YOU picked the citation. But what evs.
…yes?
I don’t think anyone here is disputing that high school and college is a totally different beast, and teenagers/proto-adults seem much more likely to spread covid-19 the same way as other adults and not like small children.
I also have to repeat then that I do agree that there are less risks for elementary and middle schoolers, read it again.
The point is still that the risks for the adults is cavalierly ignored.
Again, the point was that I did agree a long time ago that small kids will have less to worry, adults that will get into enclosed quarters in poor schools will have less of a choice.
It is reassuring to see that teachers of younger children are still at lower risk with open schools than the overall population risk. I think it’s important to consider the comparisons being made by individuals, though.
Are teachers working remotely from home or from an empty classroom at less risk than those teaching in a classroom full of kids? Yes. If somebody can come up with data showing the risk is the same or less for in-school, then I’d be very surprised. I’d also wonder what teachers working remotely are doing off camera.
It is very reasonable to say that the risk is still extremely low.
If I’m doing my math right, based on the school response dashboard the infection rate for non-high school staff when there is some or all in-person school is 190/100,000. Compare that to the recently released rates for Amazon and Whole Foods frontline employees of 1444/100,000. Adding back in high schools raises it to 270/100,000.
For remote only non-high school, the rate is 0/100,000. Including high school it goes to 250/100,000. What are high school teachers doing?
Caution for selection bias first. The politicalization of responses to COVID-19 has resulted in remote only having been the choice most commonly of the lowest rate districts and in-person more commonly in regions that had higher rates at the start. Weird but that is the country we have. So interpret that dashboard with caution.
Nevertheless -
Remote only High School teachers/staff being higher than remote only non-High School teachers/staff is at least consistent with the hypothesis that more frequent/recent exposure to non-COVID-19 HCoVs provides protection from infection. The younger the children you are dealing with the more unavoidable and frequent is your past exposure to their snot, and thus to the various respiratory bugs primarily transmitted by snot. High School teachers and staff have less past regular exposure to that than younger grades teachers and staff, thus less protection. Seriously (anecdote alert) none of the pediatricians I know, all of whom have stayed out and about working through it all, have caught it that I know of. I’m sure there are some but it seems uncommon.
@DSeid, you’ve mentioned before that you had some cases of kids with parents with COVID-19, and I’m really curious as to whether you’ve noticed any correlation between the age of your patients and the fraction of their parents that might have come down with COVID-19? If this speculation about non-COVID-19 HCoVs is true, I’d also expect parents of small kids to be much less likely to come down with it (or at least less likely to have pronounced symptoms). I’ve wondered this for a while but I feel like it’s possible you may have more data points now, even if they’re only anecdotal.
Not that jumps out at me anyway.
The within household directionality I’ve seen though is exclusively parent to child and the pattern I’ve seen is most consistent with the idea of very efficient vs very inefficient spreaders - when a parent or caregiver has it and the household gets tested the majority of time no one in the household tests positive but when one tests positive the majority of the kids do. Also my anecdotal experience is other than that U.K. study - most of those positives have been without symptoms.
I did misinterpret a piece of the study, but oddly not what you just posted.
It was this statement.
and was in regards to this piece of the study
I had thought that the infection rates were higher in India. But as you pointed out, the infection rates in India were lower than the US across all age groups. The point they were making was that the 5-17 age group and 18-29 age group in India was higher in relation to the proportion of other age groups in the US. That’s the reason for the finding that more infection was found in lower age groups by proportion than was found in the earlier studies.
Hmm, that’s interesting that your experience bears out the efficient vs inefficient spreaders. Thanks!
Although the study suggest teachers may be at lower risk, it may also be true that risk is taken in a cavalier fashion in some areas. I don’t want to say politics is a factor. But by all means it is reasonable to provide PPE.
You are misunderstanding the statement.
Figure 4, previously linked, helps make it clear.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2020/09/29/science.abd7672/F4.large.jpg
“A” shows that more of the Indian population are in each of the under 50 year old age cohorts.
“B” shows that in BOTH countries there are similarly FEW cases 17 and under.
“C” shows that there are fewer case per unit population in India across all age groups, ESPECIALLY MUCH FEWER in the under 4 year old crowd. Please note that is a log scale. The difference is BIG.
It in fact demonstrates the EXACT OPPOSITE of how you understood it: infection rates were lower among children in India, and most dramatically so among the youngest children. Mortality rates lower as well.
The main issue in India is the fact that their population pyramid is skewed younger: there is a smaller share of cases in those over 50 mainly because there is a smaller fraction of people those ages there. The exception might be for the over 85 group but in India the n there is very small and a very few not getting reported would greatly impact the number.
AND to engage in other good mitigation practices! Across all workplaces!
So went into the supplement for the exact numbers.
India incidence per 10,000:
0-4 years 6.3
5-17 years 12.7
18-29 years 39.2
30-39 years 45.3
U.S. incidence per 10,000:
0-4 years 33.5
5-17 years 46.1
18-29 years 165.6
30-39 years 157.3
The U.S. has 4x more incidence in the 4 and under group, and nearly the same multiple in the 5 to 17 group. To a very rough approximation pretty much each of these age cohorts in India had 25% of the cases as the same age cohort in the U.S. Child case rates in the U.S. are low but in India they really low.
So this is a cool addition to the 91-divoc site:
Obviously testing procedures vary by institution, so compare across institutions and to broader numbers with caution, but are consistent within each one. The pattern of a quick peak and quick drop, sustained so far, is pretty widespread.
Similarly when going into the local counties I have randomly checked (e.g. Champaign county IL) - rates now as low as before students returned for Fall session.
While I thought the catastrophe confidently predicted by so many that colleges opening would cause was overplayed to hysterical I have to admit I was not expecting this degree of across the board rapid drop and non-event.
My daughter’s university is running a 0.05% positivity rate.
I know one thing. My daughter and grandkids are suffering horribly with trying to do school at home. All three of them are acting out and I think my daughter is about to lose her mind.
The kids are 8, 6 and 2. Trying to get the older two set up for zoom and online field trips all scheduled at different times while trying to tend a 2 year old is next to impossible. I help when I can but with my back, I’m not good for more than a couple hours a day. I would almost rather they take the year off.
It is so so stressful. I have no good advice but I see moms all over twitter in real despair. I wish we could come up with better answers.
The researcher in the study says this.
That’s my understanding of the study.
For age 0-4, 4x 6.3 is 25.2. 5x 6.3 is 31.5, still under the US level of 33.5. The multiple for children is higher than 4x. It’s over 5x.
For age 5-17, 5x 12.7 is 63.5, way above the US rate of 46.1. If the rate of infection for children in India were the same rate as in the US, the multiple in India gives a higher rate.
If the rate of infection were the same for children in India as they were in the US, one would expect the rate of infection of the 5-17 year olds to be lower. That’s the reason for the statement that transmission of children in the 5-17 year old category in India is higher than expected based on looking at the US data.
Or put another way, in India the rate of infection of 5-17 year olds is double that of 0-4 year old. 12.7 is roughly 6.3 doubled. In the US, the rate of 5-17 year olds is not doubled. 46.1 is not 33.5 doubled.
Okay.
Yes, going by the assumption that infected child contacts of a child index case were infected by the index case and not a common adult source, which the author assumes and I am willing to go with for the sake of the discussion, then kids are as efficient of transmitters to other children as adults are to adults. And the data is extremely clear very very poor at transmitting to adults. Also the data is very clear that children who are infected are almost always infected by an adult, not by another child. The graphs are there if you care to look at them.
By Jove you are right, the rate of infection in the youngest children is even lower in India compared to the U.S. that I attributed. In the extremely crowded child on top of child circumstance of these Indian provinces, the youngest children have FIVE times less infections than the youngest children in the U.S. From there the case incidence rate follows more or less in parallel up to the over 65 cohorts. To be precise:
0-4 years 5.3X more same age group in the less child crowded U.S. conditions (or times less in crowded Indian conditions if you prefer)
5-17 years 3.6X
18-29 years 4.2X
30-39 years 3.5X
40-49 years 3.8X
50-64 years 3.0X
65 to 74 years 2.6X
75 to 84 years 3.4X
85 plus years 9X more
Reported cases and deaths are not as concentrated in the 85 plus age cohort in India (where there are very few of that age) as they are in the United States. Shocking! Also per reported case more over 85 die in the U.S. Which is potentially interesting.
What’s this thread again? Oh yeah, “opening schools.” IF kids were drivers of infection into higher risk populations, or even to each other, then we’d expect to see particularly high rates among children especially in the most crowded conditions, and many infected adult contacts of child index cases.
INSTEAD we see absurdly LOW rates among the youngest children, and children 5 to 17 in India with low rates, almost exactly the same fraction of U.S. cases 30 to 39 and roughly the same comparative fraction (a very low absolute number) and in the middle of that multiple range for all adults 18 to 64.
INSTEAD we see infected contacts of child index cases almost exclusively being other children and very few infected contacts of child index cases being adults.
The hypothesis that children drive infections into adults in any meaningful way is falsified by these findings, at least in India.
The hypothesis that kids DO NOT spread infections to adults very much is supported.
The conclusion that the author makes as quoted about the paper (left as a “may” in the paper itself) that this shows kids are effective transmitters (to other children fairly exclusively) can be made on the assumption that every infected child contact of a child index was infected by the child index case and not by a shared adult contact, BUT is in conflict with the finding that child infection rates are not relatively increased in India compared to the United States and are, for the youngest cohort significantly lower, despite crowded Indian conditions.
I wonder how much that’s just a reflection of a relatively small pool of still susceptible population on those campuses.
Speculative hypotheses covered earlier, such as by @echoreply here. If I had to guess I’d go with the idea that there is a relatively small pool of still susceptible left among those most likely to be behaving in ways compatible with being an efficient transmitter. Those individuals either already came as “resolveds” or some as “infected” or fairly quickly went into those buckets in reverse order. They are a minority of the college population but responsible for the vast majority of the spread and it ripped through them fast. The rest of the population is behaving with reasonable mitigation behaviors wanting to get the damn education they or their families are paying for most of all. Classrooms are not where it spreads; loud parties and other largish indoor gatherings especially ones that involve alcohol and/or other substances are. It’s that “heterogeneous” bit: those most likely to be superspreaders are also those among those most likely to be infected sooner thus are out of the pool to spread it more quickly. Getting to herd immunity resolved rates among that specific subgroup reduces infection for everyone who is not behaving in superspreader manners even though there are many more of the latter than the former.