As of 17th May, a couple of weeks before the start of this plot, the government dropped the requirement to wear a mask in school. And it plans to drop mask wearing and social distancing almost altogether next week. The justification for this seems to rest almost entirely on vaccination. Vaccines are wonderful, and have and will save many lives. But no English children are vaccinated. So what’s the plan for children? I guess the point of this blog post is just show the plot above and to express a personal opinion: I am amazed that the number of children being infected with COVID-19 is increasing exponentially, and the government’s COVID-19 plan is to implement measures that will accelerate this.
The mortality rate among healthy children is very very low, but they still can suffer from long COVID, and there is the disruption to their education. And even when vaccinated, the mortality rate among their grandparents’ generation is low but far from zero. Already, the odds are about 1 in 100 that when a grandmother is hugging her grandchild she is hugging someone with COVID-19, and this is increasing.
* For comparison, the rate of infection in people my age (50) is about a five times lower, at 0.2 %.
Chance & Necessity 