7 ms·

Children’s role in spread of virus bigger than thought

67 points by mmmbn 6y ago

zarmin 6y ago
That's why I call it the Child Virus
civilized 6y ago
It's good to have independent confirmation, but to my recollection, a months-old German study already reported high viral loads in the respiratory tracts of asymptomatic infected children. The idea that children don't spread COVID much has always been grounded more in wishful thinking than evidence.
- rimliu 6y ago
  There are studies stating the opposite. They are not that popular in the popular media, because people don't like their "intuition" to be wrong". Not to mention, that the title is misleading.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > There are studies stating the opposite This is true for many subjects of interest (e.g. climate change), but of importance are the quality of the studies and where scientific consensus is going.
    - greatpatton 6y ago
      Most of this is coming from a study in France in early January where 2 British kids were infected and in contact with 130 other kids at different schools and none of them were infected. So now we can suppose that this study may have different issue.
keeganpoppen 6y ago
this is interesting news, but it annoys me a little bit that all it really says is that children "can" carry a higher viral load... OBVIOUSLY the most salient fact is whether children are more conducive / likely to spread the virus / etc. because clearly the question is not whether children can get the virus, etc., but whether they are a more potent attack vector than the general population. or maybe people seriously thought that because the virus has reduced symptoms in children that children somehow don't... catch the virus at all? it is hard to not feel like there is a paternalistic bent in the way this information is presented, and one that exists only to subvert the kind of maximally shallow, facile social media critique that will be promulgated by people who are anti-mask/-etc. anyway... why must the communication of the truth in so many spheres be polluted by the mere possibility* of out-of-context quotation causing stupid people to throw a hissy fit? apologies if it turns out I misread the ambiguous wording in this report, though I think the point still stands generally, at least from my own experience...
- pwinnski 6y ago
  You seem to be arguing two opposing points: both that there is a lack of certainty that would help the general public understand, and that somehow the information is being shaped by how the general public understands. Argue one point or the other, and you might get a more cogent response. As it is, I'm left thinking that science is built on limited understanding, stating only what the evidence to hand supports, and that the problem with the understanding of the general public is that they want certainty now when there are only more questions and areas to research for now. Research should not extrapolate far beyond what can be proven, regardless of how the result is filtered and distorted by consumers of social media.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  > this is interesting news, but it annoys me a little bit that all it really says is that children "can" carry a higher viral load No it doesn't. In the first paragraph it says: > The infected children were shown to have a significantly higher level of virus in their airways than hospitalized adults in ICUs for COVID-19 treatment, according to Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Mass General Hospital for Children (MGHfC). So they SHOWED in patients that it DOES have higher viral load. First paragraph. The second paragraph contradicts your reading further: > The study, “Pediatric SARS-CoV-2: Clinical Presentation, Infectivity, and Immune Reponses,” was published today in The Journal of Pediatrics. > “I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection,” says Lael Yonker, director of the
HarryHirsch 6y ago
It's common experience that children bring home all sorts of sniffles from school, there's a noticeable uptick in upper respiratory tract infections when the new school years starts in the fall. Many of these are caused by coronaviruses. With that in mind, the push to start school is based on wishful thinking, not on clinical evidence.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  > With that in mind, the push to start school is based on wishful thinking, not on clinical evidence. Saying "clinical" here is a bit of wishful thinking. Clinical testing would mean random selection and random assignment in a medical experiment for kids. With an adverse hypothesis.
- nickff 6y ago
  The push to start school is based on the perceived economic necessity (arguably a cost-benefit analysis), of providing childcare for parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17.
  - dripton 6y ago
    I hope most 17-year-olds don't need babysitters. We can probably split the difference some on this between elementary school (where the babysitting really is kind of economically important) and the older kids.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      > I hope most 17-year-olds don't need babysitters. From a national perspective of producing competitive individuals in an increasingly international landscape? Yes, they do. They need at least a few hours of their day coached by an institution to direct their energies towards their studies. Otherwise Khan Academy would already solve 85% of the problems, because it is closely aligned to state curricula.
      - dripton 6y ago
lbeltrame 6y ago
This study does not prove that children are more infectious. The paper only tested for viral RNA, not for infectious virus. Given that some people are clinically recovered but still have RNA in the throat, and that presence of viral RNA may not equate with live virus (see a Nature paper from two months ago), this is a rather severe limitation. Note that they may as well be: but you can't infer this from these results.
- glormph 6y ago
  Exactly. The paper itself concludes somewhat softer that "children may be a potential source of contagion in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in spite of milder disease or lack of symptoms" The patient group consisted of "children ... presenting to urgent care clinics or being hospitalized for confirmed/suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children", so they are pre-selected , making the role of the full amount of children in the population in spreading harder to know. As you note, that doesnt rule it out either.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    I still feel a little sour about this result: mainly because it's "easier" to find data on adult patients, but children data are far harder to get. So I feel this is a wasted opportunity.
brandon272 6y ago
It's baffling to me that there has ever been much of a question over whether kids can get and spread the virus to begin with. Many people seem to have taken the "kids are less impacted when infected" and converted it to a "kids can't get infected" or "kids don't spread the virus" conclusion. The provincial government where I live was recently excoriated for coming up with one of the weakest back-to-school plans in the country, which effectively suggested the status quo with next to no supports or funding for schools to deal with COVID-19 unless and until outbreaks start occurring. From what I can tell based on the policy and subsequent public statements made by the officials, they seemed to have been operating under the assumption that kids can't be infected or are less likely to be infected with COVID-19. The lack of critical thinking on display when it comes to this virus, especially by policymakers, is one of the most disturbing facets of this pandemic. I really get the impression that many are not putting in an effort to maintain even a baseline level of up to date knowledge on this evolving situation. It's distressing when you see people espousing opinion based on outdated information from 4 months ago.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  Was there really a question? Or did our policymakers start from the required conclusion - the peasantry go back to work - and from there infer backwards to "their children need to go back to school so that said peasantry can go back to work"? With that kind of thinking, I can understand that they don't actually have any idea about the transmission of Covid amongst children; they don't need that information as it has little bearing on the required conclusion. I have presented something of a leading question. I know what I think the answer is.
  - blub 6y ago
    I don't think it's just the government, at least based on what I see in e.g. Germany. Society has decided that kids have to go back to school because anything else is just too inconvenient. The lame excuses about lower transmission rates and the risk of developmental impairment are conveniently put forward to justify the decision.
    - 6y ago
fallingfrog 6y ago
Any parent of school age children knows that almost every cold you catch comes from your kids, who spend their time at daycare passing around the same toy and each putting it in their mouth. A few come from the workplace, but most from kids. Covid is not a superflu, it’s a supercold, and there’s no a priori reason to expect that you can’t catch it from your kids.
SomewhatLikely 6y ago
If I read correctly the they're saying they found that children have higher viral loads in their respiratory tracts. They are then making a very logical leap to assuming that this means children will more easily spread the virus. Is it possible that this assumption could be wrong? Are there no studies on the actual transmission rates from children to others vs that from adults?
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > If I read correctly the they're saying they found that children have higher viral loads in their respiratory tracts As I wrote elsewhere in the comments, the researchers have equated the quantity of viral RNA with viral load. Studies in adults have shown that this is not always the case. There's no guarantee that there is active virus there (unless you try to infect cells with what you got from the swab).
gammarator 6y ago
The study does not support the article title. Viral load is not the same as contribution to epidemiological spread. The best study I'm aware of suggests an age-dependent effect, with older kids infecting others at about the adult rate, but young kids causing very little secondary infection: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-childr...
- blub 6y ago
  Which intuitively makes no sense, as any parent of toddlers or kindergarten kids can testify. This virus would have to be unlike any other respiratory virus for young kids not to infect others.
  - johncearls 6y ago
    I think the rationale is that the primary way SARSCOV2 is spread is via droplets in the air. The most effective way of doing that is coughing and sneezing, i.e. being symptomatic of a respiratory infection. Children are generally asymptomatic with SC2 and likely remain infected for shorter time frames as SC2 never really gets a strong foothold. These factors make the spreading of SC2 from children likely.
  - derbOac 6y ago
    My theory is that there's cross immunity to other coronaviruses. This is now supported by molecular research but it's been my hypothesis all along. Basically little kids are so exposed to so many other coronaviruses they have greater immunity to sars-cov-2. I've had this prediction I'd like to test with the right data that parents of young children, and those that work with them, have lower covid rates than demographically matched controls. Ironically this would suggest that socially distancing kids might decrease immunity in the long run.
rurban 6y ago
Children were always thought to spread the virus like with influenza virus. That's why all schools closed. But the problem was that kids under 10 turned out to be not affected in numbers. People still thought that it is dangerous for or with kids. Statistics worldwide didn't support that. The picture is now a bit clearer, that kids just belong to the huge group of asymptotic cases dealing with the common cold as every year. The potential to infect older people is still disputed. Current studies clearly dismiss that. Only the press and politicians are fascinated by that idea. The biggest COVID-19 spreaders are still young women at around 30, unlike with the influenza.
- rurban 6y ago
  Eg https://fullfact.org/health/children-silent-super-spreaders-coronavirus/ https://fullfact.org/health/children-silent-super-spreaders-...

67 points by mmmbn 6y ago

That's why I call it the Child Virus

It's good to have independent confirmation, but to my recollection, a months-old German study already reported high viral loads in the respiratory tracts of asymptomatic infected children. The idea that children don't spread COVID much has always been grounded more in wishful thinking than evidence.

rimliu 6y ago
There are studies stating the opposite. They are not that popular in the popular media, because people don't like their "intuition" to be wrong". Not to mention, that the title is misleading.
- amelius 6y ago
  > There are studies stating the opposite This is true for many subjects of interest (e.g. climate change), but of importance are the quality of the studies and where scientific consensus is going.
  - greatpatton 6y ago
    Most of this is coming from a study in France in early January where 2 British kids were infected and in contact with 130 other kids at different schools and none of them were infected. So now we can suppose that this study may have different issue.

keeganpoppen 6y ago

this is interesting news, but it annoys me a little bit that all it really says is that children "can" carry a higher viral load... OBVIOUSLY the most salient fact is whether children are more conducive / likely to spread the virus / etc. because clearly the question is not whether children can get the virus, etc., but whether they are a more potent attack vector than the general population. or maybe people seriously thought that because the virus has reduced symptoms in children that children somehow don't... catch the virus at all? it is hard to not feel like there is a paternalistic bent in the way this information is presented, and one that exists only to subvert the kind of maximally shallow, facile social media critique that will be promulgated by people who are anti-mask/-etc. anyway... why must the communication of the truth in so many spheres be polluted by the mere possibility* of out-of-context quotation causing stupid people to throw a hissy fit? apologies if it turns out I misread the ambiguous wording in this report, though I think the point still stands generally, at least from my own experience...

pwinnski 6y ago
You seem to be arguing two opposing points: both that there is a lack of certainty that would help the general public understand, and that somehow the information is being shaped by how the general public understands. Argue one point or the other, and you might get a more cogent response. As it is, I'm left thinking that science is built on limited understanding, stating only what the evidence to hand supports, and that the problem with the understanding of the general public is that they want certainty now when there are only more questions and areas to research for now. Research should not extrapolate far beyond what can be proven, regardless of how the result is filtered and distorted by consumers of social media.
Someone1234 6y ago
> this is interesting news, but it annoys me a little bit that all it really says is that children "can" carry a higher viral load No it doesn't. In the first paragraph it says: > The infected children were shown to have a significantly higher level of virus in their airways than hospitalized adults in ICUs for COVID-19 treatment, according to Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Mass General Hospital for Children (MGHfC). So they SHOWED in patients that it DOES have higher viral load. First paragraph. The second paragraph contradicts your reading further: > The study, “Pediatric SARS-CoV-2: Clinical Presentation, Infectivity, and Immune Reponses,” was published today in The Journal of Pediatrics. > “I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection,” says Lael Yonker, director of the

HarryHirsch 6y ago

It's common experience that children bring home all sorts of sniffles from school, there's a noticeable uptick in upper respiratory tract infections when the new school years starts in the fall. Many of these are caused by coronaviruses. With that in mind, the push to start school is based on wishful thinking, not on clinical evidence.

threatofrain 6y ago
> With that in mind, the push to start school is based on wishful thinking, not on clinical evidence. Saying "clinical" here is a bit of wishful thinking. Clinical testing would mean random selection and random assignment in a medical experiment for kids. With an adverse hypothesis.
nickff 6y ago
The push to start school is based on the perceived economic necessity (arguably a cost-benefit analysis), of providing childcare for parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17.
- dripton 6y ago
  I hope most 17-year-olds don't need babysitters. We can probably split the difference some on this between elementary school (where the babysitting really is kind of economically important) and the older kids.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    > I hope most 17-year-olds don't need babysitters. From a national perspective of producing competitive individuals in an increasingly international landscape? Yes, they do. They need at least a few hours of their day coached by an institution to direct their energies towards their studies. Otherwise Khan Academy would already solve 85% of the problems, because it is closely aligned to state curricula.
    - dripton 6y ago

lbeltrame 6y ago

This study does not prove that children are more infectious. The paper only tested for viral RNA, not for infectious virus. Given that some people are clinically recovered but still have RNA in the throat, and that presence of viral RNA may not equate with live virus (see a Nature paper from two months ago), this is a rather severe limitation. Note that they may as well be: but you can't infer this from these results.

glormph 6y ago
Exactly. The paper itself concludes somewhat softer that "children may be a potential source of contagion in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in spite of milder disease or lack of symptoms" The patient group consisted of "children ... presenting to urgent care clinics or being hospitalized for confirmed/suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children", so they are pre-selected , making the role of the full amount of children in the population in spreading harder to know. As you note, that doesnt rule it out either.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  I still feel a little sour about this result: mainly because it's "easier" to find data on adult patients, but children data are far harder to get. So I feel this is a wasted opportunity.

brandon272 6y ago

It's baffling to me that there has ever been much of a question over whether kids can get and spread the virus to begin with. Many people seem to have taken the "kids are less impacted when infected" and converted it to a "kids can't get infected" or "kids don't spread the virus" conclusion. The provincial government where I live was recently excoriated for coming up with one of the weakest back-to-school plans in the country, which effectively suggested the status quo with next to no supports or funding for schools to deal with COVID-19 unless and until outbreaks start occurring. From what I can tell based on the policy and subsequent public statements made by the officials, they seemed to have been operating under the assumption that kids can't be infected or are less likely to be infected with COVID-19. The lack of critical thinking on display when it comes to this virus, especially by policymakers, is one of the most disturbing facets of this pandemic. I really get the impression that many are not putting in an effort to maintain even a baseline level of up to date knowledge on this evolving situation. It's distressing when you see people espousing opinion based on outdated information from 4 months ago.

EliRivers 6y ago
Was there really a question? Or did our policymakers start from the required conclusion - the peasantry go back to work - and from there infer backwards to "their children need to go back to school so that said peasantry can go back to work"? With that kind of thinking, I can understand that they don't actually have any idea about the transmission of Covid amongst children; they don't need that information as it has little bearing on the required conclusion. I have presented something of a leading question. I know what I think the answer is.
- blub 6y ago
  I don't think it's just the government, at least based on what I see in e.g. Germany. Society has decided that kids have to go back to school because anything else is just too inconvenient. The lame excuses about lower transmission rates and the risk of developmental impairment are conveniently put forward to justify the decision.
  - 6y ago

fallingfrog 6y ago

Any parent of school age children knows that almost every cold you catch comes from your kids, who spend their time at daycare passing around the same toy and each putting it in their mouth. A few come from the workplace, but most from kids. Covid is not a superflu, it’s a supercold, and there’s no a priori reason to expect that you can’t catch it from your kids.

SomewhatLikely 6y ago

If I read correctly the they're saying they found that children have higher viral loads in their respiratory tracts. They are then making a very logical leap to assuming that this means children will more easily spread the virus. Is it possible that this assumption could be wrong? Are there no studies on the actual transmission rates from children to others vs that from adults?

lbeltrame 6y ago
> If I read correctly the they're saying they found that children have higher viral loads in their respiratory tracts As I wrote elsewhere in the comments, the researchers have equated the quantity of viral RNA with viral load. Studies in adults have shown that this is not always the case. There's no guarantee that there is active virus there (unless you try to infect cells with what you got from the swab).

gammarator 6y ago

The study does not support the article title. Viral load is not the same as contribution to epidemiological spread. The best study I'm aware of suggests an age-dependent effect, with older kids infecting others at about the adult rate, but young kids causing very little secondary infection: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-childr...

blub 6y ago
Which intuitively makes no sense, as any parent of toddlers or kindergarten kids can testify. This virus would have to be unlike any other respiratory virus for young kids not to infect others.
- johncearls 6y ago
  I think the rationale is that the primary way SARSCOV2 is spread is via droplets in the air. The most effective way of doing that is coughing and sneezing, i.e. being symptomatic of a respiratory infection. Children are generally asymptomatic with SC2 and likely remain infected for shorter time frames as SC2 never really gets a strong foothold. These factors make the spreading of SC2 from children likely.
- derbOac 6y ago
  My theory is that there's cross immunity to other coronaviruses. This is now supported by molecular research but it's been my hypothesis all along. Basically little kids are so exposed to so many other coronaviruses they have greater immunity to sars-cov-2. I've had this prediction I'd like to test with the right data that parents of young children, and those that work with them, have lower covid rates than demographically matched controls. Ironically this would suggest that socially distancing kids might decrease immunity in the long run.

rurban 6y ago

Children were always thought to spread the virus like with influenza virus. That's why all schools closed. But the problem was that kids under 10 turned out to be not affected in numbers. People still thought that it is dangerous for or with kids. Statistics worldwide didn't support that. The picture is now a bit clearer, that kids just belong to the huge group of asymptotic cases dealing with the common cold as every year. The potential to infect older people is still disputed. Current studies clearly dismiss that. Only the press and politicians are fascinated by that idea. The biggest COVID-19 spreaders are still young women at around 30, unlike with the influenza.

rurban 6y ago
Eg https://fullfact.org/health/children-silent-super-spreaders-coronavirus/ https://fullfact.org/health/children-silent-super-spreaders-...