1. humans are fuckin' terrible at thinking through second order effects, and 2. often they are simply unknowable a-priori
so to the extent that I am doing the thing I'm unhappy with, it's less hypocrisy and more accidentally proving my broad point.
At any rate, about kids: the same reason kids aren't especially susceptible to COVID seem to also substantially reduce their transmission of it. It might be the case that it's still worthwhile for the broader community, idk - I'm certainly default a little skeptical of anyone saying "think of the children!"
In hindsight, maybe, but there were a lot of unknowns in March of 2020 and that was one of them.
Then instead of just staying at the camp where it would be contained and burn itself out, the camps themselves shut down and sent everyone home on regular commercial flights. Completely inexplicable and inexcusable.
"Open schools and kindergartens" is not gradual.
After bemoaning failure to consider second-order effects this seems like making the same mistake - It was a good news that kids were less susceptible to severe infection but protecting children was not the sole purpose of closing schools. Kids were still susceptible to infection and could still spread the disease to adults. Schools were a mixing pot for kids to get infected and then go home to infect adults who might then suffer more severe effects.
I think even in retrospect it holds up very well as an effective means (amongst many others) of slowing spread.