The calculus for kids is just different

One of the few blessings of this pandemic is that Covid-19 isn’t nearly as hard on children as it is on adults, at least not in terms of illness and deaths. (It has been terrible for children in myriad other ways, particularly the disruption of in-person schooling and the educational and social consequences of that.)

To date, there have only been 790 Covid deaths in children 18 years old and younger in the U.S., data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest. Children and teens make up only 0.1% of the more than 800,000 deaths the country has incurred.

Covid has been seen to induce a post-infection condition in some children called MIS-C — short for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. According to the CDC, there have been nearly 6,000 reported cases in the U.S. Most children who develop MIS-C recover, but there have been 52 deaths.

In the main, though, children experience milder disease when they catch Covid. And because of their far lower risk of death, the WHO has suggested children should be vaccinated later, after health workers and older adults the world over have been protected.