Thread by @DrScottBalsitis

@TracyBethHoeg in Congress today speaking up for our kids. Her statement has everything you need to know about COVID and kids, all in one place. The "abundance of caution" approach did an abundance of harm. We can learn and do better. docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF… 🧵

"Recent data from Public Health England (PHE, 2021) also found that unvaccinated children have a decreased risk of hospitalization when compared with fully vaccinated 40–49 year-olds (3.4/100,000 vs 3.6/100,000 during this 2-week study period)"

"COVID-19 should also be put in the context of other risks. COVID-19 has a lower annual mortality risk to children than motor vehicle accidents, influenza (by this estimate) and, perhaps most importantly for the 5-14 year olds, suicide (Leonhardt, 2021)."

"Given the risks above and the access to all adults of highly-effective vaccinations against hospitalization for and death from COVID, we should agree to start focus on minimizing the collateral damage from prolonged school and sports closures... on normal life for our youth."

"A recent study published by the CDC (Lange, 2021) found "Of 432,302 persons aged 2–19 years […] the monthly rate of increase in BMI nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with a pre-pandemic period." This appeared to most severely impact the 3-11-year age group."

"Data published by the CDC (Leeb, 2020) found that, from April to October of 2020, Emergency Room visits for mental-health related visits for children aged 5-11 and 12-17 years increased approximately 24% and 31%, respectively."

"Below are Data from Children’s Hospital Oakland courtesy of Jeanne Noble, MD, which show a similar trend in increasing amounts of children needing emergency care for mental health reasons."

"A McKinsey Report found minority children to be falling further behind, but all children are experiencing learning loss during the pandemic compared with prior gains (Dorn, 2020)."

"We need to keep this in mind in our quarantine policies and ensure that quarantining students actually has enough effect to rationalize further exacerbating learning loss, not to mention the mental and physical health issues discussed above."

"We should all share the goal of minimizing overall harm to children. In this we should look at the overall risk to children in context as the UK, and Northern Europe have done..."

"...keeping schools open unless absolutely needing to close them, implementing test-to stay programs for children who are exposed at school and looking at metrics for removing masks, distancing and other school restrictions."

"There have been a number of American studies documenting low rates of COVID-19 transmission in schools... All saw that less than 5% of COVID cases in schools came from within the school, while over 95% of the time kids were infected in the community or at home"

"The downsides of continued quarantines include more learning losses, more time out of sports, recess and physical education, isolation and disruption of relationships."

"Coming together to do the best thing for our nation’s children should involve an honest and apolitical look at the science including both the risks to children from COVID-19 as well as the risks from our disease mitigation."