Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Covid broke a lot of brains, and not all of them were on the right.
There was sound data from the earliest days of the pandemic (remember, Europe was 4 weeks ahead of N America with every wave) that showed children contracted and spread covid at much lower rates than adults, and much lower rates than they spread colds and flu. Early data also showed that schools were not major vectors of contagion.
That data was ignored by Canadians who spouted ‘common-sense facts’ about kids being filthy spreaders of sickness. These were the same people who said kids are resilient and will bounce back from any interruption to in-class teaching. But we already knew from historical research that many kids do not bounce back from interruptions in learning, and that even a few weeks of learning loss can have permanent impacts on educational outcomes. Which is why child welfare advocates implored authorities to keep in-person schools open at all costs. Their pleas largely fell on deaf ears.
Once the pandemic became politicized, angry and frightened people of all political alignments ignored any science that didn’t fit their preferred narrative.
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Cliff, I would agree with you if that was all there was to it. Unfortunately, even though kids didn't generally suffer from symptoms, they could still spread COVID to others and represented a risk to immunocompromised folks (like their teachers who were mandated back to work).