[xscott]

I agree with almost everything you say, but calling people disingenuous is lame.

If it's your kid, you hug them, they touch everything, they drool on everything. It doesn't matter if they're slightly contagious or heavily contagious, you're going to get saturated by them regardless.

So without any "disingenousness", I claim vaccinations help slow the spread for normal interactions, but it probably doesn't help much to stop kids spreading it to their parents.

[Exmoor]

It's interesting that for almost two years now I've seen the same "common knowledge" repeated over and over. "Kids are germ factories" and variations on that theme. But watching the pandemic and how its effected children has actually made me reconsider that notion. With the caveat that Omicron data may change this, we have tons of data that clearly shows that small children spread COVID19 significantly less than teenagers and adults. It's hard to know if this is something specific to COVID or if other respiratory viruses are also spread less efficiently (but still spread) by kids than your co-workers, spouse, etc.

To speak specifically to your point, the data I've seen indicates that vaccinations are much more effective in preventing infection (and therefore spread) in younger people. That likely compounds with an adults vaccination, so a vaccinated kid is likely significantly less likely to bring an infection home and infect an adult.

[xscott]

Heh, I guess all of reality has two sides nowadays. For every person who notices how parents of small children seem to show up to the office with pink eye and catch many more colds, there's a parent who's certain their little angels are germ-free.

I'm not sure "common knowledge" has meaning any more considering that every topic is now polarizing. Anyone will argue anything and then refer to some unspecified "data" they've seen. Moreover, I doubt parents can be objective about this considering there's an evolutionary advantage to not being repulsed by their offspring's illnesses.

> the data I've seen indicates that vaccinations are much more effective in preventing infection (and therefore spread)

I don't even disagree with that. All I'm saying is that parents have a much higher level of exposure to their own children than pretty much anyone else in the world. You could reduce transmission of children by 90%, but that doesn't mean much to the parents who have 100X the exposure to them. We can talk viral load all you want, but at some point they'll cough in your face and the virus is going to start replicating inside of you.

[encoderer]

I think it’s because kids are notorious flu spreaders. They pass it much easier than adults.