PlagueWatch 2020-23 - Coronavirus

[ClemmonsDevil]

Mandate flu shots. Those are available for children.

So, we need to stop pretending that the choice is between vaccinated/not vaccinated. The choice is "Which precautions will you take to preserve public health - vaccine or face mask?" You gotta pick one, there is no third choice.

This is basically how hospitals do it. Employees can either get the flu vaccine or wear a mask. In some cases it is get the vaccine or seek other employment opportunities. But for school children it probably should be the binary choice between flu vaccine or mask during flu season.

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

The question was meant to "absurd" to highlight that when COVID risks equate to flu risks (or are even LESS because of the amazingness of the COVID vaccines relative to the flu ones) in a given environment, they should be treated similarly in my opinion. But they are not. And, yes, the initial baseline risk of COVID sans vaccines was clearly MUCH greater than the flu, particularly for the 65+ crowd. I agree with you that many more people will elect to wear masks during flu season. I probably envision wearing a mask myself on planes and such during these periods. Better hygiene is certainly good. I am a compulsive hand washer (before COVID) and I've been ridiculed for it...

I don't understand this insistence on a flu/COVID equivalency. The "flu" doesn't kill 600,000 Americans in a year. Even if COVID subsides substantially, it clearly has that potential. Why would we treat it like the flu?

[Bluedog]

I don't understand this insistence on a flu/COVID equivalency. The "flu" doesn't kill 600,000 Americans in a year. Even if COVID subsides substantially, it clearly has that potential. Why would we treat it like the flu?

I was responding to rsvman's post. He mentioned that children are the primary drivers of flu season. I am not equating the two as it relates to unvaccinated adult populations. But it is fair IMO to evaluate the risk profiles for children given particulars of a given time (e.g. current community spread levels, current vaccination rates, etc.) and then understand how that aligns/misaligns with what we've deemed acceptable risk profiles in the past.

[budwom]

FWIW, now that things have opened up a bit, kids around here (the schools just closed ) have been passing around a nasty flu-like bug, adults getting it too. It's definitely not Covid, but it's something unpleasant.

[ClemmonsDevil]

FWIW, now that things have opened up a bit, kids around here (the schools just closed ) have been passing around a nasty flu-like bug, adults getting it too. It's definitely not Covid, but it's something unpleasant.

I believe it is RSV actually based on early reports.

[-jk]

Nice NY Times rundown today on kids and Covid.

Different parents will make different decisions, and that’s only natural. Here are a few guiding principles:

* The interruption of school and other normal activities has caused substantial damage to children — academically, socially and psychologically. Helping children resume normal activities is important to their health. “Kids should be in camp,” Dr. Jennifer Lighter, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at N.Y.U., told me.

* There are still enough Covid uncertainties that some precautions can make sense for children, like wearing masks indoors or avoiding crowded places. “The actual overall threat of death is minuscule, and the threat to health is quite low,” Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, said, “but if I had young kids, I’d still really prefer they not get Covid.”

* The riskiest areas are those with the lowest vaccination rates, which tend to be in the Southeast and the Mountain West. “If I were living in a place where cases were rising, I’d be more worried that my children could contract Covid,” Nuzzo said.

* Polls suggest that many Democratic voters have an inflated sense of Covid’s risks to children. If you’re liberal, you may want to ask yourself if you fall into this category. (If you’re conservative, you may want to encourage more of your friends to get vaccinated.)

* The biggest risk to your child’s health today almost certainly is not Covid. It’s more likely to be an activity that you have long decided is acceptable — like swimming, riding a bicycle or traveling in a car.



-jk

[Bostondevil]

This is basically how hospitals do it. Employees can either get the flu vaccine or wear a mask. In some cases it is get the vaccine or seek other employment opportunities. But for school children it probably should be the binary choice between flu vaccine or mask during flu season.

That's how the hospital I work for does it with exceptions for medical/religious reasons, but you gotta file the paperwork to get the exception and that paperwork is a PITA by design. It is much, much, much easier to get the shot.

[budwom]

I believe it is RSV actually based on early reports.

Might be, but the few I know who have it don't have congestion or runny nose, just fever and lethargy...

[ClemmonsDevil]

Might be, but the few I know who have it don't have congestion or runny nose, just fever and lethargy...

Interesting. RSV has been on the rise here in the south. Was probably tamped down by social distancing and masking, but rising in the community. This is an absolute killer in the NICU where my patients are.

[Bostondevil]

Nice NY Times rundown today on kids and Covid.

Different parents will make different decisions, and that’s only natural. Here are a few guiding principles:

* The interruption of school and other normal activities has caused substantial damage to children — academically, socially and psychologically. Helping children resume normal activities is important to their health. “Kids should be in camp,” Dr. Jennifer Lighter, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at N.Y.U., told me.

* There are still enough Covid uncertainties that some precautions can make sense for children, like wearing masks indoors or avoiding crowded places. “The actual overall threat of death is minuscule, and the threat to health is quite low,” Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, said, “but if I had young kids, I’d still really prefer they not get Covid.”

* The riskiest areas are those with the lowest vaccination rates, which tend to be in the Southeast and the Mountain West. “If I were living in a place where cases were rising, I’d be more worried that my children could contract Covid,” Nuzzo said.

* Polls suggest that many Democratic voters have an inflated sense of Covid’s risks to children. If you’re liberal, you may want to ask yourself if you fall into this category. (If you’re conservative, you may want to encourage more of your friends to get vaccinated.)

* The biggest risk to your child’s health today almost certainly is not Covid. It’s more likely to be an activity that you have long decided is acceptable — like swimming, riding a bicycle or traveling in a car.



-jk

They should have included the risk of dying from a vaccine.

[budwom]

Interesting. RSV has been on the rise here in the south. Was probably tamped down by social distancing and masking, but rising in the community. This is an absolute killer in the NICU where my patients are.

I guess all kinds of bugs have had 16 months to sit around and ponder their next move...now with everyone travelling (our town has emptied out) who knows what's next?

[ClemmonsDevil]

They should have included the risk of dying from a vaccine.

Would have had trouble scaling that down enough.

[aimo]

Interesting. RSV has been on the rise here in the south. Was probably tamped down by social distancing and masking, but rising in the community. This is an absolute killer in the NICU where my patients are.

I had RSV in my twenties. I can't imagine an infant going through that.

[ClemmonsDevil]

I had RSV in my twenties. I can't imagine an infant going through that.

It's bad. Imagine all the secretions you experienced but in a smaller airway and decreased ability to clear them. RSVman knows this, but you would spend entire 12 hour shifts trying to stop kids from drowning in those secretions.

[Bostondevil]

Would have had trouble scaling that down enough.

(I know. I was being a wanker. )

[Bluedog]

They should have included the risk of dying from a vaccine.

Would have had trouble scaling that down enough.

The sample size of vaccine recipients for 1-4 year olds has to be miniscule and not peer-reviewed at this point as well. In other words, we have no idea what the risk of a 1-4 year old dying from a vaccine is, but, yes I imagine it SHOULD be basically non-existent given the risk of death from COVID in that age group is also so small. Has there been any evidence of ANY adult dying from the COVID vaccine? I guess there were the JnJ blood clots where I think one person in the U.S. died.

[ClemmonsDevil]

(I know. I was being a wanker. )

Oh I understood.

[Kdogg]

FWIW, now that things have opened up a bit, kids around here (the schools just closed ) have been passing around a nasty flu-like bug, adults getting it too. It's definitely not Covid, but it's something unpleasant.

Since the mask mandates were lifted my nephew’s daycare has had outbreaks of strep, foot and hand and now croup. I don’t even know that some of those are.

[tommy]

You may some fair points, but also some shaky ones.

I am undoubtedly guilty of painting teachers unions with an overly broad brush. Some behaved much more honorably than others over the 2020-21 school year. And in those communities where children suffered the most, it is absolutely wrong to put this solely on teachers unions, instead of citing a collective failure among teachers, administrators, School Boards and politicians.

Let me try to clarify my views a bit better. My original comment was in response to the notion that only one side was guilty of politicizing things during the pandemic, with the other largely taking the high ground of "following the science" (or, more often in reality, following public health policy, especially federal; the distinction is not trivial).

Allow me to provide some background for full disclosure. I am not a healthcare professional, but it is the industry I focus on as a finance professional. I am on the Board of a fairly large health insurance company, so have been privy to developing industry views on the pandemic since inception. I also work with a number of behavioral health organizations, and closely followed COVID's impact on these businesses, and their patients by extension. Finally, my wife is actively involved in our local school district, and for the past year, has been part of a task force dedicated to researching and benchmarking back to school initiatives across Metro Chicago, as well as comparable districts in other regions of the country. So I am perhaps better informed on these issues than you may believe.

The basic, population-level risk stratification of COVID - by age group and health profile (pre-existing conditions, co-morbidities, etc.) - was pretty well established by June 2020. Pretty clear data around risk of spread by age group and type of activity was not far behind. Enough was known that the default assumption for last fall up through high school should have been full-time, in-person, with appropriate mitigation measures (e.g. masks) generally, and some accommodations for higher risk students and faculty members. And that was the case in some parts of the country, to generally good effect. But for a variety of reasons, including IMHO some political ones, it was not the default assumption in a number of large metro areas and districts, particularly in Blue States, and instead often derided as reckless and foolish. Despite the science - perhaps not the public health policy, but the actual science - suggesting otherwise.

The necessity of in-person schooling only became more obvious during the course of the year. By mid-fall, the negative impacts of remote and hybrid schooling on youth behavioral health, not to mention their educational experience, were abundantly clear. But districts in many of those Blue states were slow to respond, despite growing evidence and community pressure. And often it was the teachers unions who were the last ones to come around - as others have noted, waiting on vaccines, then moving the goalposts and essentially running out the clock on the 2020-21 school year.

I recognize that the vast majority of teachers now support going back to full-time, in-person in the fall. But that was not the case a year or even 6 months ago. Not making full-time, in-person the default assumption in the beginning opened a Pandora's box for all manner of stakeholders that made it that much more challenging to adjust during the year. And to me that was a tragic mistake. And an avoidable one. Some will argue that this is only obvious in hindsight, but I disagree. The evidence was already there, and kudos to those educational leaders who had sufficient courage and balance in their perspective to act on it.

Great post. The "default assumption" that should have been in place is a great way to frame this.

And as far as moving the goalposts go, here in So Cal, we definitely experienced that from the teachers union. First it was "we're not going back until everyone is vaccinated." Then it was "but you can't make us get vaccinated!" Then it was "we're not going back until the school police is defunded" Then it was "we're not going back until there is no more money allocated to charter schools."

So yes, our public school teachers union, which is one of the largest in the country if not THE largest, attempted to weaponize COVID return in order to push a political agenda wholly unrelated to COVID.

Again I am not generally anti-union and am on the left side of the political spectrum on most matters. But this, to me, was galling.

[cato]

(I know. I was being a wanker. )

But did you know that an unvaccinated coworker of mine personally knows two people that have died from the vaccine?

I think I did a good job of keeping my poker face on and wrapping up that particular conversation pretty quickly.