I want you to mentally transport yourself back to 1/1/2020. Imagine if someone told you then about two viruses and their impact on American children over the previous three years.
- Infected nearly every child
- Killed over 2,000 children
- Hospitalized around 190,000 children and sent many thousands of them the ICU, some sick enough to need mechanical ventilation
- Caused lingering effects., which can be significant, in some children
- Infected zero children
How would you have reacted on 1/1/2020 if a doctor from a prestigious medical school claimed that virus B was “truly dangerous” for children, though virus A was not. Further, how would you have reacted had they also argued that because virus B was more dangerous that virus A, we should let unvaccinated children contract virus A, even though there is an effective vaccine for virus A?
That’s exactly how you should react today.
(Misinformation Alert: The COVID vaccines are not in a competition with the MMR/polio vaccines.)
Of course, there were real-world consequences to telling parents virus B was “truly dangerous”, while virus A was not. The pandemic was much more than just an absurdist thought experiment, even though some sheltered doctors treated it as such.
