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It’s OK For a Child To Get COVID
This is one of those things I thought was common sense, but is apparently so scandalous, people have threatened to call Child Protective Services on me (no, really).
Let’s look at the numbers for how kids are impacted by COVID. For children 14 and under over the course of the entire year-long pandemic, 134 American children have died according to the CDC. Of these 134 children, when details are released about their health prior to the COVID diagnosis, tales like this are common,
The immediate cause of death for a 2-month-old the state’s top medical doctor said died because of COVID-19 was a birth defect called gastroschisis, a condition in which a baby is born with intestines located outside the body, according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner.
It’s unclear how many of these 134 children who have died over the course of the past 12-months, were healthy or if they were suffering from already near-fatal conditions prior to their COVID diagnosis.
There have been reports of additional complications for some children diagnosed with COVID, yet it is a rare diagnosis. At the height of the pandemic in Europe, less than 100 children were diagnosed and treated for it.
Scary, yes, but put alongside the numbers of pediatric flu deaths and complications, when regular flu seasons see a comparable number of pediatric deaths (some seasons, like 2009-2020, saw double the flu deaths than the number of COVID deaths we’ve had so far).
All this to say: Life has always carried the risk of viral death and complications for children, and there is no more risk from COVID than there is from the flu during regular years. Yet, before 2020, we never shut our lives down because of a virus, we never would have dreamed of canceling school and life for children for close to a year, forcing them to hide inside their bedrooms glued to computer and phone screens.
Sickeningly, we likely will see school districts across the country continue this “digital learning” model into the fall of 2021 and beyond. They’re now calling for the “eradication” of the virus before schools can reopen. Anyone with even a basic understanding of viruses can explain that there is no such thing as full eradication, especially not in this circumstance.
Teachers are also insisting that children also be inoculated before they can return to the school building in-person. That possibility is a long way off; supplies for actually at-risk populations are still limited and vaccine safety trials are still in the testing phase for children under the age of 16.
It’s time for us to say the quiet part out loud: It is okay for a child to contract COVID. Is it ideal? No, no parent would wish any virus on their child. But we’re facing a choice: Keep our children locked away or expose them to a virus that is in no way more dangerous for their age than common flu strains they’ve been exposed to in the past. The alternative is intolerably riskier.
Writing for the New York Post today, I wrote about the psychological toll that this pandemic has taken on kids, and the situation is already dire. Kids who were already at increased risk of mental illness will now, according to mental health experts I spoke with, almost certainly see their illness accelerate and worsen. And for kids who had no underlying risk factors for mental illness, their resiliency is being tested as our mitigation efforts stretch into their second year. We’re already seeing frightening spikes in mental health visits to emergency rooms and suicide clusters are appearing across the country in children as young as ten. We can’t just look at the data on the virus as we consider children’s health, but we also must consider data surrounding mental health, suicides, and drug use. When we factor those numbers into the equation, the choice is clear: We must release children from this purgatory we’ve imposed upon them under the guise of protecting their health. We must release them for their health.
Published in General
Gosh Bethany. First you wanted to kill grandma. Now you want to deal death to all The Children* (TM Democrat Party). /sarc off/
Spot on, Bethany! I’ve been railing against many of the draconian restrictions all around with much the same argument. If we reported on every car accident, including death and maiming, week by week, month by month, people would be afraid to get in cars. It’s the denominator folks. BTW, the 134 dead children sounds terrible, but not when compared to the denominator of all children in the country. Same goes for vaccine reactions. Yes, it’s awful for that person (child or adult) who suffers a severe vaccine (or any drug) reaction. It’s awful for their family, too. Nonetheless, most people get great benefit from the vaccine or drug and that’s why we have them. If life were risk free it wouldn’t be worth living. If we watched every disease or accident or mode of death as obsessively as we’ve watched this one, we’d be paralyzed with fear about going out the door. Or staying in (lots of accidents in the house).
This is a birth defect that runs in my family. It’s also easily treated these days within the first week and is expected as it is screened. So at two months, what was really going on?
The same is true of adults. The Oregon Health Authority releases information about each death attributed to WuFlu. The vast majority reportedly had “underlying health conditions”. Dying of or with ?
Studies from Spain, Sweden, UK, Belgium, and a fairly recent one from North Carolina all say the same thing: Kids don’t get the virus as often as regular flu, when they do it is rarely serious, and they are really, really bad at transmitting it to others. If a kid or a teacher gets COVID it is far more likely they got it out in the community at large than in school.
We have known since last spring that there was no scientific justification for closing schools. The nation’s pediatricians have declared that the closures are far more harmful to kids than the risk of the virus. Those who promoted this fear narrative about schools because it was politically useful need to rot in hell and/or be tarred and feathered. The damage from these ill-conceived NPIs is ongoing and can never be forgiven. Our “experts” and “leaders” are all primed to take credit for saving us from a bug that is receding on its own, chased belatedly by the vaccines while our media is too innumerate and corrupt to call them out for what they did to us.
And another study from Germany–teachers are far more likely to infect other teachers than to get COVID from kids and overall, the risk in schools is pretty damn small.
Have you
punchedcalled bad names someone who said “please don’t make me risk your life to teach your kid” today?I am mystified as to why anyone would willingly use Twitter.
Sorry, I know that’s not the point here, but many Ricos quote/link to/base posts on Tweets. Every time I follow the links I end up with agita, either from the content, the comments, the format, or (usually) all three.
“Whose Bright Idea was It to Make Sure that Every Idiot in the World was in Touch with Every Other Idiot?” – P.J. O’Rourke
It would be interesting to know how dangerous Covid is to children in comparison to Measles, Mumps and Chicken Pox back in the 50s and 60s. There were no vaccines then and there were some very bad outcomes, but since there was nothing else to do, most kids suffered through it and came out ok. At some point, life must go on.
This may be a better way of saying it:
“There is significantly less risk of death if a child contracts COVID.”
Of course, unionized teachers still don’t want to come back to the classroom because they’re afraid they’ll catch the COVID cooties from the children . . .
Obviously, we need to send Randi Weingarten by Bethany’s house so that she can be enlightened…
I was watching an old movie last week, Christmas in Connecticut, because someone on Ricochet recommended it. It is indeed a wonderful movie. It was made in 1945. One of the actors said at one point when they were talking about the baby, “We don’t have to worry about whooping cough anymore.”
I think people were more used to the ebb and flow of viral and bacterial diseases.
I was surprised to hear that because when my grandson was born, I had to get a booster whooping cough vaccine. There was a resurgence of it, which had led to eight infant deaths in California, or so the headlines said.
My pediatrician always described whooping cough as a horrible and deadly disease that would be prevalent without vaccines.
But not according to the writers of that movie.
This is beyond disgusting, @bethanymandel. I have known all these things for months. If I am aware, these things are readily available to the ‘experts’ and should be common knowledge, if there is such a thing anymore. That schools are still shut, and the mental health of children is a casualty, not to mention the millions of life years that will never be recovered, the people responsible for this are the real criminals.
I weep for my country that our people have become so fearful and compliant.
The left has taught America’s youth to rebel against their parents. A lesson that is not necessary, or needs to be encouraged. They sense their victory close at hand. If they start to celebrate, hang on, that is when the wild ride really begins.
The truth can save us. It is out there, if people would only look.
And? The vast majority of Americans over 40 have some “underlying health condition”. If they die are they any less dead?
Because we are seeing a lot more deaths this year (500,000) than in an average year.
I have 2 nieces who are missing out on one of the best years of their lives, senior year of high school. One, by a fluke, actually had her junior prom. It was the last thing her school did before everything shut down. The other didn’t get to have hers and now it seems neither will have a senior one. I feel sorry for these kids. They can’t even have a proper senior skip day when they aren’t really IN school. Where’s the fun in that?
Um….vaccine for whooping cough came out in the ’30s. They were making the point that due to the vaccine the dread childhood disease was no longer of concern. A little bit of nicely placed vaccine encouragement (some might say propaganda).
Thanks for making this point, Kozak. I would have, if you hadn’t. Even the sickest and oldest eventually die of something. In this case, Covid. They might have lived several more productive years had this disease not been here to take them. This reminds me of the complaints of how much is spent on healthcare “during the last year of life.” Well, duh. At any age, the last year of life is when most people are likely to be sick. Should we cease treating serious diseases? This is such a specious argument.
FIFY.
Indeed, “What else was going on?” is a question I’ve had about a number of these cases when any details emerge. There was another case that I couldn’t find when I was writing this post about a child who was already in multi-organ failure in the NICU and in hospice care who then died “of” COVID. A large and scary number of pediatric flu deaths hit otherwise healthy children. That is not the case with COVID.
Oh, Bethany is solid and enlightened. Maybe her choice of words was deliberately inflammatory . . .
I keep wondering why this conversation doesn’t also include mention of the fact that many kids are going to school in person in the U.S. I just found this resource to identify where closures are mandated, or conversely, where schools must at least offer an in-person option: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/map-where-are-schools-closed/2020/07
It should probably be noted that some students are being unnecessarily depressed and delayed by school closings, while other American school children continue to compete in sports and benefit from the structure, motivation and social interaction provided by in-person school.
You know, with what’s happened over the last year with restrictions tanking the economy, with governors of both parties playing petty dictator, and with Trump losing to a doddering old man and a woman who dropped out before the first primary . . .
I’m starting not to care how many people die of COVID. Harsh to be sure, but this nonsense has to stop.
Thank you! They’re not really afraid . . .
Ahh. That explains it. Thank you. I didn’t think to look it up. I thought most vaccines were developed after World War II.
Thank you.
I was fully in support of shutting down schools back in March of last year. This was a novel virus and, usually the very young and the very old are most susceptible. However, as time has passed and we have learned that children, especially younger ones, seem to not get the virus as often, and when they do have less severe cases, my support for keeping in person schooling has declined. Couple that with the very real issues of teen depression and locations like Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) seeing 18 suicides amongst their students and the risks do not justify the shut downs anymore.
Sweet of you to reply. Vaccines of various kinds go back quite a while [(that link is to a really comprehensive timeline of outbreaks and development of vaccination–fascinating, if you like that sort of thing (which I do)]. Smallpox vaccine/variolation was even used during the Revolutionary war . During the 1800s and early to mid 1900s, there was a lot of work in various vaccine strategies, some more successful than others. You may be thinking of antibiotics, most of which were developed after WWII.
Salena Zito is also bringing up the enormous damage being done to kids. She focuses on a teen girl who has gone for As to Ds because she has been deprived of all motivation.
https://townhall.com/columnists/salenazito/2021/02/09/the-kids-arent-all-right-n2584421
A NY high school student was arrested last September for GOING to school on his “designated” remote-learning day. He was given 5 days suspension. Just how does “suspension” work ? If being in school was the offence?
They said if he showed up in school again ALL 3000 students would be on remote learning for the forseeable future. That’ll teach’em! Think they can go to school to get an education from those union teachers. We’ll show them!
How many of that number are due to catching COVID and how many are due to consequences from all the lockdowns? In other words, has the attempt at a cure been worse than the disease?
2020 convinced me that we are sitting ducks for any true hardship. As a people we don’t have the fortitude to endure things that prior generations could or would.
Global War? We’re Toast.
Dust Bowl? We’re Toast.
1918 Flu? We’re Toast.
EMP attack? Burnt Toast.
Virus gonna virus. People will die. Even if we had never shut down,> 99% of people would have gotten the virus and lived and most of those die would have lost less that 10 life years. Tragic yes. If it is you or a loved one that does devastating. World ending, No.