New study shows the huge role children play in spreading Covid

[Worriedmum999]

Biggest study so far on the role of children in spreading Covid has come out today. Surely this has massive implications on children going back to school as normal. It’s very concerning. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/looking-at-children-as-the-silent-spreaders-of-sars-cov-2/

@Barbie222 good question, the answer to which is I don't know and, from a quick review of the literature, it doesn't seem as though there's a consensus among scientists yet. The science moves much more slowly than the politics.

My understanding is that it's a long journey with multiple points of failure from the presence of the virus in one person's system (symptomatic or not) to an infection in another person. So research is needed at every stage of that journey to understand what's going on. This study simply shows that there is a high viral load in symptomatic children, comparable to or even greater than in symptomatic adults. So that's the first stage. For each of the next stages we need to understand how it could contribute to transmission and, importantly, whether this is different in adults and children.

Until we know for sure it's obviously best to err on the side of caution with as many measures to prevent transmission as possible, but at the same time let's not get ahead of ourselves with thinking that children are going to be super spreaders. There's no evidence of that as yet, and in fact most of the evidence from an epidemiological (rather than physiological) perspective suggests they aren't (rarely index cases, for example).

As I say I'm not a scientist but I work in research and know that science moves very slowly, with lots of back and forth, debate, uncertainty, replication of experiments etc. Lots more research is still needed, and will be for years in all probability, before we can understand how this virus really works.

People asking for schools to be opened safely, how do you actually see that working in practice? What would a safe school actually look like for you to be happy to send your children in?

I work in a small primary school, there simply isn’t a way to stop staff mixing across bubbles because there aren’t enough staff. There isn’t enough space to ensure social distancing. There isn’t enough time to spend all day washing hands and cleaning surfaces at the same time as educating.

I’d really like to know what people expect schools to do to be safe.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

It really concerns me how many people see adult or child shielders as expendable

Agree. And teachers.

You do know shielding is over now don't you! People are stuck in the mindset of March/April.

You do know shielding is over now don't you! People are stuck in the mindset of March/April

Er no. Some people believe in fairies and in what the government tells them is safe.

A poster on another thread mentioned that it’s those who want schools open full time are the actual ones who want the schools to be completely closed. I couldn’t agree more with this, as things stand they will be back to where they were in March before very long.

I don’t understand why a sustainable plan which provides blended learning as long as necessary rather than 100% for perhaps a term and then nothing for most until March, when the weather improves.

Some people are stuck in the mindset of Feb/early March. Again.

People no longer need to shield because levels of the virus in the community are very low. It's not hard to understand. Why should my child's education suffer because you want to stay in your lockdown heaven???

@ExmoorPony if a person was at risk of being very poorly if they contracted the virus in March/April so were put on the shielding list, does this mean that now they are no longer shielding if they get the virus the risk of them being very poorly is nil? Can’t you understand why people are concerned?

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@ExmoorPony if a person was at risk of being very poorly if they contracted the virus in March/April so were put on the shielding list, does this mean that now they are no longer shielding if they get the virus the risk of them being very poorly is nil? Can’t you understand why people are concerned?[/quote]
Then they should home educate and let the rest of us get back to normal. Plus the death rate is low even for shielded types and treatments are much improved.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

You do know shielding is over now don't you! People are stuck in the mindset of March/April

Er no. Some people believe in fairies and in what the government tells them is safe.

Shielding has been PAUSED. That is from the Government. People are still clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus. That has not changed. It doesn't matter what the Government say / don't say or what blooming month we are in. ECV means that you are a) more likely to catch the virus, and b) more likely to be hospitalised and die from the virus.

Five months ago we got text messages telling us that we could open a window and to have a hospital bag packed.

Now it's 'back to school for everyone' amongst 1,500 teenagers, 250 staff, no PPE and no chance of SD.

And what about the staff @ExmoorPony? Should they stay home too? How will schools operate with reduced staff?

@ExmoorPony

What do you suggest Clinically Extremely Vulnerable school staff do?

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@ExmoorPony if a person was at risk of being very poorly if they contracted the virus in March/April so were put on the shielding list, does this mean that now they are no longer shielding if they get the virus the risk of them being very poorly is nil? Can’t you understand why people are concerned?[/quote]
Risk is a combination of likelihood of something happening, and the effect is it does happen. So the risk to a formerly shielding person would be very high if the likelihood of them getting infected was high and the effect on them would be bad. Risk is lower if the likelihood of them getting it reduces even if the effect on them doesn't change. Therefore when infection rates are lower, the risk is lower. That's why in the local lockdown measures people who were formerly shielding are advised to start shielding again.

You also need to take into account factors like capacity in hospitals to treat them if they get it. At the beginning of the pandemic there was a concern that hospitals would be overwhelmed and unable to treat everybody who needed treatment. Now, that concern is not there, so actually the potential effect on the shielding is also improved.

“The study was conducted only on children who presented at hospital“

Im not sure if this implies the study looked at very I’ll children but just in case I wanted to clarify...

I read the study. It says they compared very ill adults with children with very mild symptoms. The children carried a higher vital load.

Viral

People with concerns don’t want education to suffer. We want schools to stay open.This is the whole point. Opening at 9am on a day in September doesn’t guarantee they stay open

@Emmememe

“The study was conducted only on children who presented at hospital“

Im not sure if this implies the study looked at very I’ll children but just in case I wanted to clarify...

I read the study. It says they compared very ill adults with children with very mild symptoms. The children carried a higher vital load.

Yes, but viral load isn't the same over the course of the illness. If you've been hospitalised as an adult you're highly unlikely to be in the first couple of days of the illness where viral load is highest. In fact, you're probably 2 or 3 weeks into the disease.

A better and less scare-mongery control group would've been adults presenting with COVID symptoms for the first time, in the exact same way as the children. Then we could see whether child viral load is same, higher, or lower than adults at the same stage of the disease.

Is Worriedmum999 = ClimbDad?

If cv19 was only mild then we wouldn't care.
CV19 is almost only mild for kids, and pretty low risk for most working age adults.

Challenge is limiting spread from kids to vulnerable adults.
People are clever & can figure out how to do that.

@ExmoorPony
Why should my child's education suffer because you want to stay in your lockdown heaven???
"Lockdown heaven"...oh behave, I don't want your child's education to suffer, as I (and everyone else) has said I don't want school shut, I would just like the option of keeping my medically vulnerable child home, if it seems that it is unsafe to go back in.

Then they should home educate and let the rest of us get back to normal

As I said earlier, just de registering and losing ds's school place would not he an easy option - we would lose support we have spent years fighting for. And we will be fined if we keep him off.

Shielding has been paused, it is not 'over'. Most children have been taken off the shielding list...however, it is hard not to feel trepidation when you have a child with an extremely rare condition, who has scarring on the lungs, a hole in the heart, chronic gastric issues, severe asthma and learning disabilities.

People with learning disabilities have incredibly poor health outcomes for a variety of reasons. Parents have to fight for them to be heard, for their condition to be understood and they have to question everything, necaise they are their children's best and only advocate.

Ending up in hospital is something we are, sadly, quite familiar with. We always have a hospital bag packed and have done for 10 years. I have written and updated his hospital passport to include information about what would happen if he needed to be ventilated (under the guidance of medical professionals)....these are not easy things to do.

Ds has had reactions to mild illnesses that have left Drs scratching their heads. Am I scared of him contracting Covid...I'd be a fucking idiot not to be scared and try to do everything possible for him not to get it.

Alongside this, I am afraid I have little faith in a government that has got things so consistently wrong throughout this crisis.

Newsflash: humans spread human diseases! Stop press! Lock them all up forever!

So what? Do we really need another thread about this? The virus isn’t going anywhere and kids need a proper education.

Ah fuck it.
I give up.

The study does not "show the huge role
children play in spreading Covid".

"This study reveals that children may be a potential source of contagion in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in spite of milder disease or lack of symptoms, and immune dysregulation is implicated in severe post-infectious MIS-C."
www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(20)31023-4/fulltext

@InDeoEstMeaFiducia

Newsflash: humans spread human diseases! Stop press! Lock them all up forever!

Quite.

I do think there should be more protection and support for shielded households, and a choice to pause their children’s attendance at school, plus additional support.

Otherwise parents need to get on with sending their kids to school or deregister and home school. It’s ridiculous that privileged parents without any particular risk factors think they should get to home school Tarquinius and Octavia for as long as it suits them but get to keep their grammar school place. There’s been enough handwringing and nonsense about all this now, cases will go up no matter when schools are open no matter on what basis.

I give up