Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Has there been an official study done on this? One that shows by age group and infection with contact tracing? I know about the incident but have not seen any official data or study on it.
I would like to see it for sure.

As I have said many times, High School aged kids are a risk of spreading. School districts should be ready for it.

I wouldn’t blame any family who might have someone that’s elderly or higher risk at home from not wanting their kid on school.

I personally would be totally fine with my boy going to school if he was of age (only 2 years old so a few more years haha). My wife and I are healthy and in our mid 30s. Would it suck to get sick yes but odds are heavily in our favor that nothing serious happens to us.

I already don’t see my parents (since March) because they are both high risk.

No one seems to answer me on what we do about the harm to kids not attending schools. There are many reports on some serious issues.

 

Yes, but that doesn't fit the narrative, so it's not brought up on purpose.

 

Nine seems like a low number for that crowded a group.

The more important question is how many got sick? How many were hospitalized?

 

That chart doesn't make sense. If you've got 5 million cases, and 163,000 deaths, I don't know where the delta for "recovered" comes from. Seems to me if you took out the number currently hospitalized and the number dead, that would be the "recovered" number. I can't find national hospitalization numbers, but in Florida 533,000 have tested positive, 8200 have died and 6900 are currently hospitalized. That seems like we'd be a 517,000 recovered. Or, if you want to use the two week guideline (which is not accurate. See TWiV 640: Test often, fast turnaround, with Michael Mina | This Week in Virology for more details) then we'd be at 112,000 still active, so 400,000 or so recovered. If you extrapolate that out to the country, it seems the number of recovered would be closer to 4 million, with approximately a million active cases.

 

‘Pupils pose little risk of spreading Covid’ | News | The Sunday Times

More good news on kids going back to school.

 

Many here do not want to believe it. How many more studies need to come out before they believe kids younger than high school age are not a risk to themselves, teachers, or parents.

 

Nine does seem like a low number, but we don't know how many were tested. The entire school? Then yes, 9 is low. 100 people at random? Then that's a 9% positive rate, and that's high. The CDC recommends a rate of 5% positive max to keep schools open.

And while no European countries have shown outbreaks after schools reopening, we do have Israel, which is western, very close to Europe, and is a European country for International Soccer purposes. Israel is also a large scale test, whereas most of the European studies have been small scale, consisting of only a few hundred students and a small number of schools. Israel reopened an entire country with about 1 million school age kids, and the result was a country that went from 50 cases a day to 2,000 cases a day.

I'm just speculating here, but perhaps, only 1 in 10 classrooms with a kid who tests positive spreads the virus. In small number tests, in Europe with a small number of students and small amount positives, there wouldn't be 10 classrooms with a kid with the virus. But in Israel, when you scale to 1 million kids, the virus gets out and spreads. Again, no proof, just a potential hypothesis.

Also, while it is a small number of kids who have died, if we scale, we are still talking about 500 kids who will die, plus or minus. These are preventable deaths. Is it not callous to say it's ok to let 500 kids die so other kids can go back to school? Especially if the deaths are preventable?

We're also not just considering kid's health. But teacher and staff health. Last I looked, they are all over 18 years old. Their risk is significantly higher. They are more likely to end up on the hospital and die than the kids. Out of the 9 that tested positive in the GA school, we don't know how many are adults. But given the fact that there are many more kids than adults, if it's more than 1, the ratio of those that test positive skew towards the adults, which again, have a higher rate of complications.

Which begs the question, how many staff can get sick before school can't reopen because there aren't enough teachers and staff? And just how quality of an education will it be if kids are consistently being sent home for a few days for a school deep clean after the next round of positive school tests?

 

Found an article from the AJC that lists 6 students and 3 staffers were the ones infected in North Paulding. And from the article, it looks like there were no mandatory tests, only people who took tests on their own volition because they were feeling symptoms. If these people were in school a week ago, there is a good chance they infected others. And it's likely many of these new infected people are asymptomatic, since first symptoms often don't appear for 10 days or more.

So if the school does not reopen until Wednesday, that would be 9 days from the first day of school. If any of the 9 sick were at school say last Wednesday, that's only 7 days. Not enough time.

What this sets up is a roller coaster of a few days at school, then a few days at home while the school deep cleans. Not a recipe for success in my opinion. It also means the virus is spreading to the school, and if the first week is any indication, it's 2:1 students to adults getting sick, which is a much higher ratio than total students to adults. It will mean the school will quickly run out of teachers and staff to be effective as those who get sick need to quarantine for at least 2 weeks.

 

COVID models have actually been pretty helpful in understanding the spread and death toll from the coronavirus.
Actually, the COVID Models Have Been *Great*

 

I think the disconnect is because the majority of those who test positive do not require hospitalization, thus their recovery is not officially tracked. I believe I read that a person is considered "recovered" only if they test negative twice after having tested positive. Other than those hospitalized, there is little reason to burn two tests on this, so many are simply left in limbo as "unresolved/active".

I do think it should be relatively straightforward to estimate the actual number of active cases, based on trends in new cases, deaths, average duration of illness, etc. And it would actually be a useful metric to have. Looking at the new case number relative to the number of active cases would give clues as to whether we are doing better or worse at controlling spread.

 

I know multiple people who have had it in the last month. None got a negative test. They were told to go back living post symptom.

 

Behind a firewall. Can you quote the 4 paragraphs with the most data?

 

Not sure what you classify as a study. These kids infected each other

260 campers test positive for COVID-19 after stay at a Georgia YMCA camp

Campers ranged in age from 6 to 19, and many of the staffers were teenagers. Cabins had between 16 to 26 people. The report said this was “relatively large” but doesn’t clearly say if it was too many. Health investigators did fault the camp for not opening enough windows and doors to increase circulation in buildings.
…………………………………………………...
Test results were available for 344 people and 260 of them — about three-quarters — were positive.

The percentage of campers infected was higher among younger kids than older kids, the report found. It also was higher in kids who were at the camp for longer periods of time.

Officials recorded information about symptoms for only 136 kids. Of those, 100 reported symptoms — mostly fever, headache and sore throat.

 

Where there is community spread, someone infected brings in the virus. Then is spends within the smaller community. On the other hand, control community spread and you can open schools because the virus doesn’t get in. But, you better test, test, test so that if it gets in, it doesn’t spread. That is the lesson from the school studies.

 

A study is when you have a hypothesis and tested against controlled data.
You keep showing the one and only report that has not had any type of study done against it.

mean while we have linked studies from many different countries with all different types of case load. Those most recent is with about 20k pupils... ya I’ll take that study over an incident in GA with less than 300 and no study done on the data yet.

should what happened there be a concern, hell yes. That is why I hope they look into it further.

pupils showing positive has never been questioned. They can obviously have a viral load. What is strange is how for some reason younger kids do not seem to spread the virus.

 

This guy has amazing content. Doesn't get into political garbage. Just talks medical (sometimes too technical) and lately has been heavy covid-19.

Today's video is awesome on what the world is finding out in regards asymptomatic rates and T-cells to B-Cells.

Also a good part about mask. Share with any of those anti mask people.

 

More bad news on kids going back to school. One kid infected 25 (!) teachers at a school in Israel.

Also, some children are suffering long-term effects of coronavirus.

Children are still suffering fatigue and chest pains months after suspected Covid - CNN

Maybe we should take Covid-19 seriously.

 

Interesting news on different kinds of face coverings and how well they protect against Covid-19. Neck gaiters are actually WORSE than wearing nothing (or, at least, no face mask).

Neck gaiters may actually increase COVID-19 transmission, study finds

 

I take it seriously, wear a mask and social distance, but in reality my kids have a much higher odds of having issues with the Flu/pneumonia than Covid. They don’t have a lot of interaction with adults and when they do they wear masks. Not worried one bit about them going to high school next week. More worried about them driving in 6 months LOL.

 

That's too bad, they are a lot more comfortable than any of the masks I've tried so far.