2. Place risk assessment in the context of other risks.

This rule has two parts. The first is that discussions of COVID-19 risk need context. A number such as 2/100,000—the approximate current hospitalization rate for children in Oregon due to COVID-19—means nothing to most people. Road accidents and drowning kill many more children between 4 and 14 than COVID-19, yet we still let them get in cars and go to pools. Another example is that children are around 20 times more likely to contract COVID outside of school than in school. The media need to put COVID-19 numbers into perspective instead of quoting a stand-alone number that readers cannot adequately assess compared to other risks they are willing to accept.

Second, it’s important to remember that policies designed to mitigate against COVID often cause other risks to increase. Depression, obesity, eating disorders, opioid overdoses, and suicidality have all gone up markedly during the pandemic. The CDC’s own research showed recently that children who were already struggling with weight gain more than doubled their weight increase during the pandemic. The report pointed to school and sports closures as an important cause. This is one of many tragic consequences of our failure to take into account all harms, not just those caused by COVID-19, during this pandemic.