30 per week is too high but total of 30 has to be too low. He said something about last week was that total as of last week?
Anyway, I’m seeing a total of 86 deaths for children up 17 years old and this will increase with F2F school because this is where kids see other kids more often. Some of these school districts have several thousands of students. So, I don’t think it’s dishonest to think that two children or teenagers may die in a school district. Several may end up in the hospital.
30 per week is too high but total of 30 has to be too low.
Per this page from the CDC, 28 children between the ages of 5 and 14 died of COVID between 2/1/20 and 8/26/20, so “under 30 as of last week” would appear to be exactly correct.
My state (Wisconsin) shows 0 deaths for 0-19 age group. 1,122 overall deaths. About 10,000 positive tests in 0-19 age group.
Wisconsin has an IFR (deaths over positive tests) of 1.49%. That’s way too high. If I assume a IFR of 0.50%, then there are at least 30,000 positive in 0-19 age group with zero deaths.
So even in a large school district, I think a single child dying of COVID-19 is unlikely. And as in any cohort, most of those deaths will be with underlying factors.
Also, it’s not just the issue of opening schools. We can’t freeze the children or preserve them in amber. Children will still be getting infected whether we open schools or not. It’s a question of how the open schools change the situation.
Children are vulnerable to being infected by other family members, presumably. I still hear comments like “if someone in my family gets it, we’ll all get it” that seem to be made with a shrug, when infections can still be prevented. Also, it’s not better or worse getting infected one way or another. Doesn’t matter.
Other family members are also vulnerable to being infected by children.
So are other people the children may come close to, including teachers, other workers at schools, retail workers at any businesses they go to, etc.
I agree there are reasons to open the schools, if it’s done carefully enough; but the issue isn’t only the risk to the children themselves.
I will try to clarify.
On a personal basis, my mother is 95. During COVID, she has moved into assisted living after a brief period in a nursing home after a fall. Assisted living is in lockdown. I have visited her once in the past month. She has a patio and I sat and talked to her, outside the patio, 12-15 feet away or so. I would take my kids to see her before winter. Being Wisconsin, winter lasts for a while. As of yet I don’t know how we will be able to visit then. Plus, she’s 95, time is marching on, her health may get worse for other reasons. So I can’t really pretend that it’s April and May any more.
Myself, I haven’t really started back up. I do need to keep my kids sane and myself sane, find targeted activities that are as safe as possible. Again, winter is coming, which I am dreading.
Plus the politics here are stupid. Bars and restaurants opened with no governmental restrictions because the Republican legislature used Republican judges to overrule the Democratic governor. So bars and restaurants wide open for months, schools closed the whole time.
Thanks for clarification; and sorry for the misunderstanding. It reads to me like you’re being entirely reasonable, and are as you say trying to find specific activities that are relatively safe (and talking to your mother from outside her patio certainly seems to come into that category.)
I agree that fully opening bars and restaurants while closing schools makes no sense at all.
25,604,968 total cases
853,858 dead
17,913,940 recovered
In the US:
6,211,796 total cases
187,736 dead
3,456,263 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
How can anyone think that’s a good idea? Bars should be the last thing to open. People can drink at home. They can have Zoom happy hours. But bars?
Because the cite I used lumped them in with the college kids age bracket. It is about 10X more for that age bracket.
Weekly deaths were a comparison showing that 30 in 6 months is less than what typical total deaths in a week are for this age bracket. Also, you are really assuming kids did not get together over the summer? Neighborhood pool parties, family get togethers, block parties? My state has been pretty much all open since late May. Numbers over the summer never got as bad as April/May even with everyone get tested exhortations in some counties.
Different chart, same source.
“under 30 as of last week” would appear to be exactly correct.
I’ve learned to upgrade my debating skills on this place.
So including the highschoolers seems vitally important when you’re estimating how many students in the district could die from the disease. It’s almost as though you’re skewing the numbers to look overly favorable.
Then just over 300 in an age bracket that encompasses K-college grad and that had almost 500 pneumonia deaths in the same time frame. Still extremely unlikely going to get 2 in the same school district in NH. Which I believe is what the woman’s argument was.
You’re clearly not from Wisconsin (I grew up there). While I agree that open bars aren’t a good idea right now, they’re a huge part of social life for many Wisconsinites. I would suspect that the lawmakers in the state were under strong pressure from both the business community (bars, supper clubs, etc.) and citizens who wanted to be able to start going to the bars again.
I’m wondering about a number. Has anyone or can anyone come up with this?
In any given crowd (in the USA) of people at some random moment, how many are estimated to be contagious (including symptomatic AND asymptomatic) at that random moment?
So for example, in an ordinary crowd of 1,000 people on any given day, is there a way to roughly estimate what percent are currently carrying and capable of spreading the virus, whether or not they have symptoms, or whether or not they have been tested? Would it be 10%? 60% 90%? Rough estimate, not set in concrete, you will not be asked to testify in court.
I still think the best and surest way to protect everyone is to assume that both you and everyone around you is a carrier and contagious pretty much all the time and behave accordingly (with some practical and necessary exceptions), i.e., everyone masked, keeping their distance, etc.
You need to make some big guess assumptions about how long (and for that matter to what degree) each asymptomatic person is. And what period of time you want to consider each presymptomatic into symptomatic person as contagious. And even if you want to consider the difference in risk of being near someone in the bigger group that spreads very poorly as opposed to the small group of super spreaders.
Start off though with your local daily confirmed case number, multiply by 10 to get some crude guess at how many true cases are happening each day, and figure maybe 3 days on average of being out and exposing while contagious???
So US 130/M confirmed times 10 times 3 days. So roughly one per 200 as a starting point.
Plus minus a bunch
Thanks. I knew I could count on you. 
Well, let’s face it, there’s a lot of that going on. Otherwise we got nuttin’.
Even as a WAG, one per 200 is less scary than 150 per 200.
Still, all precautions should continue to be followed! These numbers are not to give us permission to be careless, just to give us a teeny, weeny sliver of hope that someday this may be mostly, sort of over.
I very much miss my Thursday night live music with wine at the local hangout. They would bring in new talent, as well as have their house music. Guitars of all kinds, fiddle, folk songs, rock, soul, international, etc. It was great to hear singers from our town who never made it big, but who could do a tune and do it very well. I miss it, but not enough to end up on a ventiliator…
Yup. Chances of being in a car accident each drive are very low but each of us wearing our seatbelt each time lowers car accident deaths dramatically.
More like five shifts. Those guys want two days off a week plus maybe twenty days annual leave. Running any operation 24/7 is very costly.
I think the issue of bars is not that they are especially superfluous, it’s that they are especially dangerous. They hit all the markers–confined, crowded, close, and continuous. Plus, the nature of alcohol makes people less likely to follow the rules meant to mitigate those risks. They are also LOUD, so people shout, and put their mouths close to their seatmate’s ear. And the point So yeah, it’s hard to see how bars can be open until we have a vaccine.