Reply to The Urgency of Normal

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[quote=Anonymous]Just had this convo with my DH and wanted to share a few things. This is all focused on younger kids (age 3 to 6 or so) because that's our situation.

We really do need to start talking about cumulative effects, and when people say that a measure has no cost, or little cost, we need to push back on what that cost is when the measure is implemented over and over, or is ongoing.

This came up because another parent said to my DH that the Pfizer vaccine for under 5s has "no cost", so we should do it even if it turns out it doesn't work, for our 4 yr old. I was kind of take aback by this because it seems bizarre to give a child that age a medical intervention if you don't know it works.  Especially because we are now talking about 3 shots.

What if I give my 4 yr old 3 vaccine shots over 3 months, and it turns out it doesn't produce the desired immune response. And then when he turns 5, we're giving him 2 more shots, at least.

Don't you think there might be a cumulative, and negative, impact on a child of being subjected to a medical procedure (yes, mild, but kids really don't like getting shots) 5 times in one year? And that cost could be responsibly weighed agains the potential benefit (which could very well be "0" -- we don't know yet) and a parent could conclude they shouldn't do it?

And I feel similarly about masking, quarantines, and testing. I had no issue teaching my child to wear a mask 2 years ago (I mean it was hard but I didn't object to it at all). My kid is tested weekly for school. We've had almost a dozen quarantines of 10 days or more. And when these things were implemented, my attitude was "yes, of course, whatever we can do to help." But the cumulative effect of 2 years of masking a child who is in this age range isn't nil. Nor is the cumulative effect of doing nasal swabs tests every week. Nor is the cumulative effect of repeatedly disrupting daycare/school schedules for quarantines. The longer any of this goes on, the larger the impact. It might have started out as no big deal, but it's becoming a very big deal.

And if the ultimate benefit is low, because the virus is more mild, or because these measures don't actually decrease spread, we of course should re-evaluate them. I just don't see how we can't.

Two years. Not two weeks, not two months. Two years. We really have to ask ourselves what the end game is, and yes, what the "off-ramps" might be. [/quote]

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