> the most fearful 5% of people can force it upon their children and stop holding the rest of the world hostage
To be clear, as a parent, it's not because I'm fearful, it's because a positive COVID test from any child in my kid's school means that it shuts down for two weeks, completely messing up our lives, jobs etc. I'm not going to defend that policy for a second as I don't think it's a good idea either, but it's what we're dealing with day in, day out. We're not hysterical fearmongers.
> To be clear, as a parent, it's not because I'm fearful, it's because a positive COVID test from any child in my kid's school means that it shuts down for two weeks, completely messing up our lives, jobs etc.
Completely agreed. This is a stupid, hysterical policy, and we should all be against it. I include it with my previous comment that children should face no restrictions from SARS-CoV2. What we've done to kids in the last year is so unethical that it makes me furious.
I don't mean to imply that you specifically, are hysterical, but this stuff is coming from a group of people who are operating based on fear and lack knowledge. And unfortunately, a great many of them are in positions of power.
All the young people have given away a year of their lives to "save grandma"... and now, the government wants them to give up another year, because few grandmas don't want to get vaccinated.
Since the vaccines are available to everyone, and enough time has passed, that everyone has had the chance to get vaccinated, then i have no moral issues if a few people die, because they took the risk, and lost the statistics game.
we're seeing an increase in hospitalizations, which is straining capacity and putting doctors under pressure. if capacity is exceeded due to unvaccinated covid patients, what do you do? bar new covid admissions from the hospital and let them die on the street? keep existing triage order, where someone sick with heart failure or accident trauma might not be admitted because the ward's full of sicker, admitted, covid patients?
and before you say "kick the covid patients to the curb," morals aside do you really think that's politically feasible?
What if the triage criteria is to prioritize vaccinated people? Then the segment that suffers from lack of hospital capacity is the same as the segment responsible for unnecessarily burdening the hospital.
This comes full circle on the "show your papers" issue, but at least in this scenario showing papers is directly aligning cause and effect regarding death.
I'm kind of curious how that would be received. If you show up to the hospital for covid and you don't have a vaccine and aren't exempt you don't get treated.
I really think there's a good chance it would be received OK. I think vaccinated people are sick of the shit from the other half or 40% and I think the unvaccaniated think they're immune to everything. I think they're happy taking their chances or w/e
There is no easy policy win re kids. Sure, we can be like fuck it all, children are mostly safe from covid, but then its almost guaranteed parents and everybody else in household will get it. I know for 100% we both did get it from our son who brought it from kindergarden. We were super careful for almost a year and it worked well. We got covid while my wife was pregnant. Not a nice situation to say at least.
How do you set that restrictions to adults are OK because we want to protect them, but for kids aren't? Those restrictions then kind of become pointless, don't they? Older people also want to see their grandkids desperately, I think that's a simple fact of life.
So unless I am reading it wrong, folks are annoyed because suddenly they have to take care of their kids for 2 weeks. I know I had a rough week+something when I was WFH and caring for our son whose kindergarden got closed due to covid (and he brought it home as we found almost a week later). But fuck, I've managed and it brought me closer to my son, juggling tons of conf calls and so can almost everybody else for few weeks. Its just a work, on all calls in past year there have been kids yelling in the background, sometimes mine too. It is actually properly cool to hear how those voices have their lives running in the background.
Its true that those who physically have to be present at work (like my wife, doctor) had tougher times if kindergardens locked down and no solution in sight. But the amount of couples where both parents were in same situation is properly miniscule, mostly folks that complain don't fall there. Its folks who had their convenient busy lives suddenly messed up a bit and had to fully focus on their closest ones and found out proper parenting 24/7 is hard.
Society doesn't have an easy coping mechanism for this since we don't have robot nannies immune to viruses. That sucks, and will suck. Minor obstacle that builds character and family bonds I'd say.
> Sure, we can be like fuck it all, children are mostly safe from covid
No, children are almost entirely safe from Covid. Don't exaggerate the risk.
> but then its almost guaranteed parents and everybody else in household will get it.
...and they can get vaccinated, and they will face the approximate risk profile of a cold or flu.
Look, it's like I said: there are people who are going to be at continued risk from this. That's unfortunate, but it's no different than any other virus we've lived with throughout human civilization. At this point, we're proposing extraordinary interventions to head off an ordinary level of risk.
Children spread COVID first of all. Second of all, COVID attacks blood vessels. The fact that healthy children seem safe now, does not mean that as they age, we won't see a rising burden of disease due to the long term effects of having their blood vessels attacked when they were young.
The science behind COVID-19 is evolving, I see new information in the news every day that changes how I see this disease (usually for the worse, though not always). To simply assume children are safe and propose a policy of mass infection is extremely short sighted in my opinion.
I'm still undecided re: mandates as this is correctly viewed as a massive authoritarian extension of government power domestically on top of the 9/11 restrictions that never went away (it is already completely tyrannical abroad). However, for a reasonable society (not ours) I believe COVID-19, especially the Delta strain, presents a level of population risk that the consideration of such measures is warranted.
I’m vaccinated and generally quite pro-vaccine but this is just the anxious adults not coping well with reality thing timr is talking about. The whole “it attacks blood vessels” thing. Kids are largely asymptomatic and incur little damage of this sort. Their bodies heal up and it’s done. There is no real “long term” boogeyman with this virus. You can’t find evidence for this with kids because it doesn’t exist. The virus is gone and done within a couple weeks and it isn’t coming back unless you get reinfected. There is just no mechanism for this long term damage theory I have seen. Some kids have severe cases but it’s exceptionally rare. Yes it’s a virus and it does virus things but it’s really not that exceptional. Too many people are misapplying and misreporting the actual science and risk. To prove otherwise I think the burden is on you to prove such an extraordinary claim for such a relatively mundane virus in the scheme of things.
I don't agree. We thought this about adults about a year ago then started to notice brain damage, clotting problems, heart problems, and other organ damage. I'm willing to entertain that children are less vulnerable but I'm not willing to simply assume it and say whoopsie after the fact. Ask me again in a year when we know more.
It's incredibly sad but not at all surprising that so many people so quickly write off everyone that has to come in contact with unvaccinated children.
This society has little respect for the lives of teachers and staff that have to do the job of caring for kids so that parents can have time to work. I hoped that people would come away from the experience with a little bit of growth knowing how difficult it is to do childcare 24/7, but of course the entitlement knows no bounds.
These policies more often than not come from the state level, and are set by the governor or unelected bureaucrats in state departments of health. Washington and Oregon are threatening local school boards which try to set their own non-hysterical policies with fines, loss of teaching licenses, and loss of state & federal funding.
This is absolutely correct. These policies are being driven by unelected bureaucrats in Oregon Health Authority working with the Oregon Department of Education. And there are fines for failure to comply. https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/healthsafety/...
Then organize and lobby the governor to overrule them. Unelected beaurocrats should not have broad power like this.
My point is to put pressure on the people in power, not to blindly follow and then just mutter under your breath that you’re mad. They do not give a single crap if people are mad unless their power is threatened. Stand up for yourselves for crying out loud.
Many, including my family, are doing what you suggest. Unfortunately, Oregon has a lame duck Governor who does not seem to feel terribly accountable to the electorate. There are more fireworks to come. We’ll see.
Good luck, don't give up - that's what they expect. You have much more on the line (your children's future) than they do (their job) - though they don't feel that way about their power being threatened...can't give up.
To be clear, as a parent, it's not because I'm fearful, it's because a positive COVID test from any child in my kid's school means that it shuts down for two weeks, completely messing up our lives, jobs etc. I'm not going to defend that policy for a second as I don't think it's a good idea either, but it's what we're dealing with day in, day out. We're not hysterical fearmongers.