Masks on kids

Seriously. School needs to be in session in the fall.

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I hope so but here in NY itā€™s not certain. Governor said a decision will be made by July I believe

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I was on a school meeting today. The structure of how school will be wonā€™t be decided until August 1. They have to plan for multiple scenarios.

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Hopefully heā€™s learned to allow this to be a regionally adresses situation. What is reasonable for the Bronx is different than Bataviaā€¦

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I think that it does, too. No one wants to see even one child get sick (or more likely, a teacher) but the risk does seem very low both to the child and their families. When you look at the hardship families with working parents face, it just seems on balance opening schools is the right thing to do.

Hopefully weā€™ll more data like this so policymakers can feel comfortable going ahead. But closing schools was such a reflex, these types of studies arenā€™t going to be very common.

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Where are you located?

Colorado Denver area

Part of each plan is to have some sort of completely remote offered, for those who are compromised or living with those that are.

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Yes, but that was before they closed schools.

When Ireland had itā€™s peak of cases, all schools were closed. Same everywhere else.

In addition, here (Scotland) we had a third of the kids kept off school for the last two weeks we were open. So we were already operating with smaller classes, especially amongst the younger age groups (4-8).

So really there isnā€™t any evidence that holds water one way or another about children transmitting it, or even if they had it and were asymptomatic.

The U.K. has only just extended testing to include children, bar any admitted to hospital with symptoms (which were the three who died and the ones who ended up with the Kawasaki-like symptoms).

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Well, actually there is. This is just one small part of the puzzle, but it does indicate children are not very good at transmitting the virus (which we already suspected) in a school setting. If they were, they would have set off a chain of infections as we witnessed on cruise ships, nursing homes or prisons since those are all similar, contained environments. And schoolchildren have a great deal more contact with each other than residents of these other facilities.

Is it conclusive? No, it isnā€™t. I did say much more data is needed and that it will be hard to get. But it does definitely suggest that schools AND children are quite different from other settings and populations.

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ALTHOUGH, if kids are already more likely to be asymptomatic, it could be that the kids are spreading it like wildfireā€¦only, for the most part, they are asymptomatic, so we would never know it. But we should see that kids are bringing it home to the familyā€¦spreading it to those more likely to have symptoms.

Not saying thatā€™s the caseā€¦just another way to view the same data.

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It kind of makes me think that each school is itā€™s own herd so to speak. Teachers, staff and students are around each other, like a family, all day 5 days a week.

I finally got to visit my grandfather today. He can have up to 2 visitors at his retirement cottage and we all had to wear masks. He told me everyone in the retirement community can walk around without masks. They only need to wear them if outsiders come to visit. They are kind of like their own big community/family. There has been no cases of Covid-19 in his community.

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But we know thatā€™s not the case because they did contact tracing. That is the key part. The teachers didnā€™t infect any children, and the infected children didnā€™t infect anyone else, either.

Also, only one of the kids were asymptomatic, the other two were symptomatic, and all the teachers were.

So with a disease with a native R0 around 4, in the school setting it was suddenly 0. Thatā€™s pretty significant, even if it was a small study. Transmission basically dropped to almost nothing when it hit the pediatric population.

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But the children they used tested positive and the people around them at school, including adults, did not test positive. So Iā€™m confused why you would think that was the case.

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Wait. I think I jumped into the middle of specific scenario that I didnā€™t realize, not the more generalized idea that we have evidence that kids donā€™t spread it easily. I should have scrolled up a few more posts.

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Schools seem to me like a bog, for lack of a better phrase. The virus is running along, zipping through the grownups, and it hits the school and slows waaaaay down.

Itā€™s kind of odd to think that teachers might be protected from this viral disease because theyā€™re around children- itā€™s probably the first time in recorded history thatā€™s ever happened! Usually they get every virus that comes calling thanks to their young and slightly unhygienic charges.

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It is rather strange. Apparently this virus is going after the weak, the elderly and those with specific health conditions. I hope that the schools do plenty of research and are able to convince the politicians of what they think will work best based on their research.

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And the conspiracy theories beginā€¦

Iā€™m not into conspiracy theories. Please donā€™t assume. I think judging by the data that is exactly what is happening. Most of the people dying in our state are over 70 or have an underlying health condition. No children have died in our state. I do believe the children, adults and the elderly alike are getting ill.

My apologies, I wasnā€™t trying to insinuate that you were. I am married to one though, and that is just the type of observation that I know he would run with!!!

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