The CDC estimates that the survival rate for the 18-49 age bracket (which accounts for most parents of young children) is 99.94%. And that's since the start of the pandemic without vaccination. For vaccinated parents now the survival rate is virtually 100%.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Some 18-49 year old parents have cancer diagnosis that they're living with and are taking immune suppressants, or they're taking care of older family members.

You can't erect a solid barrier around that population demographic like they never come into contact with vulnerable sections of the population.

And enough people are being stupid about vaccinations that they're out there getting sick, and unfortunately if you just let them roll the dice while letting the virus rip through kids, it will find all the vulnerable people out there and overload the hospital system and affects everyone. Kids don't exist in a vacuum and the virus will happily hop through them to find every vulnerable adult it can.

Once again we find ourselves in a "flattening the curve" problem.

And you need to stop focusing on death rates. In terms of hospital resources, a patient who spends 2 weeks in the ICU and recovers is just as bad as one that spends 2 weeks in the ICU and dies. And per patient they're more resource intensive than other respiratory viruses.

> Some 18-49 year old parents have cancer diagnosis that they're living with and are taking immune suppressants, or they're taking care of older family members.

If your immune system is already compromised, there's TONS of other stuff just as scary as COVID. The risk of the flu to these people in past years was just as high, but this argument wasn't used because the entire world can't put life on hold forever.

Do any downvoters care to actually explain their reasoning? Wikipedia puts flu deaths during the last pre-pandemic season at 60K in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis...

I mean there is no reasoning. We never did this crap for other illness. It’s as if people woke up on March 2020 and discovered “holy crap people die of illness!!”

Orlando is having a water shortage due to lack of liquid oxygen to treat water, because it is being diverted to COVID patients. That does not typically happen during flu season.

Immune suppressed individuals and the people who interact with them I would assume are, as a population, used to taking care of themselves in the face of the common flu and other things which present danger to them.

The ease at which COVID, especially delta, spreads basically guarantees immune suppressed individuals will come into contact with it w/o everyone taking precautions.

You don't have to put your life on hold forever. Wear a mask, be vaccinated, and encourage others in your life to do the same. Live your life within the bounds that helps others survive this. We're in this together.

According to those same cdc numbers the hospitalization rate in that same population is ~40x higher than just the mortality.

It doesn't matter how low the death rate is if the hospital system collapses.

So, yeah, I guess the grandparents and older aunts / uncles they may be living with are fucked. But who cares about them?

I really just don't understand the hyperventilation about this stuff. At this point, the vast majority of elderly people are fully vaccinated, and breakthrough cases -- especially those resulting in severe illness or death -- are extremely rare. The risk is nonzero, but living with zero risk is simply not a realistic goal. It never has been and never will be.

And the hospitals are overflowing with people winding up on the wrong side of that nonzero risk, which impacts everyone.

That's absurd. To the extent that hospitals are "overflowing," it's due to unvaccinated people, not people with breakthrough cases (the nonzero risk I mentioned).

The context here is that somehow if kids get Covid it's a death sentence for their grandparents, and that's simply not true when the vast majority of Americans over 50 have been vaccinated.

You educate people on the risks of covid, tell them how it spreads and let the individuals and families decide what level of precautions they feel are appropriate.

Grandma only has a few years left… they wanna see their grandkids. My daughters grandparents would rather die of covid than not be able to hug and interact with their grandchildren. Who the hell is the state or some blowhard health “expert” to deny them that?

The odds are overwhelmingly high they won’t with COVID either. Let’s not forget that the survival rate in all populations is well north of 90%. Parent age populations closer to 99%. Even higher if the parents are vaccinated.

Adults sacrifice for children. If children aren’t at risk, we have a moral obligation to let them be kids and live their short, once ever childhood.

Making kids protect adults by sacrificing their one and only childhood is morally bankrupt.

Also, adults have a vaccine… so they aren’t at risk either.

But their parents are (or can be) vaccinated, thus imune to the disease.