[kurthr]

This would be accurate, if only those school age children didn't have older teachers or parents. Although children are rarely (though in some cases fatal) symptomatic there is evidence that they spread COVID, just as they spread many other colds and flus every school year. This is not a virus that should make us question the germ theory of disease. I understand the want for children's education and emotional well being, but that shouldn't require other adults to be hospitalized or die.

We already had hospitals in many states fill-up and turn away other ICU patents, because they were full.

When would such a scientific decision have been made? Certainly, some time after October 2020, so maybe January or February of 2021? Many schools were re-opening at lower density and with testing by early 2021.

Now that we have a vaccine and adults can choose to be immunized (and/or immunize older children) that's less of a question and more of a family decision, but in May of 2020 there was much we didn't know. Almost certainly, opening schools would have sped up the spread/development of variants.

Flip it around and ask, what if the virus was only deadly/debilitating to 10% young children, and parents/businesses wanted to mandate sending children to school so their parents (with <0.01% death rate) could work? Would that have been responsible?

[AndrewBissell]

> This would be accurate, if only those school age children didn't have older teachers or parents.

Then this should have been handled on a case-by-case basis. What share of families actually have an elderly or otherwise at-risk relative living at home with them? What share of teachers were actually in a high risk category? These questions were easily answerable by the middle of 2020 but all such nuance was thrown out in favor of "COVID is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to EVERYONE and we have to shut EVERYTHING (except Wal-Mart, naturally) down to stop it!"

> This is not a virus that should make us question the germ theory of disease. I understand the want for children's education and emotional well being, but that shouldn't require other adults to be hospitalized or die.

How is this not an argument that one could make in favor of closing schools and shutting down society to prevent the spread of influenza? The difference is just one of degree, not kind.

[kurthr]

Yearly flu vaccines are available for elderly and high risk populations. Typically all personnel (medical, orderly, food service) in hospitals are required to take flu vaccines (as well a TB and others) every year. Not available with COVID until Jan-March.

With a death rate (using ICU intervention and the latest treatments) death rates in developed countries are still 5-15x higher than typical flus, and hospitalization rates are more than 10x higher. It also appears to be much more (r0 2x higher) transmissible (especially the delta variant). Those are differences in degree that create difference in kind. They cause the overload of ICUs, preventing treatment of other diseases and increasing all death rates!

Influenza does not normally kill 600k people in the US (with masks, social distancing, remote schooling, etc the flu effectively didn't exist this year). Hospitals don't normally run out of respirators and morgue space. These are all well reported and documented.

Three months after the publication you site, the nuance you're looking for was available (in Jan-Feb) when many schools partially opened (with lower density and masks). So all I see is a straw man.

[AndrewBissell]

> Hospitals don't normally run out of respirators and morgue space. These are all well reported and documented.

I'm surprised people still believe the whole "overloaded hospitals" thing, it's a canard driven by selective reporting from a few very under-resourced jurisdictions like Lombardy and low-income NYC. Overall hospital occupancy was lower through 2020 than it was in prior years because people were scared away from hospitals and staff were furloughed.

The delta variant is a totally unsurprising development in the evolution of a virus: more transmissible and less lethal.