Suffer the Little Children

But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:14, KJV)

I went to a school run by a religious order (Catholic). We had to take “Religious Education” as one of our compulsory subjects. Many of my classmates objected and found inventive ways to protest. So, when asked to write an essay on Jesus’ attitude to kids, with reference to the “suffer the little children to come unto me” episode, we would have paragraphs like the following:

After a hard day’s preaching, JC had to have a bit of a sit down. He was looking forward to putting his feet up with a bag of fish and chips and watching the next episode of Coronation Street. But he was quickly surrounded by a bunch of kids wanting to see that cool thing he does with the loaves and fishes again.

I didn’t get why they used the word “suffer” here - why not just “permit”? But, then again, there was quite a lot that didn’t make much sense. If you blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, we were told, you could never be forgiven. You what? So this all-forgiving God, who would forgive the most heinous of crimes, would have a hissy fit at being called bad names?

It wasn’t until later on when I looked into the Peshitta (the Aramaic version of the Gospels - and JC probably mostly spoke Aramaic) that this statement made sense. In Aramaic the word translated as “blaspheme” means to turn away (or it can mean that). The words for Holy Spirit have a range of translations like wind and breath, but it can also mean the life-giving power of God. To be forgiven means to be brought back into wholeness.

So an acceptable translation of the saying might be “if you turn yourself away from the life-giving power of God you can never be whole”. Ahhh - now it makes much more sense and is now consistent with the rest of JC’s message.

In fact, if you put JC in the context of the conflict between the two schools of thought exemplified by the great Rabbis Hillel and Shammai, you begin to see an even greater degree of consistency.

To put it somewhat mildly, consistency hasn’t been one of the most notable characteristics of the response to covid.

It has been more like the Hokey-Cokey : you put your left leg in, your left leg out, in, out, in, out, and shake it all about. You do the Hokey-Cokey and you turn around. And that’s what it’s all about.

It’s a cliché, but no less true because of that, our children really ARE our future. These precious, precious, little bundles of joy, snot, and wonder deserve our utmost care and protection (and that does NOT mean wrapping them up in cotton wool so that they are always “safe”).

One of the most curious things about this pandemic (not to mention ultimately also one of the most despicable) has been the focus on kids. Covid, some suggest, is a “once in a lifetime” emergency, but those oh so precious developmental years are also only once in a lifetime.

Almost right from the get-go it was understood that kids, thankfully, were at extremely low risk from serious complications of covid. Even the much-vaunted LongCovid™ barely affects them - a recent large study on kids has shown that there is little difference to be found in reported LongCovid™ symptoms between those infected and not infected.

Kids are not particularly good at spreading it to others either. Teachers in Sweden, for example, haven’t been dropping like flies, despite schools being pretty much open throughout and with NO masking. That’s only one data point - but you can find plenty of studies that come to the same conclusion.

It makes sense (it is consistent) with what we know, or think we know, about the transmission of respiratory viruses - in general, if your immune system deals with things well, you’re not going to be producing a ton of viral load with which to infect others - and we know that kids deal with SARS-CoV-2 extraordinarily well.

Yet kids have shouldered such a heavy, heavy load. Their government induced covid-yoke has been anything but light. If covid only affected those under 20 it probably wouldn’t even have been discovered. If it had been discovered it would have been classed as a disease of minor consequence for the overwhelming majority (one might even say a whelm of epic proportions).

Predominately, covid has been a disease of the elderly or otherwise vulnerable. The somewhat too chunky chunderer of invective writing this has managed to eat and sloth his way into a higher degree of vulnerability than is wise. I have never claimed to be anything other than an idiot.

But that’s on me - and the very last thing I want is for kids to pay for my mistakes. I’ve upped my covid risk by consistently being an idiot when it comes to looking after myself. Why should kids pay for that?

There are, however, those who are in a more vulnerable category through no fault of their own. What’s the solution here? To lock up every kid, turn their lives into an unremitting misery, on the off-chance it reduces your risk by a tiny amount?

I don’t think so.

Life deals some of us some really shitty hands. I get that. To what extent should society have to mould itself around you? It’s a genuine question. And some degree of moulding is the right thing. I don’t think most of us would be against implementing measures for things like wheelchair access, for example. What I don’t know is how we work out the acceptable limits of that moulding for any given circumstance.

What we’ve done to our kids, and appear to be still doing, has transgressed any acceptable limit by a country mile. Alex Starling has written an excellent piece on the harms of masks for schoolkids - and masking has been only one of the vicious and unnecessary things we’ve done to kids. But why this unholy and unhealthy obsession with putting massive restrictions on kids?

But it’s good to know our schoolkids are being taught about safe sax

Kids aren’t the ones suffering from covid. The elderly, the chunky, the otherwise vulnerable - overwhelmingly these are the ones doing the coughing and gasping and, yes, the dying.

The purpose of this chart is not to somehow downplay deaths in the vulnerable - not at all - it is to put the actual risk from covid, if you are perfectly healthy, into context. It emphasizes the exaggerated perception of risk we’ve all been nudged into.

Risk perception has been weaponized - your kid goes to school, mixes with a whole ton of potentially virus-laden horrors, and possibly brings home a little spiky gift for you - that’s the story you’re being told. Meanwhile, after your now spiky little darling has returned from learning about how the white man is an oppressor, you toddle off to the pub for a few hours, and protect yourself and others by wearing a mask when you go for a pee.

Our focus, all along, should have been on those doing the actual suffering from the disease. We should have moved heaven and earth to try to figure out how to better help those who are actually struggling with a life-threatening illness. Many doctors have done that - they’ve mostly been vilified, smeared and threatened with the loss of their medical licence. It seems only the fervent Pfizerati have emerged unscathed.

And as for vaccinating kids - I probably shouldn’t get started. I think you all deserve a little rest from excessively vulgar vituperation.

Suffer the little children? By God, haven’t we ensured that - for no discernible health benefit whatsoever. Our wanton devastation of our kids’ most precious developmental years has been utterly inconsistent with any accurate measure of the actual risk.

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