'Kids don't spread it'

[WindFlower92]

Keep seeing this as a justification for schools opening. Anyone know if 14/15 year olds count as 'kids' in this context?

And is there any actual hard evidence for this statement anyway?

[Barbie222]

No because they've been closed to all but a small number of children @Mascotte .

Seriously, we need to get away from this sort of whataboutery when discussing this. The government abandoned community testing in mid March, none of the many many children or staff who were ill in the week before closure were tested. Some got ill enough to warrant a hospital admission and a positive test, and most got better. That's not saying that there were no cases around. It's saying the level of testing was low. If there were no risk, why were our schools all closed in the first place?

[BackInTime]

@Mascotte Exactly this and you would expect that these kids would have been at high of catching the virus passed on from their parents who have been exposed by the jobs throughout the peak.

[Mascotte]

All these measures are unnecessary in schools. It's nuts.

[MarginalGain]

Completely agree with @Eyewhisker and we’ll look back in years to come and wonder what on earth we were thinking.

Yes, and I think Johnson is aware of this and doing his best to make his last minute swerve to lockdown seem sensible.

[Delatron]

I guess the evidence wasn’t around then but now two months later we have more research and evidence and know more about the virus.

[T0tallyFuckedUpFamily]

Well, until the scientific community can say for certain that kids don’t spread it, I shall continue viewing them as if they are “The Children Of The Corn” and staying well clear.

[Porridgeoat]

‘Kids don’t spread it’ or in other words ‘stick kids in school for childcare so the economy is impacted to a lesser extent’

[Mascotte]

@Porridge it's got nothing to do with that, children need to be with other children and in their routines, not isolated and miserable.

[Delatron]

Personally I’m happy with 47 studies and a review of those 47 studies with mounting evidence from scientists and other countries...

Nothing from the other side of the argument..!

Everyone is free to make their own decisions. I’ll look at evidence and science.

[Weedsnseeds1]

Cornettoninja it is how live vaccines work. You are administered a small amount of a modified virus, so that your body can build up antibodies.
It's not the same as someone bleeding/coughing/spitting an infective dose of live "wild" virus straight at you.
In a non controlled situation, you are exposed to a virus unfamiliar to your immune system.
The infective dose required will vary from virus to virus. This dictates how easy or hard it is so spread it around.
In general, the younger you are, if you have no other factors that are suppressing your immunity, the faster your immune system works on the "invaders". The virus is stopped from replicating and the person either gets no symptoms or recovers from illness.
Older people or people with other issues that affect their immune system, react less slowly, the virus gets more of a toe hold and their immune systems can be overwhelmed.
That is viral load.
If a person is infected, another infective dose being administered doesn't mean that they get more infected because the immune system is already alerted and doing its thing, it's on the case.

[BackInTime]

Why does anyone think September will be any less risky?

[namechangenumber2]

I thought it was interesting when I saw a news headline recently saying about a school in Derby ( I think) who was having to be closed for a deep clean as two children had coronavirus. Was this the first school case in the UK? If so, surely that's good indicator as some schools have remained open to keyworker children over the last 2 months? I know numbers are low but I'd still expect more outbreaks

[B1rdbra1n]

read an article this morning suggesting that non-SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses can confer some degree of immunity for SARS-CoV-2
I was wondering about that...
for instance, might it be possible that people who are resistant/immune to strains of the common cold are also (by virtue of that) resistant/immune to covid?
It could be one factor affecting who succumbs and who doesn't?

[Barbie222]

There have been many examples @namechangenumber2 , they don't make much news. Three were closed and deep cleaned in my borough before the closures. I assumed it was happening in other boroughs too. A quick google shows these cases make the local paper but I haven't seen any total numbers.

[Barbie222]

Just from the first page of my search there were schools closed after individual cases in Berks, Crewkerne, Wales, Dorking, Bolton, Medway and a Whitby during March.

[WindFlower92]

The reason I'm asking is because I'm a secondary teacher and will be back in a room with 10 14/15 year olds in two weeks. From WHO's statistics, 10-50 year olds are lumped together in one group, so that suggests infection and death rates are the same from the age of 10 up. Our school has said there is 'no need for PPE' as children infect less, but my concern is that I won't be dealing with children!

I've also tried to look online but can't find anything; what age do you develop ACE2 receptors? As surely that's the age you start to be able to infect others?

[namechangenumber2]

Ah yes our local school closed for deep clean as a child had a suspected case back in March. The Derby case was two children ( non siblings) who had it, so I guess the belief is they spread it between each other. I don't know really, I'm just guessing ( and being optimistic!)

[RigaBalsam]

Coronavirus: Doctors, carers and children getting COVID-19 at same rate as everyone else - ONS news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-doctors-carers-and-children-getting-covid-19-at-same-rate-as-everyone-else-ons-11992078

Though no info on how children spread it. Very hard to investigate.

[Barbie222]

The point is that the infection was certainly around and in schools during the period when we were tracking and tracing, so I don't see that it would have suddenly stopped circulating just as we decided to stop testing.

Whether the children were infected at school is harder to say but the quick close and clean response is similar to what the Government propose to do now with the bubbles.

[Tfoot75]

adc.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/05/archdischild-2020-319474

I think it is generally accepted now that children spread less than adults and are extremely low risk themselves. There is no evidence that they spread more, as with flu.

The further we get into this, the more mired in we seem to be. I think the consequences are going to be far far wider than what we're trying to cure here.

[Barbie222]

That's very odd @RigaBalsam . It almost looks like it has been circulating in the population for a while to have those sorts of equal figures!

[WindFlower92]

But does a 15 year old spread more than a 6 year old? I'm not asking about children under, say, 10.

[Barbie222]

@Tfoot75 that's quite an old survey now and there have been a lot more data since.

[Delatron]

Sorry OP I think the thread went off on a tangent.

I think the risk just goes up slightly with each age group but not much.

[Velvian]

I don't think anyone should be vilified for putting their own family's risk at the forefront. We are obliged to keep our children safe as parents. I have avoided exposing my DC to norovirus and chicken pox when they were really small and would have taken up CP vaccinations if offered.

I think a lot of the language is misleading. I think "mild case" can mean the worst illness your child has ever had, bed bound for over a week and weeks before back to fitness. I wouldn't want that for my DC or any DC.

That's without taking the Multisystem Inflammatory syndrome into account. Yes, this does still seem to be very rare, but we know little about it and it does also seem to affect asymptomatic cases further down the line.

My Dsis developed encephalitis from an unidentified virus. That resulted in 2 months in hospital and a few years of learning to do everything again. I have lost that "it won't happen to us" mentality.