4 ms·

The very first sentence of my very first comment was: Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://

The very first sentence of my very first comment was: Only 1 in 200,000 children in the US were hospitalized with covid in the week ending July 31st: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html

jasonlaramburu 5y ago
As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, looking at nationwide data for the US is misleading. The US is really a collection of small countries (states) each with its own distinct public health policies and cultures. Vaccination rates in adults vary widely between states. You need to look at states like Mississippi which is currently in the grip of an epidemic and has low vaccination rates.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  It's not misleading. This is just you looking for excuses to dismiss evidence that debunks your position. We can get strong indications about the danger a variant poses to each age group from looking at national data, notwithstanding individual states having "distinct public health policies and cultures". The variance in public health policy/culture and vaccination rates across states does not make national data meaningless. When a particular variant of a virus has massively proliferated across the US, and caused very few deaths in children, a reasonable observer concludes the risks it poses to children is slight. You're picking individual states, and then making inflammatory insinuations about the significance of the most alarming statistic you can find about them, while insisting that national data not be taken into account. This is just bad science, focused on reaching a desired conclusion. What non-cherry-picked data shows is that the delta variant was the dominant variant in the US during the week ending July 31st, when there was only 250 covid positive testing children hospitalized in the entire US. The data from England also shows that the risk delta poses to children is extremely low. Idiosyncracies of England's public health policy and culture cannot make such a huge impact on covid survivability that it's going to turn a virus that is dangerous to children into one that causes zero or close to zero deaths nation-wide. Remember that across all of these jurisdictions, almost all children are unvaccinated, and vaccination status is the only health-care-mediated factor that could conceivably make a huge impact on survivability.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    >250 children hospitalized That was over 2 weeks ago. As of August 15th there are now 1,900 children hospitalized with COVID in the US. There are many states that are just starting to experience the delta surge. The US delta wave is not projected to peak until September/October. How many more children than 250 must get admitted to hospital for you to accept there is sufficient risk for masking? How have you determined this number? Also, if you're going to compare outcomes between England and US you absolutely have to compare policy and vax rate. Nearly 90% of adults in UK have had at least one shot compared to 70% in the US. In some individual states it's more like 50%. This is why per capita caseload in the US is significantly higher. Higher caseload means a greater number of children will get sick.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      >>That was over 2 weeks ago. As of August 15th there are now 1,900 children hospitalized with COVID in the US. There are many states that are just starting to experience the delta surge. The US delta wave is not projected to peak until September/October. How much of that hospitalization is driven by over-concerned parents being driven by exactly the kind of hysteria that we've seen fanned in this discussion, to admit their children when they get sick? How much of it is driven by RSV, which is surging: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-hospitalizations-covid-delta/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-ho... >>Combined with a highly unusual spike in the number of children admitted with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a flu-like illness that usually strikes in the winter, and parainfluenza viruses — and in some cases, co-infections with covid-19 — many children’s hospitals are overwhelmed. Something similar is happening in New Zealand, where there is no covid, as children pay an immunity debt: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch... The fact is, there have been only 292 deaths with positive covid status, in the 5-18 age group in the US throughout the entirety of the covid epidemic: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3 https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-... That is not a large enough number to justify masking tens of millions of children for much of every day, for two years, when the most likely effect of masking is going to only be to delay contraction of the virus, rather than prevent it altogether. >>Also, if you're going to compare outcomes between England and US you absolutely have to compare policy and vax rate. Nearly 90% of adults in UK have had at least one shot compared to 70% in the US. In some individual states it's more like 50%. This is why per capita caseload in the US is significantly higher. Higher caseload means a greater number of children will get sick. I would consider it if the number of children dying from covid delta wasn't ~0 in the entirety of England with a population 55 million. That tells us the risk is extremely small, and won't become significant even if the case load increases by several fold.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, looking at nationwide data for the US is misleading. The US is really a collection of small countries (states) each with its own distinct public health policies and cultures. Vaccination rates in adults vary widely between states. You need to look at states like Mississippi which is currently in the grip of an epidemic and has low vaccination rates.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
It's not misleading. This is just you looking for excuses to dismiss evidence that debunks your position. We can get strong indications about the danger a variant poses to each age group from looking at national data, notwithstanding individual states having "distinct public health policies and cultures". The variance in public health policy/culture and vaccination rates across states does not make national data meaningless. When a particular variant of a virus has massively proliferated across the US, and caused very few deaths in children, a reasonable observer concludes the risks it poses to children is slight. You're picking individual states, and then making inflammatory insinuations about the significance of the most alarming statistic you can find about them, while insisting that national data not be taken into account. This is just bad science, focused on reaching a desired conclusion. What non-cherry-picked data shows is that the delta variant was the dominant variant in the US during the week ending July 31st, when there was only 250 covid positive testing children hospitalized in the entire US. The data from England also shows that the risk delta poses to children is extremely low. Idiosyncracies of England's public health policy and culture cannot make such a huge impact on covid survivability that it's going to turn a virus that is dangerous to children into one that causes zero or close to zero deaths nation-wide. Remember that across all of these jurisdictions, almost all children are unvaccinated, and vaccination status is the only health-care-mediated factor that could conceivably make a huge impact on survivability.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  >250 children hospitalized That was over 2 weeks ago. As of August 15th there are now 1,900 children hospitalized with COVID in the US. There are many states that are just starting to experience the delta surge. The US delta wave is not projected to peak until September/October. How many more children than 250 must get admitted to hospital for you to accept there is sufficient risk for masking? How have you determined this number? Also, if you're going to compare outcomes between England and US you absolutely have to compare policy and vax rate. Nearly 90% of adults in UK have had at least one shot compared to 70% in the US. In some individual states it's more like 50%. This is why per capita caseload in the US is significantly higher. Higher caseload means a greater number of children will get sick.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    >>That was over 2 weeks ago. As of August 15th there are now 1,900 children hospitalized with COVID in the US. There are many states that are just starting to experience the delta surge. The US delta wave is not projected to peak until September/October. How much of that hospitalization is driven by over-concerned parents being driven by exactly the kind of hysteria that we've seen fanned in this discussion, to admit their children when they get sick? How much of it is driven by RSV, which is surging: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-hospitalizations-covid-delta/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-ho... >>Combined with a highly unusual spike in the number of children admitted with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a flu-like illness that usually strikes in the winter, and parainfluenza viruses — and in some cases, co-infections with covid-19 — many children’s hospitals are overwhelmed. Something similar is happening in New Zealand, where there is no covid, as children pay an immunity debt: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-children-falling-ill-in-high-numbers-due-to-covid-immunity-debt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch... The fact is, there have been only 292 deaths with positive covid status, in the 5-18 age group in the US throughout the entirety of the covid epidemic: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3 https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-... That is not a large enough number to justify masking tens of millions of children for much of every day, for two years, when the most likely effect of masking is going to only be to delay contraction of the virus, rather than prevent it altogether. >>Also, if you're going to compare outcomes between England and US you absolutely have to compare policy and vax rate. Nearly 90% of adults in UK have had at least one shot compared to 70% in the US. In some individual states it's more like 50%. This is why per capita caseload in the US is significantly higher. Higher caseload means a greater number of children will get sick. I would consider it if the number of children dying from covid delta wasn't ~0 in the entirety of England with a population 55 million. That tells us the risk is extremely small, and won't become significant even if the case load increases by several fold.