By the time fall 2020 semester started in schools we had vaccination rates climbing, hospitalization rates coming down, more effect treatment methods found.
The harm from the slight (at most) increase in community spread from schools was far outstripped by the economic, health, and educational losses incurred by closing down in person instruction in schools. Even the uncertainty from mask mandates with periodic closures and/or required isolation due to exposure made it impossible for lots of poor parents to keep jobs because they didn’t know if they would have to stay home for child care from day to day. Those policies were overreactions that didn’t properly consider associated costs. They ignored data we did have in favor of political virtue signaling.
Current school mask mandates are just ridiculous given where we are and what we know. But like the song says “I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote.”
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.
No, no, no - don’t you understand? Armchair epidemiologists armed with the greatest information available on YouTube and Twitter and 12+ months of hindsight knew (still know) so much more than anyone with decades of training and experience in that stuff.
Just don’t ask about their opinions on other things going on right now. Wait 12+ months, when they’ve had time to figure out what didn’t go right so they can proclaim what should have happened and rub it in everyone else’s face as more “proof” they were “always right.”
See my post about the hindsight issue. The first 12 months is fair, things were new, etc. etc.
After 12 months it was very clear children were at little to no risk of COVID. This isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking when people have been complaining about it for the last 12 months.
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.
And it’s going to be a while before we know how often those affect kids. A little heart damage to a kid could take years to manifest, but ultimately reduce lifespan significantly, for instance.
Delta hit the po near me early on and they sent cases to my city because their hospitals were overwhelmed. Fortunately it was over the summer and spread out a bit, but kids at that time had not been vaccinated along with half of adults.
We have been at or near 100% hospital capacity for the initial wave, for delta, and for Omicron. We have bad adults in this county who refuse to do their part to control the spread, and that is the sad outcome. So we needed to control spread where we could, and that included schools and other public areas like transportation and government buildings. I won’t argue it was at all optimal.
I’d much rather have had responsible adults do their part where we never had to think about community spread, and impacting kids learning. But those bitching about masks in school can’t possibly say that kids and education was the top priority anywhere in the country. They all just wanted to ignore covid, party on, and if hospitals are full when someone has a treatable emergency, well good luck.
It’s all Monday morning quarterbacking for all those whose worst outcome from the pandemic is their kids wore masks for 18 months.
Parents complaints usually represent a lot of their own emotional feelings about masks. They use things like kids with speech issues as reasons why the kids are suffering and falling behind. I have a kid with speech issues. The speech teacher was able to deal with masks and continue to make progress.. Never did she say we were losing time because of it. The daily interactions with other kids for more than a decade didn’t correct the speech. Unmasked interactions at home continued throughout the pandemic.
My kids wear glasses and never complained of masks. Kids are resilient, I think few felt a burden unless their parents taught them that reaction. You can add to Monday morning quarterbacking the parents projection of their own attitudes on to their kids.
Oh, and in addition to not getting covid, my kids were sick a fraction of the time that were sick in previous years. So there are plenty of non covid benefits being ignored.
So to sum up “my kids were fine therefore anyone complaining that their kids weren’t fine is just parental projection, since my kids are representative of all children “
Seems to be just as valid as “my kids suffered there anyone complaining that their kids didn’t suffer is just parental projection, since my kids are representative of all children.”
Maybe the truth is somewhere in between those two positions. Almost like every kid is unique and many of them had different reactions to schooling approaches over the last ~2 years.
Vaccines didn’t come out until early 2021.
Maybe the truth is somewhere in between those two positions. Almost like every kid is unique and many of them had different reactions to schooling approaches over the last ~2 years.