@inquietant thanks that was a useful read.
What I don't understand is this: it seems to me there is a lot we don't know about the new variant, not surprising as it's new and not enough time for loads of careful scientific study. If people are concerned about a potentially greater impact on children (which it doesn't have to be more severe to create if it simply infects more children, which so far the data supports - see the Imperial study linked above) they're told it's 'scaremongering'.
But given how fast this pandemic is moving, and given how fast the variant is spreading, why are those insisting that this new variant poses no more risk than before not doing the opposite of scaremongering? Minimising? The problem is, minimising and assuming the best could have far more potentially catastrophic consequences than accepting we don't know enough and being precautionary.
We don't know either way. Stating definitively that there is absolutely no way on earth this could affect children more is being equally as reckless as saying the opposite.
MN should be allowing this debate. We've been lied to by the government many times on this. They told us schools were 'safe' or 'covid secure', but before Xmas school aged children were the most infected group of society. It flies in the face of the science the world over to say that congregating inside in large groups with no social distancing and no masks is 'safe'.
With the new variant it seems clear to me that we simply don't know yet. But we need to find out, we need to do the studies, crunch the numbers and talk about it. With transparency. At the start of the pandemic the WHO said one of the most important things in dealing well with sars-cov-2 was transparency. Something the UK has failed at again and again.
I hope MN will allow a little more transparency on this topic as they do on others... just let people talk. Let people look at any available information and make up their own minds so they can make the best informed decisions for their own children.