Children and school return, Yes there is evidence. Please read it

[NoMorePoliticsPlease]

I dont know why everyone says there is no evidence that children are less affected bu coronavirus and spread it less.
There is this for starters
Highly respected, published in the Arch Dis Child 2020
and printed in the BMJ

I have posted it on every post on the subject but still posters say there is nothing
The teachers unions are coming out of this really badly and do not seem to have the childrens welfare at heart

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

I am admittedly not familiar with this publication and its style, but the fact this article is on a page headed "Viewpoint" seems to me to suggest this is not the cast-iron scientific evidence you suggest it is. Any piece headlined in such a chiding, come-along way immediately looks like argument or opinion. Maybe somebody more familiar with the pages can say whether that's wrong or not.
Your user name doesn't entirely ring true, anyway. Teachers have been working throughout, many in schools, to protect and educate children and the Unions seem to me to be acting in everyone's best interests. It's a complex situation at a time when there's very little patience for complexity, but in a still-developing new situation I'd rather hesitancy and caution rather than "time to get on with it!" briskness.

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01354-0

We don't know enough yet to say conclusively either way.

One study was based on 1 boy who also had flu and when you have a coinfection your viral load is less. So that was peobably why he didnt spread it to 170+ people but it dud say he spread to 1 person.

I think it’s pretty clear that the only possibly ‘conclusion’ right now is that evidence is mixed.

So the remaining issue is assessing the extent of the appetite to forge ahead on unknowns. Which might be the preferred option for any number of other reasons. But should not be based on the still unknown role of children in transmission. And definitely not the role of teens

The teachers unions are coming out of this really badly and do not seem to have the childrens welfare at heart

Teacher's unions have the teacher's welfare at heart. Hope that helps.

The teachers and early years staff have nothing but the children's needs and welfare in mind, go and talk to some of them as they lose sleep and desperately try to work out how to meet children's needs with both hands tied behind their backs by government guidance. Go see the reality of all this instead of assuming they're just lazy buggers who don't wanna. Then meet some of the preschool kids and their shock at being back in their preschool which looks nothing like their preschool any more, and staff trying to find ways to help them cope. Fgs.

There is no evidence. This is one giant experiment. We'll get the evidence in about 6-8 weeks time. All we can do in the meantime is cross our fingers and hope like hell that it turns out to have been successful, and that all the chances fall our way, and everyone can say 'well the teachers were just stupid, lazy and fussy, look it was all fine!' If that happens I'll throw a fucking party, I really will. Because if we're not that lucky and this experiment doesn't work out, its going to be really grim.

Did you read the article? The main takeaway from it is that there isnt enough evidence to provide conclusive support and therefore decisions needs to be made on a risk-benefit basis.
Likewise it dosent evaluate the research it uses to support its arguments, therefore, without looking the research it's based on could be fundamentally flawed, or even cherry picked to support a particular argument.

Likewise it treats returning children to school is the beginning and end of the issue. It dosent the safety of teachers and school staff, and any increased risk to them, nor the fact that returning schools will likely cause parents to mix.
It also dosent look at the increase in risk behaviours due to the subconscious message that mixing is okay and the subsequent impact of that.

When considering something such as schools opening you cannot consider it as a singular phenomenon but as a variable in a whole mix of variables that will influence its outcome. The decision to open schools cannot be solely based on the idea that children may be safe. As I've also read plenty of research recently that have done large studies which contradict the point within that article.

OP why are you so invested in persuading us into believing something you have no reliable conclusive evidence for? Children and adults are potentially at risk in the scenario currently being proposed, and unions are responding accordingly.

Why would your agenda differ from theirs, I wonder?

That article was not externally peer reviewed (only internally by the editors of the journal).

I have read this. I’ve read the evidence that backs up both sides and come to my own decision.

I think it’s rude to keep lecturing others. We’re all different, with different situations.

A lack of peer reviewing is very poor.

I dont know why everyone says there is no evidence that children are less affected bu coronavirus and spread it less.

There is considerable evidence that children are much less affected by the virus. There is conflicting evidence on whether or not they spread it.

Ok I hold my hand up!
I dont actually have a political view on this subject but I do have 12 grandchildren of school age and various needs. I also have ( very dedicated) teachers in the family.
I am sorry if people think I was lecturing, I have read through all of the threads on the subject and I admit to thinking some posters are getting their information from social media,
Of course this is not a research study, but a review of the literature and is new so not yet peer reviewed.
My sensitivity to the teachers unions rests on their rhetoric. Most of the teachers I know are working hard to see how this can work, and also have been teaching children of NHS workers throughout. Anecdotally you might think these are the children most likely to be exposed to the virus from their parents, and yet we havent heard much negative incidents from these teachers.
@Mumoftwo0357
please accept my apology for the offence I have clearly given you. Perhaps my own very invested situation might have mitigated. The teachers in my family and the children are everything, and they are the ones suffering at the moment, perhaps unnecessarily. I am particularly worried about children in difficult situations, and families srtruggling to home school with no computers and quiet space. I have bben very upset about thsi for over a week and so will bow out of the discussion, thank you for yourvaluable input

@NoMorePoliticsPlease
I really appreciate you posting this article - thank you for sharing. BMJ is a peer reviewed journal however there are virtually no peer reviewed articles on CoVID19, the onset being too rapid and the articles too plentiful

@FourPlasticRings
You should be aware that Nature has removed more than 1000 articles at the request of the Chinese government. It is no longer a publication I trust.

Not this article again. It's been around for weeks ( which is a long time in terms of news now) has a clearly defined agenda and doesn't offer any certainty on the degree of spread.

Anecdotally you might think these are the children most likely to be exposed to the virus from their parents, and yet we havent heard much negative incidents from these teachers.

It's important to remember that this has been very (very) small numbers of children with the whole school to themselves, a high ratio of staff to children, that group being the only ones using the building and the loos, staff on a rota so not exposed day after day and the staff generally being selected to be the ones least at risk from a school's staff team. Many schools have had less than 15 children in for this kind of care.

That isn't the same situation at all as teachers will be in under the proposed reopening guidelines.

I understand your situation but please realise that your urgency pushes guilt onto those in oppposite positions. We all have unique situation.

I hope everything works out well to you and yours.

Take care.

There is no evidence. This is one giant experiment. We'll get the evidence in about 6-8 weeks time. All we can do in the meantime is cross our fingers and hope like hell that it turns out to have been successful,

Well we have the example of Scandinavian countries which have reopened schools and found so far that the risk of spreading the virus in schools is moderate.
Granted it's a very difficult decision to make. However the risk to the welfare of children by keeping schools shut may well turn out to be a bigger problem than a moderate spread of Covid.

Call my cynical but I thought the whole idea was so that the pupils and staff contracted covid giving them summer to recover so they can teach in September and spread the virus about a bit before winter flu sets in.

@NotABeliever I would like to see an impact and risk benefit assessnent for children that accounts for the effects of the measures as well as the virus.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08dnd81

This discussion on risk is really worth a listen

The teachers unions are coming out of this really badly and do not seem to have the childrens welfare at heart

Oh for god's sake. Time and again the unions have made clear that they are not trying to block schools from opening, they just wanted clarity on what precautions were being taken and flexibility on how to implement it.

The British Medical Association, the Local Government Association, various independent education organisations, loads of academy chains and several headteachers organisations have all said the same.

Why are you convinced that they are all 'coming out of this really badly'?

The non externally peer reviewed article in the OP was submitted 23rd April. On the 30th April, The Lancet published research that children are as likely to catch and spread Covid -19 as adults (I’m not sure about the significance of ‘superspreaders’ as that isn’t clarified in the article in the OP.) The graphic attached shows the graph from that article. A quote from that article states ’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).

In response to that paper in The Lancet:

Professor Simon Clarke, a virus expert at the University of Reading, told The Times: 'This is an important paper. It means we should be extremely careful. As children are carriers, reopening schools could expose parents, grandparents and teachers to infection and in turn anyone they might come into contact with... risking a second wave.'

Lots of ‘could’ and ‘might’ in both articles shows that really, we just don’t know for sure either way.