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The Right Coast
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No Way to Grow Up – The New York Times

By Thomas A. Smith

The widespread availability of vaccines since last spring also raises an ethical question: Should children suffer to protect unvaccinated adults who are voluntarily accepting Covid risk for themselves and increasing everybody else s risk, too? Right now, the United States is effectively saying yes.

To be clear, there are some hard decisions and unavoidable trade-offs. Covid can lead to hospitalization or worse for a small percentage of vaccinated adults, especially those who are elderly or immunocompromised, and allowing children to resume normal life could create additional risk. The Omicron surge may well heighten that risk, leaving schools with no attractive options.

For the past two years, however, many communities in the U.S. have not really grappled with the trade-off. They have tried to minimize the spread of Covid a worthy goal absent other factors rather than minimizing the damage that Covid does to society. They have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults, often without acknowledging the dilemma or assessing which decisions lead to less overall harm.

via www.nytimes.com

Half-right is pretty good for the NYT. You could alternatively encourage precautions among those at risk — the obese, the elderly, the immunocompromised — and let the kids get on with their lives. Strangely, inexplicably, this is not discussed in this otherwise admirable op-ed. The medics behind the Great Barrington declaration advised this, but they were banned from YouTube, twitter, and so on, so I guess they must be conspiracy theorists.

BTW it looks like LWJ has the Omicron scariant. She’ll have to get tested but she has all the symptoms. Which means I will probably get it. If I die, I will let you know. And all this, in spite of being double-jabbed. But I will get boosted as per my formerly cute university’s ukase. Not to mention LWJ’s. Who knows, it may even work for me. But either way at least I will know I’m contributing to the finances of our current and future overlords.