Children do infect adults

[cantory]

In a paper, published in the British journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the researchers said: 'Notably, the rate of infection in children younger than 10 years (7.4 per cent) was similar to the population average (6.6 per cent).
There was no significant association between the probability of infection and age of the index case.'

This meant that children were as likely as adults to both catch the virus and to spread it.

The researchers added: 'Analyses of how cases are detected, and use of data on individuals exposed but not infected, indicate that infection rates in young children are not lower than the population average (even if rates of clinical disease are).'

Interesting. Yes people who have said they don’t spread it stated it’s because they don’t have the symptoms as much, eg cough

Ireland are keeping schools closed until at least September.

Having skimmed the abstract it says that children catch the virus but have milder symptoms. It doesn't say they infect others at the same rate as adults.

This virus is primarily spread by droplets and viral load also appears to be important both for the likelihood of catching the virus and the likelihood of developing serious symptoms.

Put simply, the people with the worst coughs will pass on the most infection and this is not children.

Children can pass the infection to adults but from everything I have read, it's far more common the other way round.

@langclegs You don't know. Yes worse coughs in theory will transmit more. But adults are more likely to cover their mouths than say 5 year old children. Behaviour matters as well.

cantory you’re shielding right? I get you don’t want schools to rush into going back. I think the vast majority don’t want them back until it’s safe. But it sounds like you’re absolutely thriving on this information. Desperate for it to be true. Why? Surely if it turned out that they don’t pass it on like adults do, that would be a good thing?

@drivingdown Don't be offensive, of course I wish kids did not infect adults, but as yet I do not see the evidence to back that up.

I’m not being ‘offensive’. You’re shouting down anyone who suggests anything other than that children spread it. At the moment, there is no conclusive evidence either way.

You don't know

And neither do you. You are citing one small study which does not say what you think it does.

Well until there’s evidence that they don’t it would seem sensible to assume they do, rather than the other way around, surely?

Well until there’s evidence that they don’t it would seem sensible to assume they do, rather than the other way around, surely?

Yes, that seems to be what the government is doing, otherwise they’d still be at school.

Some people are seriously invested in keeping this lockdown going. Reading a few scientific papers and summarising them incorrectly does not make them experts.

Yes we should be very careful. We need to look at all the available evidence before, for example, reopening schools. And while children may be at lower risk of passing infection on we also need to look at the interactions of everybody in schools, not just children, from teachers to cleaners to parents.

OP, why are you still keeping going?! The paper you’re talking about is not about transmission. It’s about infection. They’re not the same thing. You can’t think this through properly if you don’t understand that very basic difference.

And obviously, completely fucking obviously, the Swiss government have not made their decisions on the basis of a study of one child. Have you read the Dutch government announcement?

My dd (16) is recovering from covid toes, started about a month ago.
She has had no symptoms of covid at all.
Me and dh are fine, no symptoms, but we both think there's a chance we had it at end of January.
DD is a boarder, so we wouldn't have infected her in January.
Not sure what to make of it.
She hasn't been tested, were told to go if we wanted.
She's not bothered about it, obviously if the toes weren't getting better, that would be different.

It’s pointless arguing with the OP Chipotle. They are absolutely COVID obsessed and post constantly about it. They also seem to think that they have insight and the ability to understand the issues that no one else has.

A good example of how a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

This is very interesting and I think it’s quite important that no one jumps to any conclusions about any of this prematurely.

My teen dd probably had it in late March. Very mild symptoms but prolonged loss of smell and taste - which is why we think she had it. I didn’t get sick - which is pretty surprising as we didn’t take any steps to avoid contact. BUT I suspect I may have had it earlier.

but there are a number of people on MN who keep saying kids do not spread this virus. They refer to the case of 1 Austrian boy who does not seem to have passed the virus onto anyone in spite of meeting lots of people. But a bit bizarre to state as fact that kids do not spread the virus based on 1 boy.

No - they are proabably referring to the comprehensive WHO study

Looking at the infection and transmission rate of children is not be used by posters as an argument of whether schools should or should not reopen - ultimately this will be a decision by Government not MN. It is simply seeking to reassure the many very worried parents out there with medical evidence on the risk or not to their children. In any event there will be quite a few parents that regardless of when schools are deemed "safe" will still refuse to send their children to school out of concern for their children's health and realistically I cannot see how any Government can force them to do so.

A layman's report - news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-no-child-known-to-have-passed-covid-19-to-adults-global-study-finds-11981111
Note - the French boy mentioned is included as 'an example', not the sole evidence.

Op seems to have summed up what the study said. It djoes seem like peiple want to cling to children not transmitting it.
Anyway im sure uk could do their own research after all they know which kids came back from italy. Surely some were only in contact with certain people without the teachers ie certain friends who got ill or their parents.

If 6% of kids got it in studies but only 2% or so had symptoms it's going to be very hard to contain by sending kids for testing and home for 14 days as only 1/3 would have aby symptoms and probably most mild symptoms. So a kid with a 38.5 temp overnight could easily be missed (or ignored by parents...).
How mabny would actually keep themselves off work and kids off school 2w?

One of the studies said about 40% of the kids had pneumonia but with no symptoms!
Anyway even if under 10 are ok thats still potentially 2year groups in primary with kids over that age

Nyc has apparently decided no school till sept. .

It's hard for me to grasp how children couldn't spread it. What physiological difference accounts for their inability to spread it? The virus almost certainly originated in animals, meaning even they can spread it!

If they don’t spread Coronavirus then it’s the one and only horrible bug they don’t spread!
Anyone else’s family all go down with whatever cold or virus is doing the rounds each term?! 😆

Some theories as to why coronavirus affects children less badly than adults www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2020/03/coronavirus-spares-most-kids-these-theories-may-help-explain-why

So a few observations after reading through the full article: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1.full.pdf

1. As Chipotle correctly points out the article is all about infection and not transmission - they are very different things. Given that so far 9 children (26/04/20) have died in England (out of a total of 18k deaths) i don't think anyone could argue that children cannot become infected.
2. The study you referred to was based on 391 cases in Shenzen, China between Jan and Feb this year and was published on the 3rd march 2020 so I dont know why it is now suddenly news.
3. A more recent study on the 22nd April (dontforgetthebubbles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-data-top-10.pdf) has shown that infection rates amongst children in S Korea, Iceland and Italy are significantly lower amongst children than adults.

As per my previous post this is not about pushing whether schools should or should not open it is about properly informing and hopefully reassuring the very many and very worried parents that their children are at a very very low risk of dying from Corona virus.

A few observations on the Charite Berlin medical article:

zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites/m_cc05/virologie-ccm/dateien_upload/Weitere_Dateien/analysis-of-SARS-CoV-2-viral-load-by-patient-age.pdf

1. again this refers to infection amongst children not transmission - (two very different things) based on viral loads.
2. It concludes that children may have adult like levels of infectivity or they may have lower levels of infectivity compared to adults but more analysis is need to prove it one way or the other. But ends with children may be as infectious as adults.

I am shocked that this paper has even been released by Charite.