It now seems pretty apparent that for children, covid-19 is less lethal than chickenpox. The CDC reports that 8 children age 1-14 have died from covid (out of the first ~60,000 US deaths), compared to 50-100 children who died every year from chickenpox prior to the adoption of a vaccine (and thousands who were hospitalized).
And yet, parents deliberately exposed their children to chickenpox for generations because they wanted them to acquire immunity and we knew that it was much more dangerous to get it as an adult. Isn’t the exact same thing true of covid, and to an even greater extent given that covid is actually much more lethal to adults than chickenpox?
The smart thing would be to set up summer camps where kids will be exposed to coronavirus, and they can acquire immunity away from the threat of infecting adults, and then come back to school in the fall with complete safety. The camps could be staffed by people who have immunuty already, and if you excluded children who were already immunocompromised, you’d probably have less than 100 deaths across the entire country. Schools could reopen immediately and completely, and an entire generation of people could participate fully in society without fear of infecting themselves or others.
Nah that's too easy, Cuomo said this is the new normal so we have to change everything about our lives and never gather in large groups again. Forever. It's the new normal.
