Daycare testing for runny noses?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok but why didn’t day cares react similarly to flu pre-covid? That seemed riskier than covid for kids.

Covid does not seem nearly as dangerous as flu for kids.

From a February 2020 article about flu:
“Children ages 4 and younger have been hospitalized at a rate of 80.1 per 100,000 children, the highest rate the CDC has on record, even surpassing rates during the 2009 pandemic.”

https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/9761

From a January 7 NYT article:
“More than four in 100,000 children ages 4 and younger admitted to hospitals were infected with the coronavirus as of Jan. 1 — double the rate reported a month ago and about three times the rate this time last year.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/health/covid-children-hospitals.html

Notice how the NYT article is carefully worded too because they probably don’t know if the children under 4 were hospitalized for covid or something else, like a broken bone.

Flu vaccines are available to all kids age 6 mo and up.

These two stats aren't comparable. The first (Feb 2020) stat seems to have a hospitalization for flu rate of 80 per 100k kids - all kids. Which is a lot! The second stat has the infection rate of kids who were admitted (4 of 100k kids - hospital admitted kids). And the stat was as of 1/1, so only just catching the start of any hospitalizations as a result of omicron wave. You can try to draw some conclusion from these two stats, but would be better to find more comparable stats.

If you are looking at hospitalization and deaths, RSV is certainly more dangerous to our <5s, especially the < 1 set.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a preschooler with allergies. Sometimes he still has a drip. If he seems sick, or it's obvious this is a cold, not just a drip or allergies, I keep him home. And yes I test him. If he is acting fine (energetic, happy, normal, etc) I send him despite the drip.

Use your common sense. I will say, I am in a private preschool and their covid rules are WAY MORE strict so good luck finding a different place.

This. We've tested for runny noses since June 2020, since my kid has no allergies. Usually PCR, but since those are so unavailable right now, we'd probably do an antigen then a virtual doctor visit to talk about getting a return-to-school note based on that + doctor's assessment.

I think these things will go away once we've fully completed the transition to "endemic covid", but we are not quite there - at least not from a policy and instituation perspective,. We are getting there, though.