Coronavirus: Biden needs to put a stop to the CDC mismanagement

Politics US Politics
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I’ve been hearing about summer camp guidelines lately, and I think what I’ve been hearing is very unhealthy for our society. The CDC has released the following guidelines for children’s summer camps:

“Masks protect the wearer and those around them. Require all campers, staff, and visitors to use well-fitting masks with proper filtration consistently and correctly to prevent the spread of COVID-19 through respiratory droplets. All people in camp facilities should wear masks at all times with exceptions for certain people, or for certain settings or activities, such as while eating and drinking or swimming. Campers and staff can use well-fitting cloth masks with two or more layers of tightly woven, breathable fabric or disposable masks. N95 respirators or other personal protective equipment intended for healthcare workers should be worn only by camp medical staff when appropriate.

Develop mask policies for all campers and staff that set the expectation that people will use masks throughout camp. This includes campers in the same small group or cohort.

Teach and reinforce consistent and correct use of masks. Staff and campers should wear masks over the nose and mouth, especially when physical distancing is difficult (whether activities are indoors or outdoors). Camp administrators should provide information to staff and campers on proper use, removal, and washing of masks.

Masks should not be placed on:
Anyone younger than 2 years old
Anyone who has trouble breathing or is unconscious
Anyone who is incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cover without help

Store masks properly and wash them regularly to keep them clean. Staff and campers should have more than one mask on hand each day so they can easily replace a dirty mask with a clean one. Make sure to remove masks correctly and wash hands after touching a mask while wearing it or when removing a mask. Store your mask somewhere safe to keep it clean, such as your pocket or backpack. When reusing a mask after a break, keep the same side facing out. For more information on washing masks, visit How to Store and Wash Masks.

Do not wear a mask when doing activities that could get your mask wet, like swimming at the beach or pool. A wet mask can make it difficult to breathe and might not work.

CDC’s guidance on wearing masks includes adaptations and alternatives for various activities.

Additional guidance on wearing masks at overnight camps is provided in the Additional Guidance for Overnight Camps section of this web page.

Physical Distancing
Cohorting: Cohorts (or “pods”) are groups of campers and staff that stay together throughout the day to minimize exposure to other people while at camp. Cohorts should have the same staff stay with the same group of campers and remain together as much as possible. Limit mixing between cohorts. Cohorting should not replace other prevention measures, including wearing masks. Campers and staff in the same cohort should continue to wear masks at all times, except when eating and drinking or swimming. Camps that serve younger and older children should consider creating cohorts with campers who are similar in age. When developing cohorts, consider services for campers with disabilities, English language learners, and other campers who may receive services, and to ensure equity, integration, and other requirements of civil rights laws, including federal disability laws.

Maintaining Physical Distance: Physical distancing provides protection by reducing risk of exposure and limiting the number of close contacts when someone is infected with COVID-19. Establish camp policies and implement strategies to promote physical distancing, indoors and outdoors, of:

At least 3 feet between all campers within a cohort
At least 6 feet between all campers outside of their cohort
At least 6 feet while eating and drinking, including among people within the same cohort
At least 6 feet between campers and staff
At least 6 feet between staff
Use physical or visual guides to reinforce physical distancing of at least 6 feet in areas where adults may be interacting with other adults, camp staff, or campers (for example reception and dining areas).

If specialized staff (for example, speech language pathologists) are providing services to campers within multiple cohorts or multiple camp programs, they should take prevention measures to limit the potential transmission of COVID-19, including getting vaccinated if eligible, and wearing masks, or other necessary personal protective equipment. Specialized staff should keep detailed contact tracing logs.

If nap times are scheduled for younger campers, assign campers’ naptime mats to individual children, sanitizeexternal icon before and after use, and space them out as much as possible. Place campers head-to-toe to ensure distance between their faces. Masks should not be worn when sleeping.
Create physical distance between campers on buses or transportation (e.g., seat children one child per row, skip rows) when possible. Campers who live in the same household may be seated together. Masks should be required on buses or transportation.”

https://www.cdc.gov/…mmer-camps.html

According to the CDC, 282 people between the ages of 0 and 17 have died as a result of COVID. 709 children in that age group have died from pneumonia in the same time period. 179 have died from the flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/…x.htm#SexAndAge

Children are not at significant risk from COVID. The vaccine is available to virtually every adult who wants it. Children do not need to be wearing masks while playing soccer or softball at a summer camp. At some point, we have to get out of this mindset. Biden needs to put a stop to this. This is an agency under his control. This isn’t like the stock market or the unemployment rate. He DOES control this.

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This kinda feels like the right wing version of outrage.

Those are just generic guidelines that may or (most probably) may not be followed to the letter.

I don’t really see a big problem.

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I saw an interview today with a mayor and (I believe) a governor saying the areas in their jurisdiction will continue to follow the CDC guidance. It matters, and I’m a bit surprised to hear an argument that it doesn’t.

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They would like to reelected. They are just hedging their bets and protecting themselves.

But if cops show up and start giving tickets to little kids not wearing masks, I’ll concede your point. :wink:

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What if airlines keep refusing to allowing 2-4 year olds to fly either because they aren’t always wearing the masks perfectly or might not wear it perfectly in the future? Or schools refuse to open due to the dangers 7-year olds pose to teachers? Or businesses kick out families with toddlers because those kids aren’t wearing masks to their liking? The CDC guidelines matter, as do the government mandates based upon those guidelines.

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I never thought that could be the way to deal with over population, interesting :slight_smile:

I do agree though that the CDC of USA has lost credibility over the last year plus. As have many other health organizations.

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We sent a seven-year-old home yesterday because he kept pulling his mask down below his chin, literally immediately after being reminded, at least 80 times in three hours. This was in Taiwan. Because the CDC said that masks are required in schools and everyone else in the school understood the requirement. This week has been the cusp of tipping point for widespread community transmission of COVID here. If masks didn’t work, we’d be finding that out that this point.

I know preschool teachers in the US who teach four-year-olds, the whole class of which, while enjoying the act of “eating” their masks and needing to replace them a number of times each day, do keep them over their mouth and nose at all times. It comes as no surprise that no one in the school has tested positive, despite being in person since August.

Until kids can be vaccinated, why on earth should they be allowed to run around spewing particles in one another’s faces?

There are plenty of children who have died of COVID, even if it’s comparatively smaller than old people.

If the death of “only a few” kids doesn’t scare you, maybe consider the number of kids who have gotten weird as F ailments after recovering from COVID, which we won’t know the permanence of until they get older.

As this virus mutates, it’s going to find a way to either spread more easily among children or become more lethal in children. Because it’s clear this virus is capable of mutating rapidly, and has mutated independently to become more contagious in at least three different places across the globe.

Kids are lucky they can go to summer camp at all this year. I do not and never will understand the idea that requiring someone to put two pieces of fabric over their mouth and nose is somehow “government overreach”. The same local governments that insist that Biden is going too far ban the handing out of water at polling places, make it illegal to teach high schoolers how to have safe sex, and make it illegal for trans children to play in sports or get gender-affirming therapy. Requiring masks on children in order to prevent the spread of the deadliest pandemic in a century? No, that’s an infringement on my rights, goddamnit.

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This is a deranged perversion of our duty as a society. The risk to kids is smaller than many other existing risks, yet the US is willing to sacrifice the mental and physical well-being of the kids for a bunch of anti-scientific fear-mongers. At this point the data is so obvious, I doubt the sincerity of the efforts to keep kids out of school and further subject them to these life-altering rules; the only logical explanation is that the kids are being sacrificed for political expediency.

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Yet they also pose a risk.
Anyways, kids under 12 shouldn’t be forced to wear a mask. And with the way vaccination is going, things will probably get to normal rather sooner.

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I agree, but as adults we should be willing to sacrifice to protect the mental and physical health of our children, not asking them to sacrifice for ours.

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What issues do you have with those guidelines? It’s essentially what my child has had for school this year, as.well as at our YMCA activities.

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How do those guidelines do that? Kids frankly don’t generally think it’s a big deal if their parents don’t make it a big deal. Put on a mask? Yea, like you have to put on a coat when it’s cold you little knucklehead, now let’s go. :man_shrugging:

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Well, he probably doesn’t.

This has all turned into a Deep State thing, IMO, with unelected officials pulling the puppetstrings behind the scenes. These guys have Biden by the balls. If he says anything they don’t agree with, they’ll hold a press conference and denounce him, and the public (especially the credulous ones of a “liberal” bent) will believe them, not Biden.

They were damn lucky to get a loose cannon like Trump in power when all this kicked off; he came across as so completely uninformed that they undermined him without any real effort.

Their power thus cemented, Biden now has to do what he’s told.

They will be followed, because camp leaders will live in fear of being denounced to the Stasi. At best, they stand to lose their jobs if they don’t go along with the charade. COVID hysteria has taken on a life of its own now, and it’ll be some years before people come down off their high.

Civilisation is crumbling around our ears because the general public is absolutely convinced that all this asshattery keeps people safe. It’s superstition pure and simple. It’s a Bear Patrol.

It’s not just about wearing a mask either, as you can see from those reams and reams of specifics. If you don’t jump three times, turn to face Mecca, and say the right incantations, the magic won’t work (and you’ll be denounced to the Stasi).

In any case, as @Mithrandir said: whatever happened to these vaccines that were going to make everything all right again? Are we now saying that it looks like they won’t make everything all right again, and in fact there’s no way of making everything all right again? That’s a bit of a bleak future we have to look forward to then, innit?

This. It’s utterly f’ing sick that people are guilt-tripping young kids (“don’t go near granny because she might die!”) just so that they can indulge in their own weird death-fantasies.

I predict a generation of really messed-up adults about ten years from now. More messed up than their parents, I mean.

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I disagree with this. Here are my reasons.

  1. It is misleading to say ‘Children are not at a significant risk from COVID’. What is more true is that Children are not at a significant risk to be seriously ill or die. Children are as susceptible be infected with the virus like any other virus children get.

  2. Building upon that; Because children are less likely to be seriously ill or die, they are more likely to have minor symptoms or be asymptomatic, but this doesn’t mean they cannot spread disease to other people, both kids and adults. Because of this, I support the guidelines because children can unknowingly spread the Coronavirus to vulnerable people. While the vaccine is available, not everyone who wants one can get one. Your post focuses primarily on the effects on children but ignores the situations where children bring it home and the masks go off, infecting family members and other members of the public.

Often, the policy in many places, restaurants etc… already is if your child is not able to behave, then you are asked to leave if you do not remove the problem in one way or another.

I feel this is a bit of a strawman. It’s a piece of cloth on a face. Kids willingly wear masks for halloween. I sent my young cousins fun kids style masks a year ago. They sell fun coloured masks with interesting designs for individuality. I think the trauma of Nonna dying is far greater than wearing a piece of cloth…especially since many kids need to wear other things like glasses, hats, scarves, coats etc… Taiwanese kids have been doin the masks thing for 20 years and were encouraged to wear them when sick. I am all for personal responsibility but I want to also protect our fellow humans who cannot get vaccines.

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A little dramatic, don’t you think?
A lot of kids have been home schooled. And most of them turned out ok.

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I’m not sure I know any adult that was homeschooled as a child who turned out to be “OK”. Able to function as a person, sure, but “OK”? Even into their 40s, they still lack basic social skills. And I know a lot of people who were homeschooled. No exceptions to my observations. The same goes for children who didn’t attend preschool or skipped grades because “they were so smart”. I will never understand why academics is seen as the only reason for school. Social skills > academic skills, through university.

That being said, the alternative is the pandemic continues indefinitely. More and more children do get sick and get lifelong conditions and some will die. The virus continues to mutate and current vaccines become worthless.

Of all the things that have serious mental health implications in Taiwan, I’d say the mask-wearing as young children is at the very bottom of the list. And young’uns have been wearing masks for at last two decades here, so my guess is there’s research to back that up.

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Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough. There’s still a difference between distance learning and home schooling. Even though I don’t like the thought of home schooling because it’s mostly religious or ideological bound, most of them still grow up to be functional members of society. I just very much doubt Mithrandir’s fears that this pandemic and the restrictions to contain it will hurt an entire generation on a long term.

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Mask-wearing per se is probably not the issue. The inculcation of fear of others, and fear of “infection”, is a very bad thing indeed.

Related: there is ample evidence to suggest that young kids need to be exposed to pathogens. If it doesn’t happen, their immune system appears to be retarded in some way (same thing happens in animal studies).

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I agree with what you have said. I will admit that there are obvious phycological effects on everyone in lockdown, but 1) The US never had real lockdowns and 2) the alternative, many more people getting sick and dying, is worse for everyone’s mental health than even the pseudo lockdowns experienced in the US. I no longer know anyone in the US who hasn’t lost at least one person to this disease, myself included. Masks work if everyone wears them and the people I know who have lost their lives to COVID always wore their masks. It’s the murders who think that not wearing a mask is a good political statement that killed those people.

I will also remind anyone having a fit about the Biden administration’s regulations that they are in place so people can return to some semblance of normalcy while lowering the risk to everyone involved. Hence opening schools with COVID protocols in place. I will go back to what I said before about the hissy fits that republicans keep having with regards to “government overreach”: Especially with the Biden administration, when republicans win the award for actually passing legislation that quite blatantly intends to discriminate against/harm people, wearing two layers of fabric over one’s mouth and nose for the protection of all involved parties is a simple request made so that life can return to “normal”

Ummm… something like the common cold, sure. I ate my pound of dirt as a child. That is not the same thing as throwing my 6-year-old self in a classroom while a pandemic is raging without some common sense precautions.

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