. Saying that covid is dangerous to children is pure fear mongering. Compared to basically everything else, virtually no children have died.

Yes, compared to supernovas nuclear bombs are virtually nothing.

I was merely pointing out that "it does not kill kids" is just not true, which it isn't.

Your child doesn't wear a mask to protect your child, they wear a mask to protect others. While they may not feel very strong effects from the virus, they can pass it on to other who will.

FWIW our district is considering removing the mask mandate at school as soon as we reach 80% vax rate among the students, so hopefully your nightmare of making your child wear a piece of cloth will end soon.

Your district is going to remove the mandates when pigs fly, I'm sorry to say. The "nightmare" is really about continually-shifting goalposts and the false promises of administrators. The funny thing is that those figures won't be reached, thanks to parents with enough common sense not to inoculate their kids with something they don't need. If the parents are vaccinated, let the kids alone. If the parents aren't vaccinated, well, that's their choice - so let the kids alone.

> continually-shifting goalposts and the false promises of administrators

Ever since the vaccine came out our county has said that mandates will go away as soon as we hit 80% vaxxed and community transmission is low, as defined by the CDC. The goalposts haven't moved. We're almost there too -- we have 79.4% of all residents vaxxed, but transmission is still "substantial".

> thanks to parents with enough common sense not to inoculate their kids with something they don't need.

That's not how vaccines work. You get vaccinated to protect both yourself and others. We still vaccinate for polio even though it's basically been eradicated, because if we didn't, it would come back.

Luckily I live in an area where people are mostly educated and believe in science, so our child vax rate is already at 64% fully vaxxed for the county, despite the fact that you could only be fully vaxxed as of last Thursday.

The polio vaccine is a traditional vaccine that provides _immunity_. The mRNA shots are called "vaccines" by the medical establishment, but they only (and they are clear about this) provide _protection_. This is why the very definition of "vaccine" had to be changed: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126.... The new variant has been contracted by people who've received triple shots. That getting the prophylactic shots protects others is simply not true; it's a tagline being repeated on the news to convince people otherwise.

Also, I did receive my shots, and I "believe in science" (whatever that means) by actually reading the studies (such as those listed under the parent comment) showing that children have a greater chance of being stuck by lightning than becoming seriously ill from this virus. Believing in science... that doesn't mean anything.

I hope no one in your county's kids get any heart problems as a result of this decision. After two of my friends' kids had to go to the hospital due to chest pain, with no history of cardiac issues, and with Twitter actively suppressing stories highlighting "myocarditis", my bullshit detector, developed from long years of life under the Iron Curtain, simply went ballistic.

You might not have heard, but the illness does (albeit very infrequently) kill kids, but more likely, kids can bring it home and infect their older, more vulnerable family members. Which is what recently happened in my kid's school district, when some nitwit parent also "at their wit's end with these school administrators" sent their COVID infected kid to school.

My wife and I are vaccinated. Any other "vulnerably family member" can get vaccinated, too. Problem solved, right? It _is_ in the land of reason and rationality, but not in bizarro world, where our governor and school administrators seem to live.

Of course, since the beginning of time, our kids could transmit the influenza virus to "vulnerable family members" too, but we were wise enough not to subject them to humiliating practices such as having lunch by sitting in PNW winter-temperatures and barring socializing.

> My 5 year old has to wear a mask 7 hours a day against an illness that doesn't kill kids

This is misinformation: https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...

Maybe you ought to pay more attention to what it actually says instead of getting upset at what is obviously a generalization about the overreaction to COVID when it comes to young children-

>A smaller subset of states reported on hospitalizations and mortality by age; the available data indicate that COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death is uncommon in children.

Here's a more accurate representation -

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Deaths-by-Sex-Ages-0-18-years/xa4b...

Now, go look up how many of those kids were already immuno-compromised.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6937e4.htm?s_cid=mm...

That's just one report that mentions 75% with an underlying medical condition.

When people say it doesn't kill kids they're generalizing, flagging it as misinformation is completely silly. By percentages and how we react to every other virus this is NOT something we should be scared of when it comes to children. We certainly shouldn't be subjecting children to measures that may cause psychological and developmental harm for something that's VERY unlikely to be a threat to them.

Thanks for bringing in that hard data. I don't understand why the news media keeps saying "thank goodness kids can get vaccinated now!". Why are they trying to normalize annual or 2x a year shots for these kids, who are more likely to suffer from myocarditis as a result than to actually contract or get ill from this virus? Nobody freaking knows.

Even if vaccination does nothing for kids except keep them from spreading it, it's net positive for the community.

Of course, with omicron, who knows...

Children are a vector for spreading the virus, this really isn’t complicated.

The psychological “trauma” of wearing a mask is nothing compared to what these kids will feel when they give grandma covid over Christmas.

It’s not about them.

In your article, it says that:

>Among states reporting, children were 0.00%-0.27% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 6 states reported zero child deaths

>In states reporting, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death

So how is what I said "misinformation"?

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