Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 10:14     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


They don't mask inside their house! The preschooler got it at school and brought it home. It's not about masks not working for adults or older kids. Everyone kniws that little kids aren't going to madk perfectly. Plus they have to unmask when eating or sleeping at preschool.

Your argument fails.

Masks DO help reduce the amount of innoculum. They are not perfect, but they help.

The real question is whether we are at a level of infectiousness in Fairfax where masking is no longer needed or where the burden of masking outweighs the benegits given low incidence.

I think we are or will be soon.


K-12 kids take their masks off at lunch. By your logic, it’s pointless-like people have been saying.


Masks reduce exposure, they don't eliminate it.

And you don't see a difference between exposure to a few kids near you at lunch vs exposure to hundreds of kids during the school day (high school) .

You don't see the difference between reducing the amount of exposure during 7 hours of contact while accepting 30 min of higher potential exposure (during meals) because starving is not an option?

If not, then masking isn't your biggest problem, low intelligence is.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:47     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


They don't mask inside their house! The preschooler got it at school and brought it home. It's not about masks not working for adults or older kids. Everyone kniws that little kids aren't going to madk perfectly. Plus they have to unmask when eating or sleeping at preschool.

Your argument fails.

Masks DO help reduce the amount of innoculum. They are not perfect, but they help.

The real question is whether we are at a level of infectiousness in Fairfax where masking is no longer needed or where the burden of masking outweighs the benegits given low incidence.

I think we are or will be soon.


It proves the mask at preschool are not effective at preventing covid so masks should be optional for kids.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:45     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


They don't mask inside their house! The preschooler got it at school and brought it home. It's not about masks not working for adults or older kids. Everyone kniws that little kids aren't going to madk perfectly. Plus they have to unmask when eating or sleeping at preschool.

Your argument fails.

Masks DO help reduce the amount of innoculum. They are not perfect, but they help.

The real question is whether we are at a level of infectiousness in Fairfax where masking is no longer needed or where the burden of masking outweighs the benegits given low incidence.

I think we are or will be soon.


K-12 kids take their masks off at lunch. By your logic, it’s pointless-like people have been saying.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:40     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


They don't mask inside their house! The preschooler got it at school and brought it home. It's not about masks not working for adults or older kids. Everyone kniws that little kids aren't going to madk perfectly. Plus they have to unmask when eating or sleeping at preschool.

Your argument fails.

Masks DO help reduce the amount of innoculum. They are not perfect, but they help.

The real question is whether we are at a level of infectiousness in Fairfax where masking is no longer needed or where the burden of masking outweighs the benegits given low incidence.

I think we are or will be soon.


If they help, you would think that they would have helped the preschooler avoid covid. They didn't. And they won't help anyone else avoid covid either. Therefore, they are useless.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:39     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


So you have inside knowledge that the surgeon general’s family was masking 24/ 7? What a dumb argument against masks. Look, no one likes wearing the damn things, but they do provide some mitigation. I think it’s silly to argue that they do absolutely nothing.


If he is not masking when in public, why should we?
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:38     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


They don't mask inside their house! The preschooler got it at school and brought it home. It's not about masks not working for adults or older kids. Everyone kniws that little kids aren't going to madk perfectly. Plus they have to unmask when eating or sleeping at preschool.

Your argument fails.

Masks DO help reduce the amount of innoculum. They are not perfect, but they help.

The real question is whether we are at a level of infectiousness in Fairfax where masking is no longer needed or where the burden of masking outweighs the benegits given low incidence.

I think we are or will be soon.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:38     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


So you have inside knowledge that the surgeon general’s family was masking 24/ 7? What a dumb argument against masks. Look, no one likes wearing the damn things, but they do provide some mitigation. I think it’s silly to argue that they do absolutely nothing.


The CDC said cloth masks are merely facial decorations. What something do they do besides decorate the face?
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:24     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.


So you have inside knowledge that the surgeon general’s family was masking 24/ 7? What a dumb argument against masks. Look, no one likes wearing the damn things, but they do provide some mitigation. I think it’s silly to argue that they do absolutely nothing.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:19     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


They have booster, good one way masks if they want them, and they should work on improved air filtration in their own room to the extent possible - such as opening windows. I know all classrooms don’t have windows but most of them do - and I’m active on the PTA for example and if the school didn’t provide something to improve air filtration in the room and the teacher wanted something - that is something we would reimburse like we do for supplies every year.


Sounds like you have a great PTA. I doubt ours would do the same in terms of funding supplies and air filtration systems. Our hogh school is too big and overcrowded.

Anyway, I am not arguing with you on the feasibility of going without masks. I just imagine FCPS is going to take the super-cautious route if it can. In my experience, quality of life for employees and students isn’t really their priority. They want teachers and staff functioning.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:18     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

The Surgeon General's family caught covid. If masks work, I would guess that he could have avoided it.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:12     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


Most effective mitigation = vaccines ✓ effective air filtration or N95 masks ✓

Done. The rest of mitigation, we're past that. With effective air filtration, adults in school buildings don't need masks, by themselves or by the students.


Eh, people still spit when they talk - a lot more than you’d think. If I am working in close proximity to a student, I would think the mask would help.

Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:09     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


Those people were first in line to get the vaccine. They have now been vaccinated for a long time. If they choose not to vaccinate, are we going to stay in masks and distanced forever? When do we draw the line?


They are vaccinated and boosted. People caught omicron, however, vaccinated or not, and mass staff shortages caused problems in many industries. I honestly don’t know what teacher absence rates are this month; i just imagine FCPS wants to play it as safe as possible and keep it minimal. Hence, the masks.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 09:06     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


Actually the kids are the “school”. The role of adults is to educate them.

It’s not the kids’ job to make sure you have a job.



If the role of the adults is to educate the kids, then the adults are the school. Otherwise, “school” would be just a warehouse for children.

Also, although I am a teacher, I was speaking from the the point of view of “management” when I said the super-cautious mitigation measures are there to keep staff illness and absences minimal.

Job security, by the way, is low on my list of concerns.
Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 08:54     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


Actually the kids are the “school”. The role of adults is to educate them.

It’s not the kids’ job to make sure you have a job.

Anonymous
Post 02/21/2022 08:53     Subject: Re:FCPS Masking Update

Anonymous wrote:
Cruzado wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For anyone who cares about kids, this is a must read by: Shelli Farhadian is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying how Covid-19 affects the brain. Shira Doron is an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/

In two other studies that included scientific controls, the rates of long Covid symptoms were nearly the same in children who had tested positive for Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In other words, other factors were to blame in many or most of these cases.

Indeed, children who had not had Covid-19 reported higher rates of many symptoms, including difficulty concentrating and muscle pains — nearly every long Covid symptom except the loss of smell and taste. Similar findings have also been reported in controlled studies in adults.

To be sure, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms persist for weeks in a small number of children, likely due to lingering effects of infection and the body’s immune response to it. But the studies that include control groups tell us that the odds of this occurring in a child with Covid-19 is low, lower even than the odds of getting seriously injured while playing sports.

Controlled studies like the CLoCk study in England, published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health on Feb. 7, also offer crucial information about the mental health toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on children, regardless of whether they had personally been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19. An alarming 40% of teens surveyed — those who had Covid-19 and those who did not have it — reported feeling worried, sad, or unhappy. These mental health symptoms are real, but the data indicate that, more often than not, they are not a consequence of direct Covid-19 infection. Among those who did have Covid-19, poor mental health before getting Covid-19 was an important risk factor for having multiple long Covid symptoms after three months, highlighting the importance of accounting for mental health conditions in studies of pediatric long Covid.

Framed this way, restrictions on children should not be maintained in the name of preventing long Covid.

Fear has had a strong hold on Americans for more than two years, and it is a hard thing to let go of. But we owe it to children to follow the science: Children are more likely to suffer from pandemic-associated symptoms than from infection-associated symptoms. School policies should reflect this reality.


Thanks for posting. It’s good confirmation of what many of us have been saying—based on the science—for over a year now: COVID is not a serious threat to children; it’s less of a threat than many other risks to children that we accept and live with every day; and many of the mitigation measures may be worse in terms of unintended consequences.

Remember folks—your child will get COVID if they haven’t already. Common sense tells us that we can’t stop our children from catching a highly-contagious coronavirus that’s endemic to the population at this point. And if common sense isn’t enough, the CDC has already admitted that “essentially everybody” is going to get COVID. So what, exactly, are all the potentially harmful mitigation measures for? To delay the inevitable? To what end? Hospitals are not overwhelmed and children hospitalized because of COVID are an immeasurably small percentage of hospital patients.

Long COVID may or may not present issues for all of us; none of us are going to be able to avoid it over the long term. We have to go back to living normal life and letting our children do the same.


I think mitigation measures are there, for the most part, to protect the adults who keep the school open and running. If you want school, you sort of need to protect the people who are, essentially, “school.”


Those people were first in line to get the vaccine. They have now been vaccinated for a long time. If they choose not to vaccinate, are we going to stay in masks and distanced forever? When do we draw the line?