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He didn't say they were "immune". He said they were "almost immune", which is certainly unscientific but is another way to say they are at very low risk. Trump

He didn't say they were "immune". He said they were "almost immune", which is certainly unscientific but is another way to say they are at very low risk. Trump was often reckless with his words, but you're being pedantic.

MathYouF 5y ago
Yes, the wisdom of his statements jumps from "utterly nonsensical" to "occasionally somewhat correct" if you interpret what he says with the same leniency you might a 12 year old. For example, he probably meant immune by the definition "protected from" with the implied thing being "serious medical harm" rather than "infection". I agree it's disingenuous to call him a deliberate liar here when the truth is he just speaks with the vocabulary and scientific acumen of a candid 6th grader. The real shame is triplicate here: 1. That we must settle for a president with those verbal skills 2. That his verbal skills are perhaps more reflective of the average American than we'd like to believe 3. That people with sometimes exceptional verbal skills and education can somehow not comprehend some of the simple truths that he can (children being at extremely low personal health risk should've been obvious to everyone after the first few months of the pandemic) And in my opinion, the well educated being deluded into a false perception of reality is a lot more startling of a fact than that a person who has an obviously mediocre command of his native language and paltry understanding of scientific fundamentals said something that was incoherent and not technically correct when trying to verbalise his opinions.
XorNot 5y ago
"Almost immune" is either wrong or nonsense, and they were still right to remove it. Children can get COVID, they just don't get a high rate of complications. They do get sick, but not severely. That is, in no way, "immune". I'm not "almost immune" to the common cold because it doesn't make me very sick.
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hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
But they're not immune at all. They can get and transmit the virus as well as anyone else.
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herbst 5y ago
It's still wrong, what is your point?
- trentnix 5y ago
  It's not still wrong, because it was never wrong in the first place. The risk to children is exceptionally low as he pointed out, imprecisely as it was. If you delineate between generally healthy children and those with known co-morbidities, it's likely the risk was much, much lower than that. I'm guessing hindsight will tell us the cost-benefit of sending kids to school significantly outweighs the cost-benefit of the school shutdowns. And that's not even mentioning the actual effectiveness of school shutdowns in restricting the spread of Covid. We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not. In time I expect the narrative will turn to recognize that the policy consequences of "almost immune" would have been much preferred to the "sky is falling" rhetoric that resulted in schools that were closed for more than a year and the resulting educational and developmental damage that has caused.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Kids ain't immune. It's not only stupid but outright dangerous to assume that.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    I find your responses baffling, because on one hand I agree with your main point that Covid is just not very dangerous to children, but on the other, you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers. Children obviously interact with a ton of different adults throughout their day, and "almost immune" would definitely argue to me that these kids wouldn't be a dangerous coronavirus vector, which is false.
    - trentnix 5y ago
      you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers On the contrary, I specifically said: "We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not."

MathYouF 5y ago

Yes, the wisdom of his statements jumps from "utterly nonsensical" to "occasionally somewhat correct" if you interpret what he says with the same leniency you might a 12 year old. For example, he probably meant immune by the definition "protected from" with the implied thing being "serious medical harm" rather than "infection". I agree it's disingenuous to call him a deliberate liar here when the truth is he just speaks with the vocabulary and scientific acumen of a candid 6th grader. The real shame is triplicate here: 1. That we must settle for a president with those verbal skills 2. That his verbal skills are perhaps more reflective of the average American than we'd like to believe 3. That people with sometimes exceptional verbal skills and education can somehow not comprehend some of the simple truths that he can (children being at extremely low personal health risk should've been obvious to everyone after the first few months of the pandemic) And in my opinion, the well educated being deluded into a false perception of reality is a lot more startling of a fact than that a person who has an obviously mediocre command of his native language and paltry understanding of scientific fundamentals said something that was incoherent and not technically correct when trying to verbalise his opinions.

XorNot 5y ago

"Almost immune" is either wrong or nonsense, and they were still right to remove it. Children can get COVID, they just don't get a high rate of complications. They do get sick, but not severely. That is, in no way, "immune". I'm not "almost immune" to the common cold because it doesn't make me very sick.

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hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

But they're not immune at all. They can get and transmit the virus as well as anyone else.

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herbst 5y ago

It's still wrong, what is your point?

trentnix 5y ago
It's not still wrong, because it was never wrong in the first place. The risk to children is exceptionally low as he pointed out, imprecisely as it was. If you delineate between generally healthy children and those with known co-morbidities, it's likely the risk was much, much lower than that. I'm guessing hindsight will tell us the cost-benefit of sending kids to school significantly outweighs the cost-benefit of the school shutdowns. And that's not even mentioning the actual effectiveness of school shutdowns in restricting the spread of Covid. We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not. In time I expect the narrative will turn to recognize that the policy consequences of "almost immune" would have been much preferred to the "sky is falling" rhetoric that resulted in schools that were closed for more than a year and the resulting educational and developmental damage that has caused.
- herbst 5y ago
  Kids ain't immune. It's not only stupid but outright dangerous to assume that.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I find your responses baffling, because on one hand I agree with your main point that Covid is just not very dangerous to children, but on the other, you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers. Children obviously interact with a ton of different adults throughout their day, and "almost immune" would definitely argue to me that these kids wouldn't be a dangerous coronavirus vector, which is false.
  - trentnix 5y ago
    you keep ignoring all the responses that point out that the primary reason for things like school shutdowns was to protect others from child carriers On the contrary, I specifically said: "We're already seeing very little difference in infection and death outcomes among children from areas that shut down their schools for a long period of time to those that did not."