Always on the little ones?
In the long run, no one will escape the virus who isn’t vaccinated. For children and teenagers, that’s a delicate situation. How we can protect them nevertheless.
By Harro Albrecht, Ulrich Bahnsen, Linda Fischer und Jan Schweitzer
21.07.2021, edited on the 24.07.2021
Translated by Grzmot
Source: https://www.zeit.de/2021/30/corona-infektion-kinder-impfung-schutz-delta

Infestation, that sounds dangerous. And it sounds like surrender: just stop resisting and let the coronavirus work, until it has infected all unvaccinated people. Prime minister Boris Johnson seems to be following such a strategy, he has lifted almost all restrictions related to corona this Monday. His idea: the old and vulnerable are protected by vaccinations, the rest of the population will not go through a severe infection. The United Kingdom is daring to go through a world-wide unique experiment with unknown results.
In Germany, more than 46 percent of the population has been completely vaccinated, it can be surmised that even with rising positive cases, fewer deaths can be expected. But what about the children and teenagers, who have not received a vaccination recommendation or for who there is no allowed vaccine? In Germany only 4 percent of vaccinated people are under 18. It can be expected that Sars-CoV-2 will spread between the younger ones at the end of the summer holidays. There are millions.

Can it be avoided, that all children will be infected eventually?

Sometimes one gets the impression from all the debates in this country, that between infection and vaccination there is a third option – evading the virus somehow. But in the long run, there are only two options: vaccination or infection. In both cases, special anti-bodies and immune cells appear in the blood of the individual. Research shows that only a minority of the children and teenagers have such anti-bodies. Reinhard Berner, director of the hospital for children- and adolescent medicine clinic at the university hospital in Dresden, estimates that 15 percent in that age group have an infection behind them. That leaves 85 percent, if they won’t be vaccinated.

How many children have a severe infection?

Apparently even with the Delta variant, children go through a severe infection extremely rarely. In mid July the Robert Koch institute (RKI) reported, for the duration of the entire pandemic, 23 deaths of people under 20, of which 16 had pre-existing illnesses. Sars-CoV-2 is almost never deadly for children, but still some fall ill so severely that they have to be hospitalized. Known is the paediatric inflammatory multi-organ syndrome (Pims) [Addendum: In English, the syndrome seems to be called multi-organ inflammatory syndrome, changing the acronym to PMIS], a persistent inflammation, which starts with stomach aches and fever and can end in severe cardiovascular and neurological problems. So far, 383 cases have been registered in Germany, and in most cases, the symptoms disappear after some time. Based on data from the German society for paediatric infectiology; from all children under 14 reported as infected, only 1600 had to be hospitalized, and in only half of those cases, a corona infection was the reason for hospitalization, 100 ended up in intensive care. In a lot of the cases, the children came into the hospital because of something else, and the corona infection was detected by chance.

Do children get long covid?

If all 13 million children and adolescents in Germany get infected and only a fraction of them get long-term problems, it would be a massive problem. The total cases of infected people would be high. One fear factor is “Long Covid”, this difficult to describe umbrella term of complaints like “fog in the head”, ongoing weakness and troubles breathing. How much children are affected is not clear, depending on country and study, the numbers fluctuate. An Italian study showed, that a third of all infected children between 6 and 16 years of age reported health issues for longer than 4 months. In February, the British Virus Watch reported, that 4,6 percent of all 4700 infected children had symptoms like difficulties breathing or tiredness for longer than 4 weeks. The university College London calculated, that 5 percent of all children get long covid.
The data is unclear, because it’s still unclear, what a normal reaction to the infection is, what the consequences of isolation and home-schooling are, and where long covid begins. “You have to be terribly careful with all those numbers, that you don’t confuse different effects with each other”, warns Reinhard Berner. He does not want to say that long covid related to children is nonsense, “It really exists, and for the affected kids it is a real problem.” The effects can be measured on adolescent athletes, who were not even close to their previous level pre-infection even after half a year.
Even then, children seem to be affected extremely rarely by long covid. If 15 percent have been infected so far in Germany, and if only one in one hundred got long covid (less than in the named studies), we should already have more than 20,000 cases. “But that’s not the case”, says Berner, “they would flood the practices.” Because of this, he estimates the fraction of young long covid patients as much lower. From the UK, despite rumours, paediatricians do not report an alarming increase of long covid cases or hospitalizations of children.
But still this age group is heavily affected by the pandemic, but just not physicially. Paediatricians of the TU Dresden looked at 1500 students, averaging 15 years old, 12 percent already infected. Surprisingly, in both groups of infected and non-infected, the same percentage of students reported typical long covid symptoms like problems remembering things, pain in the abdomen or extremities and a bad mood. The collateral damage of the lockdown, the psychological strain, says Berner, is a much greater risk than potential infection.

What’s the next step when it comes to vaccination of children?

Currently, only BioNTech’s vaccine is allowed to be used on children and adolescents from 12 years up. BioNTech says it will have finished testing on children between 2 and 11 years in autumn. The results of studies on children from the age of six months on could follow at the end of the year.
Even then, BioNTech’s vaccine is only recommended in rare cases to be used on children and adolescents by the “Ständigen Impfkomission (Stiko)” [Addendum: German regulatory body on vaccines], for example when they have certain preexisting conditions that make them vulnerable for a severe covid-19 case. It’s not clear if the use of the vaccine outweighs the potential side-effects, explain the members of the Stiko. The British brother of the Stiko, the “Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation”, has basically said the same thing in a statement released only at the start of this week.
There is little data on the vaccine risk for the broad juvenile population. Scientists in the USA, where millions of children and teenagers have been vaccinated, have noted a risk for the inflammation of the heart after a mRNA vaccine (BioNTech and Moderna). Especially boys between 12 and 17 have a higher risk of said Myokarditis: Approximately 1 in 16,000 boys, which have received both doses, has begun suffering from the condition. For girls, the risk is considerably smaller, for young adults even lower. Myokarditis can be treated well, but not much is known about long-term effects. Relevant governmental bodies in the USA (and Israel) have reached the conclusion that the use of the vaccine outweighs the risks and have upheld the recommendation for teenagers. In the near future this will not happen in Germany, the Stiko has given strong signals, that it will keep holding back until more data comes in.

How many people must be vaccinated for herd immunity?

The bad news: to be frank, true herd immunity will not be reached. At least not in the sense that the spread of the virus will be halted entirely. The good news: every vaccinated person makes it harder for the virus to spread. In that way, we protect the ones that cannot be vaccinated, like little children. The RKI has, at the beginning of July, calculated different scenarios, what quota is necessary to at least control Covid-19: 85 percent of the population aged 12 to 59 must be fully vaccinated, and 90 percent of the population from 60 years old. If we reach that quota in the summer, people follow the AHA rules [social distancing, hygiene measures, face masks], reduce their contacts somewhat, then a fourth wave in autumn and winter is improbable. Currently, the vaccination quotas are only at 44,8 percent for 18- to 59-year-olds and at 74,9 percent for people over 60. It’s not likely that we reach the necessary quotas in time, especially since the Delta variant will spread faster and the fourth wave could begin sooner, says RKI scientist Stefan Scholz, who participated in the analysis: “Many vaccinations would happen only after the begin of the wave, and thus too late.”

Can you protect children by vaccinating adults?

Of course, children can infect each other in schools and preschools. Effective hygiene concepts and masks (for older children) are a good way to protect them from Sars-CoV-2. But the best way to protect them from infection is really the vaccination of the adults in contact with the children.
Studies from the health department of Israel show how useful vaccinations of adults are. The results only allow the single conclusion, that the way of the infection is mostly from the adults to the children and not the other way around. Israeli epidemiologists have compared communities with high rates of vaccinations and small rates of vaccinations. The result was clear: The more older people receive the vaccine, the lower the danger of infection for the little ones. According to paediatrician Reinhard Berner, not even the Delta variant will change that. Therefore, he calls the adults to action when it comes to vaccinations.
A possible faster rate of vaccination for the adult population wouldn’t just be the best protection for the youngest of our societies, but also for all those, who cannot be vaccinated or don’t build enough immunity. There are, since Delta, so called breakthrough infections all over the world, i.e., infections of fully vaccinated people, but those are in general harmless.
But can’t infected pass on the virus to children (or adults)? That possibility cannot be entirely ignored, but the risk is low, according to Israeli scientists. : They checked how many viruses vaccinated but infected people excrete: it’s about 3 to 4,5 times lower than unvaccinated infected. It’s enough for the PCR test, the US scientist Eric Topol reported via Twitter, but it’s not even enough to fully sequence it. The risk of transmission is probably low.

How can we convince more adults of the vaccine?

People shouldn’t come to the vaccine; the vaccine should come to them. That’s the shortest way to put it, according to scientists of the Cosmo project, who have done a recent survey. “Visiting Vaccination” they call such offers which should exist in apothecaries, via vaccination bus or at universities and schools. Those places would be preferred by people the most as an alternative to vaccine centres or doctor’s practices, those are the newest results of the project, which is a result of the cooperation of the university of Erfurt, the Robert Koch-Institute and the Yale institute for global health in the past year. The make vaccination as simple as possible: That’s the most important thing which would lead to more vaccinations.
Other measures have little effect, the scientists discovered. Even a pretty high financial incentive of EUR 1000 “only increased the willingness to vaccinate by about 6 percent”, said the psychologist Sarah Eitze, a member of Cosmo. Benefits for the vaccinated, like being able to visit the cinema or theatre without a test, “don’t a positive effect on the decision to vaccinate”. How about punishments? From the entire spectrum of possibilities it’s the worst one, says Eitze, “It might even backfire and lead to a negative effect on the people currently considering”.
It’s a tricky part of the pandemic. The Stiko does not want to give a general recommendation of vaccinations for children and adolescents, because they don’t have enough data to evaluate the risk and benefits. This age group won’t be vaccinated in any meaningful amount at least until autumn. In this situation, it cannot be avoided that children and teenagers will be infected little by little. But according to current research, that doesn’t mean that a lot of young patients will get very sick. We are still missing data to evaluate the rare side-effects of a corona infection in children accurately. If the children return to schools after the summer holidays, free and unburdened by any measures, it leaves a heavy remainder risk for parents and politicians. The slower the virus spreads, because parents, teachers and educators are vaccinated, the more time we gain to get new data and results.

Our authors spoke with paediatricians, epidemiologists and psychologists for this article and have evaluated German and international studies – for example the register of the university clinic Dresden, which collects health data nationally in Germany. You can find our sources here.

Hey everyone! Last time I translated an article, it generated all sorts of interesting discussion. so I thought I'd do it again and I think I found an interesting one that gives plenty of good ground for discussion.

Your fellow citizen, the oppressor

A new ideology is spreading in Germany. It divides society artificially in hostile camps. This madness must be stopped.

An essay by Jochen Bittner

Published 2021-03-10, 16:54, edited 2021-03-11, 10:27, DIE ZEIT № 11/2021, 2021-03-11.

They are two seemingly completely divorced events, but they are part of one and the same questionable ideological trend, which is currently spreading at universities, editorials and party headquarters.

In the summer of 2018, a black student at the college of Massachusetts accuses a janitor of racist intimidation. The janitor had asked her, what she was doing there. “Everything I did, was being black.” Said the student. That was enough to question not just her existence at the college, but her entire existence. Outrage broke out at the elite women’s university (yearly fee 78,000 USD). The university president apologized profusely, accused the janitor of racism and suspended him. Only now, a few days ago, the New York Times continued the story: After an investigation by a law firm ended, their report concluded that the space the student was occupying had been reserved and closed off for an event. That is what the janitor was referring to. Signs of racist behaviour were not found.

The second event was a shitstorm centred around the pop radio station Bayern 3 [Bavaria 3] in the last week of February. A moderator known for his polemics had talked himself into a rage including insults about a South Korean boy group; in the end he equated said boy group with a virus, for which we would hopefully soon find a vaccine. In a couple of hours, a global quake of protests arose under the hashtag #BR3Racist, and it did not take long for Bayern 3 to publicly apologize with the words “If a statement is deemed inflammatory and racist by many people, then that statement is.”

300 years of enlightenment, and only the feelings of many angry people are enough to count as truth? So, we burned the witches in medieval times rightly?

Fact is, that what comes out in such events is the result of a powerful academic movement that has found entry in all humanities, social sciences including law. It is a kind of thinking, where categories like skin colour, gender and other bodily characteristics do not play a vanishing, but a very important role, with more weight placed into it every day. Not what someone says, but if they are an “old white man” or a “privileged cis-woman” – cis means shortened: not transsexual¹ – says, is significant. And less the intent of the speaker is relevant than the impression of said words. That leads to a form of “Social Justice” where not individual circumstances are important, but alone the perspective of the real or fictive victim. If that sounds dangerous, then because it is.

The origin of this cultural step back is the combination of two models of explaining the world: the “Critical Theory” and “Intersectionality”. Both cannot be avoided in todays university seminars. Who wants to understand the swelling culture fight climate, which is also spreading in Germany, must learn to understand.

Looked at each in isolation, both models of Intersectionality and Critical Theory are useful. The term Intersectionality comes from the American law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. She found an important flaw in anti-discriminatory law in 1989. The car manufacturer General Motors had, in the 1970s, let go a wave of black women because they were part of the employees, who had only been hired recently. The women sued, without success. According to the court, the women were not discriminated as women, because there were still women in the offices of the company, who had not been let go. They had also not been discriminated as black people, because the company employed them in its factories. What the judges were not keeping in mind: black women only recently began to be hired in offices by GM – which was the reason why they were let go first.

The plaintiffs had been exposed to a special form of injustice, their characteristic as women and as black people. Crenshaw compared this to an intersection on which the women were standing and had subsequently been caught in two streams of discriminations at once.

Are injustices nothing else but products of structures?

The answer of classical liberalism to this question would be: Here there were two instances, where the universal right to equality of the individual were violated. It was racist that GM did not hire black women for so long. And it was sexist, that the women were only employed in offices. Every reasonable person must recognize this and want to remove these circumstances.

A different answer comes from Critical Theory, or better, the 21st century reprint of it. According to it, society is full of power structures, which are permanently connected to group characteristics like skin colour, gender and sexual orientation. Depending on which characteristics people fulfil, they belong into a “privileged” group or a “oppressed” group. Men oppress women. White people oppress black people. Heterosexuals oppress homosexuals. Cis people oppress trans people. Fully abled people oppress disabled people. If there are injustices between two such groups, they are nothing but the product of these structures. Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt school, claimed in the 1960s that because of these power inequalities people that supported these structures (according to Marcuse; the political right) should not be able to talk with the same tolerance as oppressed groups.

In the times of the student revolts postmodernism of the French philosopher Michel Foucault became more popular. Many of his followers understood it that way that there was no objective reality, but that the perception of truth depended on the particular position of power in society. Colonialism and relationship of the genders were examples how power influenced knowledge. Systems are still oppressive, even if the individuals are not aware of oppressive behaviour.

Again liberalism, optimistic to clarify would answer: Correct, as colonialism was based on the thought of superiority of white people against “inferior races”, and the discrimination of women results from the patriarchal misfire that different bodies should result in different social values. But haven’t the western, free societies on the last seven decades not detected theses chauvinisms and have made leaps forward? Racism remains a dangerous problem, but it is socially and juristically despised, women are by law made equal and are partially even supported by quotas. Gay people become heads of state and public officials, and the right to asylum grants oppressed people from the global south protection. Of course, there is more to be done, the liberal society is never finished, but the direction is right.
Sadly no, says Critical Theory in its newest reprint. Liberalism is not the solution, but part of the problem. It does not recognize the problems in the system, because it itself is an intellectual product of white men, therefore, a power structure. In her in the USA very successful book Critical Race Theory (2012) the lawyer couple Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic write, that liberalism does not offer the correct frame to solve problems of racism: “Different from traditional civil rights conversation, that (…) focus on step-by-step advancements, Critical Race Theory questions the fundaments of the liberal order itself, including the equality theory, the judicial arguments, the enlightened rationalism and the neutral principal of constitutional law.” You have to read that sentence aloud to yourself sometimes.

An in America also recognized author is Robin DiAngelo, who landed a New York Times bestseller with White Fragility – Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism in 2018. The book states that “Individualism” is an “Ideology” and white people had to, to reflect on omnipresent racism, always look at themselves as part of their race. DiAngelo also offers “Antiracism” trainings. In one of them for the employees of Coca-Cola, she demands to appear “less white” which also meant: “Be less oppressive, arrogant and ignorant.” Sounds racist? It is of course, except if one thinks such generalizations are legitimate to remove “White supremacy”.

Political Poison

Exactly here the political poison lies dormant, a concoction of Critical Theory and Intersectionality. It lets society appear as layers of opposing hostile groups – and every injustice is a consequence of those structures. That is the hot core of so-called identity politics. That is why it suddenly is a problem, if a white Dutch woman translates the book of the black US poet Amanda Gorman, even though when Gorman herself thinks that the translator is a good choice. That is why the peak officials of the SPD² are “extremely ashamed”, when Wolfgang Thierse (a not that young white man) warns, that identity debates could lead to new trench warfare which destroys the public spirit.

Skin colour, age, gender, are the basis of the presumption of guilt – from too little sensibility to racism. The clou, with which this kind of thinking is made waterproof is the mentioned idea of white fragility. It says: If white people fight the accusation of being racist, they are simply denying the reality of racism – and thus keeping it alive.

These already dividing teachings are often directly applied from the USA to Germany, despite the historic, economic and institutional differences. They are taught in seminars, spread in books and shared in editorials. The Critical Race Theory, writes lawyer Cengiz Barskanmaz on the online platform Verfassungsblog [Constitutional blog], can be used to “propagate a racially aware perspective for the German law”. “The interest of law students in Critical Race Theory is definitely high, with rising tendencies.”

Black people can be missing the right racial awareness, mind you. The German-British sociologist Natasha A. Kelly said in a recent discussion round about a black man from Kiel, who called his restaurant “To the Mohr’s head”³ simply hadn’t been through his “political awareness process” yet. The name of the restaurant remains racist, independent of the viewpoint of the man who named it, because: “It is not an individual thing, that you or me can influence, it’s something in the structures.”

The structures. They are everywhere, and they are more powerful than the individual and their arguments. It is a to political theory heightened deeply pessimistic, even in parts paranoid, world view. Of course, racism exists, and it makes murderers out of people. After the NSU terrorism, the murders of Hanau and the success of the AfD⁴ at the voting booth it is only understandable that the fear of the (luckily growing louder) migrant community in Germany is increasing. But who thinks that crime and extremism arise from the “structures” of this country, even from and especially from their immediate surroundings, accuses and alienates their main ally in the fight against racism. Such a rough interpretation of the truth is wrong in the same ways as the right-wing populist projection, Islamist terror comes from the middle of the Muslim community.

Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist at the side of Martin Luther King, once wrote: “When my brothers draw a circle around me to exclude me, I’ll draw a larger one, to include them. When they talk about the privileges of a weakening group, I’ll talk about the rights of all people.” From this inclusive philosophy this new, dangerous teaching of hostility does not only step back – it draws ever-shrinking circles with thicker and thicker brushes and divides society into more and more groups, which are supposed to oppose each other with more and more hostility. It is time to realize this madness – and stop it.

Footnotes:

¹ The term transsexual was used here verbatim. I think the term is outdated, but as I am not a professional translator, I was unsure if I should "update" it, as I think a translation should always be as close to the source as possible.

² The SPD is the major center-left party in Germany. They have formed the government together with the center right party, the CDU/CSU for decades now, but are fairly unpopular right now.

³ The word Mohr is a German discriminatory term to refer to black people. I would not put it on the same "pedestal" as the n-word as it is missing the historical weight, but nevertheless it should not be used any more. It still remains in use under the population in some historic remnants like a classic dessert called Mohr im Hemd (Mohr in a shirt) which is a chocolate sponge cake in chocolate sauce served with vanilla ice cream.

⁴ The populist rightwing party of Germany. Have gotten enough votes due to the refugee crisis to enter some local state governments and the German federal, but no other party cooperates with them as they are very obviously racist, islamophobic and have in some cases, ties to actual neo nazis.

Original article: https://www.zeit.de/2021/11/identitaetspolitik-rassismus-soziale-gerechtigkeit-intersektionalitaet/komplettansicht (paywalled, and in German, if we have German people here who'd like to verify my translation, I can give you a copy).

That marks the end! I hope you liked it and I hope we can have a good discussion about it. I've spend some time translating this so I'll take a break, go shopping and come back to this a bit later to form my own opinion in a separate comment. Be kind to each other!