A glance through the history of pandemics reveals that they can kill people in large numbers and combatting them requires intelligence, persistence and knowledge. Viruses mutate and react to circumstances as they try to find a way to replicate. They usually need a host and different hosts have different biologies. Mosquitoes afford viruses an efficient taxi service. Bats, because their blood which circulates faster and generates more heat, can cope with viruses in their blood stream which kill humans. Someone with a cold in S. Africa infected with Covid incubated the Omicron variant. If you want to stop a virus spreading among humans you have to immunize or isolate as quickly as possible. Humans discovered ways to trick the body to defend itself many years ago. It took lengthy research and understanding. Rich Lowry armed with a political playbook declares nobody should be allowed to "force" kids to be vaccinated. To him they should be allowed to carry round a virus because only a few might die, unlike with polio. He doesn't understand that children might incubate a totally new variant or pass on the original to their parents. To Lowry infection and death rates are just figures.