Comments by "oolong2" (@oolong2) on "U.S. Begins To Relax Mask Mandates" video.

It sounds like you guys are on pandemic culture war autopilot.... The vaccines have been available for a year now and it's fairly obvious that every single person in the country will be exposed to SARS Cov-2 at some point. Whether it is next week or next year. You really have to ask yourself who exactly are you protecting from a virus that is pretty much endemic? If you're vaccinated, it's actually better to be exposed sooner rather than later when protection is diminished. For kids, their risk has always been the same risk as the annual flu, other countries didn't even have mask mandates in schools, that's more uniquely American. The lockdowns are for mitigating the spread until the vaccines were available. They have been available to anyone who wants one. So what exactly is your plan? Have people wear masks forever and slowly get exposed to the virus?
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@AdamSmith-gs2dv Yup. Once the vaccines became widely available it became a personal responsibility issue, but for some reason progressives decided latch onto this idea of forcing people to vaccinate even if they don't want to, forcing businesses to remain closed, forcing kids to stay home, and forcing everyone to wear masks everywhere. Yes, technically it wasn't all "forced", but that's the political narrative and you're feeling that in NY. Then they wonder why the public has been turning against them. As if the idea is to keep anyone from ever getting sick indefinitely which was never going to happen without turning into a complete authoritarian state. There seems to be no room in this world for people who are pro-vaccine, pro-natural immunity, and pro doing whatever you want to do with your own body. Two years into this thing, everyone has had plenty of opportunity to prepare one way or another.
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@gottagowork I did not say "no risk", I compared the risk for children to the flu and other respiratory diseases where you saw similar levels of complications and deaths. "Long term effects" is pretty much any symptom lasting longer than 4 weeks and I've had plenty of flus where I've had a persistent cough afterwards and YES that would fall under the definition of "long covid" because there has never been a strict definition. If you look at the study published a few weeks ago: "Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS‑CoV‑2 positive children" If shows that "Long Covid" only effects 0.8% of kids and that for most of these cases their symptoms go away after a few months. Their conclusion is that these cases are "rare". Yes, long covid is a thing in a small number of rare cases in children, but it has been GREATLY overexaggerated by the media for ratings and clicks.
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@gottagowork And yet it was in fact labeled "rare" in the study I mentioned that was published just last month, not last year like your study was. The "media" used studies like the one you mentioned to create sensational headlines before it was ever even fully studied. If you were really concerned with deaths and long-term impacts in children, you would be raising alarm bells about RSV which leads to far more deaths and long-term health impacts in children. Drinking soda, eating sugary cereal, eating fast food, and drinking alcohol (in the case of adults) also has long lasting impacts on health. There is no scenario where we stop people from getting infected. Even variants of the Spanish Flu are still in circulation today. The virus is here to stay whether you like it or not. The question is how to live with it from now on. The quality of life and the impact society has on the short period someone is a child is far different than it is for an adult.
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