I was recently perusing some posts in social media group called “All Politics is Local” when I spotted a very emotional post by someone warning of the imminent danger of the new Delta variant of the Corona Virus. The post claimed that we “may be entering what may be its worst phase for many Nebraska communities.” The point of the post was to strike fear into our hearts so everyone would run to the nearest vaccination clinic.

The post goes on to warn that the Delta variant is “causing more severe disease in younger people and that hospitals are currently on the brink of collapse”, due to this new surge in hospitalizations.

One of the individuals commenting said that he was “done kissing their backsides”, referring to people who decline to get the vaccination which has not yet been approved by the FDA, and which may have serious, or even life-threatening side effects, which will not show up in people until years have passed. The individual also stated It is, “time for proof of vaccination to go to restaurants, bars, public buildings, public transportation, etc.”, before concluding that “The unvaccinated are selfish and unpatriotic. I’m done kissing their backsides. Now they need a swift kick in that backside. It’s time to place the burdens and costs of lockdown on the unvaccinated.” This individual is an attorney, but apparently not an attorney familiar with the constitution.

Later in the comments section, this same individual stated: “We need to protect the kids.” This was in response to another individual who stated that “It’s going to be a s***show as it is with school not requiring masks when 100% of their population (elementary) and 60-70% (high school) isn’t vaccinated.”

It is interesting to see how a conversation on the virus goes from a general warning to requiring masks for all students in K-12 schools. While the original post did claim that the Delta variant was causing more severe disease in younger people, it also defined the age groups at issue, which were ages 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. In other words, not K-12 students.

Because the conversation had not only gotten off-track, but had evolved into an aggressive call that every child must be vaccinated and be masked up this fall, I thought I’d ask a question or two to help these poor people realize that they were talking nonsense. In essence, they are saying that because older people are being hospitalized for a disease which has been shown to have minimal effects on K-12 aged youth, the youth should be forced to take an unapproved and highly experimental drug, and wear masks in school… for the safety of the youths.

If you think that is silly, you are right. I think it is insane.

Unfortunately, when I asked questions in the group, the mask and vaccine advocates declined to provide scientific evidence that people under the age of 25 were at risk, much less a heightened risk from Covid or the Delta variant. They also declined to explain how forcing vaccinations and masks for K-12 students would protect the students, as well as what it would protect them from.

The fact is, the majority of K-12 students are pretty healthy. Healthy people handle Covid pretty well. Most of them survive (more than 98%), and many of them show no symptoms at all. People under the age of 25, handle Covid better than any other age group, and the younger the person is, the more likely they will not only handle Covid easily, they are more likely to show absolutely no symptoms at all. In fact, many positive cases of Covid in K-12 aged youth go totally undetected unless they happen to go in for a test for some reason (which is rarely due to showing symptoms).

But some people want to force these kids to be vaccinated and in some cases to be vaccinated and wear a mask all day long at school?

It makes no sense at all. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the vaccination and mask advocates from briefly trying to defend their flawed point. One posted an article which talked about the fact that the Delta variant was much more contagious than other strains of Covid. I pointed out that the article did not say that the Delta variant was causing any increased risk of serious medical issues or death in people under the age of 25, to which one individual responded with an article from Forbes Magazine. In that article the author claimed that, “While children are unlikely to get seriously unwell or die from Covid-19, evidence increasingly suggests a significant number go on to experience lingering symptoms for months after their initial infection, even if the case was mild. While there are no exact numbers, research indicates a significant number of children could be these Covid ‘long haulers’.”

I think it is important to note that while Forbes is a well-known financial publication, it isn’t a medical journal, the reporter who wrote the column had no medical training in his bio, and the article cited zero sources for its claims and even admitted that there are “no exact numbers” to support the reporter’s conclusion.

To that, I offered the following so we could rely on science instead of one financial reporter:  “The CDC and the New York Times (neither of which are bastions of conservative thought) are telling us that hospitalization rates and risk of severe illness have not been increasing among children. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that children still have a low risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19. Dr. Richard Martinello, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist says that a small percentage of kids develop long-haul COVID-19.”

After that, crickets.

Could it be, once again, that concerns over the virus are driven more by fear and other emotions than by scientific evidence and facts? Could it be that, once again, some “experts” are saying one thing, and other “experts” are saying something which contradicts it? Could it be that no one is an expert on this brand new “pandemic” yet, and that those who are held out as experts are simply trying to make the best guess? (That would make them expert guessers by the way.) Could it be that some people are predicting (guessing) catastrophe when in reality, things are not really as dire as they presume them to be?

As I said in my social media conversation with these people, I don’t deny that Covid is real and that for some people, it is very dangerous and even deadly. All I’m arguing in this instance, is that increased infections for people over the age of 30 does not warrant mandating vaccines and masks for people under the age of 25, especially if the motive for doing so is, “to protect the kids”. That is not only illogical, it is unscientific, and it is likely due to prejudices and biases totally unrelated to any desire to protect children.

I do agree that we need to protect the children, but I don’t think that is done by requiring them to receive an experimental vaccine, nor by forcing them to wear masks all day long throughout the school year. I think we protect our children by dealing with scientific facts, respecting human nature, and by supporting each person’s freedom to do what is right considering the circumstances of the time and place.