DENTON COUNTY PEDIATRIC COVID DATA, JAN 13
Not much more can be said, but here's ten thoughts on the state of affairs
Today’s data from Denton County Public Health. Just two graphs tonight. You have all seen the news of the disruptions taking place at school districts across Texas in this surge. There's not much I can add to what I have already said in the last several days of my data updates, so I'll just leave you with ten thoughts:
1/ I am hoping that the three day Martin Luther King weekend will help in slowing the rapidly increasing trends not just here in our home county but in every community across the country.
2/ Reopening a grade level, campus or district absent a mask mandate with social distancing protocols in place is just setting yourself up for another disruption by kicking the can down the road.
3/ We do not know for certain the long term impacts of Omicron infection in children but we know from prior variants that a significant number of children remain symptomatic in one form or another up to 90 days after initial infection. We already are seeing data showing increases in the risk for diabetes in children who have had COVID. This pandemic is still too new despite it being two years now to know for certain the long term impacts of infection not just in adults but in children who are still growing and developing.
4/ To equate Omicron or any COVID variant as something analogous to the common cold or influenza is a bit disingenuous and minimizes the potential long term impacts. This virus is a vascular and neuro-invasive pathogen with multi-organ impacts that just happens to use the lungs and upper airways as its portal of entry to invade the human body.
5/ Avoid Omicron fatalism! This viral variant needs an “air bridge” to get to you. N95 or KN95 or something equivalent when in public indoor spaces or outdoor spaces when you can’t spread out. Avoid crowds, think about peak times in stores and restaurants and avoid those times. If eating out, eat outdoors. Ventilation, ventilation, ventilation. Air exchanges and air movement is your friend.
6/ As long as what needs to be done is viewed as a personal inconvenience and an affront to perceive personal liberties, we will continue to endure repeated cycles of new variants and surges. The freedom to act and chose that infringes on the well-being of others is not an expression of liberty but an immoral act of callousness. Don't engage in the fallacy of "both siding". There is no other side to respect. The other side is wrong and immoral. Period.
6/ Be strong for your children. How they deal with all of this is a reflection on how we as parents are dealing with it. This is what the anti-maskers/anti-vaxers fear- actually having to work at life and exercise some mental and emotional flexibility to ADAPT. They want life handed over with no effort because they feel they deserve it. The best investment you can make with your kids right now is to show them how to handle the new normal productively and with appropriate resolve.
7/ We enter this world not with rights, but with obligations.
8/ The greatest measure of personal integrity and patriotism is what you do to benefit people you will never know. You do it for the child too young to be vaccinated. You do it for the cancer patient whose immune system is compromised. You do it for the health care workers who are stretched thin and exhausted. You do it because that's what a community of decent human beings do.
9/ America is taking an open book test and has even been given the answer key. But some people are refusing to open the book or use the answer key and are going to fail the world's easiest examination.
10/ We take our kids on some very challenging hikes on our family vacations because we teach them that “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” Every day of this pandemic is on the edge of our comfort zones and how we chose to live our lives when there’s all sorts of shit hitting the fan is where you, your kids, and your families will grow.