Children spread covid more effectively than adults

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is really awful news! I desperately want my kids back in school but not if it means killing their teachers or the lovely older women who work in the school. Or DH and me!

How odd. I'd die for my childrens' future. Why so selfish?

NP. I'll bite.
Because we have no one to take care of our very young kids. Grandparents are elderly. It's just DH and me. I have no idea what to do if we both get very sick at the same time, and I certainly dont want to orphan them.

What posters like the person you’re responding to forget is that children will die and be disadvantaged by meeting schools closed. By almost any margin more children will suffer more greatly with schools closed than with them open. Not kids like yours or mine but abused and neglected kids 100%.

Kids needs are in direct conflict with teacher needs right now. We need to be honest about this being the issue. Teachers are scared and have been effective at communicating their fear. They are at much higher risk than the kids themselves and this is just a truth we seem to not want to grapple with. No one wants to paint it as that kind of a choice but that’s what it is. As a society do we care more about kids or teachers? And relatedly, do we care about teachers more than we care about the economy at large. Do we care more about teachers or a generation of progress in someone’s equality in the workplace being wiped out?

I’m not saying the answers up there are clear, but these are the questions. Posing it like a zero sum outcome is simply not reflective of reality and obfuscates the issue.

Personally I think teaching is an essential service and they should be paid hazard pay.

+1

They should also be able to choose to work from home. A lot of young teachers would prefer to be in the classroom, because ALL teachers realize it’s more effective than dl. But when the choice is inadequate distancing, masks that aren’t required or don’t stay on, parents sending sick kids to school? They should have a choice.

+2

Although, frankly, I think a lot of the extreme fear I’ve heard many teachers express is unfounded. They’re not intubating COVID patients in an ICU with no PPE, FFS. The available data suggest that young kids, at least, don’t contract or transmit COVID the same way older kids and adults seem to. So, these younger kids and their teachers could probably go back safely with reasonable mitigation measures (masks, hand-washing, spacing, etc.). This article sums up how I feel (even though I’m not a nurse): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/im-nurse-teachers-should-do-their-jobs-like-i-did/614902/

I don't think this is true. The data is largely inconclusive. Remember, most countries shutdown schools for a while, so we don't have enough info on this. Even Birx indicated as much.


https://www.today.com/health/dr-deborah-birx-still-open-question-how-rapidly-children-under-t187702

July 24, 2020

"What I can't tell you for sure despite the South Korea study is whether children under 10 in the United States don't spread the virus the same as children over 10.

"I think that is still an open question that needs to be studied in the United States. We certainly know from other studies that children under 10 do get infected, it's just unclear how rapidly they spread the virus."

Which is why I said, “the available data.” I know it’s not perfect, but it’s not like we know nothing; “largely” inconclusive overstates it, IMO. We can also consider how many essential daycares were operating, and were rarely the source of outbreaks. Cases, sometimes, yes, but not outbreaks. Emily Oster’s COVID website explains it well, I think: https://explaincovid.org/kids/kids-and-covid-19

It’s also worth noting, and taken from that website, that between February 1st and June 6th, 42 children died from COVID, and 198 from seasonal influenza. Is it conclusive, no, but it’s an important data point.