As we enter our third Covid year, much of the world is getting back to normal. Denmark yesterday dropped most of its Covid restrictions and welcomed back “the life we knew before”. In the UK, face masks and Covid passports are no longer a legal requirement. Some US red states have passed laws against local mask mandates and vaccine requirements.
But in many of America’s deep-blue cities and suburbs, stringent Covid measures are still the norm, especially for schoolchildren. In New York City public schools, for instance, all students must wear masks at all times, including outdoors, except while eating or during designated “mask breaks”. Palo Alto, the hometown of Stanford University, makes kids wear mask outdoors at recess. And LA public schools, responding to new evidence about the uselessness of cloth masks, recently required children to wear surgical masks or N95/KN95s.
These measures are premised on the idea that America’s children must be shielded from exposure to Covid-19. What kids really need, however, is a return to normal. And when it comes to infectious disease, normality means a world where they are routinely exposed to, and overcome, viral illness. For children, getting sick and recovering is part of a natural and healthy life.
It has become common to criticise restrictions for children on the grounds that they harm mental health and social development. These concerns are valid, but it is important to emphasise that a more laissez-faire approach to kids and Covid makes public health sense, too. Dropping masks, quarantines, distancing, and all other mitigations will allow children to develop the kind of broad immunity gained by living a normal life.
Shielding kids from exposure only increases their future risk. This is partly why the UK does not vaccinate against chickenpox. Serious complications from the disease are rare among children, and the circulating virus allows adults to be naturally boosted against reactivation-driven shingles. By rebuilding population immunity among the least at-risk, moreover, we help buffer risk for those most vulnerable.
With Covid, the nadir of risk is between 5–11 years old — an age where children develop more robust and durable immunity from infection than adults, even with asymptomatic silent infections.
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