Fully vaccinated people can get Covid, but it’s extremely rare. In Michigan (where it’s relatively easy to be exposed) there have been 246 cases out of 1.8 million.
Nationally, this week the CDC counts 28 hospitalizations of kids 5-17. That’s down from a high of 65 in January.
Speculation becomes increasingly unnecessary as hospitalizations and deaths drop. The current seven-day average of Covid hospitalizations in California is under 2,500, down from over 22,000 three months ago.
In San Diego County, where people ages 0-19 represent 27% of the population, and where there have been a total of 272,000 confirmed covid cases since the pandemic began, there have been no deaths at all ages 0-9, and exactly two in the age group 10-19 – over the entire period of time.
The B.1.1.7 variant is already dominant in the US in general and California in particular, so the current trends reflect that. I think Michigan and Minnesota are doing worse than California for the usual reasons.
And just to add - by unnecessarily exposing school kids to covid we increase the chances to generating new variants which might overcome our current vaccines. Wearing mask longer will increase our chances to have a longer effective vaccine (that’s also why the situation in Brazil is so dangerous for the whole world)
Government intervention in Sweden has increased to the point of forcing restaurants to be closed and empty by 8:30 pm. A result of the famous Swedish Covid-19 policy being a disastrous failure.
Indoor dining until 8:30 is less restrictive than lots of places that are doing worse. Certainly they failed in some respects, notably protecting old people in care homes, but the UK, Italy, the US, Spain, and France have all had more deaths per capita.
There’s a difference between getting sick and dying. Let’s hope that the new variants don’t lead to deaths in the 10-19 age group. That’s a very unhappy speculation on your part.
Kids get colds. Kids get the flu. You can’t prevent that. Some kids will get sick, but let’s hope they get over it without dying.
The Swedish Public Health Agency thought other countries were overreacting. Given the country’s relatively lax approach, it’s no surprise that their per-capita death rate was three times that of Denmark. To me the more interesting question is why France and Spain did worse despite much tighter restrictions.
My thoughts why France and Spain did not great are that Spain was similar to Italy the second country in Europe who was hit hard very early in the pandemic when there was little knowledge about it (afterwards they did not too bad compared to other countries in Europe). France had during the second wave a different lockdown strategy than most other countries for a long time with less restrictions - especially schools were open for a long time (there were a lot of demonstrations from school kids because they didn’t feel safe but no remote learning was offered)
There is also emerging research showing lasting, severe, and complex health implications in those who have had the virus and lived.
Wearing masks seems to be a pretty low ask of people, given the potential impact of possibly transmitting the virus (as well as possibly incubating and transmitting a new variant).
Completely agree and just to put some perspective how many people are getting long term effects - we are talking about millions of people in the US alone
But even this small fraction of the total number of people who’ve had covid (31 million in the US) do get over it eventually. Haven’t you had a cold or bronchitis or the like that went on for weeks? I have, but eventually those things went away. And I once had a lung infection that took months to go away. Anything that goes away completely in a few weeks or months is unpleasant, but not something to elicit great fear (such as cancer). And again, although the number seems large, the fraction of “long haulers” (10%) is really pretty small. I feel badly for those unfortunate people, but it’s good to know that at least the long-haul after-effects of the covid do eventually go away
And by the way, I’ve been a supporter and active participant in mask-wearing since the beginning. I only raised the question earlier as to whether that requirement too couldn’t be removed (so to speak) once we reach herd immunity, which it appears the governor believes will be in mid-June. I have yet to hear or read a really solid scientific answer to that question, just negative response to the question itself.
I respect other’s opinions on these and other subjects, pro and con, but we can remain civil in our dialogue.
Actually, there are still many unknowns about “long Covid,” including what percentage of infected people get it, how long after infection symptoms appear, what all the symptoms are, how much the severity of lingering symptoms relates to the severity of the initial infection, and how long it takes to recover (it’s not clear at this point that everyone does). I’ve read reports of people whose initial infections were asymptomatic getting serious problems months later.
But when enough people are vaccinated that community spread is nonexistent or negligible, masks will be unnecessary.
This is absolutely unclear so far if it will go away ever. There are many studies ongoing and a number of them could indicate that especially brain changes (which happen to many of the patients) will stay forever and will have a significant impact on their lives. But there are also long lasting (potentially life-long) effects on lung and kidney in particular. And your comparison to cold or bronchitis couldn’t be further off (and shows that you seem not to realize how different this virus effects different organs/parts of patients. So no, it is far from sure that for many these effects will ever go away complete and 10% (this included also asympomatic cases) is not a small number.
