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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

> Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools?

I have no idea. I'm not an expert. And no experts seem to be talking. Our preschool recently switched from a 14 day shutdown to 7 day plus negative PCR test to re-enter. At least there's that?

> Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying.

We'll have to agree to disagree there. My kids have never had anything that's lasted for months, the kid I know with the cough was waking up in the middle of the night coughing most nights. No thank you.

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We had RSV do the rounds (twice) where I live, and all of us in our house were quite ill, fatigued, and snotty/coughy for about a month. Our friend's 6 month-old caught it and ended up in hospital.

Our youngest also had Croup last year, which is pretty scary if you don't know it. It shows up as a horrible, barking cough, and can make it look like your baby is suddenly struggling to breathe. We panicked and called an ambulance. The little one was just fine, but had the horrible cough (which is much worse at night) for a while.

Once our pre-school care re-opened (it was shut for many months after March 2020) and the regular diseases started circulation again, it felt like we were ill for several months, albeit with different diseases. We'd send our kids in on Monday, and wait to see what we'd have for the weekend...

I'm not saying this to complain - as I see it, this is the reality of life with the little snot-nosed monsters.

I am in the same boat as you. It is crazy to me that we accepted the risks of every other RSV, influenza, corona, rhino, rota, noro, and whatever other bug going around daycare every week prior to Mar 2020, and still do, but if a COVID 19 is detected, then the whole thing shuts down.

Every single one of those kids at drop-off and pickup has a runny nose. I am pretty sure we have an informal agreement amongst all the parents that no one gets their kid tested for COVID. It is one thing to do all this song and dance without an available vaccine, but it has been widely available for over a year.

Yep. Sometimes when I air opinions like these, I get the response "but attitudes like that will keep the pandemic and shutdowns going for longer!". It's surprisingly hard to explain that I also don't want my nursery to shutdown if someone merely tests positive for Covid. Personally, I've decided to re-brand "asymptomatic" as "not ill".

This sounds like a bad policy on the nursery's part. We have a soft lockdown when somebody has a case: basically, the group who had a positive test is secluded from the other groups and get daily tests.

We know about "soft lockdowns" too (in fact, it's now just standard practice around here). It's why our kids get less age-appropriate care - for example, they can't mix with the groups who share the same sleeping pattern as they do, and are forced to stick to whatever their "bubble" is doing. To me, this is incredibly developmentally inappropriate.

Well, pandemics suck, what's new? It's also bad if the kita has to shut down because all the staff are sick. It seems like a good balance to me.

What's new is deliberately destroying a generation's future potential, for a disease that barely affects them. What's also new is that the repercussions of our collective response to this disease will be felt long after Covid fades to another endemic sniffle.

100% of people can get these vaccines, and 100% of people will still get and spread Coronaviruses. Full stop. It's getting really old hearing that vaccines will stop anything when the majority of people spreading this shit RIGHT NOW, are vaccinated people. The people I've been seeing the sickest for a year now when they do get sick, are vaccinated. The 3-4 people I know recently who were very sick with COVID for 10 or more days with breathing troubles, were VACCINATED. The shit is nonsense anymore.

> sickest for a year now when they do get sick, are vaccinated

The vast majority of those in ICUs and morgues are unvaccinated.

And?

Where I live (Wales), total ICU usage right now is 77%. The absolute numbers are very small. If you want to make an argument that people should not add an un-necessary burden on the health services, then why restrict the discussion to Covid?

I was responding to the claim that vaccinated people are the ones with the worst illness. That claim is dangerous bullshit.

I never claimed that vaccinated people are getting sicker than a comparison to non-vaccinated people. I plainly said that the "sickest people I know lately" are all vaccinated. You took it and spun it into apparently what you wanted to take from it. You have taken what I said and what I meant out of context.

Your words speak for themselves. It's dangerous bullshit.

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