There’s growing evidence children aren’t very contagious either. There’s another topic here I was reading about opening schools. You should take a look at it.
Yes, I saw that before, but there has been some contradictory results and in practical examples your point is likely to be missing something regarding the kids not giving others the contagion.
Two weeks after Israel fully reopened schools, a COVID-19 outbreak sweeping through classrooms — including at least 130 cases at a single school — has led officials to close dozens of schools where students and staff were infected. A new policy orders any school where a virus case emerges to close.
The government decision, announced Wednesday evening, comes after more than 200 cases have been confirmed among students and staff at various schools. At least 244 students and school employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Ministry of Education. At least 42 kindergartens and schools have been shuttered indefinitely. More than 6,800 students and teachers are in home quarantine by government order.
It’s an abrupt reversal of the post-pandemic spirit in Israel as officials lifted most remaining coronavirus restrictions last week. With fewer than 300 deaths in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared victory in early May over the pandemic and last week told Israelis to go to restaurants and “enjoy yourselves.”
But by the weekend, the spike in cases led him to consider reimposing restrictions, including closing all schools.
@RealityCheck71 is completely correct -
“The prevalence of obesity was 18.5% and affected about 13.7 million children and adolescents.” (CDC)
Given that numerator of many millions, yeah, the risk of an obese 10 year old dying from COVID-19 is pretty close to zero. Not sure if I consider numbers that low as “at risk.”
But how about being at risk of at least getting more severe disease than non-obese kids do at least?
Maybe. The article notes with concern that 22% of 50 children hospitalized in a NY hospital were obese. Thing is that given 18.5% of the general population is obese (see above) that is not that much bigger of a number, hard to call significant given the small number of cases.
For most severe though the number was that 6 of the 9 kids needing a ventilator were obese. Hard to say with that few of serious cases if it is meaningful, but assume real. In that case compared to normal weight kids higher risk of severe disease, but given an obese child with COVID-19 the risk of severe disease is still near nil. Three times near nil is still near nil.
The extremely low efficacy of transmission by younger school kids is increasingly well established, and the fact that a teacher came in sick to work, did not wear a mask, and sparked a flare, especially among staff, has a thread that it is discussed within. We are talking about young adults here. YES they can spread it. 18 to 22 year olds presymptomatic with COVID-19 or with mild unrecognized illness will spread it during the day or two before symptoms and for at least several days after. Not so much if masked and socially distancing when in contact with higher risk people, lots more if at a family party with yelling and singing.
These young adults will get together, laugh, sing, party, and yell, together, let’s face it, hook up together, whether at school or living in their parents’ homes. Given that they will be infected, which circumstance do you think results in more higher risk exposures to more vulnerable other adults? Living on campus with some percent sometimes visiting family on a week-end and with campus and especially classroom rules for mask wearing and social distancing somewhat (not perfectly) enforceable, or living in parents’ households with Gramma and Granpa and Aunt Rose visiting somewhat more often?
FWIW, most universities are modifying their fall schedules specifically to reduce the risk of students going back and forth between the campus and their homes. We’re starting a few days earlier than planned, going straight through without any breaks, and shortening the semester by a week so that we finish exams right before Thanksgiving; after that, we’ll all be off until January.
I’m not 100% convinced this makes sense at a school like mine, where only about 25% of the students live on campus (but I guess some of the others are in off-campus apartments but still living near the campus rather than with their families, and I know there has always been a sizeable online-only contingent, for whom the going-back-and-forth thing is not an issue at all).
That last line really does sound like a false choice. In reality if Grandma and Aunt Rosie are visiting they are very irresponsible.
As for the teacher, think about that a moment, why was he there if not because kids are called to come back? Did not work in Israel, kids got infected anyhow and schools closed again.
Considering that the majority of adults aged 18-24 don’t go off to college, I’m not convinced that switching the location of their risky behavior is a strong argument. They may well not be at any greater risk in residential college, but it’s not like areas will be drained of their young and reckless.
I also am not convinced that changing their behavior is hopeless. We’ve shifted the needle on public mores many times. It won’t be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be to be meaningful. However, the easiest bunch to reach will be those residential college students, just because it’s easier to immerse a population in focused messaging when you control where they eat, sleep, and recreate.
Children in schools have their own thread. I’ll not repeat that discussion here. Not my place to tell you what you can do.
“In reality” is what I am considering. Reality is “irresponsible” or not, when 18 to 22 year olds live in their parents’ households many exposures to more vulnerable adults will happen, many many many more than if kids were living on campuses.
@MandaJo, “hopeless” no. Reasonable to expect? Not at all.
Indeed not a majority of 18 to 24 year olds in college, just about 34% of them (admittedly not all residential). I consider that a sizable bunch and the point is that they are less risk to overall mortality the more of them that are at school compared to at home, if only “just because it’s easier to immerse a population in focused messaging when you control where they eat, sleep, and recreate”
Protecting those at highest risk (those in nursing homes) with much better effort than we have to date is essential. The other side is the population who is likely to get the infection the most often, who are most likely to be so minimally symptomatic that they continue to be out and about spreading it, and who are least likely to be compliant with the rules. The more of them as you can get away from larger groups of the more vulnerable in circumstances in which their risk actions to those a higher risk, and even other behaviors to some degree, can be controlled and impacted, the better.
This claims only 13% of college freshmen live on campus, and that will be the largest group. So 13% of a third of that age group. I’m not arguing with your larger point, but I just don’t see this particular claim as a convincing argument for having school. It’s a very small % of the cohort, and in many cases the young people you lose will be replaced by the ones you gain.
I do have some concerns about anything that includes movement from hot spots to areas with low positivity rates. I hope schools will intensely screen the first three weeks.
https://www.aacu.org/aacu-news/newsletter/2018/november/facts-figures
Thing is that Dseid is basing a lot of this on research that is not conclusive, when one looks at the latest it is clear that social distancing did work and it is really hard to separate that from closing schools in the USA; and most of the reports I have seen are from families that have done the proper thing and limit the visits to Grandmas and aunts.
As for the schools, I could have said that it was social distancing together with school closings and other measures why is that lives were saved, one big reason why there is uncertainty in the USA about schools is that in the latest research the school closings were not found to be a big factor, not because they demonstratively were not a factor, but because schools were closing when the research was being done, so uncertainty remains and as noted in other science discussions, uncertainty is not your friend. And it is noted that “it is still unclear what role kids have in spreading the disease”.
In that case one then looks to places like Italy or Israel, where school closings were found to be an important factor on minimizing the contagion spread, because their contribution could be analyzed more properly when they were closed before they normally did.
That is provisional data, with a couple of important caveats:
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It runs only through 6/20 (not 6/29) and even there includes only deaths for which death certificates have been reported to the National Center for Health Statistics and completely coded as of 6/24. With data running anywhere from one to eight weeks behind, depending on state, we know there is data missing. Comparing these numbers to Worldometer, e.g., something like 13-14% of reported COVID deaths as of 6/20 are not included in CDC’s provisional count; I don’t have a source to indicate what percentage of other deaths might be missing.
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Trom’s reporting neglects deaths of infants under the age of one (a combined 80 pneumonia/influenza/COVID), or children aged 15-17 (unknown, as this is not broken out separately in the table).
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Where COVID is not confirmed as the single underlying cause of death, different states and even facilities may not be following exactly the same rules on how to report deaths where COVID could be a contributing factor but some other disease process actually caused death, or when COVID could be present but isn’t lab-confirmed. Right now, if a very elderly person presents with respiratory symptoms then COVID is likely to be front-and-center as a possible diagnosis, but given the “kids don’t get sick from COVID” mentality, I would be cautious in assuming that the same is necessarily true with kids, or that presumptive or probable cases are being reported exactly the same across all age groups.
An incredible amount of effort sure seems to be going into arguing against the fact that children aren’t dying fom this.
If you follow the discussion, I merely suggested that having a risk factor isn’t the same as being at risk. An obese child would not be considered “at risk” by anyone following the research. End of story – for me anyways.
The problem with your statement is that children ARE dying. It doesn’t appear to be a lot of kids, and even allowing for data problems it may never turn out to be a lot of kids, but treating it as though it were impossible is not helpful.
Neither is it useful to assume that just because the kid survives, everything is peachy. We don’t yet understand what the long-term effects might be, but the case of the 20-something in Chicago who has already required a double-lung transplant merits caution. There is also increasing evidence of neurological symptoms. What will be the long-term effects of even asymptomatic COVID infection on a developing brain? At this point, nobody knows, and we have no evidence to assume they will be serious. However, should we therefore assume they will and must be benign or insignificant? On what basis?
Anyone who thinks it’s all over should look at this Sate-by-State graphic. https://rt.live/
Do you have some examples of other asymptomatic diseases that have such long term effects?
Whilst this article does not relate specifically to young people, it does show that there are longer terms effects
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/06/02/covid-health-effects
There is still a great deal that is not known but is strongly suspected. The only way to confirm fully is literally body by body which is one way to undertake research but it would be unethical to enable this pandemic to ravage communities unchecked merely in order to obtain the data.
Why would it be important if other asymptomatic diseases have long term effects, THIS specific one DOES have these properties.
As for young folk - even if they do not die off in droves, the loss of close family members along with associated guilt of transmission is not a cost free option, loss of a parent or carer will have an effect on family finances and on opportunities - those young people in college will carry their loan debts for years if not decades under normal conditions, loss of support from families will make life all the harder for them and their future families.
It’s one thing if we’re taking all (or most) of the right precautions and it turns out that mostly young people are getting infected but at controllable rates, and that on top of that, we’re doing what we can to protect more vulnerable people – we could live with that.
What I seem to be hearing/reading, however, is “Yeah, cases are surging, but it’s mostly young folks, which isn’t really a big deal because young folks are resilient and they don’t seem to be impacted by this virus.”
That’s not the right way to look at it. And the reason it’s not is because today’s young ‘victims’ are also going to be tomorrow’s super spreaders. They aren’t just infected; they are now walking, breathing disease vectors, and that number of disease vectors is what’s most troubling.
Yeah, right now, you don’t see surging death rates. Wait another month, and you’ll probably see a different story. Or, wait until ICUs become full - I don’t care what kinds of improvements in treatment exist; if your hospitals are at capacity and you come down with a bad case of COVID, you’re fucked.
Here’s an article from today’s New York Times:
The American Academy of Pediatrics thinks that it’s better to have students in schools. The guy they interview is a pediatrics infectious disease specialist who helped to write the Academy’s guidelines. He also has two kids of his own, and is still recovering from his own COVID-19 infection so, as he says in the article, “I absolutely take this seriously.”
Here’s a direct quote from his answer to a question from the reporter:
That first paragraph alone contains five links to different studies dealing with children’s susceptibility to, and transmission of, the coronavirus.
The paragraphs I just quoted were in response to the following question from the reporter:
Look, I have no personal skin in this game, at least as far as elementary and secondary schools go. I teach at a university, and next semester I’ll be safely teaching from home. I have no kids of my own. I think that we, as a society, need to do everything we can to reduce the risk of infection, and if that includes keeping schools closed, I’ve got no problem with that. But I also think it’s important not to just soak up and throw around terms like “super spreaders” without looking at what the epidemiologists have to say.
If hospitals are at capacity, and you come down with a case of anything, you’re fucked.
Had a friend recently have an infected wound who waited a bit too long to get it treated. Ended up in the hospital. He’s fine now, but could have been really bad if he’d waited another day or two. I commented to him that it’s a good thing that it didn’t happen in a few months, when he wouldn’t have been able to get in in any sort of timely fashion.
No, it doesn’t. Lots of diseases can cause permanent damage when they get serious and ravage the body. Covid-19 hasn’t shown itself to be different in that regard. But we can’t just give boogeymen equal standing. Saying there’s possibly long term neurological damage in people who are asymptomatic is a total boogeyman and I’ll give it credence if you can show me it already occurs with other diseases.
You still don’t get it do you?
Even if no other disease on earth causes neurological damage for asymptomatic carriers, its Covid 19 that is the cause for concern, even if loads of other diseases DO cause neurological damage, its still irrelevant because its Covid19 we are dealing with and the rate of infection and damage that IT causes.
You are just raising a strawman here - I would be interested to understand your reasoning that damage caused by other diseases has any relevance whatsoever to Covid 19 and why this changes what should be done in relation to Covid 19, because I ain’t seeing it.