JAMES FREEMAN: Children and the Burden of Covid Policy.

Since the start of the pandemic, some media folk have continued to insist on making obscene comparisons between the number of Americans who have died with Covid and the number of Americans killed in various wars, as if it’s irrelevant whether one dies at age 80 or age 18. But there is one way in which Covid really is similar to combat. In both cases, aging policy makers demand disproportionate sacrifices from the young.

Fortunately children age 0 to 17 in the U.S. are always at comparatively low risk of death relative to their elders. When children have died in 2020 and 2021, the website of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in 99% of cases the kids have died from something other than Covid.

But that doesn’t mean they haven’t suffered greatly from Covid and the political reaction to it. Our masked and restricted generation of youngsters is hurting, as U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledges in a new report.

Plus: “If a child already had Covid, there’s no scientific basis for vaccination. Deep within the 80-page Pfizer report is this crucial line: ‘No cases of COVID-19 were observed in either the vaccine group or the placebo group in participants with evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.’ That’s consistent with the largest population-based study on the topic, which found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic Covid. Natural immunity is likely even more robust in children, given their stronger immune systems. An indiscriminate Covid vaccine mandate may result in unintended harm among children with natural immunity.”