Some Good News
The battle over science and science fiction wages on, but today is one of those rare days when science appears to be winning. Various news outlets are reporting that Pfizer has completed successful tests on children between the ages of five and 11. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that the vaccine is right around the corner for our younger kids, but it could be approved before the end of the year.
This comes as more and more children are testing positive for the virus. It’s getting closer and closer to home. My daughter is luckily a part of the vaccinated population, but other children are not. We get a call every day from the school where I work about another person on campus testing positive (they won’t differentiate between students and staff). Those are usually proceeded by an email from our daughter’s school about the number of people testing positive there. These occur daily.
Our daughter plays volleyball and we have instituted a car pool with several other parents and kids to make life easier on all of us. One of the parents tested positive. Her daughter initially tested negative but being quarantined in the same house with someone that is positive can’t be good. She has a younger sister that cannot be vaccinated yet. These are the real considerations at work here. These are the real results from a world where not everyone wants to mask up or give themselves the jab. Based on our dealings with them, I certainly believe both parents and the older children are vaccinated, but that hardly protects younger children.
Meanwhile, the effects on activities that we took for granted when we were younger cannot be overstated. This week is homecoming. The game and their parade are on for now, but the homecoming dance has been cancelled for weeks. Maybe something will be done later in the year. Maybe it won’t. As adults these considerations seem trivial. Who cares about a dance? That’s easy for us to say when we all had those activities when we were younger. It’s hard to get past the anger of knowing this could have been avoided had everyone just acted responsibly. At any rate, maybe Pfizer is taking one significant step in the right direction.
Nick, if this latest vaccine availability is approved, our oldest son will be eligible while our youngest will not. But it’s progress.
But we would ask this of all who would open the schools and resume as many activities as possible: are you committed to being the responsible adults in the room? That means that not only all school personnel be vaccinated. Safe school openings cannot happen without EVERY adult in the students’ contact tracing circle being vaccinated. That means parents, friends and family of the parents, their co-workers, etc.
With current vaccination rates <60%, that is not happening.
The safe deal is Vaccine Mandates Now. Time to shove some reality into the discussion. While a few dead kids may be an acceptable consequence to the notably hypocritical anti-vaxxer forced birther conservatives, Jane and I cannot remotely risk the long term health consequences of Covid-19 to our sons or any child.
1I’m glad we are closer to my last grand getting the vaccine. However so many people refuse the vaccine and don’t follow mask hygiene that I think this virus may take as long to eradicate as smallpox did.
2We are getting there slowly PKM. I’m obviously right there with you. I can’t fathom how elementary schools don’t require it. I know NASA has finally required it for those working on site. I can only hope we will get there in education. Freedom is not always a good thing. Sometimes people have to be told what to do and this is one of those instances.
3No, Nick, not only elementary schools. Everywhere we congregate as a society is a danger zone until every adult acts as a responsible adult. The <60% vaccination rate says it all. Some might prefer "we are our brothers keepers." I'd go with we fought fascism once before, it is now time to defeat it.
Under the guise of "freedom" these spoiled brats among us defy all science, including that which would benefit themselves and their families. Again, those at the WMDBS know their history. So to keep it brief: those who would by default or any other means kill the most vulnerable among us are fascists. We have seen this behavior before.
4I think getting there with vaccines for the 5-11 YO kids is positive but as everyone has noted, too many people are thumbing their noses to doing what’s needed to not only protect themselves but everyone around them. This weekend, a hundred + fire and police that have been mandated to get vaccinated protested at the OR capital. The reason for the mandate is because these public employees come in contact with people needing medical care. To me, this is the height of selfishness. These public employees risk their safety every day and getting vaccinated seems like the least risky thing they should do. I call them chicken shits.
5Back to kids, schools and covid, the Oregonian reported the status of local school districts communication with parents on covid cases. I’m furious that the school district where our grandkids go to school doesn’t have a system to communicate with parents on the covid positive cases in any of the schools. Considering the rising cases in kids and breakthrough cases in even the vaccinated, they should not even be conducting in person learning without timely communication with parents daily. That’s crazy and dangerous and potentially deadly. The odds are by the time kids can get vaccinated, it will be woefully too late for many.
No, we are on the same page PKM. I’m just thinking that should be the bear minimum. Any institution/business that deals with children under 12 as its primary function should have all adults vaccinated. I’d agree that COVID vaccines need to go the way of all of the other vaccines. I can see where Biden is trying to phase it in and it get the thinking there. It just boggles my mind that districts wouldn’t mandate elementary schools do it just as a common sense measure.
6Perhaps we are on the same page, Nick. My disappointment with the Biden administration is similar to that which many of the moderates in the Democratic Party are not always at their best. That would be messaging. Admittedly I am not a wordsmith, a professional politician nor an educator at the committed level. But I can recognize the buzzwords that do attract conservatives like ____ <— insert one of Ms. JJ's favorite sayings.
When the Biden admin rolled out the vax, the military did substantial heavy lifting with the distribution. That would have been an excellent opportunity to appeal to conservative "patriotism." Hoorah, support the troops! As for "protect the children" I am not a nice guy; I would go straight at the soft under bellies of those alleged "pro-life" forced birthers. Send out the women in Congress who are still in their child bearing years with PSAs citing the dangers to pregnant women and their fetuses. As I freely admit, not a nice guy – would hammer the conservatives relentlessly with their hypocrisy and willful ignorance, and not "above" using the women on the front lines of messaging.
7One thing we need to keep in mind: the sensationalism of the major news media. So 100+ fire and police personal protesting is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of such personal in the state of Oregon.
Locally I’m covered by the Indiana University Health system. Big news (nationally even) was that 100 of that system’s part time employess have been fired for refusing vaccination and masks. Sounds dire, but the IUH system has 34,000 employees. So that’s less than 0.3%, and is probably about the same number that believe the earth is flat and UFOs are piloted by angels. And their coworkers probably look on their vaccination stand as having about the same validity as those other beliefs. At least, the 8 I’ve spoken with roll their eyes about those 100.
Me, I think the nation could stand to lose those Oregon cops and firefighters, and IUH NEEDS to lose those 100 part-timers.
8Professor, I agree 100 is only a small % of the total, but I also believe there are many more including a number of county sheriffs that not only don’t support the mask and vaccine mandates but use social media to communicate that they won’t enforce them. 100 was only a portion of those across the state- they didn’t all show up- just my feeling. Wish I was wrong. Still too many public “servants”. I also agree- fire their asses.
9Yeah, I think timidity is the enemy here. Again, I get the impulse. It was the exact same scenario as the ACA. Moderates believe half measures will be more accepted. The past 10+ years should have taught us to damn the torpedoes and go for the jugular. It’s about being reasonable when that doesn’t exist anymore. They respond to brute force and that’s it. They’re going to grumble anyway, they might as well grumble after getting the shot.
10Timidity. OK, your brevity challenge is accepted, Nick.
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11I understand the frustration of waiting for adequate response to COVID. But the pace of change is already faster than I expected.
When the Trump Sad!-ministration did nothing about a distribution plan beyond asking states to send their plans and agreeing to a distribution plan to get vaccine to states, it should have been obvious there was no hope of a national response. When there was no mandate including a way to deal with laggards announced January 2021, these haphazard days were baked into the timeline.
Consider other “public health” timelines:
* DWI standards, where there is a clear mandate … and we continue to suffer from a lack of commitment even to a mandated standard of enforcement.
* Vaping, where there was a clear health threat, and we are still debating how to react.
* MMR vaccines for children — and the persistent resistance among some groups and many more individuals.
Our response to COVID will be a societal test — one we apparently not earn a failing grade, but we a well past when our performance would merit an A.
12Nick, this may be “day late, dollar short” advice for you, but locally several parents apparently created an informal co-op, so that if a family had an adult that needed to quarantine, another family would house their younger ones for the two weeks or so required. Obviously it was only for groups that knew and trusted each other. I live in a small-ish college town, so there’s cliques of educated folks willing and able to do this. Mostly they live within a few blocks of each other, meaning the kids can still see their family daily and easily.
I only found out about it because I went to tutor one of my high schoolers and saw a young’un that looked familiar from another house. [Of course the high school girl first spun a yarn about how her family “bought a new one to replace her” since she herself would soon go to college.]
Given the Great Unvaxxed population, it may be necessary for families in the future to make these kind of plans. Sad, but necessary.
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