Any African Dopers with perceptions from on the ground?
So far Africa as a whole is not getting hit hard at all. Egypt some but even they’re at only 0.4 deaths/million population.
Overall about half of the continent’s population is under 19. If it is true that kids are not very contagious with it then Africa might not get bad at all even with crowded conditions, much baseline malnutrition/disease, and a healthcare system with little capacity to take care of many very ill at once. If children functionally act more like Resolveds then it might not be able to spread very much there at all, even with tight multigenerational social networks as are common in many African cultures.
If they are very contagious then it may become very bad quickly.
I am not African but used to live there and follow events there via the news and personal contacts. COVID has not hit Africa particularly hard. It is probably under reported, but it’s not nearly as bad as Europe or the United States, by far. There have been measures taken like school closings and some places have lockdowns and curfews.
Still, given the crowded living conditions and multigenerational residential lifestyles, it is a happy surprise that the disease has not spread more rapidly. The most likely reason is that the virus does not transmit as well in hot, humid climates.
Under reported because of lack of testing would likely be the main reason. Places like Jo’Burg and Pretoria are more modern cities with better access to testing and better record keeping.
I may have missed something, but is there any reason to believe that kids are not very contagious, as opposed to that they just exhibit few-to-no symptoms?
That would under report confirmed cases for sure. But a spike in deaths due to pneumonia, even if attributed to influenza or other clinically, would still be noticeable if it was taking off.
No. The early data (heavily massaged) by the CCP and WHO seemed to indicate that in China, young people weren’t catching this as much, and when they were they were mainly getting the mild version. But that doesn’t seem to be the case anywhere else, so either it was an anomaly in the data, in Chinese physiology, or it was deliberate mis-information by the CCP. In this case, to be charitable, I’d say it was just an anomaly in the data. It certainly isn’t being shown in Europe or the US.
Also has a long and recent history of dealing with epidemic out breaks like ebola and marburg.
So a lot of these quarantine and testing procedures are already familiar and in place.
Also the heat may be helping, though that is at best a guess now. Similarly, Vietnam, Loas, Cambodia and to some degree Thailand and the Philippines , all have far few cases than one would expect, despite a huge influx of Chinese tourists.
But I would think Africans after dealing with these previous epidemics are more prone to quickly adapt to measures, the Western countries thought were “extreme.”
Case contact tracing done extensively in South Korea found many cases of kids getting infected by adults and none of adults from kids.
I am sure it happens some but that is a long shot different than the case with influenza and most other higher R0 infections. In general kids are the amplifiers.
There has been some suggestion that countries, where Malaria is endemic, have seen a reduced number of cases. Others have cast doubt on this hypothesis.
There is the weather transmission debate, which states that warmer weather inhibits COVID spread, which is still being debated but has a lot more evidence to back it up.
Another proposal put forward and linked with the malaria hypothesis is that Chloroquine, which is regularly prescribed and administered, is responsible for the surprising lack of cases. Again, not definitive. Still Despite popular belief, the fact Chloroquine has effects on viruses has been anecdotally reported for decades, Trump and the French didn’t make it up. Its the reason why it was investigated in the first place for SARS and MERS.
There are all sorts of articles on this, but I can’t link to the one I’m looking at now as it’s a special report. However, here is what the CDC says:
The key there is ‘do not appear to be at a higher risk’ I think. In the US and Europe, there have been a higher rate of children getting infected that in several Asian countries. I don’t know if anyone knows why. My gut feeling was that in China there was a lot of misreporting that may (probably did) skew a lot of the early reporting. Also, children don’t seem to get (as much) the really sever version as adults do, but they are carriers. Here is a CNN article on that part:
Basically, at this stage, take everything with a huge grain of salt. There seem to be a ton of unknowns still, though maybe 'dopers with expertise in disease theory or whatever could weigh in. I can’t say I’m even a gifted armature on this, just someone who gets briefed on stuff and tries to follow what people more qualified are trying to tell me. A brief I attended at the end of last week had it in stuff about children and they were saying that the Chinese data may have masked a lot of the children infections there because they weren’t as severe, and that the early data in Europe and the US seemed to bear that out. Now they seem to be shifting on that, but I don’t know if there is enough data to really say at this point.
So, like I said, grain of salt on anything. The experts are still collating data on all of this, and some of the data is contradictory or seems to have changed over time. I don’t think any definitive statement can be made about this, but to think children can’t get it or can’t transmit it seems incorrect. What does seem to be tentatively correct at this time is that children mainly seem to get the milder version, but with exceptions that don’t always correlate to having pre-existing conditions.
I wasn’t really trying to address this directly, except to say ‘it’s not really known at this time’, but here, from the same article:
Not sure I linked to it, but earlier I read that one of the reasons children don’t seem (emphasis on the ‘seem’ part) to have been part of the early transmission vectors is because it was parents bringing it home from work or from going out initially, and that the spread was mainly due to adult actions (work and travel, not from the schools), but that this may be changing now that we are in a social distancing situation where adults are home. Also, as noted, young children seem to predominantly have a milder case. So, they may not be being reflected in the numbers, since kids get runny noses, fevers and coughs all the time, and if it’s not sever they may not even be being counted in many cases. There have been a few cases where kids got more sever cases, but mainly, at least at this time, it SEEMS like kids predominantly get the milder case…or are even totally asymptomatic. Unless you test all the seemingly healthy kids, we aren’t going to know really how many of them have it…and how many times they have been vectors.
Again, grain of salt. Not only am I definitely NOT any sort of expert or even really knowledgeable on this but I think even those who are don’t have definitive answers at this point. There are a ton of things they are still finding out about this every day, and my WAG is that will continue for months to come.
I would hope that many factors are responsible possibly including children getting milder disease, warmer weather inhibiting the virus etc. However, I fear that the reason is simply that Africa was infected later. They seem to be about a month behind the US and with limited testing so the initial disease is not being reported. I have a terrible feeling that one month for now we are going to see an overwhelming spike in severe disease and death in Africa (and also in South America).
Right, it’s just even this last quote just said “yes they can” - he would be crazy to say that it’s impossible. He says “probably” they are a major vector because that’s how a lot of other viruses are spread. But the person DSeid quoted was talking about findings from the extensive case tracking done in South Korea.
