Kids are Covid superspreaders

[Summerfreeze]

Interesting article. Largest contact tracing study to date of half a million finds that kids really are key to spreading this. Not a surprise really, is it.

www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/30/largest-covid-19-contact-tracing-study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence

Restaurants could have remained open sensibly. But the eat out schemes made people flock to them when really we should have still encouraged people to be more cautious.

Whilst the Eat Out scheme supported restaurants at the time it’s looking like that caused an uptick in cases, amongst other things, and now restaurants are suffering again. Maybe it would have been better just to keep them ticking cautiously along.

And many of the holidays have caused a lot more cases both here and abroad. The vibe was ‘get back to normal’ which definitely wasn’t the message that should be pushed during a pandemic.

Tbh I don't what the approach should have been as people wanted to get out/go on holiday. Of course holidays lend to an increase but what was the alternative?

know

Yes, not having a holiday is shit but it’s hardly vital. But what we have now in the aftermath is even shittier. Children would have fared better not having that holiday but having a more sustainable schooling.

So stupid to think India doesn’t have the same resources as western countries. Lol. Fair enough the poorest won’t, but you can be sure the Indian children in the cities are being educated. They have the internet, intelligent minds and parents who give a damn.

Given that 65% of the Indian population live in rural areas, you can't talk about city norms as if they are representative. Yes, some city dwellers are immensely rich and their kids are no doubt getting educated no matter what, but there are vast swathes of the population who don't have access to technology...and I'm not only talking about the very poorest.

Some Indian schools are now open though.

so you would have banned holidays? I can't agree to that as it would be hypocritical as I had a break. I chose not to fly though. I also used the eat out scheme & it definitely helped my local restaurants hang on in there however they did implement measures I was comfortable with.

I just think it's completely unrealistic to have had lockdown last through the summer.

I don't believe the vast majority would have been happy to comply with that & it has to be consensual.

@Starlight101

Rather than the ‘schools are responsible for spread’ and ‘schools are normal’ teams constantly sniping at each other we should be bloody furious at the government for making such a hash of the school return.

For allowing cases to rise right before schools went back with stupid eat out schemes and encouraging holidays. And then not putting any money into schools that are already on the bones of their arse. They absolutely do not give a shit whether children are in school or not. They just wanted to try to remain popular. If they genuinely cared they would have put in place many of the measures that could have allowed schools to tick along with less disruption. There was a team of supply teachers and retired teachers happy to return to the classroom or online to support children, most of them for free! They couldn’t even be arsed to make use of them.

Honestly, is anyone surprised by the government screwing it up?

Of course they don't care, never have and never will. The only reason the tier system is in place now, is simply window dressing by the government to show they are doing something, nothing more.

This should all have been expected from day one and be no surprise to anyone.

@Piwlyfbicsly

Children are superspreaders of...everything. Literally. Starting from common cold ending with lice, probably. There is no way out of this, though. I feel like all the measures are just that - to show that "we are doing something". Close schools, children will spread it somewhere else. It is not going away.

No. Why is it that for months, many people had no sore throats, sick bugs etc. Because primarily most children were not interacting. Reduce their amounts of contacts, quite obviously would redu e the risks of spreading covid. Halving class sizes at least and actually putting in place social distancing from Year 1 up would have a huge impact. Likewise ALL SCHOOLS having better ventilation and windows open.

It's a good headline. Quote from the actual report (which had a tiny number of children included in it, included late teens with young children, and didn't correct for other infected adults in the house) is clear that it is the household risk of infection rather than age-driven risk: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.14.20153643v1.full.pdf+html
"Our analyses do not identify strong evidence of differential risk of acquiring or transmitting infection across ages in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, after accounting for the fact that many of the observed infectious contacts involving children occurred in household settings. Evidence of the role of children in transmission is inconsistent, and risk likely varies across locations in accordance with public health interventions including closure of school or daycare centers, stringency of stay-at-home orders, and aspects of the built environment of settings where contact with children occurs. Limited data on infection risk are available from prospective testing of exposed children, similar to our study. Two contact tracing studies in China yielded conflicting conclusions, with one reporting no difference in risk of acquiring infection across ages (although children were less likely to experience symptoms; (39)) while the other reported higher risk of infection at older ages (40). One study in Switzerland revealed adults served as index cases for a majority of familial transmission clusters (64), however it is difficult to determine the role of differential contact patterns among children and adults outside of the household in this context, particularly in light of the closure of schools and daycare facilities."

superspreader

I think my children would relish that description!

What's really needed is for people to stop saying "children" and differentiate between:

1. teenagers, who actual tests prove again and again catch covid and spread covid amongst each other and their household; versus
2. young children pre-order, who actual tests prove again and again are less likely to catch covid and may also spread it less. It doesn't matter that little kids spread rhinovirus, flu and the common cold efficiently, it matters what the evidence is for actual spread of covid to push for targeted measures for the appropriate groups.

It would also be useful to get updated research on the superspreader ages, the Swiss research said age 40s were most efficient spreaders, but that was a long time ago.

That should say pre-puberty, not pre-order.

There won't be any "getting on with education" when the teaching staff get sick.
PT education and more masks might help. It's the teachers I feel sorry for.

I am not sure that teens are superspreaders.

My 15 year old Was at school for 3 days while infectious (2 days before symptoms and the day it started).

There was no spread amongst his friends or classmates

That said he was isolating due to another case 2 weeks before so the only place he could have got it was at school.

So I think the virus just reacts differently in different people, it's not an age thing

I don't understand how this statement

Across all age groups, people had a greater chance of catching the coronavirus from someone their own age.

turns into
"kids are superspreaders"

If you dive into the article, there are charts of who most people have contact with & probably got covid from: 80 yr olds get it from other 80 yr olds, 70 yr olds get it from other 70 yr olds, etc. 80 yr olds superspread as much as young people. People are saying a reason Africa is less affected by covid is because they barely have any care homes & no one sends their elderly to hospital unless already very ill.

It isn't just teaching staff that are needed to keep a school functioning either "Meglet*. Lack of kitchen/office/cleaning/midday staff etc could force a school to close. If numbers keep on rising, it's inevitable that closures will happen.

Well said @Londonmummy66

So how come those countries that locked their kids up by shutting schools but let their economies open including India, Mexico and the USA (all shut schools in March) still had huge surges over the summer?...shutting schools alone has not be shown to be a particularly effective means of infection control yet it surely would of children were the main vectors for transmission.

I would also question why the ons survey (which includes a random sample of the same indivisible includes non symptoms) is still not showing higher than average infection rates in primary children in the U.K. (infection rates on a par with adult now)...I mean a bunch of these so called super spreaders get together in a non socially distanced manor in a primary schools every day they should be showing much higher infection rates than any other age group under your theory!

I get the desire to shut schools give the minimum impact on the economy compared to other measures and it has undoubtedly been the reason it was the focus of measures in Mexico but it simple doesn’t work in the absence of a full lockdown and does amazing damage to children’s educational outcomes.

Good point sultan 👍.

@Starlight101

Restaurants could have remained open sensibly. But the eat out schemes made people flock to them when really we should have still encouraged people to be more cautious.

Whilst the Eat Out scheme supported restaurants at the time it’s looking like that caused an uptick in cases, amongst other things, and now restaurants are suffering again. Maybe it would have been better just to keep them ticking cautiously along.

And many of the holidays have caused a lot more cases both here and abroad. The vibe was ‘get back to normal’ which definitely wasn’t the message that should be pushed during a pandemic.

Trouble is that restaurants aren't profitable if they are only at 1/4 or 1/3 capacity due to social distancing etc. Also, customers can't be spread over a full day as there are obviously peak times and dead times.

Rather than EOTHO and reduced VAT, government should have been giving direct subsidies to all businesses that can't operate at normal capacities so that they could operate at lower levels.

Rishi's scatter-gun approach to covid grants was badly thought out - some businesses got grants they didn't need, others have been excluded completely based on pretty random/illogical criteria.

It's no wonder that some restaurants etc jumped on the EOTHO scheme as it was basically the only support they were getting - and yes, some will have gone too far with inadequate social distancing, inadequate cleaning, inadequate recording of customer details etc. All that was entirely foreseeable by whichever clowns were deciding the rules re the scheme rules, covid support grants, etc.

What an utterly misleading article and thread title.

@Qasd

So how come those countries that locked their kids up by shutting schools but let their economies open including India, Mexico and the USA (all shut schools in March) still had huge surges over the summer?...shutting schools alone has not be shown to be a particularly effective means of infection control yet it surely would of children were the main vectors for transmission.

I would also question why the ons survey (which includes a random sample of the same indivisible includes non symptoms) is still not showing higher than average infection rates in primary children in the U.K. (infection rates on a par with adult now)...I mean a bunch of these so called super spreaders get together in a non socially distanced manor in a primary schools every day they should be showing much higher infection rates than any other age group under your theory!

I get the desire to shut schools give the minimum impact on the economy compared to other measures and it has undoubtedly been the reason it was the focus of measures in Mexico but it simple doesn’t work in the absence of a full lockdown and does amazing damage to children’s educational outcomes.

Primary age children aren't getting tested as much.

• they often don't show symptoms, so spread happens silently

• they are low priority for testing

• when there is a positive case in schools, there is now a move towards other children in the bubble not being quarantined or tested.

In fact, in the last set of ONS figures, broken down by age, the fastest rate of growth of infection was in primary school.

(The ONS figures are especially useful as this is a random community sample repeatedly tested, to investigate infection spread scientifically, in a prospective way )

@Piwlyfbicsly

Children are superspreaders of...everything. Literally. Starting from common cold ending with lice, probably. There is no way out of this, though. I feel like all the measures are just that - to show that "we are doing something". Close schools, children will spread it somewhere else. It is not going away.

Agree with this! Short of locking all children indoors indefinitely this is just something we have to live with