https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.8266...
Immunology is really tricky because the human immune system is quite complex. These kinds of findings sadly need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Evidence with a sample size of 1: I have a pandemic toddler and a baby. Toddler was not sick once in first 18 months. Both just got RSV. Toddler was fine after a couple days. Infant was in ER and is still having effects weeks later.
None of that is to downplay the potentially fatal seriousness of RSV. The immune system is imperfect after all. The NICU is maybe the most depressing place I’ve ever been in my life and my heart goes out for every parent who has or has had a child there or in any pediatric ICU.
For example, if your toddler has a stuffy nose, you can help them to blow it. For an infant, you need a tool to suction their nose which can be difficult to do. That same stuffy nose might cause poor feeding and dehydration which on top of the general breathing issues caused by RSV can lead to a rapid deterioration in the infant's health.
Even with all the supportive care (oxygen, regular suctioning, a feeding tube), it took a full 5 days in the hospital for our infant to recover.
My first-hand experience with this seems to be consistent with larger trends as well. A recent CDC presentation shows that children age 0-5 months are hospitalized by RSV at far higher rates than any other age group. [1]
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...
lets lock kids in solitary confinement until it's safe to leave, good plan /s
I'd love to see schools take a serious look at air movement and filtration.
Deeming it "irrecoverable" requires a time machine; one of the most frustrating parts about dealing with child development is the impacts take decades to sort out, in sometimes surprising fashion.
Europe apparently operated a lot less draconian wrt schools, never really closed down & things worked out pretty well. The science was pretty clear even from early on but democrats in US said georgia reopening schools was "an exercise in human sacrifice." You don't need a middle ground for the least vulnerable age-range for covid.
> Deeming it "irrecoverable" requires a time machine
what? it's irrecoverable because you never get back lost time, the past is settled and kids lost out on crucial brain development windows
I certainly would've preferred this; here we kept the bars open, but closed the schools. Both are middle grounds, I preferred Europe's prioritization. At the time these decisions were being made, some folks talked about R0 being like a budget - you want it under one, and each mitigation gets you part of the way there. I was disappointed to see the US prioritize economy over kids; much of the world made the opposite choice, and provided more income supports to keep kids in school.
> You don't need a middle ground for the least vulnerable age-range for covid.
This would be a great point if kids lived alone, with no vulnerable folks at home.
> it's irrecoverable because you never get back lost time
People recover from lost time frequently. If your teacher is sick and you have a substitute teacher for a couple days, that time gets made up. There's summer school, enrichment programs, etc. Very little of what kids learn in school has to be learned in one specific set of months; there's a pretty large range in exact ages within a single grade, even.
It'll be years, maybe decades before we know how plastic child development is in this regard. Right now, there are massive unknowns in evaluating all of this.
Nope. They fall behind and don't catch up. https://www.edweek.org/education/students-who-struggle-early...
Kinda hard to do if you are trapped at home with an abusive family. For many kids school is not just education but a sanctuary from a broken home.
It takes a lot of privilege to support closing schools for any duration of time—especially two years.
yea the young kids who are forming hobbies, instead of say learning to read or talk
To start, kids don't learn how to talk in the school. Not normally and if they are so young as to not being able to talk still, school is basically a convenience parking for toddlers.
We shouldn't adjust the laws to the saddest history that we can find. Treating everybody in a population as if all of them were outliers does not give the desired results.
Children are able to learn in lots of places apart of the school. Yes, is a fact. They can learn a lot for example from their grandpas and grandma. Of course, as long as their grandparents are alive because they were smarter than the fake news and the 'magufo' crew.
The effects are especially clear for the disadvantaged who struggled before.