Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[CaptainAmerica]

Not live with the risk. Mitigate the risk. As long as there are people who cannot be vaccinated, or variants can breakthrough the vaccine, other precautions will also be necessary. It is not just about protecting the individual, but protecting the community. Until COVID is barely present, masks and vaccine mandates will be essential. Vaccine mandates may be as necessary as the many other vaccination mandates already in place.

None of this is correct.

COVID mutations will tend to make it more contagious but less lethal. It will become another common cold.

 

[ABQ]

I’m sure thats a huge comfort to the families of those 24 kids

Well of course not, but if only 1 child had died you could say the same thing about their family. There is no such thing as comfort in a death.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Would love to. But they are older and even though vaccinated we cannot risk giving them an infection, given the daily exposure our kids deal with in school.

And our children cannot see their grandmother, my MIL, at all, and haven’t for most of the pandemic. Because she is locked down in a nursing home that’s continuing to grapple with continual COVID outbreaks. So no visits from minors allowed.

Heck, even my FIL, who before the pandemic had to deal with the difficult choice to put his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife in a nursing home, can only visit her sporadically, and must maintain a safe distance. All he wants to do is give her a hug and he can’t even do that.

Through it all, to see my kids continue to remain optimistic and focused on their studies, to see them socialize as much as possible with friends... to see them handle the situation and themselves with maturity and grace, to know that they will emerge from this stronger, smarter and ready to tackle the challenges of the world they will inherit... that gives me hope.

Each and every parent has had to make difficult, frustrating, worrying choices through this. Every family’s situation and story is different but we all love our children.

That’s what we all should focus on, because that’s what matters most.

I'm sorry I just can't understand this mindset. This is so awful. My mother-in-law was literally a chemo patient and she spent summer 2020, pre-vaccine, playing with my newborn son on the beach. Get your MIL out of that prison.

Some people are worth melting for.

 

[carolina_yankee]

None of this is correct.

COVID mutations will tend to make it more contagious but less lethal. It will become another common cold.

Like Delta?

 

[lazyboy97o]

COVID mutations will tend to make it more contagious but less lethal. It will become another common cold.

This is not true. Smallpox did not just become a rash even after centuries of circulation. Evolution is not predestined. Absolutely nothing prevents more contagious and more severe.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Like Delta?

I said "tend to."

 

[CaptainAmerica]

This is not true. Smallpox did not just become a rash even after centuries of circulation. Evolution is not predestined. Absolutely nothing prevents more contagious and more severe.

In the short term that's true. In the long term, a virus that kills all of its hosts isn't going to survive itself.

 

[carolina_yankee]

My kids are 6, 3, and 1. They're much more likely to develop mysophobia and agoraphobia out of all of this madness than they are serious illness from COVID. There are competing goods at stake, but everyone has decided the the virology is the only dimension worth considering. To hell with education, recreation, social development, or anything else.

Kids tend to model the attitudes and behaviors of the adults in their life. The issue isn’t kids not wanting to wear masks (or some supposed phobia) but adults who out over common sense protections.

 

[lazyboy97o]

In the short term that's true. In the long term, a virus that kills all of its hosts isn't going to survive itself.

Unless that virus drags out death to allow for ample replication…

 

[MisterPenguin]

None of this is correct.

COVID mutations will tend to make it more contagious but less lethal. It will become another common cold.

If what you said was true, then Small Pox and Bubonic Plague and Polio would have all morphed into a commmon-cold-like illnesses... which they didn't.

The diseases which sometime mutate into less deadly versions are the ones that kill off a large portion of the population and do it very quickly and then have very few left to infect. Milder mutations that don't kill, or deadly ones that don't kill as quickly will then stick around.

But it is certainly the case that mild infections can mutate into more deadly versions such as the Spanish and Swine flus. In fact, the ordinary flu is a deadly killer which hasn't morphed into something like the common cold.

 

[Virtual Toad]

I'm sorry I just can't understand this mindset. This is so awful. My mother-in-law was literally a chemo patient and she spent summer 2020, pre-vaccine, playing with my newborn son on the beach. Get your MIL out of that prison.

Some people are worth melting for.

Would love to but she is wheelchair bound, has advanced Alzheimer’s and requires around the clock specialized care. Care my FIL can’t provide on his own. Nursing homes cannot risk widespread outbreaks and are forced to take extra/extreme precautions to prevent them from happening.

 

[carolina_yankee]

I said "tend to."

Theory is fine but reality is what matters. I stand by everything I wrote.

 

[Virtual Toad]

I didn't say a damn thing about masks.

I'm talking about people *forbidding their children from hugging their grandparents.*

That's insane and I'll not apologize for saying so. Enough is enough.

Since that’s the first time you mentioned that explicitly and since it follows my discussion about my family’s choices, let me respond.

Your initial post lamented the situation *your* children were facing. Nowhere did you mention anything about grandparents.

To repeat again. Everyone’s situation is different but we should all be in this together.

And for the record, our kids do occasionally get to see their grandparents, they got to do that a lot over the summer. But with COVID cases raging at our kids’ schools and a frail grandparent in a nursing home, we are taking extra precautions.

 

[correcaminos]

Since that’s the first time you mentioned that explicitly and since it follows my discussion about my family’s choices, let me respond.

Your initial post lamented the situation *your* children were facing. Nowhere did you mention anything about grandparents.

To repeat again. Everyone’s situation is different but we should all be in this together.

And for the record, our kids do occasionally get to see their grandparents, they got to do that a lot over the summer. But with COVID cases raging at our kids’ schools and a frail grandparent in a nursing home, we are taking extra precautions.

Let's be real, not all can travel to where their families are too. We are dealing with cancer as well and until we all were vaccinated, no staying in the home of the loved one. Now until treatments are better tolerated we are not traveling. So we're about 2 years from seeing some. None of us should have to justify our actions that keep people apart. We do what is right and best for the family. That's pretty much the end of it.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Since that’s the first time you mentioned that explicitly and since it follows my discussion about my family’s choices, let me respond.

Your initial post lamented the situation *your* children were facing. Nowhere did you mention anything about grandparents. You bring that up now in what I assume is a veiled criticism of our family’s choices, or the choices of other families.

To repeat again. Everyone’s situation is different but we should all be in this together.

And for the record, our kids do occasionally get to see their grandparents, they got to do that a lot over the summer. But with COVID cases raging at our kids’ schools and a frail grandparent in a nursing home, we are taking extra precautions.

After the last several exchanges I’m not even sure what you’re upset about anymore, but you do seem angry. Please know- and I mean this sincerely- I hope all is well for you. Peace.

I need to think through how to articulate this, so it might come across as sloppy as I do it on the fly.

Parents need to weigh competing goods when they decide what to do with their children just like public officials need to weigh competing goods when they decide what to do as a matter of policy. My problem is that parents and public officials are making their decisions based on flat-out incorrect facts.

Let's pretend, for a second, that you could quantify risk and express it as an integer from 1 to 10. Let's further pretend that COVID presents risk level 3 to children. Given risk level 3, parents have every right to make decisions for their kids as they see fit. My objection is that many parents (and public officials) are acting like the risk level is a 9. Parental discretion means "you get to determine what to do at a given risk level," but not "you're entitled to a delusion regarding what the risk level actually is."

I don't think people are doing this deliberately. Some in the media are, because it gets clicks, and some public health officials are, because they want everyone to err on the side of caution, but I think most ordinary people just genuinely overestimate how dangerous COVID is. That's why I raise things like children killed in car crashes, or children killed by seasonal flu. It's not to diminish the deaths of children who have died from COVID, it's to raise the question "X is riskier to children than COVID, yet we never shut our entire society down to mitigate the risk of X. Why then, are we okay shutting society down to mitigate the risks of COVID?" Why have we collectively decided to tolerate things that are *riskier* than COVID, while refusing to tolerate the risk of COVID itself?

 

[Andrew C]

None of us should have to justify our actions.

Eh. We ask others to justify their actions all the time. I think it’s reasonable to ask people why they won’t let their kids see their grandparents when the grandparents are vaccinated. If the grandparent has cancer, well okay, that’s the reason. And we move on.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

None of us should have to justify our actions.

Think through that logic for a second.

We're talking about mask mandates. Vaccine mandates. Testing mandates. "None of us should have to justify our actions... unless you're a dirty anti-vaxxer who doesn't want to wear a mask, in which case we're going to use the power of the State to force you to comply." You support parents' rights to make decisions for their children, as long as they're the exact decisions you approve of.

 

[mmascari]

Take your kids to see their grandparents. Please. We only get so many circles 'round the sun.

I'm sorry I just can't understand this mindset. This is so awful. My mother-in-law was literally a chemo patient and she spent summer 2020, pre-vaccine, playing with my newborn son on the beach. Get your MIL out of that prison.

Some people are worth melting for.

Right before reading this, my wife was literally telling me the story of how her uncle had all his grandkids over earlier in the week, and then tested positive on Friday. Breakthrough case, but he still feels like crap and has lots of symptoms. His wife is isolating now, no symptoms, but as a precaution. They were supposed to go to a 100 year birthday party on Sunday for their aunt. He probably got it from the kids.

So, great they got a visit in, but if they had missed it by a day or two, they could have infected a 100 year old and her younger 75 year old friends.

Wonderful that little Suzy got a visit in, not so much if it starts the chain that does in great aunt Gertrude.

Clearly bad luck, we’ve visited grandparents before the last kid was vaccinated. But not with any other unvaccinated people. And ours were both not high risk, plus spread was lower then.

None of this would matter for just kids if enough adults were vaccinated to drive spread down.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Right before reading this, my wife was literally telling me the story of how her uncle had all his grandkids over earlier in the week, and then tested positive on Friday. Breakthrough case, but he still feels like crap and has lots of symptoms. His wife is isolating now, no symptoms, but as a precaution. They were supposed to go to a 100 year birthday party on Sunday for their aunt. He probably got it from the kids.

So, great they got a visit in, but if they had missed it by a day or two, they could have infected a 100 year old and her younger 75 year old friends.

Wonderful that little Suzy got a visit in, not so much if it starts the chain that does in great aunt Gertrude.

Clearly bad luck, we’ve visited grandparents before the last kid was vaccinated. But not with any other unvaccinated people. And ours were both not high risk, plus spread was lower then.

My grandparents would rather die tomorrow than spend two years not spending time with their great grandkids.

None of this would matter for just kids if enough adults were vaccinated to drive spread down.

Correct.

 

[mmascari]

Not the results I expected.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254100398.html

Our school is requiring vaccination for all winter and spring athletics in the middle and high school. Presumably fall next year too.

I assume that for everyone will follow, but maybe not this year. We have a virtual option people could apply to if that’s an issue.