344 kids have died of Covid through July 8th. Only 1 child has died of Flu this pandemic.
4,196 kids have gotten Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) through June 28, and 37 children have died from it.
There's been nearly ~200k estimated Covid hospitalizations among children. The 2018-2019 Flu season had an estimated ~46k hospitalizations among kids.
Kids were 22% of all Covid cases last week.
We have vaccines for kids that are extremely effective. In the clinical trials, there were 0 vaccinated kids that got symptomatic Covid. Neutralizing antibodies were 1.76x higher in teens than in young adults.
You rightfully protect your child from influenza. You should protect them from Covid too. It is a bigger risk to them than seasonal influenza.
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I just want to highlight these excerpts from the CDC's science brief on kids and Covid. Particularly in light of the upcoming school year and the uncertainty on when a vaccine will be available for kids under 12.
I know this is a heated issue and I know parents and teachers have rightful concern about Covid and schools. But the evidence over the course of the pandemic supports that as long as staff are vaccinated, schools should be safe environments with or without the vaccine. This doesn't mean jurisdictions shouldn't do mitigation and react to outbreaks, but the availability of the vaccine for kids should not preclude kids being in school this Fall.
Most school transmission is among staff to students or from community transmission outside of school to a child. And among kids, older kids (12+) are more likely to transmit than younger kids (<12).
The bigger issues for kids at this point are their community and household, not necessarily school as most teachers are vaccinated. Same goes for teachers.
As far as we know Delta hasn't changed these relative patterns.