All attempts to slow the spread of COVID-19 have been abandoned. States across the country have lifted either indoor or school mask mandates. Hospitalization rates in the United States do continue to slowly creep downwards but if you compare how many are sick with COVID in the USA there are so many more than in any other country.
As of March 10, 2023 travelers from China will no longer need a pre-flight COVID test before they arrive. The testing requirement began in January of 2023 when there was a huge surge in cases in China after they abandoned the ‘zero COVID’ policy.
The United States Public Health Emergency will end on May 11, 2023 despite a high plateau of about 2000 deaths a week due to COVID-19. This is the new norm moving forward. People will hopefully have an insurance plan that covers vaccinations. Otherwise it is a $300 out of pocket expense. Somehow I suspect even fewer people will want to get vaccinated. Only about 16% of Americans have gotten a booster dose.
Parents had their children at home when the entire country shut down early in the pandemic. It is not surprising that parents would say and do anything to get rid of their children, parents needed to get back to work. The economy trumped public health. Claims rose that the isolation would cause permanent damage to their children’s mental health. No thought was given to how repeated infections with COVID-19 would shorten their child’s quality of life and life expectancy.
COVID is mild for many children, but the long term effects are just now being discovered. 1 in 4 children are developing long COVID symptoms like, headaches or difficulty concentrating, fatigue, insomnia, joint pain, respiratory issues, skin rashes and heart palpitations, which can remain months after the infection has passed. Children who are asymptomatic or mildly infected can develop persistent problems. It would seem to make sense that living a life with these debilitating symptoms would also affect a child’s mental health.
The emergence of the Omicron variant, which is more infectious than previous forms of Covid-19, and the new sub-variant XBB.1.5, has now led to a much higher proportion of children becoming infected with the virus. Despite this school masking has been abandoned and there is little attempt to install HEPA filters in classrooms to remove airborne virus from classrooms. Children’s immune systems do not develop adaptive memory against the next COVID infection, The result is repeated infections and immune systems being destroyed.