(Long post, sorry)
Ok. So first things first. It turns out I have blood pressure issues (which I’m dealing with now) and having a teenager, it turns out, can be a massive complicating factor. 😩😉
So, after last year, which was a real struggle for all of us I guess, but personally was particularly tough to see the psychological effects on my not so little girl. At 15 she should have been pushing her geographical boundaries for some time already, and I should be at the stage where I’m not having caniptions at the idea of her getting a train to another nearby town.
But here we are, this summer Lily has already missed out on a trip to Edinburgh (I need to work up to that shiz), but now she’s going to a nearby town to see the funfair and go to the local arcade (that’s my girl).
However, I, being the angst ridden catastrophiser that I always have been, have been stressing out enormously over the whole thing. The risk of infection on the train, or in the arcade, gets added on top of the usual stuff any parent will stress about without a fucking pandemic to add to the mix. I know I need to let her go do this thing, for her sanity if nothing else, but my brain. Man, my fucking brain. It just goes straight to the worst possible outcome. Every. Damn. Time. I try not to spread it around the house, but it causes me no end of grief.
So I did what everyone says not to, and yet everyone still does. I did some digging on t’internet.
And this time, for the first in my life, I think it helped. I don’t really want to start a COVID nerd argument here, it’s more that I know the anxiety of being a parent right now is just fucking terrible. It’s bad enough for everyone regardless, I know, but that added responsibility makes it hard to assess risk of any kind, for yourself or your kids. This very long article is worth a read, if you struggle to put your kid’s risk in perspective. The stats were quite shocking to me tbh, in terms of the magnitude of difference between risk for the young, vs risk for the elderly.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-kids-were-safe-from-covid-the-whole-time.html
It’s mostly US focussed, but it collates a lot of global data including putting a ton of UK stats in perspective. It seems, to me at least, to be very objective. And most importantly for me, it’s staved off an impending panic attack / blood pressure crisis about my daughter taking too big a risk. Spoiler, the chances of her not being fine are vanishingly small against the mental health benefits of letting her go adventure.
I’m not saying that you should reach the same conclusions here btw. I’m just saying, I’ve never seen the stats and risks for this age group portrayed so comprehensively or so readably either. I can’t see a way that posting this would cause offence, but if it does, my apologies.
TL; DR (from the article)
If you want to keep your kids at home, or in their pods, or in their masks, that is up to you — but it is up to you, because the science is quite clear.
