Kids are safe from COVID, and they always have been. dwallacewells writes on why we should rethink safety protocols for children — and everyone else
It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that, according to the CDC, among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu. The risk of severe disease or hospitalization is about the same.
Some of these comparisons aren’t so neat, since the data on other diseases and accidents are sometimes unreliable, and because the extraordinary precautions against COVID-19 probably prevented significant additional spread . But, last year, fewer kids died of COVID-19 than of heart disease, “malignant neopolasms,” suicide, and homicide — not to mention birth defects, which killed hundreds of times more.
But on that point mass vaccination in the United States has utterly changed the landscape of the pandemic: not only by protecting those who have received shots, indeed astonishingly well, but by changing the calculus for all those who haven’t, by eliminating almost all of the mortality risk of the population at large. All told, 80 percent of American deaths have been among those 65 and above. According to the White House, 90 percent of American seniors are now fully vaccinated.
And though the skew is most visible among the very old, the effect is consistent across all age groups, with mortality risk doubling every five years. This means every difference of two decades multiplies risk 16-fold. Three decades and the difference is 64-fold. Those aged 75-84 face a mortality risk from the disease 230 times higher than those in their twenties. Between 65 and 74 you are 95 times more likely to die from a COVID infection than the CDC’s 20-something baseline reference group.
Studies on these questions have returned a variety of divergent answers, a sign of how complicated it can be to unpack the effects of one variable from others . But one recent eye-opening report was recently highlighted in Nature. Among 900,000 in-school pupils learning in North Carolina last fall, researchers would have expected, based on local transmission rates, about 900 cases of COVID. There were, it turned out, only 23.
In the U.S., Peter Hotez of Baylor has warned that low mortality rates among children are misleading because severe initial illness might be just the “tip of the iceberg” of the country’s long-term coronavirus problem.
In parts of Europe where the vaccination rates remain low, near-vertical rates of case growth, driven by Delta, remain concerning; case growth elsewhere in the world, likely more so. But in the well-vaccinated U.K., where the rise of the Delta variant has generated widespread anxiety about a national “reopening” scheduled for July 19, the ratio of case growth to hospitalization rates has fallen more than fivefold.
I first wrote about the subject early last May, in an essay with the headline “COVID-19 Targets the Elderly.
México Últimas Noticias, México Titulares
Similar News:También puedes leer noticias similares a ésta que hemos recopilado de otras fuentes de noticias.
We Need To Protect Our Unvaccinated Kids From The COVID-19 Delta VariantWe Need To Protect Our Unvaccinated Kids From The COVID-19 Delta Variant Delta infection can feel 'more like a bad cold' in younger people. And because it seems like just a head cold, they don’t take their symptoms seriously or get tested.
Leer más »
Teletubbies Upend Their Own Reality With a COVID PSAThe tweet featured each of the show's colorful cuddly protagonists \u2014 Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po (and later their anthropomorphic vacuum cleaner, Noo-Noo) \u2014 holding up vaccination cards and taking some whimsical liberties with the details, such as the vaccines being called 'Noo-nson \u0026amp; Noo...
Leer más »
Arkansas governor 'working hard' to overcome vaccine hesitancy amid COVID-19 surgeOn federal help for vaccine outreach, Arkansas Gov. Hutchinson tells GStephanopoulos: 'We want all the help we can.' 'We want to have our churches involved, we want to have our communities, organizations.'
Leer más »
Minneapolis Fed requiring COVID-19 vaccinations by next month — or employees will lose their jobsSeveral other Fed banks say they're encouraging, but not requiring, vaccines.
Leer más »
Lambda Variant Of Covid-19 Coronavirus Is Spreading, What You Need To KnowThe Lambda variant of the SARS-CoV-2 has become the dominant strain in Peru, which has had the highest Covid-19 case fatality rate in the world.
Leer más »