A year ago, we were protecting the vulnerable immunocompromised and elderly. Yet with this (Delta) strain, the children in my arms are part of the vulnerable I am trying to protect.” So laments a Mississippi mom in her blog.
Protecting vulnerable children from the surging Delta variant is a priority for governors in some states. Not yet in Mississippi. Though this sudden surge has alarmed health care officials.
“The risks to children are real,” state health office Dr. Thomas Dobbs told reporters. “We are seeing numbers more than we ever have before of healthy children that are getting hospitalized,” said Dr. Alan Jones, UMMC associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs and COVID-19 clinical response leader.” Just in Jackson, UMMC’s Children’s Hospital has no more beds available for children with serious COVID cases.
This accompanies the overall upswing in COVID cases in Mississippi. Last week state cases surged past its previous one-day record. Doctors say the Delta strain is as contagious as the chicken pox.
Schools, just barely opened for the fall semester, saw the impact. “Less than two weeks into August, more than 4,000 students across the state have tested positive for COVID,” the Clarion-Ledger reported last week. Lamar County schools had 442 students test positive in the first 10 days of school.
Yet, Mississippi has implemented no overall strategy to protect children from the virus. Decisions are left up to school districts and local officials in what has become a highly politicized controversy.
State and federal guidelines are clear. Testing, social distancing, sanitation, and, yes, masking are the best means to protect unvaccinated children.
“I want to make sure everybody understands,” said Dobbs. “You can’t fill a classroom with non-immune kids without a mask on with the most contagious coronavirus we’ve ever seen circulating, and expect for it not to spread. It’s just biology.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, based on scientific studies, recommends masks in schools for everyone over age two.
One such study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “airborne transmission is highly virulent and represents the dominant route to spread the disease” and face coverings “alone significantly reduced the number of infections.” (https://www.pnas.org/content/
Of course, the best protection for children, as for adults, is vaccination. So far, only children age 12 and older can be vaccinated. Again, in some states governors are aggressively pushing such vaccinations. In Mississippi it gets mentioned.
While incidents are still rare, there is growing concern about the long-term impact of COVID on children.
“It is becoming increasingly apparent that a large number of children with symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 are experiencing long-term effects, many months after the initial infection,” found a National Center for Biotechnology Information study.
“Symptoms of long COVID were first thought to include fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headache, insomnia, respiratory problems and heart palpitations. Now, support groups and researchers say there may be up to 100 other symptoms, including gastrointestinal problems, nausea, dizziness, seizures, hallucinations and testicular pain.”
“Children are a heritage from the Lord,” says Psalm 127:3. It is unconscionable not to do all we can to protect them.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
24 comments:
Masks help, but it is laughable to expect a 2-year old to wear a mask.
Why do tyrants always cry out:
My GOD think of the CHILDREN!?
Small children with masks protects only some of the children, not all of the children. If you really want to protect the children beyond lip service, then you must close the schools.
Of course de facto and actual lockdowns, such as school closures, is exactly what the left desires. There is no denying it, the left wants total dictatorial control.
It doesn’t get real until your child, grandchild, niece or nephew is on a ventilator.
10:26,
How selfish do you have to be to put your personal profits before the safety of the lives of children?
It is time to return to lockdowns. We have already proven that kids can learn from home.
Lock it all down. This is a matter of public safety.
The effectiveness of masks in school has not been born out by rigorous science. Many European countries have done just fine without masks. The now famous Duke study (heavily covered in the media this week) did not prove its case. Make no mistakes about this virus: It is still mysterious in many ways.
To say that all young people should be vaccinated sounds nice but we don't know the side effects of vaccination yet (in children) and those studies may show a harm to benefit ratio that is not favorable to vaccination in young (less than 12) children.
We don't mask children in schools all year to prevent flu or RSV and these viruses take a significant toll of young children every year. There is no evidence that masks would prevent flu or RSV.
Our collective best efforts are in adult vaccination and we must reach that goal.
Cramming 20 kids into a room and expecting masks to prevent transmission of this virus is pretty ridiculous - even if every kid has a perfectly sealed and fitted mask that stays on 100% of the time. This virus is more like cigarette smoke than spittle. If someone sits in a room and chain smokes for six hours, even if they exhale into a cotton mask, the room will quickly fill with smoke. There is a reason it is almost impossible to catch COVID outside. Ventilation and filtration are the most effective defenses we have, but billions aimed at mitigation measures have instead gone to line corporate America's pockets and state and local payrolls. We're in this situation because dead kids don't slow down an economy. Like the elderly, they are considered expendable.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has a history of making recommendations when there is no data to support their claim.
In 2006, without data, the American Academy of Pediatrics asserted that a good way to avoid peanut allergy in children was to withhold peanuts from the diet of babies and infants.
Bad recommendation. Very bad recommendation.
Years later the evidence came out: Exposing peanuts to babies and infants is a way to prevent peanut allergy. And a decade of following AAP's recommendations led to a surge in peanut allergy.
They should have learned to make recommendations (then and now) based upon evidence.
@10:55 - You're promoting 'LOCK IT ALL DOWN'. The supply chain is still crippled from the last LOCK DOWN. Millions of U.S. citizens lost their jobs, their homes and their way of life because of the LOCK DOWN. The feds stepped in with increasing the unemployment benefits to the point that those affected by the LOCK DOWN do not want to return to work.
Are you one of those or are you one that will keep their job through another LOCK DOWN because you work from home and have been since before the first case was diagnosed? If your are the latter GOOD FOR YOU but who are you worried about? Are you one that hasn't or refuses to vaccinate?
Vaccination and booster shots just like the flu and pneumonia shots is about the only way we will a return to normal.
To everyone that was deemed "Essential' when covid began and continue to get up every day and go to your jobs I applaud you no matter what it is that you do!!
To all healthcare workers from doctors all the way down to the orderlys and those that make the hospitals run I pray for you all.
To 10:55 and all those like you, put your big boy/girl or however you identify, britches on and deal with it.
Business and commerce has to go on.
Trump lost his reelection due to the handling of the pandemic. If Reeves continues his way of handling the pandemic in Mississippi, it might happen to him.
Reeves's childish and snide remarks during Friday's press conference could make great political ads by his opponents.
Show me the study that would indicate masks prevent transmission. Then we can talk.
Rotoshield
Let's lock down the unvaccinated.
Despite the Delta surge the hospitalization % for children is still 2.0% of al Covid-19 hospitalizations in Mississippi.
10:40- the main reason someone is put on a ventilator is because no one is treating them. They are simply told to quarantine and then come back if symptoms get worse. If we all want to get serious about this, start demanding doctors treat COVID patients at the onset. Healthcare providers are causing their own problems as the patients swamping their ICUs are there because they were not treated. And they won’t be treated, because if you can treat them then the vaccines don’t have the regulatory clout and liability protections that they’ve been given.
And yes, in some places patients are being treated. You’re just not being told about it. Aren’t you curious how the rest of the world is handling this? Why isn’t that on the news? Why don’t we have panels of doctors discussing and comparing treatment regimens? Out of roughly 350 million people in this country we have one doctor we are told to listen to.
Turn on the news, you will only see one aspect of COVID healthcare being discussed: Take the vaccine. Keep watching and what will you see? The advertisers that are funding the news.
It is not difficult to be objective and to deduce what is happening.
I would never, ever, allow my child to be injected with an experimental mRNA shot that has been out for so little time with no long term safety data. (And yes, my child has received all of her childhood vaccines, I am not an “anti-vaxxer). Everyone getting the shot now is part of the experimental trials. Not to mention the drug companies negotiated with the government for zero liability for the next 10 years if and when their product causes harm.
Forcing and coercing people into an EUA mRNA injection is a crime, it should be a choice, and now it’s “papers please” in places like New Orleans. For the love of all that’s holy, wake up people!!! Is this the America you want? Proof of vaccination to do anything, get a job, get groceries? A health Gestapo allowing any myriad of diseases to flourish in the population but checking for your recent round of Covid shots??
Fauci recently said it’s possible people will need boosters “indefinitely.” They are turning our immune systems into a subscription service!! There is nothing healthy or forward-thinking about indefinitely needing to be injected and our lives being determined by our latest shot.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9889661/Fauci-says-rule-indefinite-COVID-booster-shots-says-one-hopefully-suffice.html#article-9889661
Reeves's childish and snide remarks during Friday's press conference could make great political ads by his opponents.
Great ads featuring swipes he took at the partisans posturing as journalists?
You are sorely mistaken.
It ain’t Tate Reeves job to protect your children, it’s yours! Must someone have to tell you to have your child wear a coat when it’s cold, wear a seat belt, not to pick up poisonous snakes, run out in the street, don’t talk to strangers, don’t go with strangers etc.
Your child is your responsibility. Not a Government Officials!
5:24, thank you. Sad we need the reminder.
Kingfish, thanks for the comment informing us of the small percentage of COVID hospitalizations that children comprise. This is good to keep things in perspective. People are scared for their children and need to be reassured of the still relatively low risk COVID poses to children.
This Crawford piece has a glaringly inaccurate statement in it. There is NOT a shortage of hospital beds. There is a shortage of nurses to care for patients - in both the adult and children's hospitals. A family member in my immediate household who works at Batson confirms this. They are short-handed because management has previously refused to hire enough help. During the lockdowns last year, UMMC actually laid off people.
Management like Louann Woodward make a killing but they can't afford to hire enough help. The public is being mis-informed like always.
I’m currently sitting up with my very ill 5 year old who attends a “mask choice” district that doesn’t even report infection numbers to MSDH. She wears a mask; hardly any of the other kids and staff do. I am so tired of the politics of this, and I understand just about every side of it. All I have to offer at this point is that it looks different to me at 1:30 a.m. with a sweet girl writhing in discomfort and unable to sleep. You can cite all the reassuring stats you want. Her pain tells me different. My fear for her tells me different. I just wish we could all be concerned, together, and mourn, together. Someone said it well the other day: “we are mesmerized by attributing blame and cold analysis in the face of an epic human tragedy.” What happened to us? How do we fix it? We are spiritually and morally broken.
@10:17am Because it began working in about the 1980s. Before that, the world was well aware that people and children get sick, and people and children sometimes die. It was mostly in God's hands.
But the Government has brainwashed everyone into now thinking money will rain from heaven and save every single one, or at least it will be said "the very best was done" to save them. And only when America ends up bankrupt in economic collapse, will they begin to remember again about sickness and death being an integral part of the human condition.....like the rest of the world.
If you had placed your faith in God instead of mankind, you would have traded your fear for peace. Psalms 60:11, vain is the help of man.
To be clear, I don't think we are at the point where further lockdowns are necessary, nor do I think they would be helpful. Such actions would only further push those opposed to such measures, or even simple measures, into a corner when we desperately need to win them over. Currently what is needed is real leadership, Reeves is in no way shape or form this.
The first step is simple measures, such as a renewed mask mandate coupled with a refresher on current research. Early on in the pandemic people were not wrong to be cautious about mask efficacy after officials flip-flopped, and the science wasn't 100% there yet. 1 year on, the science is there, there can be no doubt that not only are masks effective, they are specifically effective for Covid-19. I would love to see all of the new research broken down in an easily understood way, presented to the public, and renew strict mask mandates. This would be far more effective than drastic lock-downs which only malign an already skeptical public
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