Yet another Op Ed
Three days ago the Washington Post published an Op Ed titled “It’s time for children to finally get back to normal life”.
Many of you, understandably, have lots of questions. So I thought I would provide a reaction.
Disclaimer: I didn’t know how to do this without sounding like a professor. This was the easiest and most straightforward way to write this blog post. So, this looks like one of my students’ papers with edits/comments/reactions. In the document, the colors are meaningful. And I tried to associate a comment box with every yellow and red color.
GREEN (I agree);
YELLOW (I agree and I disagree); and
RED (I disagree).
As you can tell, I do agree with some of their statements. However, I also disagree with a lot. Overall,
They cherry picked studies, which doesn’t give the full story. As scientists we have a responsibility to give the full story.
They ignored fundamental epidemiological concepts, which is surprising given some authors are epidemiologists.
They ignore guidance from pediatricians, which is confusing for the layman. And, quite frankly, could lead to vaccine hesitancy for parents.
Here we go…
And the links to the scientific studies I mention throughout the article…
Long COVID19: low prevalence (here) vs. high prevalence (here)
Vaccines reduce transmission between 70-95%: There are about 15 studies in this now. I’ve summarized them in my vaccine table here.
2020-2021 Flu Season: 1 pediatric death recorded (here)
Love, YLE
The educator in me loves this. Thank you for providing your expertise. Oh, and I love how you called out the rhetoric "our children deserve to have their needs put first." That line is hilarious!
Thank you so much for putting this information together. So many times someone reads an article in a newspaper and they take it for being correct. Just because someone gets something published doesn't make it right, or them correct in their conclusions. I LOVE you gave corrections and notes like a professor would. I wish you could submit it to the WP for them to post it as a response to the original article.
"our children deserve to have their needs put first".... I missed the part of the article where the authors found a study (or did one for themselves) asking what these kids need... there's a bunch of assumptions on what they need without so much as anyone seeming to ASK a kid. Mine are happy to wear their masks because they don't want to be the ones not wearing a mask when other kids are... they just turned 12 last week and I was able to get them their first Pfizer dose yesterday. They were concerned about the younger kids and how long it will take to protect them. They aren't refusing or arguing to wear masks, they are worried they still might get their friends sick if they don't wear a mask around others. I'm sure we (mostly) want to get back to pre-covid times... but we're not going to return to a pre-covid normal... we're going to eventually get to a post-covid normal... which is going to look completely different than before. Good luck to us all, because we're in this together... like it or not.