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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everyone keeps using this word "safe". Omicron isn't a meaningful threat to children. Cases are up, but hospitalizations are flat. Your children are safer today than they were a year ago when no one was testing, we knew less about the virus, the virus was more deadly, and we lacked treatments for it. Your kid is more likely to die on the walk/drive to school than from COVID at this point.

We can have discussions about appropriate mitigations (I'm for them). But it's important to keep things in perspective here. Failing to do everything possible to mitigate omicron in school isn't actually going to meaningfully threaten your kids. [/quote]

Except hospitalizations are up.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/child-covid-hospitalizations-are-5-states-are-rise-rcna10089[/quote]

Fauci himself said not to read too much into that figure because 1) the base rate is so low minor variations create large percentage increases (we're talking between 300 and 400 kids per day), and 2) "with" isn't the same as "because of"

https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-children-hospital-covid-omicron-1664676

International news media have also noted the increase in pediatric hospitalizations but downplayed the idea of additional risk to children:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211231-pediatric-hospitalizations-up-under-omicron-but-it-s-not-more-severe

Furthermore, you heard that pediatric hospitalizations are up, but did you hear that deaths are down?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-covid-19-deaths-hospitalizations-comparatively-low-despite-omicron-surge-cdc-2021-12-29/

Which is consistent with what happened in South Africa: 
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/30/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-tests

I'm not saying COVID is nothing, but I dispute the notion that things are materially "less safe" for children today than they were at previous points in the pandemic when we decided school was still "safe". If the risks to children were low enough to make school feasible in August 2020, when there were no vaccines, no protease inhibitors, and a more lethal form of the virus, then it is assuredly still "safe" today. The only obstacle to in-person, in my mind, should be staffing.

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