4 ms·

For a longer but more user-friendly explanation of the general idea: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/6

For a longer but more user-friendly explanation of the general idea: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo... Note that it's easy to read the Princeton press release as "children are spreading the disease to each other", but I don't think the Science paper is very good evidence for that hypothesis. Sadly the paper is making it pretty hard to get an answer to that question - the least they could have done was to make it obvious over what time their study data was extracted (answer, I think: for all time up to 1st Aug 2020), and also when schools were shut down in India (answer according to UNESCO: partial closure from 2nd March, still fully closed). Anyway, it seems perfectly consistent to me that the superspreaders are adults, and that clusters of children who interact with each other also interact with the same adults.

threatripper 6y ago
If schools are closed and children have to stay at home they don't spread the disease. They just get it from their parents and don't have any further contacts to whom they could spread it. The statistics during lockdown are pretty solid: Children don't spread it! (As long as you lock them inside with their adult parents - but the statistics may overlook that.) Therefore we must always keep a close eye on the circumstances where the data was taken and what we can and cannot conclude from that.