(2021-07-12) Kids And The Delta Variant: Should You Act Differently?

Emily Oster: Kids and the Delta Variant: Should you Act Differently?. Vaccines we have remain highly effective against the delta variant. The presence of the variants is an extra reason to get vaccinated, not a reason to not be vaccinated. Virtually all COVID-19 deaths in the US at this point are among unvaccinated individuals

However: kids under 12 are not eligible for vaccines yet. So, what about them?

we want to simply ask whether this should change what we do.

There are two reasons that our behavior might change in response. One is if this makes kids more likely to get COVID-19. The second is if it is more likely to lead to serious illness in kids. Let’s deal with these in turn.

Is Infection More Likely?

if an interaction with an infected person had a 10% chance of leading to infection with the original COVID-19, that same interaction has a 16% to 20% chance now.

Just as in earlier parts of the pandemic, rates in younger children remain extremely low. The most affected group in this time frame are people 16 to 24, a group which in the US has been eligible for vaccination for several months.

It is important to note that over the next months we will continue, in the US, to see children be a larger and larger share of cases. (Not number, share). This is because older people are vaccinated

Is infection more serious?

Serious infection or death from COVID-19 in kids is extremely rare.

Turning to delta: there is disagreement about whether the delta variant leads to more severe disease in general.

The broad expert consensus seems to be that serious illness risks rates are similar.

When it comes to kids, though, the data doesn’t point to anything that would look like alarming increases in hospitalization rates in recent weeks.

the risks of serious illness for kids remain really, really low.

Yes, many people are worried about long COVID. But, again, this is a risk you thought about before. It hasn’t changed, which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about it, but does mean that you do not need to re-evaluate based on it

Should you do anything differently?

let’s say you thought through some case rate cutoff for various activities before, under the wild type virus. Like, maybe you thought: I’m comfortable with my child in day care as long as daily case rates are below 60 in 100,000. The presence of the variant should reduce that threshold proportionality, since it’s based on an assumption about transmission risk. If the variant is twice as contagious, your new threshold should be 30 in 100,000.

On the observables — serious illness, symptomatic illness, mortality risk — COVID-19 for kids (variants or not) is a risk comparable or lower than diseases like RSV or the flu. Again, I know the long COVID fears are real, but the fact is that RSV, the flu and other diseases have these long tails also.

We’ve kept kids isolated to protect high risk adults, but as those groups get access to vaccines and we focus on kids, there is an argument for treating this like other diseases. Which means, in turn, accepting the risk that your kid might get COVID-19.