4 ms·

The details of the epidemic matter, though. For example, closing schools is a fairly obvious intervention in flu epidemics - kids are really likely to get it an

by makomk 7y ago

The details of the epidemic matter, though. For example, closing schools is a fairly obvious intervention in flu epidemics - kids are really likely to get it and bring it home to their families, especially since they don't have the immunity that some adults might. It may actually be completely useless in this epidemic. Whilst kids can be infected, they generally seem to have very mild cases and there's some evidence they're no good at passing the infection on to others.

zamfi 7y ago
> there's some evidence they're no good at passing the infection on to others May I ask: What evidence of this did you find convincing? From my own digging it seemed like this was a claim from China, which merely indicated that it was rare that, in a family, the child got it first and gave it others. However, when the epidemic really started taking off, it was the middle of CNY and kids weren't in school, which could completely account for why they didn't observe child->adult transmission. I'd love to be wrong about this, though.
- nl 7y ago
  The China evidence was fairly compelling (they did contact tracing and were unable to find a single case where the child was the transmitter). Schools didn't close in Australia (although many parents kept their children at home). There have been zero cases traced to child transmission, even in a few cases where a teacher or worker at a school got it from another place and brought it to school and those individual schools had to be closed. There was a single cluster based around a school in Sydney but it was found to be parent-to-parent transmission. Singapore didn't close schools during their early phase (until 2 weeks ago) and contact traced every single case. Zero were attributable to child-to-child contact. It's possible this is all luck though.
  - sundvor 7y ago
    Schools in Australia are closed now, not reopening since Easter break. Kinders (preschool child daycare centers) remain open, and are now free - 100% paid for by the government.
    - nl 7y ago
      It's the school holidays in many states (I'm Australian). All schools will open for term 2, with Victoria and the ACT saying parents should prefer to keep children at home when possible while the other states are advising there will be more face-to-face[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/13/are-schools-open-closed-term-2-australia-coronavirus-easter-holidays https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/13/are-s...
      - sundvor 7y ago
        In Vic children are held home, except for those of essential workers and if vulnerable; school started last week. Source: I'm managing son in grade 4. They just started using Cisco WebEx to connect with AV.
- usaar333 7y ago
  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(20)30095-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...
- lemming 7y ago
  Here's an article from a microbiologist here in NZ who's been one of the public faces of decoding the current scientific understanding of COVID for the general population: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-04-2020/siouxsie-wiles-what-we-know-about-children-and-covid-19/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-04-2020/siouxsie-wiles-w...
Gibbon1 7y ago
I keep coming back to since we don't know the details very well right now and risk of catastrophe is high then executing the laundry list of interventions is the most prudent option until we have better data. Maybe we figure out that children and teenagers basically don't get it or spread it. Then we can guardedly reopen schools. But not before we aren't certain it isn't going to blow up in our faces.
- __blockcipher__ 7y ago
  Unemployment directly leads to suicide over the long run, and that’s not even mentioning the extra suicide and overdose-related deaths from the unique conditions of isolation and constant fear mongering we are all collectively being exposed to. It’s not clear that our interventions are going to help, given that the economic damage is going to introduce mortality (dud to the aforementioned suicide/overdose) in individuals who never would have been harmed by covid. Meanwhile, it’s still a reality that majority of the globe will be exposed to this, so the lockdown is not avoiding death but instead just _postponing_ it. We need to hunker down insofar as we are close to exceeding medical capacity, but when we are not on the brink of medical collapse we need to be opening up. Unfortunately the public policy has been built around irrational fear rather than “straight talk”. Thus why people are scared shitless that their teenage children, or elementary school children, will did if they return to school (rather than merely being a vector to infect their parents). I’m on mobile but I have citations for the link between unemployment vs suicide that I’ll try to edit and stick in here in an hour or so. Last thing is that people should understand that the serological data, while not entirely reliable, is indicating from multiple sources that true IFR is .2-.8%, and furthermore that relative risk varies massively as a function of age/obesity/etc. So this seems to be one of the worst diseases to be practicing national lockdown for. (Avoiding hospital overrun was a great goal but the goalposts have now moved over time). Also the IMHE model is so laughably bad that I actually am shocked that the authors are considered “experts”. It predicts 0 deaths after some point in June (I forget the day, I think june 6) because it naively assumed a .3 R_0 based off of the wuhan data, which they apparently assumed would hold for the US. In other words my understanding is the model is pretending that we’re going to contain covid. And they actually were crazy enough to lower the estimated deaths to 60,000 which we can already see is ridiculous. I really wish I was in Sweden right now...
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
It's important to try to better understand the effect of various measures on R. In the present situation in the US and Europe, though, what matters most is quickly reducing R. There will be time for more experimentation with different measures (e.g., different regions trying slightly different interventions) later, but right now, plausibility is the best guide.

by makomk 7y ago

zamfi 7y ago

> there's some evidence they're no good at passing the infection on to others May I ask: What evidence of this did you find convincing? From my own digging it seemed like this was a claim from China, which merely indicated that it was rare that, in a family, the child got it first and gave it others. However, when the epidemic really started taking off, it was the middle of CNY and kids weren't in school, which could completely account for why they didn't observe child->adult transmission. I'd love to be wrong about this, though.

nl 7y ago
The China evidence was fairly compelling (they did contact tracing and were unable to find a single case where the child was the transmitter). Schools didn't close in Australia (although many parents kept their children at home). There have been zero cases traced to child transmission, even in a few cases where a teacher or worker at a school got it from another place and brought it to school and those individual schools had to be closed. There was a single cluster based around a school in Sydney but it was found to be parent-to-parent transmission. Singapore didn't close schools during their early phase (until 2 weeks ago) and contact traced every single case. Zero were attributable to child-to-child contact. It's possible this is all luck though.
- sundvor 7y ago
  Schools in Australia are closed now, not reopening since Easter break. Kinders (preschool child daycare centers) remain open, and are now free - 100% paid for by the government.
  - nl 7y ago
    It's the school holidays in many states (I'm Australian). All schools will open for term 2, with Victoria and the ACT saying parents should prefer to keep children at home when possible while the other states are advising there will be more face-to-face[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/13/are-schools-open-closed-term-2-australia-coronavirus-easter-holidays https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/13/are-s...
    - sundvor 7y ago
      In Vic children are held home, except for those of essential workers and if vulnerable; school started last week. Source: I'm managing son in grade 4. They just started using Cisco WebEx to connect with AV.
usaar333 7y ago
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(20)30095-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...
lemming 7y ago
Here's an article from a microbiologist here in NZ who's been one of the public faces of decoding the current scientific understanding of COVID for the general population: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-04-2020/siouxsie-wiles-what-we-know-about-children-and-covid-19/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/23-04-2020/siouxsie-wiles-w...

Gibbon1 7y ago

I keep coming back to since we don't know the details very well right now and risk of catastrophe is high then executing the laundry list of interventions is the most prudent option until we have better data. Maybe we figure out that children and teenagers basically don't get it or spread it. Then we can guardedly reopen schools. But not before we aren't certain it isn't going to blow up in our faces.

__blockcipher__ 7y ago
Unemployment directly leads to suicide over the long run, and that’s not even mentioning the extra suicide and overdose-related deaths from the unique conditions of isolation and constant fear mongering we are all collectively being exposed to. It’s not clear that our interventions are going to help, given that the economic damage is going to introduce mortality (dud to the aforementioned suicide/overdose) in individuals who never would have been harmed by covid. Meanwhile, it’s still a reality that majority of the globe will be exposed to this, so the lockdown is not avoiding death but instead just _postponing_ it. We need to hunker down insofar as we are close to exceeding medical capacity, but when we are not on the brink of medical collapse we need to be opening up. Unfortunately the public policy has been built around irrational fear rather than “straight talk”. Thus why people are scared shitless that their teenage children, or elementary school children, will did if they return to school (rather than merely being a vector to infect their parents). I’m on mobile but I have citations for the link between unemployment vs suicide that I’ll try to edit and stick in here in an hour or so. Last thing is that people should understand that the serological data, while not entirely reliable, is indicating from multiple sources that true IFR is .2-.8%, and furthermore that relative risk varies massively as a function of age/obesity/etc. So this seems to be one of the worst diseases to be practicing national lockdown for. (Avoiding hospital overrun was a great goal but the goalposts have now moved over time). Also the IMHE model is so laughably bad that I actually am shocked that the authors are considered “experts”. It predicts 0 deaths after some point in June (I forget the day, I think june 6) because it naively assumed a .3 R_0 based off of the wuhan data, which they apparently assumed would hold for the US. In other words my understanding is the model is pretending that we’re going to contain covid. And they actually were crazy enough to lower the estimated deaths to 60,000 which we can already see is ridiculous. I really wish I was in Sweden right now...

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

It's important to try to better understand the effect of various measures on R. In the present situation in the US and Europe, though, what matters most is quickly reducing R. There will be time for more experimentation with different measures (e.g., different regions trying slightly different interventions) later, but right now, plausibility is the best guide.