The end of Mask Mandates

[MayanActuary]

@The_President

There is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here. Each variant presented a new risk to kids that needed to be assessed and that included the impact on community spread. I am not sure early studies could be relied on with the Delta and Omicron waves.

The media freaked out about kids each new variant. People that actually can read data saw it for what it was and posted about it on this very site. I just searched my own posts, but here are 3 from July of 2021 talking about kids and Delta not being additional risk. Citations include expert from Johns Hopkins, CDC, American Academy of Pediatricians, Dr. from U Cal San Fran, Dr. from Yale.

Post 1

@MayanActuary

Delta variant is most common in US right now, so based on CDC tracker - no major change for the kids groups on a per 1,000 basis.
CDC COVID Data Tracker

“Children are spared the severe consequences of COVID-19 and less likely to spread it, and I think that remains true for the delta variant despite scary headlines,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security

“Hospitalizations are not increasing in children as a result of the delta variant, so they still seem at low risk of COVID-19 even with this variant,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist with the University of California, San Francisco.

American Academy of Pediatricians - “At this time, it still appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children.”

So no, just media talking points.

Post 2

@MayanActuary

This is just lazy reporting → raw cases are up across the board. So “big jump in kids cases!”, ignoring rates.

Post 3

@MayanActuary

The Delta Variant and Kids: Here’s What Parents Should Know (healthline.com)

@article

The risk doesn’t appear to be increasing

Delta is a more contagious variant and is expected to trigger outbreaks in areas with low vaccination rates.

Since many children are unvaccinated, they remain susceptible to contracting the virus.

Kids are also back in their social activities more so than adults due to their low risk of getting seriously ill with COVID-19.

“People shouldn’t be surprised about cases, because this virus isn’t going to be eliminated or eradicated,” Adalja said.

According to Adalja, the goal has never been to drive coronavirus cases to zero.

“Our goal has been to remove the ability of the virus to cause severe disease, hospitalization, and death — to tame it,” Adalja said.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children still have a low risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19.

The latest data shows that kids make up around 1.3 to 3.6 percent of total reported hospitalizations, and that around 0.1 to 1.9 percent of all COVID-19 cases in children resulted in hospitalization.

“Hospitalizations are not increasing in children as a result of the delta variant, so they still seem at low risk of COVID-19 even with this variant,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist with the University of California, San Francisco.

Gandhi, who has a young unvaccinated child, said she’s not nervous right now, given the data showing the hospitalization rate is not increasing in children due to the delta variant.

Dr. Richard Martinello, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist and associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, said that though children have a lower risk, a small percentage of kids develop complications, like multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) or long-haul COVID-19.

When a variant is more contagious, like delta, it will naturally lead to more “raw hospitalizations” — which does not equate to an increase in the hospitalization rate.

It really depends on the child’s underlying health.

Just like adults, children who have medical issues have a greater risk of complications.

Most children don’t develop severe illness, and it won’t be very different from other common respiratory viruses.

If you have a healthy child with no medical problems, Adalja said parents can make an informed risk assessment that your child may not need to wear a mask in situations where it’s not required.

If you have a child who, for example, had a heart transplant and takes immunosuppressants, then you will want to take more precautions.

“I don’t think you can give a one-size-fits-all recommendation,” Adalja said. “It depends upon the individual child’s risk for severe disease.”