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This logic of selectively applying externalities based on an arbitrary threshold of risk tolerance is not a good argument.

We might as well blame all the fat people as well. If they were thinner we’d have saved lives.

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The article you’re replying to is that 70% of household infections started with a child. That’s selective application of externalities, that’s a causal statement. So, you could without a huge stretch of conditional probability say that ~70% of fat people dying in a household were due to their kids infecting them, assuming the paper is right. I am not blaming kids for anything, or fat people. I’m saying the focus on preventing kids from being infected had important knock on implications - which is a restatement of the paper linked itself, with the extension that all mitigants were helpful in saving household lives.

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