4 ms·

Where do I fit if I wear a mask when I'm indoors because I feel compelled to try to prevent my children, who are ineligible for the vaccine, from catching COVID

Where do I fit if I wear a mask when I'm indoors because I feel compelled to try to prevent my children, who are ineligible for the vaccine, from catching COVID-19 due to any failure on my part?

650 5y ago
How much risk do you think your children have? I believe it's the same as the flu according to recent stats.
- scruple 5y ago
  > How much risk do you think your children have? Very little, probably, but I don't think anyone can say. I've read the same statistics as you. But our understanding is immature, no? For example, we're seeing now that young people, who were infected with COVID-19 but who had extremely mild cases / symptoms, are now experiencing / developing so-called long COVID. Here's a piece in the NY Times from yesterday [0] and similarly in Yahoo! News (not behind the paywall) [1] . In addition, pediatric cases of COVID-19 are currently on the rise. Here's an excerpt: > An April study by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that 9.8% of 2-11-year-olds and 13% of 12-16-year-olds infected with the coronavirus reported continuing symptoms five weeks later. After 12 weeks, rates remained significant: 7.4% in the younger group and 8.2% in the older group. That sounds much worse than the flu: > In another U.K. study, 4.4% of 1,734 children had symptoms more than four weeks post-COVID, over four times as high as the percentage with symptoms four weeks after non-COVID illnesses like flu. So, this aspect of the pandemic actually is much worse than the flu. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine#some-children-who-had-mild-covid-are-facing-confounding-long-term-symptoms https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/covid-delta-va... [1]: https://news.yahoo.com/really-scary-kids-struggle-long-115416939.html https://news.yahoo.com/really-scary-kids-struggle-long-11541... edit/ Typos and words.
  - horrified 5y ago
    NYT is paywalled, but all articles about it that I have read are a mix of scary anecdotes without statistics ("Johnny was unable to remember his biology lessons" - how often does that happen" and statistics about "x% experience 'such' ongoing symptoms", where "such" is sneakily a mix of severe and non severe symptoms that can be lumped together under "long covid" to make it sound scarier. Not saying there is no risk, but I wish there were some clearer statistics about it. There should be enough data by now. I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now.
    - scruple 5y ago
      > I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now. I sure don't have a high degree of trust in our officials to communicate clearly. Not after the last 19 months.
      - horrified 5y ago
        They seemed very keen to communicate high risk things, though.
umvi 5y ago
In my opinion you fall under the first group of fervent mask wearers. The key words being "feel compelled". Group 2 certainly doesn't feel compelled, and group 3 only wears masks around kids if the other adults are also wearing masks around kids, but not because they feel compelled to by some internal source.
- scruple 5y ago
  But I'm not a "fervent mask wearer." It covers my mouth and nose for 10 minutes while I grocery shop once or twice a week. Because that's basically the only indoor exposure I routinely have to the crowd of people who are both unvaccinated and "fervently don't wear a mask." I don't wear it when I'm with friends or family who are like-minded. I don't wear it when I'm outdoors, including places with medium-sized crowds like the beach this past weekend. Etc. edit/ Words.
  - umvi 5y ago
    fair enough, the 3 groups I summarized cover the most general cases I've seen. There is certainly more nuance in real life than can be captured in a HN's comment's worth of categorization.
horrified 5y ago
You fit into the "uninformed" group, as there is actually little risk for children.

Where do I fit if I wear a mask when I'm indoors because I feel compelled to try to prevent my children, who are ineligible for the vaccine, from catching COVID-19 due to any failure on my part?

650 5y ago

How much risk do you think your children have? I believe it's the same as the flu according to recent stats.

scruple 5y ago
> How much risk do you think your children have? Very little, probably, but I don't think anyone can say. I've read the same statistics as you. But our understanding is immature, no? For example, we're seeing now that young people, who were infected with COVID-19 but who had extremely mild cases / symptoms, are now experiencing / developing so-called long COVID. Here's a piece in the NY Times from yesterday [0] and similarly in Yahoo! News (not behind the paywall) [1] . In addition, pediatric cases of COVID-19 are currently on the rise. Here's an excerpt: > An April study by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that 9.8% of 2-11-year-olds and 13% of 12-16-year-olds infected with the coronavirus reported continuing symptoms five weeks later. After 12 weeks, rates remained significant: 7.4% in the younger group and 8.2% in the older group. That sounds much worse than the flu: > In another U.K. study, 4.4% of 1,734 children had symptoms more than four weeks post-COVID, over four times as high as the percentage with symptoms four weeks after non-COVID illnesses like flu. So, this aspect of the pandemic actually is much worse than the flu. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine#some-children-who-had-mild-covid-are-facing-confounding-long-term-symptoms https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/covid-delta-va... [1]: https://news.yahoo.com/really-scary-kids-struggle-long-115416939.html https://news.yahoo.com/really-scary-kids-struggle-long-11541... edit/ Typos and words.
- horrified 5y ago
  NYT is paywalled, but all articles about it that I have read are a mix of scary anecdotes without statistics ("Johnny was unable to remember his biology lessons" - how often does that happen" and statistics about "x% experience 'such' ongoing symptoms", where "such" is sneakily a mix of severe and non severe symptoms that can be lumped together under "long covid" to make it sound scarier. Not saying there is no risk, but I wish there were some clearer statistics about it. There should be enough data by now. I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now.
  - scruple 5y ago
    > I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now. I sure don't have a high degree of trust in our officials to communicate clearly. Not after the last 19 months.
    - horrified 5y ago
      They seemed very keen to communicate high risk things, though.

umvi 5y ago

In my opinion you fall under the first group of fervent mask wearers. The key words being "feel compelled". Group 2 certainly doesn't feel compelled, and group 3 only wears masks around kids if the other adults are also wearing masks around kids, but not because they feel compelled to by some internal source.

scruple 5y ago
But I'm not a "fervent mask wearer." It covers my mouth and nose for 10 minutes while I grocery shop once or twice a week. Because that's basically the only indoor exposure I routinely have to the crowd of people who are both unvaccinated and "fervently don't wear a mask." I don't wear it when I'm with friends or family who are like-minded. I don't wear it when I'm outdoors, including places with medium-sized crowds like the beach this past weekend. Etc. edit/ Words.
- umvi 5y ago
  fair enough, the 3 groups I summarized cover the most general cases I've seen. There is certainly more nuance in real life than can be captured in a HN's comment's worth of categorization.

horrified 5y ago

You fit into the "uninformed" group, as there is actually little risk for children.