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.
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.