The Covid-19 Info thread (keep politics out please)

[Gutter Cobreh]

Not to pick on you or be argumentative, but I would say this entire paragraph is an example of not seeing the bigger picture. We don't normally require that things be essential in order to allow them to go forward even with risk. Phrase like "whether an activity is essential enough to waive the risks" to me indicates somebody whose risk meter is all out of whack. The first question should be from the kids interest. I.e., how much additional risk is a child exposed to from (for example) playing football. ANd the answer is, not much. If they aren't playing football, they will very likely be socializing in similar sized groups and possibly going to school in similar sized groups. Even if they don't do that, many of them will be working in jobs like retail that expose them to a good number of people. And of course, most importantly, for most of them, it's not a particularly serious threat as far as we know. If you ask most kids, "Would you give up high school sports and other group activities for two years of your high school and otherwise drastically reduce the number of people you interact with socially for two years, in order to cut your risk of catching COVID in half (which I'm not sure we can do), which means your risk of death from COVID would drop from something like 0.01% of dying of COVID to 0.005%, and also cut your risk from some as of yet unknown side effects by half, I think most teenagers would say "are you 17ing kidding me?", and I don't think they would answer that way b/c they are bad at assessing risk (although granted most teenagers are).

I don't take this personal and enjoy the dialogue. My take is until a kid turns 18, it's up to the parents since they are considered a minor. You can't vote or enlist in the military without parental permission until you're 18, yet we want to give them the ability to make these decisions. Hell, at that age I thought I was invincible. All the examples you provide should be done with parental input.

You can't do anything sports related these days without signing COVID waivers. Why is that? It's to protect the entity sanctioning those events. I think my view is pretty global regarding this. With all due respect, this topic appears to be hitting home for you for whatever reason (but I could be completely off base). Irregardless, having different opinions isn't always a negative.