Helping kids be healthy and safe. It's a nice thing to do. It's kind, but it's more than that.

It's primal. It's animal instinct. It's preservation of whichever species you happen to be a member of.

It's not always easy, but it is at root.

Simple, this idea, let us protect the kids.

Except when it's not, like now.

A year and a half into COVID, entering our third school year that will be affected by the virus.

The vaccine has spread, but not far enough.

Unavailable if you're under 12, which a lot of kids are.

Safety measures are being taken, but not enough, especially by knuckleheads.

And there have been well over 600,000 deaths. Young people live in a world

that for them has not yet been formed. But whatever had been formed has been fractured, maybe shattered.

A lot of them don't have a normal that they can remember, that they can imagine returning to.

And it's messing them up. This is from

the CDC. Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health-related emergency department visits

for children age 5 to 11 increased approximately 24%. For kids 12 to 17 years old, it was 31%. Children's Hospital of Chicago

took a survey and found 71% of parents believe the pandemic has taken a toll on their child's

mental health. Sixty-nine percent say the pandemic is the worst thing to happen to their child. I'm sure I'm not alone in

thinking that one of the tougher parts of COVID has been having my kids quite logically ask

what's going to happen with COVID and me not being able to give them really firm answers,

especially in terms of timelines,

empathetically saying, well, I don't know for sure, is honest and it's humane,

but it's not super helpful. And to me, that hurts. It sucks because I can't fulfill that

...