I’ll gladly be in the minority on this one, as I thought the article makes some very good points.
A few comments:
1. Current science demonstrates that most children who become infected with the COVID-19 virus have no symptoms, or they have milder symptoms such as low-grade fever, fatigue, and cough. More specifically, children were between 0.5% and 3.7% of total reported hospitalizations, and hospitalization only resulted in between 0.2%-7.9% of all child COVID-19 cases. Further, analyzing data from 42 states, children were between 0% 0.26% of all COVID-19 deaths (17 states reported zero child deaths), and in states reporting, between 0% and 0.16% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death. Given these figures, you'd be hard-pressed to argue COVID is dangerous to children.
2. The present implementation and enforcement of COVID guidelines have put us in a place from which it'll be hard to dig out. First the lockdowns were to flatten the curve -- something that, aside from individual liberty concerns, seems to have been an appropriate response, particularly if judged by the results: we flattened the curve and we saved our hospital system from being overwhelmed. (I'll leave for the future sociologists and epidemiologists the question of correlation vs. causation.) Now, however, we're seven or so months into the pandemic, and the lockdowns appear now aimed to eradicating the virus. Never before has this been tried, let alone been successful, and to ignore the countervailing concerns (e.g. substance abuse, child abuse, etc.) is to either play ostrich or to have some ulterior motive. And I found the age-old comparison to speeding laws to be directly on point. We as a society accept certain levels of risk because the costs in eliminating that risk far outweigh benefits -- and yes, for those keeping score at home, that means we make societal choices that value things more highly than life, in this case 35,000 people a year. So the question he asks, that remains, and that will remain, is this: Given the controlling view on the pandemic, e.g. lockdowns, quarantines, isolations, mask wearing, social distancing, etc., how do we return to normal? What has to happen for the controlling view to revert to the way it was not in Oct 2020, but Oct 2019? Short of a bunch of hypocrisy, convenience, complete change of opinion, or a miracle, I don't see it.
3. He is correct that it seems schools, at least in NJ, are going above and beyond DOH requirements. For example, (i) quarantining entire classes as a result of a single positive infection and (ii) banning Yom Tov guests in an outdoor sukkah, is substantially stricter than NJ DOH guidelines. That said, he does not address what I (charitably) believe to be the reason underlying that approach. Preliminarily, NJ DOH guidelines contain no middle ground between “Schools open” and “Schools closed.” As a result, the approach taken by the schools is, I believe, to craft their own middle ground so as to avoid the latter consequence. Reasonable minds, of course, can argue where to draw the line in this quest for a middle ground (perhaps a non-mandatory 14-day quarantine is too long, perhaps a quarantine AND mask wearing is too burdensome, perhaps we get rid of plexiglass, perhaps we allow guests on YT), but there does appear to be a method to the madness. Further, the apparent dichotomy he notes between the approach we have taken with respect to our children and school vs. the approach that we have taken with respect to adults can be explained, too, by the schools underlying motive: avoiding school closure.
4. The mesirah and loshon hara is rampant, inappropriate, and egregious. The end.
