What has made children more resilient to Covid exposure than adults up until now is not entirely clear. Perhaps it’s because, compared to adults, childrenhave fewer receptors on the surface of their cells that the virus can use to enter and cause sickness. Kids might also be capable of deploying a more rapid immune response that snuffs out the contagion before it causes havoc. In addition, fewer comorbidities and lower obesity rates may also stave off severe outcomes.
But a lower risk is not an absence of risk. Simple pandemic math tells us that as legions of kids get infected, more will also be admitted to the hospital with serious symptoms. And it’s not yet clear whether the delta variant, which has already upended many of our pandemic assumptions, is making kids sicker than ever before or just increasing the volume of those who become exposed and subsequently ill.
Either way, places where state governments, school districts and parents refuse to provide basic health safeguards should automatically face virtual learning. Far more than just disrupting the normalcy of a third school year, any politicization or denial of medical and scientific truths threatens to morph this into a pandemic of the innocent.
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