A New US/Japan Variant to Watch
forbes.comWe need to actively and consciously include naunce in the warnings about the threat COVID poses in stories like this.
There is a vast gulf between how the public perceives the threat of COVID, and the reality of that threat.
As per Bill Maher, registered Democrats in particular vastly over-estimate the risk it poses:
https://twitter.com/reneeonline/status/1439369640937930752?s...
The reality is that the risk is largely dependent on a few risk factors: age, obesity and vaccination status.
For children, the risk is close to zero (as per the CDC, the IFR is 0.002%, or on par with that posed by a bee sting). For the elderly, that is 70 plus, the IFR goes up to 5%, and it is higher still for subset of the elderly who are institutionalized.
The vaccinated also face a vastly lower risk from the virus.
Why this matters is that an over-estimation of the risk for low-risk demographics has led to behavioral patterns that are net harmful. For example, the climate of fear around COVID has maybe reduced the very minute risk the virus poses to children, at the cost of an unprecedented rise in childhood obesity:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037a3.htm?s_cid=mm...
"Among a cohort of 432,302 persons aged 2–19, rate of body mass index increase approximately doubled during pandemic compared to prepandemic period. Persons w/ prepandemic overweight or obesity & younger school-aged children experienced largest increases."
The response to COVID, with respect to children, is going to cause far more deaths in the long run than it mitigates.
> age, obesity and vaccination status
Not really. Nobody actually knows what causes Covid to develop symptoms in some patients and not in others, despite being similar people.
There is of course a correlation between those who are healthy vs. those who are unhealthy. But even healthy, young people are dying from Covid.
This is because COVID-19's unusual feature is that it rewrites itself upon infection, which is dissimilar to other coronaviruses (as I understand it).
So of course age, obesity, etc. are all "risk factors" because they're always risk factors. However it's much harder with Covid to say "people with X health situation or Y pre-existing condition are the highest risk" because frankly Covid affects people differently, seemingly at random.
Further, the mutation rate is quite high and new variants are coming out all the time. I don't think it's an overreaction to be worried.
That's why such a large net is being cast, though. Covid is dangerous in that people think "I'm healthy and young, I'm at low risk" when 1) Being young and healthy isn't a guarantee, and 2) vaccination benefits everyone, not just yourself, but people still think they don't need it.
> The response to COVID, with respect to children, is going to cause far more deaths in the long run than it mitigates.
Because people are sedentary more? The sooner the pandemic ends the sooner people will get back to normal. This is temporary; children aren't going to die because of getting fat from sitting inside more than playing outside for a few years.
That's surely the overreaction here.
>>So of course age, obesity, etc. are all "risk factors" because they're always risk factors. However it's much harder with Covid to say "people with X health situation or Y pre-existing condition are the highest risk" because frankly Covid affects people differently, seemingly at random.
That's how all risk factors, for all diseases, work. It's a simple statistical correlation that gives someone a better than random chance of predicting what risk they face from a disease.
Outliers and unknowns do not nullify the utility of knowing the risk factors.
So despite your claim, COVID is not some extraordinary phenomenon with respect to how one ought to manage the risks it poses.
>>I don't think it's an overreaction to be worried.
One is not limited to the choices of not worrying about COVID, and one limiting specific COVID responses that are net-harmful. One can worry about COVID, and try to understand that the risk and response should be specific to each demographic group.
>>This is temporary; children aren't going to die because of getting fat from sitting inside more than playing outside for a few years.
Not true at all. Childhood obesity is a strong predictor of adult obesity. The behavioral patterns adopted during the COVID era are therefore going to lead a huge number of deaths, by raising future adult obesity rates.
It "rewrites itself upon infection"? I'm not aware of any such mechanisms, could you elaborate on that?
Even if children are at less risk, their teachers aren't.
1. Children shouldn't have had their development and future health jeopardized to protect teachers.
2. Children are not major spreaders of COVID: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/147/4/e202004...
3. Even if children were big spreaders, they could have been allowed to continue having a social life without exposing teachers to them.