'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?

[Velvian]

Sorry, that was a bit off topic. I listened to More or Less too. I took from it that children were initially feared to be superspreaders, but the evidence so far seemed to suggest that they spread it slightly less than adults do.

I did think that David Spiegalhalter slightly contradicted himself. He did a blanket "children only get mild illness" and then went on to acknowledge the few children in ICU and 1 fatality in the UK (data was only for over 5s).

[Barbie222]

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="blank">fromm<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770353?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/education&link_location=live-reporting-story

Children "half as likely" to contract, not clear on role in spread.

[Delatron]

Great to see more and more evidence on this very day.

[WindFlower92]

That's a great article about children, but no mention of 15 year olds

[WindFlower92]

Except for the graph that puts them in the 15-44 year old group.

[WindFlower92]

Which in my eyes makes them adults!

[DelphiniumBlue]

I work in a primary school, and caught Covid from kids at school. I know this because I drive myself to and from school and didn't go anywhere else in the time leading up to it -we were already heading towards lockdown at the time and I didn't do my usual activities.
Everyone else in my household got it after me, so i didn't catch it from them.
Just saying.

[Sweetnhappy1]

@Ontopofthesunset

There weren't huge outbreaks in schools prior to lockdown which you would have expected in London at least.

In my child's school, loads and loads of children went off sick after Feb half term (South West London) after they got back from their skiing holidays. Quite a few local schools had to shut for deep cleaning. We don't know if these were actual outbreaks because no-one was being tested. You could only access testing if you had returned from China, Iran or that very specific part of North Italy. So these kids who came back from skiing in France, Switzerland, Austria etc were just presumed to have normal viral infections. Most people I know who think they might have it had their symptoms after Feb half term up until the beginning of lock down. Bear in mind, infection to death usually takes a good few weeks.

[beresh]

School children up to age 15 have been back in Switzerland since May 11th, in classes of up to 15 children. Not sure how it works for the kindergarten children but for my teenager there are no masks, 2m social distancing from teachers and plexiglass screens for close work with teachers. There are hand sanitisers outside all classrooms.

There have been no outbreaks in schools yet. The scientists here have argued very strongly all along that children are not major spreaders of this disease, they are less likely to catch it than older adults and are rarely ill if they do catch it.

The number of new infections has continued to fall, despite shops and restaurants also being open. The last 3 days there have only been 15 or fewer positive tests.

The UK only overtook Switzerland's infection rate per million people in the last couple of weeks, we were getting over 1000 new cases a day at the peak.

[MarginalGain]

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.

But that's not what is meant by 'mild case'. What you describe would be an outlier/severe case.

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

On the topic of the role of older children in the spread of the virus, there is a retrospective study of the students and staff of a high school Covid-19 hotspot in France which does seem to show that it can take hold in such an environment.

Around 40% of the teachers and students tested positive for antibodies. Parents and siblings were also tested and a seropositive rate of around 10% was found.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134v1.full.pdf

This is one school. It was in the epicentre of the outbreak in France. I am not sure how representative it would be for possible developments in UK schools but it is certainly worth taking note of.

Some medical professionals and epidemiologists have suggested that the virus could have been seeded in the UK by students returning from half-term skiing breaks.

[mac12]

Secondary school in Auckland was centre of one of New Zealand’s clusters, 96 cases if I remember correctly

[LastTrainEast]

"It's all theatre" well that's a relief. I thought people were dying from it.

I'm a bit puzzled that somehow Boris is at fault for the lockdown. I was under the impression that other countries had lockdowns too, but I'm happy to hear that it was just something invented by one British Politician.