American society has lost any ability to assess risk to kids. Almost two years into a pandemic that mercifully spares kids, with almost 60% of the total population (and 75% of the eligible population) vaccinated, the CDC is still advising caution when trick-or-treating.
Looking even further into the future, Rochelle Walensky opined that schools should maintain mask mandates even once younger children are vaccinated.
Why? What are we doing here?
COVID-19 is endemic. It will always be around. Everyone will be exposed at some point, and most people will acquire some form of immunity, either from vaccination or from fighting off the illness. And, very sadly as Matt Shapiro points out, people will die, possibly at twice the rate that people die of influenza. We are stuck with a virus that is twice as deadly as the flu.
But life, today as ever, is for living, not for cowering in fear. A fascinating analysis by University of Edinburgh’s Jean-Francois Daust shows that
the elderly people, i.e. the most vulnerable population, are not systematically more responsive in terms of prospective self-isolation (if they were told to do so) and willingness to isolate. Moreover, they are not more disciplined in terms of compliance with preventive measures, especially with wearing a face mask when outside their home.
Older folks, who have objectively less time left to live, seem to favor not spending this time in isolation, even at the risk of contracting a deadly disease. This seems reasonable to me. We will all die. Every single one of us. Death is a rock-solid certainty. That is why we want our lives to be fulfilling, meaningful and happy -- because we know they will end.
While the death of a person approaching their natural life expectancy may at least be cognitively understandable, thinking about kids dying is incomprehensible and horrendously painful. Kids are meant to outlive us; the death of a child feels like a crime against nature. Adults will rightly want to do anything in their power to prevent this, and temporary inconveniences feel like acceptable trade-offs when considering the 7-8 decades that still lay ahead.
But kids also need to live happy, fulfilling, meaningful lives, not just in the future, but now. We don't have the right to put kids in literal boxes, or lock them in their rooms (no matter how comfortable), in order to protect them.
Our kids are living in a world where COVID-19 is endemic, and fortunately they are the least likely to be affected. Yet we continue to cover their faces, keep them away from each other, and periodically remove them altogether from their peer group. For an illness that, when symptomatic, acts like a cold. In a country where all adults can get vaccinated.
Who is this for?
While kids are spared the worst of COVID-19, they are not immune to the effects of mitigation. My eldest daughter is 9. I've known her two closest friends since they were 2. They have always been active, happy, gregarious kids. Over the past year, I have heard them say things like, "I don't want to play with these kids, cause they're not in my pod," and "Ugh, taking my mask off freaks me out!" and "I can't go to this birthday party, because it's inside." Adults have been misguidedly projecting their own anxieties and fears onto the group least affected by the pandemic. In turn, this has made children twice as depressed and anxious as they were just a couple years ago.
Why? Who is gaining anything here?
And the grownups are still unwilling to even think about turning this minivan around. While the European CDC, hardly a backwater, regressive institution, expressly recommends that children under 12 not wear masks in schools, the US has no plan for doing away with restrictions even after kids are vaccinated.
It's almost as if kids have become fidget toys, objects that adults can do things to in order to make themselves feel better. Please stop. Enough.